The Rise of the Celebrity

Not to harp upon the Tiger Woods fiasco, God knows we’ve all heard enough about it since Thanksgiving, but I came across this Newsweek article by Neal Gabler that ties in with one of my previous posts on the pseudo-event. It discusses the rise of the celebrity and the writer contends that ‘celebrity’ is the art form of the 21st century and serves the same purpose as books, dvds, plays, etc.  He references Boorstin (who we’ve read in my Visual Communication class) and below is an excerpt:

But there is a less antiquated and reproachful perspective on celebrity—one that may help explain why Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and now the new and revised Tiger Woods seem so embedded in the national consciousness. In this view, celebrity isn’t an anointment by the media of unworthy subjects, even though it may seem so when you think of minor celebs such as Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag, or Levi Johnston, or the gate-crashing Salahis. It is actually a new art form that competes with—and often supersedes—more traditional entertainments like movies, books, plays, and TV shows (and the occasional golf tournament), and that performs, in its own roundabout way, many of the functions those old media performed in their heyday: among them, distracting us, sensitizing us to the human condition, and creating a fund of common experience around which we can form a national community. I would even argue that celebrity is the great new art form of the 21st century.

Gabler more or less breaks down our obsession with celebrity which he attributes to our obsession with interesting narratives ands explain how anyone can become famous once they have an interesting narrative behind them. I tend to agree.

Access the full article here: Tiger-Stalking: In Defense Of Our Tabloid Culture

The Power of the Panopticon

I generally don’t like to write forced blog posts. Instead I prefer to let my inspiration come naturally, which is why I guess I haven’t posted in a while…no inspiration…ha! But this weekend I had a chance to check out the movie Law Abiding Citizen and it took me back to one of my Visual Communication classes which centered on the idea of the Panopticon. The Panopticon was a prison model proposed by Jeremy Bentham back in the late 18th century (see image). It was designed to enable round the clock but invisible surveillance of prisoners via a tower central to a circular building. A lot of the movie Law Abiding Citizen was filmed within the walls of the Eastern State Penitentiary here in Philadelphia which was constructed with a similar idea of prison surveillance to the Panopticon.

Well what has this got do with anything was the question I first wondered upon encountering this concept. It seemed like a concern of architects not communication students or professionals. However, upon delving more into Foucault’s ideas, I realized that the concept of the Panopticon is much more pervasive than I ever would have thought. I don’t feel like I can do justice to Foucault’s ideas on Panopticism in this short post, but go here if you’d like a more in-depth understanding. Suffice it to say, Foucault was concerned with the manifestation of discipline in a society under constant surveillance or rather a society under perceived constant surveillance as one of the key features of this prison model was that the prisoners could never know when they were being watched.

The Panoptic system is present in our every day lives through camera surveillance, computer technology (think cookies on your computer) and in organizational settings to name a few. It is obviously a form of control and discipline that is very effective in first-world countries particularly. What’s interesting to me is that within Foucalt’s ideas is a commentary on how powerful vision and visuals are. That a society can be disciplined simply by the threat of being watched speaks wonders to the power of vision to imprint upon us what it wants us to do, see or be. The implications of this are far-reaching especially as we go deeper into a world of technological wonder and complexity.

Tiger’s Transgressions

Ah yesss…this week saw yet another male celebrity apologizing for ‘transgressions’…and not one transgression mind you but according to some reports, as many as four transgressions! I will reserve my private thoughts on this breach of marital trust by professional  golfer Tiger Woods and instead focus on the branding and PR implications of his missteps.

As the world’s highest paid professional athlete and one with an almost impeccable background, Tiger Woods in undoubtedly one of the most marketable athletes. Not as young and immature as Michael Phelps and not at all as reckless or stupid as Michael Vick, his image has netted him some of the largest endorsement deals ever signed by an athlete. Nike, General Motors, Gillette and American Express are only a few of the large companies behind the Tiger Woods brand. So how, if at all, will Tiger’s dalliances affect his sponsorship deals? If I had to bet I would say that they won’t. Thus far, all of Tiger’s corporate sponsors have stood behind him and will probably continue to do so.

The fact of the matter is that these sponsors stand the chance of making alot more money with Tiger in the long run than if they drop him right now. Let’s face it, the U.S. is a country that is still enamored by former President Bill Clinton, once the most powerful person in the world and an admitted adulterer. It’s a simple equation, the more money and power a public figure possesses, the less likely they are to take a serious hit from marital infidelities. Kobe Bryant endured similar scrutiny following his 2004 (much more serious) scandal but has since then rebounded nicely and I have no doubt that Tiger Woods won’t do the same.

What remains to be seen is how Woods intends to deal with this truly private situation which has unfortunately exploded onto the public radar. So far he has only made statements via his personal website, which I had no problem with before all the sordid details began emerging. However, with more negative information being uncovered each day, I think it would be smart of him to address the allegations publicly. Woods has probably lost the respect of alot of avid female golf fans (and males no doubt) and it would probably be wise of him to do some damage control.

