ABSTRACT
Jameson's analogy between media and market culture under conditions of informational capitalism and dematerialisation lies at the heart of this special issue. It sets in motion the idea of brands as media of exchange; and celebrity brands as the mediatised embodiment of market logics that reach into cultural fields and shared experience spinning them as everyday capacities to produce a common, branded, social world of being. Hackley and Hackley take seriously the cultural production of celebrity in an age of media convergence. This chapter highlights the complex nature of celebrity capital, alongside considerations of social, cultural and economic capital. It illustrates a case study in celebrity brand management, the paper ends with the suggestion that human brands are best considered from a portfolio perspective to address the challenges of fame and the challenges of aging. Celebrity brands are in this regard best understood as fables of transformation, from emancipation to resurrection.
