Abstract
Arguing that the most visible feminists in the mediasphere have been authors of bestselling works of non-fiction—feminist ‘blockbusters’—Taylor contends that there are key differences between the fame embodied by blockbuster celebrity feminists and other types of stars. Engaging with previous feminist scholarship on the relationship between feminism and celebrity culture, much of which sees the celebrity feminist as an anxiety-provoking figure, Taylor suggests there is a need for a much more nuanced critical approach. In particular, as part of this process of refiguring the celebrity–feminism nexus, she emphasizes that the agency of blockbuster authors in their own celebrification needs to be foregrounded.
References
Alcoff, L. (1991) ‘The Problem of Speaking for Others’, Cultural Critique, 20: 5–32
Bailey, C. (1997) ‘Making Waves and Drawing Lines: The Politics of Defining the Vicissitudes of Feminism’, Hypatia, 12.3: 17–28
Banet-Weiser, S. (2012) Autheticity, TM, New York: New York University Press
Barcan, R. (2000) ‘Home on the Range: Nudity, Celebrity, and Ordinariness in the Home Girls/Blokes Pages’, Continuum, 14.2: 145–58
Barker-Plummer, B. (2010) ‘News and Feminism: A Historic Dialog’, Journalism and Communication Monographs, 12.3/4: 145–203
Barthes, R. (1967/1978 ed) ‘The Death of Author’, in Image/Music/Text, London: Fontana
Bennett, J. (2011) Television Personalities: Stardom and the Small Screen, London: Routledge
Biressi, A. & Nunn, H. (2013) Class and Contemporary British Culture, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Bourdieu, P. (1993) The Field of Cultural Production, New York: Columbia University Press
Bradley, P. (2003) Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 1963-1975, Jackson: University of Mississippi Press
Brown, W. (2001) Politics Out of History, Princeton: Princeton University Press
Browne, V. (2014) Feminism, Time, and Non Linear History, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Brunsdon, C. (1997) Screen Tastes, London: Routledge
Bulbeck, C. (1997) Living Feminism: The Impact of the Women’s Movement on Three Generations of Australian Women, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Carter, D. & Ferres, K. (2001) ‘The Public Life of Literature’, in T. Bennett & D. Carter eds. Culture in Australia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 140–160
Coombe, R. (2007) ‘Author(iz)ing the Celebrity: Engendering Alternative Identities’, in P.D. Marshall ed. The Celebrity Culture Reader, London: Routledge, pp. 721–769
de Beauvoir, S. (1949/1989) The Second Sex, New York: Vintage
Dean, J. (2010) ‘Feminism in the Papers: Contested Feminisms in the British Quality Press’, Feminist Media Studies, 10.4: 391–407
Dow, B. (2014) Watching Women’s Liberation, 1970: Feminism’s Pivotal Year on the Network News, Chicago: University of Illinois Press
Drake, P. & Higgins, M. (2006) ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me into Politics: The Political Celebrity and the Celebrity Politician’, in S. Holmes & S. Redmond eds. Framing Celebrity: New Directions in Celebrity Culture, London: Routledge, pp. 88–100
Driessens, O. (2013a) ‘Celebrity Capital: Redefining Celebrity Using Field Theory’, Theory and Society, 42: 543–560
——— (2013b) ‘The celebritization of society and culture: Understanding the structural dynamics of celebrity culture’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 16.6: 641–657
Dux, M. & Simic, Z. (2008) The Great Feminist Denial, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press
Dyer, R. (1979) Stars, London: British Film Institute
Echols, A. (1989) Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
Eichorn, K. (2013) The Archival Turn in Feminism, Philadelphia: Temple University Press
English, J.F. & Frow, J. (2006) ‘Literary Authorship and Celebrity Culture’, in J.F. English ed. A Concise Companion to Contemporary British Fiction, Malden: Blackwell, pp. 39–57
Faludi, S. (1991) Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, London: Vintage
Farrell, A.E. (1998) Yours in Sisterhood: Ms Magazine and the Promise of Popular Feminism, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press
Felski, R. (1989) Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, Cambridge: Harvard University Press
——— (2000) Doing Time: Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture, New York: New York University Press
Fish, S. (1980) Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities, Cambridge: Harvard University Press
