Notes from: John Street “Celebrity Politicians: Popular Culture and Political Representation” BJPIR: 2004 VOL 6, 435–452
Two types of Celebrity Politics
- CP1 – a politician plays at being a celebrity Clinton playing the sax on TV talk show
- CP2 – a celebrity becomes a politician or takes up political causes – Peter Garrett or Bono or Arnold Schwarzenegger
Usually evaluated dismissively:
The assumption is that the political use of popular culture is a cynical expression of a desperate populism, one in which presentation and appearance substitute for policy and principle. What is being signified is a crisis of representation, not a realisation of it. By this account, the world of celebrity politics is one in which politicians, acutely aware of their loss of credibility and trust, re)sort to new forms of political communication, but in so doing further damage the very credibility and trust that they sought to salvage. (Street 2004:436)
Is it ever legitimate?
It is at least plausible that political ventures into the world of popular culture are a legitimate part of the complex ways in which political representation functions in modern democracies. From this perspective, what may be at stake are competing ideas about political communication and political representation. But before we begin to assess these various claims, it is useful to outline the key features of the celebrity politician. (Street 2004:436)
CP1 and CP2 differ is in the means by which the claims to represent others are legitimated and or critiqued:
- The elected politician (CP1) impoverishes the relationship between representative and represented by marginalising issues of political substance in favour of irrelevant gestures and superficial appearances (e.g. Franklin 1994).
- The celebrity (CP2) boasts irrelevant qualities and superficial knowledge that do not justify their claim to ‘represent’.(Street 2004:439)
West and Orman 2002 the Pros and Cons
Pro:
- Celebrity politics may ‘reinvigorate a political process that often stagnates’ (West and Orman 2002, 112
Cons:
- the rise of celebrity politics has seen the displacement of traditional political skills (bargaining, compromise) and their replacement by those of media management and fundraising.
- The qualities of the celebrity politician are ill-suited to the duties of statecraft which representatives owe their constituents.
- These inadequacies are compounded by ignorance. Celebrities lack the knowledge of, or expertise in, public policy:
- ‘Serious political issues become trivialized in the attempt to elevate celebrities to philosopher-celebrities’ (West and Orman 2002, 118).
Who are these celebrities really representing/serving?
According to West and Orman (2002, 113), the elevation of the celebrity politician leads to a distortion in the political agenda in favour of those issues which interest the rich (who are the source of the politician’s campaign funds) and marginalise more pressing social problems. In summary, the argument is that celebrity politics risks ‘short-circuiting’ representative democracy and endangering the system of accountability (West and Orman 2002, 113). (Street 2004:440)
These criticisms of celebrity politics are premised on a set of assumptions about, the proper nature and character of political representation. It is about:
- informed political judgement.
And is threatened by:
- privilege style and appearance over substance,
- or the marginalization ofrelevant expertise.
Aproduct of the transformation of political communication.
According to Paolo Mancini and David Swanson (1996), the breakdown of traditional social structures under the strains of modernisation have created the need for a form of political communication in which new ‘symbolic realities’ have to be created, containing ‘symbolic templates of heroes and villains, honored values and aspirations, histories, mythologies, and self-definition’ (Mancini and Swanson 1996, 9). (Street 2004:441)
The Process:
- focus shifts on to individual politicians
- politics is ‘personalised’
- trend is accentuated by a mass media whose generic conventions favour this form of politics (Mancini and Swanson 1996, 13).
John Keane (2002, 13) on Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, Pauline Hanson, Martin Bell and Pim Fortuyn
The ‘popularity’ of these politicians is a measure of their ability to establish claims to represent the people. It is a claim that derives from a world which, says Keane (2002, 13–15), is marked by ‘communicative abundance’, and in which popular identities derive from the role models provided by the celebrities who inhabit this world. In so far as people’s sense of self and others is mediated in this way, it becomes plausible to claim that CP2s ‘represent’ the people, and for CP1s to base their claim to ‘representativeness’ on the icons and techniques of the celebrity.(Street 2004: 442)
Some different notions of representation
- Critics of celebrity politics focus on the capacities and skills of the representative,
- Supporters are concerned with their resemblance to the represented.
Representation
- by activity,
- selection or
- personal characteristics (Birch 1964, 16)
Representation as
- ‘standing for’
- ‘acting for’. Hanna Pitkin’s (1967)
The critics notion of representation captured in the idea of activity and acting for
The defenders favour an account couched in terms of resemblance or mirroring.( Street 2004: 442)
Dick Pels (2003, 50) puts it:
‘Political style ... enables citizens to regain their grip on a complex political reality by restoring mundane political experience to the centre of democratic practice’.
Frank Ankersmit
suggests that the question of whether a state or any other agency represents its people is a matter of ‘taste’. Representation, whatever the principles or ethical values informing it, does not reflect the world so much as organise knowledge about it. Just as art creates a version of reality, making present what is otherwise absent, Ankersmit contends that political power comes into existence via the act of representation. It is a product of style and creativity.(Street 2004: 445)
Representation as constituted and experienced aesthetically.
- It is not to be dismissed as a betrayal of the proper principles of democratic representation, but as an extension of them. Celebrity politics is a code for the performance of representations through the gestures and media available to those who wish to claim ‘representativeness’. It does not follow from this that all forms of celebrity politics are to be welcomed (any more than all forms of art or political ideology are to be welcomed).(Street 2004:445)
John Corner argues that a politician engages in a performance:
- that is intended to establish him- or herself as ‘a person of qualities’
- within the public space of ‘demonstrable representativeness’ (Corner 2000, 396).
- that the individual political figure serves to ‘condense “the political” ’ for those they represent.
- through a mediated public performance, politicians try to demonstrate certain political qualities and to connect them to political values.
Role of artists and musicians in communist Eastern Europe:
What is contended is that, under conditions where the state monopolises the conventional forms of political communication and seeks to regulate all forms of artistic expression, it becomes possible for musicians and other performers to assume a leadership role, legitimated by their success as artists. The state, in its regulatory role, politicises artistic expression, and the aesthetics of the art in turn make possible an alternative form of political expression. Peter Wicke (1992), for instance, argues that East German rock musicians were instrumental in uniting the opposition to the Honneker regime and in bringing about the collapse of the Berlin Wall. (Street 2004: 448)
Street’s Conclusion: a creative relationship formed under particular political conditions:
The capacity to claim to speak politically as a celebrity is determined by a number of conditions and structures, as well as by the affective bond which is created by the relationship between the celebrity and their admirers. In certain contexts and under particular conditions, performers can lay claim to represent those who admire them. They give political voice to those who follow them, both by virtue of the political conditions and by means of their art. And as Ankersmit claims for traditional forms of representation, this is not a matter of mimetics but of aesthetics, of creatively constituting a political community and representing it. (Street 2004: 449)
