Steven Patrick Morrissey was the lead singer of the 1980s British band The Smiths. Since the band's demise in 1987, Morrissey has had a successful career as a solo performer. Morrissey is a rich case study for the analysis of mediated celebrities. This dissertation examines the ways in which Morrissey's public persona has shifted throughout his career. These changes have to do with the nature of popular cultural mediation, the status of celebrity, and Morrissey's engagement with issues of gender and desire. / Morrissey's celebrity persona, or star image, takes shape within the ongoing production of what Roland Barthes refers to as enigma, and its incompleteness is thus one of its consistent features. This star image is constructed from---and within---"streams" of information which are produced and circulate over time. The unending character of this "stream" is such that Morrissey's star image is perpetually produced and continues to evolve. The sense of the celebrity's image as incomplete leads, in turn, to an ongoing impulse, on the part of fans and observers, to find resolution. Throughout his career, Morrissey has maintained mystery around key aspects of his identity, in particular his sexuality, his feelings about England, and his relationship to pop stardom. This dissertation explores the various elements which contribute to Morrissey's enigmatic star image: critical press; music videos; live performance; musical syntax; and interviews. This dissertation explores the interaction of these various elements, and how they have given rise to ongoing speculation within fan and critical discourse, and it explores the particular kinds of mystery and gender roles which arise to accompany these sorts of enigmas. / As a celebrity, Morrissey is subject to the gaze of an audience in a way that has historically been construed as objectifying, and theorized within important works as feminizing. Morrissey's principle response to this objectification has been the maintenance of a constant sense of enigma. While other performers might seek clarification of their images as a means of controlling them, Morrissey's response to ongoing objectification is the ongoing production of enigma. His active control of his image is manifest through his constant transformation of that image.

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Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-120). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on November 17, 2009). Thesis advisor: Dr. Yong Volz. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-87). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-87). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Melbourne Law School, 2010. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-261)

This thesis examines the changing nature of Hollywood stardom and how this is informed by an emergent celebrity culture. Through several case studies this study augments older forms of analysis with Bourdieu’s concept of capital to create a new model of stardom that can accommodate recent cultural developments. In chapter one four key forms of capital are identified. After contextualising this new model within the history of classic Hollywood and older academic approaches to stardom in chapter two, the analysis of Nicole Kidman’s star text in chapter three shows how her image has evolved to combine all forms of cultural capital and as such exemplifies an entirely new formulation of the Hollywood film star. Chapter four applies this analysis to the small screen, with the case studies of Michael J. Fox and Sarah Jessica Parker showing how some performers are able to accrue cultural capital by simultaneously working in film and television, establishing television as a legitimate site for Hollywood stardom and its associated capital. In chapter five a case study of Brand Beckham shows how the capital of contemporary celebrity can be effectively deployed in order to generate a similar allure to that of the classic Hollywood star and with it a similar level of Hollywood power. The final chapter examines the simultaneous unravelling of one brand and the creation of another in light of the increasing power of the fan within celebrity culture. A detailed study of Britney Spears’s presence on perezhilton.com highlights the involvement of the audience as producers of her image and demonstrates how new technologies can be used to create an entirely new form of fame for the gossip columnist, which in turn has been appropriated by the Hollywood system as the next site for legitimate fame.

Thesis ( M.A. ) -- University of Texas at Arlington, 2008.

This thesis investigates how British advertising agencies select celebrity endorsers and the criteria considered important in deciding which celebrity to employ. Specifically the primary focus of the study is to identify and analyse the process by which celebrity endorsers are selected by advertising agency practitioners; to explore factors affecting the selection of celebrity endorsers; and, to generate a model of selecting celebrity endorsers for marketing communication messages. The research had a two-phase design, which progressed from exploratory interviews to a mail survey. For the first phase, a sample of advertising agencies was taken from a recognised listing of the 300 largest agencies in the UK by Campaign in 1997. The top thirty, as ranked by annual sales in 1996, were chosen. Ten managers from nine advertising agencies and a celebrity director from a special research company called the Celebrity Group Ltd, were interviewed. Two fax responses were also received. Having identified a process by which practitioners select celebrity endorsers and the criteria considered, ten hypotheses were developed and the second phase, a mail survey, was launched. The population included advertising agency directors/managers working in Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) member agencies. Purposive sampling was used with the objective of selecting agency managers who have been involved in celebrity campaigns. After two waves, 131 out of 414 (31.6%) questionnaires from 80 out of 148 (54%) agencies were received. The research findings indicate that there is an informal and unwritten process of selecting celebrity endorsers in which a number of agency teams play a part and there is a range of criteria considered in the process. During the research process a preunderstanding model of how agencies select celebrity endorsers was developed that is grounded in the exploratory interview findings from which the research hypotheses are mainly de rived. After havin During the research process a preunderstanding model of how agencies select celebrity endorsers was developed that is grounded in the exploratory interview findings from which the research hypotheses are mainly derived. After having tested the hypotheses, a final version the process is proposed, which reflects a normative theory and represents a major contribution of the thesis.