Foucault, M. (1969/1984 ed) ‘The Author Function’, in P. Rainbow ed. The Foucault Reader, New York: Penguin, pp. 101–120
Freeman, J. (1976) ‘Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood’, April, Ms Magazine, 49–51, 92–98, accessed via http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/trashing.htm
Fuller, S. & Driscoll, C. (2015) ‘HBO’s Girls: Gender, Generation, and Quality Television’, Continuum, 29.2: 253–262
Gamson, J. (1994) Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America, Berkeley: University of California Press
——— (2007) ‘The Assembly Line of Greatness’, in S. Holmes & S. Redmond eds. Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader, London: Sage, pp. 141–155
Gay, R. (2014) ‘Theses on the Feminist Novel’, Dissent, 61.4: 45–48
Genette, G. (1997) Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Gever, M. (2003) Entertaining Lesbians: Celebrity, Sexuality, and Self-Invention, New York: Routledge
Giroux, H. (2000) Impure Acts: The Practical Politics of Cultural Studies, London: Routledge
Glass, L. (2016) ‘Brand Names: A Brief History of Literary Celebrity’, in P.D. Marshall & S. Redmond eds. A Companion to Celebrity, London: Wiley Blackwell, pp. 39–57
Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, New York: Random House
Gunew, S. (1993) ‘Feminism and the Politics of Irreducible Differences: Multiculturalism/Ethnicity/Race’, in S. Gunew & A. Yeatman eds. Feminism and the Politics of Difference, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, pp. 1–19
Hall, E.J. & Rodrigeuz, M.S. (2003) ‘The Myth of Postfeminism’, Gender and Society, 17.6: 878–902
Hammer, R. (2000) ‘Antifeminists as Media Celebrities’, Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 22.3: 207–222
Hammill, F. (2007) Women’s Literary Celebrity Between the Wars, Austin: University of Texas Press
Hekman, S. (1999) Feminism, Identity and Difference, London: Psychology Press
Hemmings, C. (2011) Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory, Durham: Duke University Press
Henderson, M. (2006) Marking Feminist Times: Remembering the Longest Revolution in Australia, Bern: Peter Lang
Henry, A. (2004) Not My Mother’s Sister: Generational Conflict and Third Wave Feminism, Bloomington: University of Indiana Press
——— (2014) ‘From a Mindset to a Movement: Feminism in the 1990s’, in D.S. Cobble, L. Gordon, & A. Henry, Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History, New York: W.W. Norton, pp. 147–226
Hesford, V. (2013) Feeling Women’s Liberation, Durham: Duke University Press
Heywood, L. & Drake, J. (1997) ‘Introduction’, in L. Heywood & J. Drake eds. Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, pp. 1–24
Higgins, M. & Drake, P. (2006) “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me into Politics: The Political Celebrity and the Celebrity Politician”, in S. Holmes & S. Redmond eds. Framing Celebrity: New Directions in Celebrity Culture, London: Routledge, pp. 87–100
Hogeland, L.M. (1998) Feminism and Its Fictions: The Consciousness Raising Novel and the Women’s Liberation Movement, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press
Hollows, J. & Moseley, R. (2006) ‘Introduction’, in J. Hollows & R. Moseley eds. Feminism in Popular Culture, London: Berg, pp. 1–22
Holmes S. (2005) ‘‘Starring … Dyer?’ Re-visiting star studies and contemporary celebrity culture’, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, 2.2: 6–21
hooks, b. (1994) Outlaw Culture, New York: Routledge
Huddy, L. (1997) ‘Feminism and Feminists in the News’, in P. Norris ed. Women, Politics and the Media, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 183–204
Keller, J. (2015) ‘Girl Power’s Last Chance? Tavi Gevinson, Feminism and Popular Media Culture’, Continuum, 29.2: 274–285
King, B. (2003) ‘Embodying an Elastic Self: The Parametrics of Contemporary Stardom’, in T. Austin & M. Barker eds. Contemporary Hollywood Stardom, London: Hodder Education, pp. 43–61
King, K. (1994) Theory in its Feminist Travels, Bloomington: Indiana University Press
Lakoff, R.T. (2001) The Language War, Berkeley: University of California Press
Lauret, M. (1994) Liberating Literature: Feminist Fiction in America, New York: Routledge
Le Masurier, M. (2007) ‘My Other, My Self’, Australian Feminist Studies, 22.53: 191–211
———. (2010) ‘Reading the Flesh’, Feminist Media Studies, 11.2: 215–229
Lilburn, S., Magarey, S. & Sheridan, S. (2000) ‘Celebrity Feminism as Synthesis: Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch and the Australian Print Media’, Continuum, 14.3: 335–348.
