Cultural Crim. & Fashion

Hier ein -wie ich finde-interessantes Interview mit Pamela Church Gibson:

http://www.asc.uw.edu.pl/theamericanist/vol/24/24_15-32.pdf

IT IS HAPPENING FOR A REASON

An Interview with Pamela Church Gibson by Agnieszka Graff

Pamela Church Gibson is a Reader in Cultural and Historical Studies at the London College of Fashion. Her research interests are focused on gender, consumption and the relationship between film, fashion, fandom and celebrity in the post?war period. She is the co?editor of several important anthologies: Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations, Analysis (2001) and Oxford Guide to Film Studies (1998). Most recently she edited More Dirty Looks: Gender, Pornography and Power (2004) for the British Film Institute (a reworking of an earlier BFI anthology).

Agnieszka Graff interviewed her in June 2007 in Newcastle, U.K., after she had delivered the keynote address at the 20th Annual Conference of The Feminist and Women’s Studies Association (U.K. & Ireland) – “Feminism and Popular Culture” (University of Newcastle June 29th?July 1st, 2007).

Ë Agnieszka Graff: Has popular culture truly gone global? Does national identity make a difference? In your lecture, you mentioned the omnipresence of the Paris Hilton image, her self?perpetuating celebrity status. Your example was London. You said one would have to be like F.R. Leavis and abandon civilization entirely to avoid media coverage of Paris Hilton in central London, and even then she would inevitably catch up with you, in the free papers given away daily and left on London buses. Well, does it matter to British consumers that Paris Hilton is American?

Pamela Church Gibson: It must matter to some extent because we have our own homegrown variety of celebrity. You know the cliché about those who are famous because they are famous? The English variants, interestingly enough, are quite often far more homely. Although there is a current Big Brother contestant who models herself on Victoria Beckham, there are “the Twins” who enjoy nation? al celebrity status, but are actually quite inarticulate, they are just students. In

15

Agnieszka Graff

British pop culture, in reality television, you have these “ordinary” people who may not necessarily win, but they attain celebrity status. Jade Goody is a good example of this; she is not conventionally attractive; you might call her “interesting,” but actually her appeal is the very ordinariness and imperfection of her looks. Most important, she is also working class and a young single mother and very much what you would call “mouthy.” She became a kind of minor celebrity as a Big Brother contestant, and she endorsed a fragrance. But it all went terribly wrong because her racism came out; she was very nasty to another contestant, an Indian woman, on a later program.

Ë…