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The term celebrity is commonplace. People refer to themselves as a celebrity and others connote celebrity status with well-known or revered individuals; but what defines a celebrity? Here I will examine the notion of the term and apply these ideas to the Twitter user @ElderRon and a pig.

The dictionary definition of the term celebrity is as follows: “the state of being well known”.

To some, the pig from The Only Way Is Essex is revered as a celebrity – he is well known and even has somewhat of a fan base. (I think his name is Mr Darcy, but I could be wrong. Just search Twitter and you’ll soon find his following.) But what about this inimitable pig allows him celebrity status? His starring role in the ITV2 reality-soap-drama-whateverelseyoucancallit series, The Only Way Is Essex (or TOWIE as it’s affectionately known), undoubtedly is the catalyst of his fame but for those who don’t watch the series this humble pig’s celebrity notoriety is lost. Therefore, it can be deduced that the notions of celebrity are relative.

The notions of celebrity are relative to those aware of the person – so Mr Darcy the TOWIE pig is only a celebrity to those who are familiar with the series. It could be asked, however, at what stage of notoriety does “well known” become celebrity? How well known does this pig need to be before he is classed as a celebrity? For me, someone who doesn’t (yet) watch TOWIE (but clearly insists on using the acronym), I don’t consider the pig a celebrity – although his continued appearances on my Twitter and Tumblr feeds would say otherwise.

In a similar way, can we then consider @ElderRon a celebrity? If you didn’t attend the Student Radio Conference last month then already you’re questioning who this Ron guy is, but if you did you probably do notarise him with some celebrity status. Let me explain, Ron was the unforgettable bus driver who tirelessly ferried students between campuses for the Student Radio Conference in Hatfield this year – without him, there would’ve been some long, hungover morning walks between campuses. It wasn’t until after the conference did @ElderRon’s Twitter presence emerge to the #sracon twittersphere – and he was an instant hit. Apparently his presence online is well known by the students of the University of Hertfordshire, and now amongst the attendees of the conference. To everyone else however, he is just another Twitter user. Relatively, to the attendees of the conference and the students that travel on his bus, @ElderRon is a celebrity.

Other than being simply well known, the discourses of the @ElderRon Twitter account can be analysed – his celebrity is not only relative to those who have travelled on his bus service, but also relative to his Twitter account. By including the noun ‘Elder’ in his Twitter username, Ron displays a discourse and connotes ideas of age, seniority and education over his followers and fans – something that is revered as part of his celebrity both on Twitter and in real life. This throws up another question, would @ElderRon’s online persona still echo his real-life celebrity if his username was different?

Do you ever go into Topman, see the adverts and models they use, and come away thinking - is it just me, or does everything look like it’s out of the 80s? Retro is still “in” so I’m told, which apparently means that development of fashion has somewhat ceased whilst we regenerate the styles of former years - ironic some would say.

Ironic? Or more new sincerity… the irony of retro isn’t really as ironic as it appears - there is some sincerity in the replication of former styles. Whilst you may look like a bit of an idiot if you do go into Topman and come out looking like Chesney Hawkes, in all seriousness the concept of retro-chic is the appreciation of styles gone by.

But what is this new sincerity business? Well it’s exactly that, the combination of irony and sincerity, whereby there is a lack of irony in something seriously ironic. Quite postmodern, no? In some respects new sincerity is really quite cynical, the ideas have been applied to all forms of art and media by a range of theorists.

Key theorists:
- Epstein, Mikhail (1999) “A Catalogue of New Poetries”
- Yurchak, Alexei (2008) “Post-Post-Communist Sincerity: Pioneers, Cosmonauts, and Other Soviet Heroes Born Today”
- Morris, Jason (2008) “The Time Between Time: Messianism & the Promise of a “New Sincerity,” Jacket 35

This is a reading response to David Parker and Paul Long’s
“‘The Mistakes of the Past’? Visual Narratives of Urban Decline and Regeneration”.

Tim Berners-Lee is credited with ‘inventing the internet’. Revolutions in the last few years have seen the rise of what is commonly coined ‘Web 2.0’ - for the guy who came up with the idea for what was essentially Web 1.0, regeneration on this scale is something almost sacrilegious and unnecessary:

“Nobody really knows what it means… If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.”

Taken from an interview with Berners-Lee on the topic of Web 2.0, he claims that the regeneration of the original world wide web was simply just a progression in “jargon” and not in reality.

When the post-war concrete architecture that, for Parker and Long, was the original cityscape of Birmingham began to be regenerated for the new and exciting post-modern architecture of Bullring and Rotunda, they saw this as sacrilege and unnecessary regeneration. Apparent forward thinking now which will turn out to be mistakes in the future?

