The Celebrity Image and Cultural Identity: Publicity Rights and the Subaltern Politics of Gender

Abstract

Who authors the celebrity? Where does identity receive its authorization? I shall argue that the law constructs and maintains fixed, stable identities authorized by the celebrity subject. In so doing, however, the law also produces the possibility of the celebrity signifier's polysemy. The celebrity image1 is a cultural lode of multiple meanings, mined for its symbolic resonances, and, simultaneously, a floating signifier, invested with libidinal energies, social longings, and political aspirations. Focusing upon cultural practices that engage, reproduce, ironize, and transform the meaning and value of celebrity personas to assert alternative gender identities, I shall argue that the celebrity is authored in a multiplicity of sites of discursive practice, and that in the process unauthorized identities are produced, both for the celebrity and for her diverse authors. Through its prohibitions the law produces the means by which unauthorized identities are both engendered and endangered. I will very briefly summarize the legal doctrine of publicity rights2 and argue that the rationales traditionally offered for recognizing and protecting rights to the celebrity persona cannot be supported and do not justify the extent of the protections legally afforded celebrities, their estates, or their assignees. The social and cultural value of the celebrity image will then be addressed.

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