The Ghostwritten Memoirs of Female Celebrities: Authorship, Authenticity, Agency and Gendered Access

Yelin, Hannah

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-44621-5_2

Hannah Yelin²

344 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter situates the contemporary memoirs of young female celebrities in their cultural and historical contexts. It shows how celebrity memoir is a ‘bad object’ in both popular media and academe, yet both overlook the genre’s valuable insights about celebrity culture, female subjectivity and agency. It also demonstrates that, whilst selling gendered access to the commodified celebrity private life is nothing new, these memoirs are very much a product of a cultural moment at the turn of the twenty-first century.

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Notes

1.
Ben Yagoda, for example, calculates that ‘total sales in categories of Personal Memoirs, Childhood Memoirs, and Parenthood Memoirs increased more than 400 per cent between 2004 and 2008’. Ben Yagoda, Memoir: A History (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009), p. 7.
2.
Carole Cadwalladr, ‘All Because the Ladies Love Jordan,’ The Observer, 12 February 2006.
3.
November and December are reportedly responsible for one-third of the annual turnover of bookshop chains. Paul Bignell, ‘Decline and Fall of the C-List Female Celebrity Memoirs,’ The Independent, 23 December 2007.
4.
For example, an article in The Independent, titled, ‘Celebs Lose Their Sheen for Publishers as Gift-Buyers Spurn Celebrity Biographies,’ focusses upon the decline of the genre despite listing commercial successes from the celebrity author-subjects Zoe ‘Zoella’ Sugg (178,000 copies), Lynda Bellingham (265,000 copies), and Sir Alex Ferguson (850,000 copies). Gideon Spanier, ‘Celebs Lose Their Sheen for Publishers as Gift-Buyers Spurn Celebrity Biographies,’ The Independent, 19 December 2014.
5.
Jack Crone, ‘Are We Seeing the Death of the Celebrity Memoir?’ Mail Online, 20 December 2014.
6.
Jerry Maatta, ‘Apocalypse Now and Again: Mapping the Bestselling Classics of the End of the World,’ Hype: Bestsellers and Literary Culture, ed. by Jon Helgason, Sara Kärrholm, and Ann Steiner (Lund, Sweden: Nordic Academic Press, 2014), p. 160.
7.
Ian Hollingshead, ‘Is It Curtains for the Celebrity Memoir?’ The Telegraph, 9 December 2011.
8.
Lynsey Hanley, ‘Reality Cheque,’ New Stateman, 16 October 2008.
9.
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984), p. 6.
10.
Bignell.
11.
Cadwalladr.
12.
John Carey, The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia (London: Faber, 1992), p. vii.
13.
Milly Williamson, ‘Female Celebrities and the Media: The Gendered Denigration of the “Ordinary” Celebrity,’ Celebrity Studies 1.1 (2010), 118.
14.
Dyer (1979); Emma Bell, ‘From Bad Girl to Mad Girl: British Female Celebrity, Reality Products, and the Pathologization of Pop-Feminism,’ Genders 48 (2008).
15.
Leigh Gilmore, ‘American Neoconfessional: Memoir, Self Help and Redemption on Oprah’s Couch,’ Biography 33.4 (2010), 657–79.
16.
Julie Rak, Boom! Manufacturing Memoir for the Popular Market (ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013).
17.
For example, James Frey’s (2003) account of addiction and recovery, A Million Little Pieces, which, gained bestseller status through support from Oprah Winfrey’s TV Book Club, but was then exposed to be fabricated by website, The Smoking Gun, resulting in a lawsuit enabling readers to demand a full refund. Both Gilmore and Rak discuss Frey’s book in particular and the text has become a go-to example for demonstrating the problem of truth claims in contemporary memoir.
18.
Pamela Fox, ‘Recycled “Trash”: Gender and Authenticity in Country Music Autobiography,’ American Quarterly 50.2 (1998), 234–66.
19.
Katja Lee, ‘Not Just Ghost Stories: Alternate Practices for Reading Coauthored Celebrity Memoirs,’ The Journal of Popular Culture 47.6 (2014), 1256–70.
20.
Rak (2013), p. 3.
21.
Ibid., p. 5.
22.
Yagoda (2009), p. 28.
23.
Ibid.
24.
