ABSTRACT
The documentary seemed to play out a number of discourses which permeate contemporary celebrity culture. It circled around a fascination with the processes and practices of fame-making, perhaps more so than the celebrity herself (see Mole, 2004); it flagrantly displayed the production and manufacture of celebrity, while aiming to negotiate a discourse of intimacy and authenticity around its
subject. It expressed an implicit disapproval about the flourishing of such fame, while simultaneously celebrating it as the ultimate triumph, and it offered an intriguing dramatization of the power dynamics which structure relations between the production of celebrity and the economic and cultural entity this creates. In this respect it is worth acknowledging that Abi's celebrity is very gendered in nature (she was initially famous for her association with a famous male partner and then later for her body), but she also represents a woman who has confidently exploited the apparatus of fame, even while - as the documentary makes clear - she struggles to maintain control of the image it has produced.