For me, this incident raises another issue as well. Are celebrities good spokesmen for large corporate companies? We’re all human after all and none of us are perfect wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, etc. So why should we be surprised when one of our supposed ‘idols’ falters? The errant spokesperson has always been a concern of large corporations but I kind of think that the exposure the company can potentially receive will always outweigh the perceived effects of a spokesperson’s transgressions.

Just my two cents on the topic du jour….we’ll see how Tiger fares this week.

The Pseudo-event…a necessary evil

This week’s Visual Communication readings centered around a discussion of how images contribute to and shape public opinion. Some of the buzzwords that came out of the articles are visual rhetoric, propaganda and pseudo-events. Funny that all of these words give off a slightly negative connotation.

I was particularly struck by the DeLuca & Peeples article: From public sphere to public screen: democracy, activism and the violence of Seattle. It provided a good frame I think for thinking about how violence and other image events serve the purpose of thrusting an issue into the limelight. But what also emerged from the article was the realization that our seemingly increasing tendency to privilege the dramatic image event can seriously marginalize the attention that certain issues/segements of society receive.

Undoubtedly this state of events is preferrable to total ignorance of any of society’s issues but it does raise some interesting thoughts on why public relations/public affairs is necessary especially for non-profit who represent under-represented organizations or issues.

The Object Stares Back from magazines and billboards and electronic displays and…

Ok so I left off about a month ago with grand expectations of posting here regularly…never happened. But now that I’m back I figure I should go back to where I left off…thoughts on The Object Stares Back by James Elkin.

I found this book to be a good starting place for a course on Visual Communication as it definitely exposed me to some ideas on seeing and vision that I had never previously considered.  For instance Elkins says:

“Vision, I have argued, is not the simple thing it is imagined to be. It has to do with desire and possessiveness more than mechanical navigation, and it entangles us in a skein of changing relations with objects and people. In particular, vision helps us to know what we are like: we watch versions of ourselves in people and objects, and by attending to them we adjust our sense of what we are. Because we cannot see what we do not understand or use or identify with, we see very little of the world — only the small pieces that are useful and harmless. Each act of vision mingles seeing with not seeing, so that vision can become less a way of gathering information than avoiding it. “(p. 201)

The implications of this quote are tremendous for those involved in any aspect of communicating visually i.e. artists, graphic designers, those in the marketing and advertising industries. In order to have a full command over one’s audience an understanding of the complex nature of vision is imperative I believe. People don’t see what they don’t understand is a line which translates well to marketing communication. It explains why advertisers use those images most common to a majority of people to sell their product, it makes it easy for our minds to process and subsequently take in the message being touted. Knowing this can potentially demystify the process of creating graphic displays which stand out in our already image saturated world. Thoughts?

Envisioning the Visual

As part of my grad school course requirements I”ve been asked to create a blog for my Visual Communication & Culture class. I had originally considered starting a new blog specifically for the class but decided against it because 1) I have trouble keeping up with one blog far less two and 2.) alot of the ppl who read this blog (not many I assure you) may find some of my musings on the topic interesting and helpful.

As you may or may not know, my professional interests lie in marketing communication, social media and advertising, all areas which directly rely on some sort of visual communication. That said, in this special ‘column’ entitled ‘Envisioning the Visual’ (which I hope to post to weekly), I hope to merge my academic knowledge with my professional interests by applying (or attempting to apply) what I understand from the course to professional marketing and advertising examples.  Of course there’ll be the occasional random rambling on the topic as well. Sooo..let’s see how this works out. Stay tuned for some thoughts on the James Elkins book ‘The Object Stares Back’. Interesting stuff, I promise.

Guess Who’s Back!

I’m finally back after what has seemed like an eternity…

I’m on summer vacation and have been trying to enjoy my time off from grad school before being thrust back into the world of 30 page journal articles and my impending thesis. Not one to stay idle for too long however I’ve been working on some projects while I’ve been away. Yup! The 9th Annual Miss Caribbean US Pageant has just concluded and I was an integral part of the marketing and PR for the event, I even did the website for the event. The organization has a long way to go but the experience was a good one. What I really gained from the experience was the chance to meet people who are interested in advancing Caribbean culture and causes in the US. Which brings me to an interesting point. Earlier in this blog I talked about networking and it’s status as a necessary evil but since being off of school I’ve come to realize that the most effective networking seems to happen when you aren’t expecting it.

I’ve always had a problem with controlled networking settings but since being off from school and working on projects I enjoy, I’ve met a few good people who I’ve been able to form mutually beneficial professional relationships with. It just goes to show that the best networking can happen once you immerse yourself in the things you love to do.

Out for now.

