ABSTRACT
Introduction In this essay I want to explore the frameworks of fame in two specific but related ways. First, I want to set out to establish that fame is a ubiquitous and dominant cultural phenomenon, a meta-discourse that shapes, in profound and meaningful ways, social and everyday life for the great many touched by its mediagenic fingers. Fame, I will contend, is everywhere, and the cultural centrality of fame needs unpacking and greater critical understanding. In this respect I will be following the work of writers such as Joshua Gamson (1994), Chris Rojek (2001), and Graeme Turner (2004), who contend, albeit in different ways, that the modern world is distinctly marked by the practices and processes of fame. Second, I will argue that the everywhere of fame has the potential to offer new and liberating interactions and engagements for all those who are 'made-up' in fame, or for all those who regularly consume its stars, celebrities and personalities. My argument will be that fame culture offers 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary' people the chance of a heightened level of intimacy, an intimacy that potentially, perhaps inevitably, destabilizes the borders and boundaries of identity, and which energizes or electrifies one's experience of the world.