Lind, L. & Salo C. (2002) ‘The Framing of Feminists and Feminism in News and Public Affairs Programs in U.S. Electronic Media’, Journal of Communication, 52.1: 211–228
Look, H. (1999) ‘The Author as Star’, Publishing Research Quarterly, Fall: 12–29
Macdonald, M. (1995) Representing Women: Myths of Femininity in Popular Media, London: Bloomsbury
Maddison, S. (2013) ‘Discursive Politics: Changing the Talk and Raising Expectations’ in S. Maddison & M. Sawer eds. The Women’s Movement in Protest, Institutions and the Internet: Australia in Transnational Perspective, Oxford: Routledge, pp. 37–53
Marshall, P.D. (1997) Celebrity and Power, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
———. (2007) ‘Intimately Intertwined in the Most Public Way: Celebrity and Journalism’, in P.D. Marshall ed. The Celebrity Culture Reader, London: Routledge, pp. 315–323
Marwick, A. & boyd, d. (2011) ‘To See and Be Seen: Celebrity Practice on Twitter’, Convergence, 17.2: 139–158
Marwick, A.E. (2013) Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age, New Haven: Yale University Press
———. (2016) ‘You May Know Me from YouTube (Micro-)Celebrity in Social Media’, in P.D. Marshall & S. Redmond eds. A Companion to Celebrity, London: Wiley Blackwell, pp. 333–350
McCurdy, P. (2013) ‘Conceptualising Celebrity Activists: The Case of Tamsin Omond’, Celebrity Studies, 4.3: 311–324
McRobbie, A. (2013) ‘Feminism, the Family and the New Mediated Maternalism’, New Formations, 80–81: 119–137
———. (2015) ‘Notes on the Perfect: Competitive Femininity in Neoliberal Times’, Australian Feminist Studies, 30.83: 3–20
Mendes, K. (2011) Feminism in the News: Representations of the Women’s Movement Since 1960, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
———. (2015) ‘Slutwalk, Feminism and the News’, in K. Silva & K. Mendes eds. Feminist Erasures: Challenging Backlash Culture, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 219–234
Miller, L.J. (2000) ‘The Best-Seller List as Marketing Tool and Historical Fiction’, Book History, 3: 286–304
Moran, J. (2000) Star Authors: Literary Celebrity in America, London: Pluto
Moreton-Robinson, A. (2000) Talkin’ Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Australian Feminism, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press
Murray, S. (2004) Mixed Media: Feminist Presses and Publishing Politics, London: Pluto
Negra, D. (2014) ‘Claiming Feminism: Commentary, Autobiography and Advice Literature for Women in the Recession’, Journal of Gender Studies, 23.3: 275–286
Newbury, M. (2000) ‘Celebrity Watching’, American Literary History, 12.1: 272–283
Norris, P. ed. (1997) Women, Politics and the Media, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Nunn, H. & Biressi, A. (2010) ‘“A Trust Betrayed”: Celebrity and the Work of Emotion’, Celebrity Studies, 1.1: 49–64
Ommundsen, W. (2004) ‘Sex, Soap and Sainthood: Beginning to Theorise Literary Celebrity’, JASAL, 3: 45–56
———. (2007) ‘From the Altar to the Market-Place and Back Again: Understanding Literary Celebrity’, in S. Redmond & S. Holmes eds. Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader, London: Sage, pp. 244–256
Orr, C. (1997) ‘Charting the Currents of the Third Wave’, Hypatia, 12.3: 29–45
Pearce, L. (2004) The Rhetorics of Feminism, London: Routledge
Piepmeier, A. (2009) Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism, New York: New York University Press
Radway, J. (1984) Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press
Redfern, C. & Aune, K. (2013) Reclaiming the F Word: Feminism Today, London: ZED Books
Rhode, D. (1995) ‘Media Images, Feminist Issues’, Signs, 20.3: 685–709
Rodden, P. (2007) Performing the Literary Interviews: How Writers Craft Their Public Selves, Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Rojek, C. (2001) Celebrity, London: Reaktion
Roof, J. (1997) ‘Generational Difficulties; or the Fear of a Barren History’, in D. Looser & E.A. Kaplan eds. Generations: Academic Feminists in Dialogue, Minneapolis: University Minnesota Press, pp. 69–87
Rowlands, S. & Henderson, M. (1996) ‘Damned Bores and Slick Sisters: The Selling of Blockbuster Feminism in Australia’, Australian Feminist Studies, 11.23: 9–16
Sandoval, C. (2000) Methodology of the Oppressed, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
Schwartz, J.M. & Cook, T. (2002) ‘Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory’, Archival Science, 2.1: 1–19