Everyone’s doing it…

Bandwagon effect

Something interesting happened at work today. I work part-time in Marketing for a  small company and the business has been around for a while. But today, I get into the office and they approach me about the prospect of doing a Facebook page for the company. Being as immersed in social media as I am, I had already planned to approach them about a social media marketing component of their overall marketing plan, but as we’re in the middle of a website redesign I thought it would be best to wait until that was completed. It’s very cool to me that even people who’ve been in business for a while are realizing the need for social networking and I’m kinda excited about it (yes, I’m a little bit of a nerd). Of course it is a case of  institutional isomorphism (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) ..which is a theoretical concept in organizational culture studies that more or less refers to the ‘bandwagon effect’. Applied to the company I work for, institutional isomorphism basically means that my company is seeking to replicate the successful social networking practices of other institutions…and there’s nothing wrong with that, because it is how business sometimes works. For me, the key will be finding a way to adopt those methods which have been successful while making them our own. As I haven’t yet decided on a topic for my graduate thesis, I’m thinking that this just might be a good case study for me but we shall see.
In other news from the big city, the semester is almost over and I have three research papers due in the next two weeks, so hopefully I emerge alive. All of my papers explore some aspect of social media (journalist newsgathering techniques w. social media, Facebook as narrative and public opinion via social networking sites). I didn’t start grad. school with a clear idea of where I wanted to take my research but I feel now as if I’ve found my niche. So for my college readers, don’t feel too stressed if after the first semester you haven’t decided what you’d like to do your thesis research on. Back to the books now…signing out.

Reading + Me = Fabulousness

I miss books. Yup..those things with lots of pages and plenty of words. Over the last year or so I’ve been suffering serious withdrawal from novels. Being in school and even more so now with the internet and social networking sites, I seem to only be reading journal articles, educational books and random news articles on Twitter, Facebook and everywhere else. It’s not good. I grew up reading voraciously (thanks to my Momma who devours books by the week). I would read Enid Blyton’s adventure stories, any classic I could get my hands on (still read Wuthering Heights every two years or so) and would even sneak my mom’s romantic novels at an age when I really should not have known any of what takes place in romance novels. I would read at the dinner table (much to Mummy’s disapproval), I would read into the wee hours of the morning (much to Mummy’s disapproval) and really anywhere else that I could take a book. Nothing was better to me than reading out on the front porch on a Sunday evening after Sunday lunch….good old days.

It’s sad to me that I don’t read like I did before college anymore. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I can’t seem to find the time to! Last summer I somehow managed to get through Obama’s Dreams from my Father but besides that, the reading landscape has been populated by communication theories and news. So what does this have to do with anything you might be asking. Well, I was reading a post over on 5 a.m. at Mango Media about creativity and the ways that folks get their creative juices flowing and it started me thinking about my own creative process. Reading has always been central to that creative process for me. The ideas, the phrases, the situations that books present have always triggered streams of ideas in my head. Without original content and writing styles, my creative processes can sometimes run stagnant and as someone in a creative industry this is a problem.

Just yesterday I read an article on the top meaningless phrases of 2008. Communication professionals really do need to tap deeeeeeep into their creativity at times to avoid falling back on the tried and true phrases and being like everyone else. So if there’s a lesson to be learned from all of this, for me, it’s that in the absence of being able to read as much as I’d like, I have to find new ways to allow my creative expression to flourish (part of the reason I started this blog). And ultimately it’s a lesson that everyone in a creative industry can use.

Is it better to be great at one thing or mediocre at many things?

Well this is my first real post since migrating to WordPress, so let’s see how it goes shall we. Once again I’m awake at 1:04 a.m. neck deep in a rhetorical analysis of Facebook. It’s actually quite interesting to view Facebook through an academic lens but tiring as well, so I’m taking a break to write a quick post. Onto the topic of the day.

I recently had some email correspondence with one my twitter peeps (shoutout to @AerialEllis of Urbane Imagery) who gave me so good advice on being in the PR field and on being female in the field…it was really good advice. One thing she said however which I’ve been thinking about is that you should attend conferences and events in the industry you’re interested in. Anyone who reads this blog (not much of you I’m sure ) knows that one of my greatest passions is my beloved Caribbean, unfortunately, living in Philadelphia there isn’t much of a ‘Caribbean industry’ for PR and marketing. And while NY, the city with the highest concentration of Caribbean folks, is only two hours away, there still aren’t that many agencies/organizations who focus on that segment. What’s a girl to do.

Well it got me thinking that while I can work with Caribbean brands on my own time, professionally I need to have an industry. There are tech PR folk, travel PR folk, financial PR folk….and the list goes on. While at my previous internships I found that at times it was hard to get excited about an industry which you really have no passion for. Don’t get me wrong, actually doing Marketing/PR stuff no matter what the indsutry is exciting for me but I feel like when you are passionate about insurance, or non-profits or whatever, your work will mean so much more.

So here’s my full  list of industries I would definitely want to work in.

1. Caribbean entertainment/fashion/events/products/services

2. Travel (Airlines, Cruise ships)

3. Sports (I’m thinking a Nike, Puma, Reebok etc.)

4. Education (Higher-ed)

5. Lifestyle Technology

My list is slightly amusing to me because although I’ve had a ton of internship and job experience, none of that experience has been in the industries on my list..LOL. Guess I’ll have to do something about that. I’ve heard it said before that it’s better to be great at one thing than mediocre at many things and while I tend to want to agree with that sentiment, I still feel like you should strive to be great at many things. So until I find my niche I’ll keep doing that.

I should get back to that paper now