Mark Sanders, ‘Theorizing the Collaborative Self: The Dynamics of Contour and Content in the Dictated Autobiography,’ New Literary History 25 (1994), 455.
25.
G. Thomas Couser, Memoir: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 14.
26.
John Sutherland, ‘Among the Ghosts,’ Spectator, 11 June 2011.
27.
Yagoda (2009), Rak (2013).
28.
Ernest R. May, ‘Ghost Writing and History,’ The American Scholar 22.4 (1953), 459–65.
29.
Williamson (2014).
30.
Sean Redmond, ‘Intimate Fame Everywhere,’ Framing Celebrity: New Directions in Celebrity Culture, ed. by Su Holmes and Sean Redmond (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 27.
31.
Anna Gough-Yates, Understanding Women’s Magazines: Publishing, Markets and Readerships (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 137.
32.
James Curran and Jean Seaton, Power Without Responsibility: Press, Broadcasting and the Internet in Britain (London: Routledge, 2010), p. 238.
33.
Kirsty Fairclough, ‘Fame Is a Losing Game: Celebrity Gossip Blogging, Bitch Culture and Postfeminism,’ Genders 48 (2008).
34.
Williamson (2014).
35.
Nick Muntean and Anne Helen Petersen, ‘Celebrity Twitter: Strategies of Intrusion and Disclosure in the Age of Technoculture,’ M/C Journal 12.5 (2009).
36.
Fairclough (2008).
37.
Ibid.
38.
Richard Berger‚ Framing the Subversive: Journalism, Celebrity and the Web. Paper presented at The End of Journalism? Technology, Education and Ethics, University of Bedfordshire, 18 October 2008.
39.
Ibid.
40.
This is a twelve thousand per cent increase. Hannah Yelin and Jonathan Wise, ‘Dave: Now Everyone Has a Mate Called Dave,’ Advertising Works 17: Case Studies from the IPA Effectiveness Awards 2008, ed. by Neil Dawson (Henley-on-Thames: WARC, 2009), p. 114.
41.
From 4 to 30, ibid.
42.
On average, people spent more time watching TV than in paid employment, ibid.
43.
From 6 hours 18 minutes to 50 minutes—an 87% drop, ibid.
44.
Channel 4 reported a record financial year after Big Brother’s first series and saw audience figures grow steadily over subsequent years: ‘Record Year for Channel Four,’ Daily Mail, 1 May 2001; Nadia Cohen, ‘Beep, Beep, Beep … It’s Big Brother!’ The Daily Mail, May 2002.
45.
Rak (2013).
46.
John Harris, ‘Why Celebrity Memoirs Rule Publishing,’ The Guardian, 13 December 2010.
47.
Yagoda (2009), p. 7.
48.
Rachael McLennan, American Autobiography (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), p. 7.
49.
For example K. Tiidenberg, ‘Bringing Sexy Back: Reclaiming the Body Aesthetic via Self-Shooting,’ Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace 8.1 (2014).
50.
Su Holmes, ‘“All You’ve Got to Worry About Is the Task, Having a Cup of Tea, and Doing a Bit of Sunbathing”: Approaching Celebrity in Big Brother,’ Understanding Reality Television, ed. by Su Holmes and Deborah Jermyn (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 121.
51.
Muntean and Petersen (2009).
52.
Michel Foucault, ‘What Is an Author?’ Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Poststructuralist Criticism, ed. by Josue V. Harari (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), 141–60, p. 141.
53.
Lisa Ede and Andrea A. Lunsford, ‘Collaboration and Concepts of Authorship,’ PMLA 116.2 (2001), 354–69, p. 354.
54.
Lee, p. 1257.
55.
Ibid., p. 1256.
56.
Philippe Lejeune, ‘The Autobiography of Those Who Do Not Write,’ trans. Katherine Leary, On Autobiography, ed. by Paul John Eakin (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).
57.
G. Thomas Couser, ‘Making, Taking, and Faking Lives: The Ethics of Collaborative Life Writing,’ Style 32.2 (1998), 334–51.
58.
Leroy Searle, ‘New Criticism,’ The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory, ed. by Michael Groden, Martin Kreiswirth, and Imre Szeman (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2005); Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author,’ Image/Music/Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), pp. 142–47.
59.
Smith and Watson (2001), p. 6.
60.
Wayne C. Booth, The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 130–32.
61.
Couser (1998).
62.
Bourdieu (1984).
63.
Ibid.
64.
Jade Goody, Jade Fighting to the End (London: John Blake, 2009), p. vii.