Berners-Lee was convinced that the Web 2.0 wave would die down, but the ideas of procumercy which lie behind the “jargon” have - in reality - stayed strong online. Were Parker and Long really right to say that the developments of Birmingham would be considered mistakes in future years? Will they eventually be seen as outdated? Well, probably. But surely that’s the whole idea of development and, in turn, regeneration - otherwise how do we progress?

“Cities, like most of the lives they enclose, rarely turn out as intended.”

Well who knew that we’d all be blogging, tweeting and interacting online when the world wide web was established? Certainly not Tim Berners-Lee, it’s safe to say.

This is a Media Culture reading response to Stuart Hall’s “Notes on Deconstructing ‘The Popular’”.

The ever-changing nature of popular, according to Hall, makes the term highly difficult to define - equally difficult is the notion of culture. This chapter looks at defining popular culture and how different definitions take into consideration different areas of both popular and culture.

Complexities in the term popular arise mainly from issues surrouning periodisation; Hall notes the mass changes between the 1880s-1920s, but also the ever-changing and advancing preferances of “the people”. From this, Hall draws three definitions:

1. Popular by consumption - media is popularised by mass consumption, which Hall says implies to passive audiences.
2. Popular culture is everything “the people” do or have done, which is considered far too descriptive and broad by Hall. Also, a difinitive list can never be achieved due to mass-media consumption.
3. Popular is the ever-changing ‘prefered’ choices of “the people” - this gives a dynamic list which can chance dependant on the cultural dialectic and periodisation.

Hall prefers the third definition as it dynamically changes as per mass consumption as well as consumer preference, rather than the static, endless lists of the first two definitions. Whilst the first two definitions also allude to popular as class, the third definition is not reliant on the links between popular culture and class.

On Sunday night I ashamedly bought into the consumer culture and went to see X Factor Live at the NEC in Birmingham. Whilst I’m not afraid to admit that I actually enjoyed it - albeit apart from Wagner’s hip-shaking - I couldn’t help but observe it from a Leavisite perspective.

(If you’re reading and wondering who on earth this Leavis guy is, in short he is a highly respected mass culture and literary theorist with strong views on mass communication and consumer culture.)

The X Factor franchise, which every year is bought into en mass by thousands of consumers (myself included), could be seen to have began the resurgence popularised talent competitions, as by far the most successful televised talent competition. One of Leavis’ main criticisms of the mass media is the standardisation of film, advertising and television. With so many programmes of the talent genre appearing on screens up and down the country, could Leavis’ concerns of standardisation truly be producing passive audiences willing to watch these fairly repetitive programmes week in week out?

Leavis’ work “The Canon” was a critique of the traditional process of naming a definitive list of outstanding literature - a list that if read and comprehended by all would lead to mass culture. Whilst the “Scrutiny” journal, founded by Leavis, followed a canonised discourse, critics then and now have questioned how a definitive list of culture can be produced. In which case, should questions not be raised about the canon-like process in which the X Factor is dictating the number one singing talents in the country?

Whilst the programme gives the illusion of the winner and subsequent runners-up being decided by the mass publics, the genre of the show automatically dissuades a vast majority of consumers away from being part of the process. Therefore, the X Factor is not representative of mass culture or preference, instead it is resultant of passive consumers accepting the Leavisite canon which is the wide-spread talent genre.

This post is part of a module in Media Culture which I am studying at Birmingham City Univeristy. Fan of Glee, or abhore the concept? Read Lucy Hird’s excellent Leavisite take on the programme »

This post is for @BCUMedia module MC513 and is a response to the reading ‘The Analysis of Culture’ by Raymond Williams.

Williams initially outlines three key definitions of culture:

• the ‘ideal’: “culture is a state or process of human perfection”
• the ‘documentary’: “culture is the body of intellectual and imaginative work”
• the ‘social’: “culture is a description of a particular way of life”

It is clear that these three definitions, whilst independent of each other, must be used collaboratively to analyse culture; to evaluate fully “meanings and values” within all areas of ‘culture’, from “art and intellectual work” through to “institutions and forms of behaviour”, all three definitions must be used.

Williams goes on to define the theory of culture as “the study of relationships between elements in a whole way of life”; where the analysis of culture is “the attempt to discover the nature of the organization which is the complex of these relationships”. Through the analysis of culture, including the three definitions, Williams sees ‘patterns’ as key markers for the aforementioned “relationships”.

Williams also defines three levels of culture:

• “livied culture”: openly acceptable, of a particular time or place
• “recorded culture”: the culture of a period
• “selective tradition”: the amalgamation of the two previous levels

It is key to comprehend the concept of “selective tradition”, the beginnings of cultural selection “within the period itself”. This creates three levels of selection: “general human culture”; “historical record of a particular society”; or “rejection of considerable areas”.

Culture, according to Williams, is evolutionary - constantly reinventing and evolving itself. This characteristic is defined as “structure of feeling”, where new generations actively move culture forward or remediate older culture. Equally, “cultural tradition can be seen as a continual selection and re-selection of ancestors”.