Scott, L. (2000) ‘Market Feminism: The Case for a Paradigm Shift’, in M. Catteral, P. MacLaran, & L. Stevens eds. Marketing and Feminism: Current Issues and Research, London: Routledge, pp. 16–38
Serisier, T. (2013) ‘Who Was Andrea? Writing Oneself as a Feminist Icon’, Women: A Cultural Review, 24.1: 26–44
Shaw, F. (2013) ‘Blogging and the Women’s Movement’, in S. Maddison & M. Sawer eds. The Women’s Movement in Protest, Institutions and the Internet: Australia in Transnational Perspective, Oxford: Routledge, pp. 118–131
Sheridan, S., Magarey, S. & Lilburn, S. (2006) ‘Feminism in the News’, in J. Hollows & R. Moseley eds. Feminism in Popular Culture, Oxford: Berg, pp. 25–40
Showalter, E. (2001) ‘In Search of Heroines’, 14 June, The Guardian, accessed via: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jun/14/gender.uk
Siegel, D. (1997) ‘Reading Between the Waves: Feminist Historiography in “Postfeminist” Moment’, in L. Heywood & J. Drake eds. Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, pp. 55–82
Skeggs, B. (1997) Becoming Respectable: Formations of Class and Gender, London: Sage
Street, J. (2004) ‘Celebrity Politicians: Popular Culture and Political Representation’, BJPIR, 6: 435–452
———. (2012) ‘Do Celebrities Politicians Matter?’ The British Journal of Politics and International Culture, 14.3: 346–356
Taylor, A. (2007) ‘Misreading Feminists/Feminists Misreading: Helen Garner, Literary Celebrity and Epitextuality’, Australian Feminist Studies, 22.52: 73–87
———. (2008) Mediating Australian Feminism: Rereading the First Stone Media Event, Oxford: Peter Lang
———. (2014a) ‘Germaine Greer’s Adaptable Celebrity: Feminism, Unruliness, and Humour on the British Small Screen’, Feminist Media Studies, 14.5: 759–774
———. (2014b) ‘“Blockbuster” Celebrity Feminism’, Celebrity Studies, 5.1–2: 75–78
Templin, C. (1995) Feminism and the Politics of Literary Reputation: The Example of Erica Jong, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press
Thomas, S. (2014) ‘Celebrity in the “Twitterverse”: History, Authenticity and the Multiplicity of Stardom’, Celebrity Studies, 5.3: 242–255
Thompson, J.B. (2010) Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty First Century, London: Polity
Tomlinson, B. (2005) Authors on Writing: Metaphors and Intellectual Labour, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Tuchman, G. (1978) Making News: A Study of the Construction of Reality, New York: The Free Press
Turner, G. (1993) ‘Nationalising the Author: The Celebrity of Peter Carey’, Australian Literary Studies, 16.2: 131–139
———. (1996) Literature, Journalism and the Media, Rockhampton: James Cook University
———. (2014) Understanding Celebrity, London: Sage
Turner, G., Marshall, P.D. & Bonner, F. (2000) Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in Australia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Weber, B. (2012) Women and Literary Celebrity in the Nineteenth Century: The Translantic Production of Fame and Gender, Farnham: Ashgate
Wheeler, M. (2013) Celebrity Politics, London: Polity
Whelehan, I. (2000) Overloaded: Popular Culture and The Future of Feminism, London: The Women’s Press
———. (2005) The Feminist Bestseller: From Sex and the Single Girl to Sex and the City, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Wicke, J. (1994) ‘Celebrity Material: Materialist Feminism and the Culture of Celebrity’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 93.4: 751–778
Withers, D. (2015) Feminism, Digital Culture and the Politics of Transmission, London: Rowman & Littlefield
Wollstonecraft, M. (1792/2004) A Vindication on the Rights of Woman, London: Penguin
Woolf, V. (1929/1977) A Room of One’s Own, London: Grafton
York, L. (2007) Literary Celebrity in Canada, Toronto: University of Toronto Press
———. (2013a) Margaret Atwood and the Labour of Literary Celebrity, Toronto: University of Toronto Press
———. (2013b) ‘Star Turn: The Challenges of Theorizing Celebrity Agency’, The Journal of Popular Culture, 46.6: 1330–1347
Young, S. (1997) Changing the Wor(l)d: Discourse, Politics and the Feminist Movement, London: Routledge
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Taylor, A. (2016). ‘Blockbuster’ Feminism and Celebrification. In: Celebrity and the Feminist Blockbuster. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-37334-2_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-37334-2_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-37333-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-37334-2
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)