65.
Lejeune, p. 199.
66.
Couser (1998).
67.
Dyer (1979), p. 13.
68.
For a discussion of the persistence of assumptions of celebrity manipulation see Lorraine York, ‘Star Turn: The Challenges of Theorizing Celebrity Agency,’ The Journal of Popular Culture 46.6 (2013), 1330–47.
69.
Richard Dyer, ‘Lana: Four Films of Lana Turner,’ Movie 25.4 (1977–8), 30–54.
70.
P. David Marshall, ‘Personifying Agency: The Public–Persona–Place–Issue Continuum,’ Celebrity Studies 4 (2013), 369–71.
71.
P. David Marshall, Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 47.
72.
Ibid.
73.
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
74.
Joe Moran, Star Authors: Literary Celebrity in America (London: Pluto, 2000), p. 67.
75.
Ibid., p. 1.
76.
York (2013), p. 1341.
77.
Dyer (1979).
78.
Marshall (1997).
79.
Moran, p. 67.
80.
Rebecca Williams, ‘From Beyond Control to in Control: Investigating Drew Barrymore’s Feminist Agency/Authorship,’ Stardom and Celebrity 111–126 (2007), 111.
81.
Smith and Watson (2001), pp. 32, 51.
82.
Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004), p. 11.
83.
York (2013), p. 1339.
84.
Efrat Tseëlon, The Masque of Femininity: The Presentation of Woman in Everyday Life (London: Sage, 1995), p. 2.
85.
Ibid., pp. 2–3.
86.
Misha Kavka, ‘Hating Madonna and Loving Tom Ford: Gender, Affect and the “Extra-Curricular” Celebrity,’ Celebrity Studies 5.(1–2) (2014), 59–74, p. 71.
87.
Holmes and Negra, ‘Introduction’ (2011), p. 1
88.
Imogen Tyler and Bruce Bennett, “‘Celebrity Chav’: Fame, Femininity and Social Class,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 13.3 (2010), 375–93, p. 380.
89.
Holmes and Negra, ‘Introduction’ (2011), p. 2.
90.
Kavka (2014), p. 60.
91.
Holmes and Negra, ‘Introduction’ (2011), p. 7.
92.
J. A. Wilson, ‘Star Testing: The Emerging Politics of Celebrity Gossip,’ The Velvet Light Trap 65 (2010), 30.
93.
Lauren Berlant, The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).
94.
Ibid.
95.
Helen Hester, Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2014), p. 65.
96.
Holmes and Negra, ‘Introduction’ (2011), p. 1.
97.
Natasha Patterson and Camilla A. Sears, ‘Letting Men Off the Hook? Domestic Violence and Postfeminist Celebrity Culture,’ Genders 53 (2011).
98.
Karen Boyle, ‘Producing Abuse: Selling the Harms of Pornography,’ Women’s Studies International Forum 34 (2011), 593–602.
99.
Holmes and Negra, ‘Introduction’ (2011), p. 14.
100.
Tim Edwards, ‘Medusa’s Stare: Celebrity, Subjectivity and Gender,’ Celebrity Studies 4.2 (2013), 155–68, p. 158.
101.
Christine Geraghty, ‘Re-examining Stardom: Questions of Texts, Bodies and Performance,’ Stardom and Celebrity, p. 99.
102.
Pamela Anderson, Star Struck (London: Pocket, 2006); Katie Price, Being Jordan (London: John Blake, 2005).
103.
Lady Gaga and Terry Richardson, Gaga x Richardson (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2011).
104.
Goody (2009).
105.
McAllister, Jenn, Really Professional Internet Person (London: Scholastic, 2015).
106.
Jenna Jameson, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale (New York: It Books, 2010).
107.
Paris Hilton, Confessions of an Heiress: A Tongue-in-Chic Peek Behind the Pose (New York: Fireside Books, 2004); Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, and Khloe Kardashian, Kardashian Konfidential (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011).
108.
Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasm, M.I.A. (New York: Rizzoli, 2012).
109.
Rosalind Gill, ‘Postfeminist Media Culture Elements of a Sensibility,’ European Journal of Cultural Studies 10.2 (2007), 147–66, p. 147.
110.
Jessica Ringrose, Postfeminist Education: Girls and the Sexual Politics of Schooling (London: Routledge 2013), p. 121.
111.
Ibid.
112.
Gill (2007).
113.
Anderson, (2006), p. 212.
114.
Price (2005), p. 7.
115.
Lois McNay, Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender and the Self (Cambridge: Polity, 1992), p. 106.
116.
Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Anchor Books, 1992).
117.
Tasker and Negra (2007), p. 28.
118.
Ibid., p. 43
