Historicizing and Gendering Celebrity Culture

Famous Women in Nineteenth-Century France

Datos Bibliográficos

ID23178384
AutoresLenard R Berlanstein (autor de correspondencia)
Año2004
Volumen16
Número4
Páginas65-91
Fecha de publicación2004-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of women's history (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1042-7961 • E-ISSN: 1527-2036
EditorialProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/jowh.2004.0077
OpenAlexW1988071772
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas15
Referencias citadas11

Celebrity status couples recognition of individual achievement, the preeminent cultural ideal of Western societies since the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century, with the power of the media to disseminate visibility and publicity. This article demonstrates the relevance of celebrity culture well before film and the electronic media by historicizing and gendering it. The nineteenth-century French press offered its bourgeois readers a lively celebrity culture, notably featuring famous women more than men. The historicized and gendered concept of celebrity provides an important tool of cultural analysis since societies inevitably project upon celebrities—and expect them to perform—reigning myths about self-fulfillment and personal uniqueness. In the case of nineteenth-century France, there was a telling evolution in the representation of women celebrities from femmes fatales to proper women whose achievements outside the home were accepted as legitimate.

Aesthetics · Art · Bourgeoisie · Celebrity culture · Democracy · Literature · Media studies · Mythology · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Publicity · Relevance (law) · Representation (politics) · Sociology · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law