ABSTRACT
Based on the case study of the presented autoethnographic consumer narrative, Chapter 5 offers an alternative explanation of how an individual celebrity appeals to individual consumers and, then, discusses how the individual consumer relates to admired celebrity in everyday life based on this alternative explanation. Instead of treating film stars and celebrities just as ‘semiotic receptacles of cultural meaning’, this chapter conceptualises celebrities as real human beings and performers with a polysemic consumer appeal. A celebrity appeals to the individual consumer as (a) the performer, (b) the ‘private’ person behind the public image, (c) the tangible manifestation of either through products, and d) the social link to other like-minded consumers.