119.
Adrienne Evans and Susan Riley, ‘Immaculate Consumption: Negotiating the Sex Symbol in Postfeminist Celebrity Culture,’ Journal of Gender Studies 22.3 (2013), 268–81, p. 276.
120.
Tasker and Negra (2007), p. 2.
121.
Angela McRobbie, ‘Postfeminism and Popular Culture,’ Interrogating Postfeminism, p. 35.
122.
Avelie Stuart and Ngaire Donaghue, ‘Choosing to Conform: The Discursive Complexities of Choice in Relation to Feminine Beauty Practices,’ Feminism & Psychology 22.1 (2012), 98–121.
123.
Abigail Gosselin, ‘Memoirs as Mirrors: Counterstories in Contemporary Memoir,’ Narrative 19.1 (2011), 133–48.
124.
Joel Gwynne, Erotic Memoirs and Postfeminism: The Politics of Pleasure (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 118.
125.
Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (London: Free Press, 2006).
126.
Rosalind Gill, ‘Culture and Subjectivity in Neoliberal and Postfeminist Times,’ Subjectivity 25 (2008), 432–45, p. 440.
127.
Angela McRobbie, ‘Top Girls? Young Women and the Post-Feminist Sexual Contract,’ Identity in Question, ed. by Anthony Elliott and Paul du Gay (London: Sage, 2009), p. 79.
128.
David Annandale, ‘Rebelais Meets Vogue: The Construction of Carnival, Beauty and Grotesque,’ The Performance Identities of Lady Gaga, ed. by R. J. Gray (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing, 2012).
129.
Rosalind Gill, ‘Critical Respect: The Difficulties and Dilemmas of Agency and “Choice” for Feminism,’ European Journal of Women’s Studies 14.1 (2007), 69–80.
130.
Caitlin Yunuen Lewis, ‘Cool Postfeminism: The Stardom of Sofia Coppola,’ In the Limelight.
131.
Jakki Spicer, ‘The Author Is Dead, Long Live the Author: Autobiography and the Fantasy of the Individual,’ Criticism 47.3 (2005), 387–403, p. 388.
132.
Mary Evans, Missing Persons: The Impossibility of Auto/Biography (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 138.
133.
Dan Shen, ‘Unreliability in Autobiography vs. Fiction,’ Poetics Today 28.1 (2007), 48.
134.
Hilton, p. 176.
135.
Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
136.
Turner, Bonner, and Marshall, p. 12.
137.
Redmond (2008).
138.
Holmes (2005).
139.
Dyer (1986), p. 2.
140.
Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 5–6.
141.
Joshua Gamson, Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Holmes (2005); Su Holmes and Sean Redmond, ‘Introduction: Understanding Celebrity Culture,’ Framing Celebrity, p. 4.
142.
Yelin, 2019.
143.
Susan Sontag, ‘Notes on Camp,’ Against Interpretation and Other Essays (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1967), p. 280.
144.
Ibid.
145.
Richard Dyer, The Culture of Queers (London: Routledge, 2002).
146.
Jack Babuscio, ‘Camp and Gay Sensibility,’ Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality, ed. by David Bergman (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993).
147.
Christopher Isherwood, The World in the Evening (London: Methuen, 1954), p. 125.
148.
Angela McRobbie, Postmodernism and Popular Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 175.
149.
Judith Butler, ‘Imitation and Gender Insubordination,’ Women, Knowledge, and Reality: Explorations in Feminist Philosophy, ed. by Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), p. 378.
150.
Ibid., p. 380.
151.
Butler (1990), p. xii.
152.
Ibid., p. xxxi.
153.
Ibid., p. 34.
154.
Marshall and Barbour.
155.
P. David Marshall, ‘Persona Studies: Mapping the Proliferation of the Public Self,’ Journalism 15.2 (2014), 153–70.
156.
Anderson (2006), p. 34.

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Hannah Yelin

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Yelin, H. (2020). The Ghostwritten Memoirs of Female Celebrities: Authorship, Authenticity, Agency and Gendered Access. In: Celebrity Memoir. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44621-5_2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44621-5_2
Published: 10 November 2020
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-44620-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-44621-5
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