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interesting--though i have to say that i almost did not read the opening post because of the title--i expected to read something about britney spears commenting on wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics or something and it is too hot in philadelphia for me to take any pleasure in watching a trainwreck...but no.
some of the earliest analyses of post world war 2 mass culture (transformations in printing technology that made glossy color adverts routine for example--later television supplanting radio) went in this general direction in an effort to figure out what is going on with the marketing of celebrity...stuff by edgar morin from the late 1950s for example...you see traces of it in the marxist analyses of mass culture across the 1960s, cropping up in various guises.
in england, through stuff like early pop art and the work of j.g.ballard, this general line converged with an idea that the result of fordism was the colonization of people's fantasies..which strangely helped to clarify a bit how this analogy between saint/magical image and celebrity might function--as a kind of inward performance space, in which folk can play out their desires to be someone else, somewhere else.
i think the kind of investment/performances that go on across the medium of celebrity are much more curioous and complex than the research cited in the opening post woudl have youi believe--i dont think that the analogy to the church is useful--some other kind of magic might be more interesting to think about--nor do i think that the circuit is about community in any meaningful sense--this gives far too much to the analogy of the church in shaping the outcomes of research--but it is obviously hard ot know too much from the tiny summary above.
off to see if i can find the report itself somewhere.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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