Week 8:Which comes first the celebrity or the culture?

People are strongly influenced by celebrities in the modern society. According to Marshall (2012), a celebrity is a construction of a personal persona. In other words, celebrity is made by audience. This post will discuss about which comes first the celebrity or the culture.

Culture and the celebrity have strong connections in the modern society because people could access many different kinds of media; therefore, the public and the private are not clearly separated in the contemporary society (Marshall 2012). Celebrities show the trend of the society and also create the trend.

 For example, a young idolized singer group, AKB48 is popular in Japan and Asian countries today.

The group is supported by a lot of people and filmed and shown by the media; therefore, the group is a social phenomenon in Japanese culture. The producer, who created the group started the movement and he created a new symbol of Japanese pop culture worldwide. Their website is multilingual and people can watch their videos with subtitles on Youtube anywhere around the world. This shows how the media and popularity of this group drives globalisation forward.

The group members are blogging, tweeting, and participating in events that give the audience the opportunity to meet the group; therefore, the audience has affinity with the group members. 

In this case, the members of the group are not special talented girls; therefore many teenage girls could copy them easily. In other words, the reach of celebrity goes beyond entertainment (Marshall 2010) because the celebrity becomes role model for people. 

The culture and the celebrity are both influenced by each other; therefore it is impossible to say which comes first. 

  

Image source:

http://hararie-japan-tokyo-tokyo.com/japanese_culture/2010/11/akb48-a-very-large-and-popular-girl-group.html

http://blog.harugon.com/2012/01/akb_6471.html

References:

AKB48 Official English Website 2012, retrieved 4 September 2012, <http://www.akb48.co.jp/english/members/index.html>

AKB48 Official Chinese website 2012, retrieved 4 September 2012,
<http://www.akb48.co.cn/>

Marshall, D 2012, ALC215 Lecture, Deakin University, retrieved 3 September 2012, <https://d2l.deakin.edu.au/d2l/lms/content/viewer/main_frame.d2l?ou=31220&tId=1637656 >

Marshal, D 2010, The Specular Economy, Society, vol.47, no.2, pp. 47-52, retrieved 2 September 2012,<http://ehis.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=06343fae-2275-40fc-b18e-61cda1dbde0a%40sessionmgr13&vid=1&hid=3&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=54618364>.