ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the vexing question of how fans and audiences receive celebrity culture. It centres its reading of reception on the theme of impressionability and the argument that celebrity culture shapes people in the mould of neo-liberal ideologies and patriarchal discourses. In the circuit of celebrity culture, consumption is very often set within discourses that see power operating on people. Celebrity culture is very often drawn into moral panics about the values, beliefs and attitudes of society, with young people identified as particularly impressionable. Fantasy is crucial to the conceit that celebrity audiences are impressionable. Consuming celebrity culture is often argued to be detrimental to social life and resistant and active social identity formation. Celebrity influencers are very often young, attractive and draw on self-presentation techniques, which require a set of 'mirroring' responses from the young fans that gravitate to their blogs and websites.
