ReviewThis collection offers a severe and satisfying intellectual engagement with female celebrity as a trans-media phenomenon. Fourteen highly readable essays scrutinize a wide range of issues that arise from the gendering of celebrity, from Helen Keller’s frustrated attempts to further socialist causes to the negotiation of lesbianism by television personalities Rachel Maddow and Suze Orman, from Lily Langtry’s cautiously calibrated financial exploitation of her status as Victorian beauty (and royal mistress) to Britney Spears’ inscription as a symbol of American excess and indulgence for the duration of the height of the Iraq war. In the Limelight and Under the Microscope elaborates our understanding of the cultural, political, and theoretical significations of celebrity as something more than a guilty pleasure. This book succeeds in showing how, in numerous dissimilar cultural, historical, and textual circumstances, gender politics has played an crucial role in the creation of celebrity and in the fascination that it holds for so many.–Gaylyn Studlar is David May Distinguished Professor in the Humanities and Director of the Program in Film & Media Studies at Washington University in St. Louis
About the AuthorProfessor Diane Negra is Head of Film Studies, University College Dublin. She is Co-Series Editor (along with Yvonne Tasker) for the book series Wiley-Blackwell Studies in Film and Television, and is the author, editor or co-editor of seven books.
