Transcendental meditation’s tipping point

The allure of celebrity on the American spiritual marketplace

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12780498
AutoresCharles Laughlin (0000-0003-4030-2153, Loyola Marymount University, autor correspondente)
Ano2019
Volume18
Fascículo2
Páginas108-120
Data de publicação2019-07-08
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoPopular Communication (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1540-5702 • E-ISSN: 1540-5710
EditoraTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/15405702.2019.1634810
OpenAlexW2959706308
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas31

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