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Climate change and celebrity culture
DOI link for Climate change and celebrity culture
Climate change and celebrity culture book
Climate change and celebrity culture
DOI link for Climate change and celebrity culture
Climate change and celebrity culture book
ABSTRACT
Several authors have been struck by the 'celebritisation' of climate change in the early twenty-first century. Celebrity involvement with climate change is an indication of its already-established status as a consensual, mainstream concern, although one might see the preference for consensus as working against more radical, anti-capitalist versions of environmentalism. Climate change is viewed through the frame of religious guilt rather than political engagement, but for a broader audience and a secular society this is rendered in therapeutic terms relating to personal doubts and feelings. There has indeed been a shift of emphasis in how celebrities establish their standing on the issue of climate change, from scientific expertise to emotional involvement. Dan Brockington considers various ways of conceptualising celebrity culture – as a top-down imposition of 'false consciousness'; or conversely in a more bottom-up way, as a 'tonic demanded by estranged masses'; or in a more Foucaultian way.