Transcendental meditation’s tipping point

The allure of celebrity on the American spiritual marketplace

Bibliographic Data

ID12780498
AuthorsCharles Laughlin (0000-0003-4030-2153, Loyola Marymount University, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume18
Issue2
Pages108-120
Publication date2019-07-08
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePopular Communication (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1540-5702 • E-ISSN: 1540-5710
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/15405702.2019.1634810
OpenAlexW2959706308
LanguageEN
References cited31

Since 2005, the film director David Lynch has been the most visible and vocal proponent for the spread of Transcendental Meditation (TM), a practice brought to the United States by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the late 1950s. This paper analyzes the public-facing operations: website, books, and celebrity benefit concerts, through which the David Lynch Foundation interacts with its American audience and charts two moves that the David Lynch Foundation has made in order to market TM. First, I assert that they have positioned TM as a technique rather than a spiritual practice and I understand this through Foucault’s theory of techné. Second, I argue that they have leveraged the auracular quality of celebrity as a modality through which to brand TM for the spiritual consumer. Ultimately, I made claims on how these moves represent a shift in how American spiritual seekers are understood and marketed to in popular culture

Aesthetics · Economics · Epistemology · Foundation (evidence · Meditation · Order (exchange · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Theology · Tipping point (physics · Transcendental meditation · Transcendental number · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · Media, Religion, Digital Communication · Philosophy · Psychology · Theological Perspectives and Practices