Celebrity Politicians: Popular Culture
and Political Representation
John Street
Considerable political and media attention has focused on the phenomenon of the ‘celebrity politician’.
As this article illustrates, there are two main variants of the phenomenon. The first is the
elected politician or candidate who uses elements of ‘celebrityhood’ to establish their claim to represent
a group or cause. The second is the celebrity—the star of popular culture—who uses their
popularity to speak for popular opinion. Both examples have been seen by critics to debase liberal
democratic political representation. This article challenges this critique and argues that the celebrity
politician is consistent with a coherent account of political representation. This does not mean that
all examples of the celebrity politician are to be seen as legitimate, but that the representative claim
has to be analysed more carefully and discriminatingly than the critics typically suppose.
‘Politics is just like show business’ (Ronald Reagan, quoted in Postman
1987, 128).
Introduction
In 2003, readers of British newspapers were treated to these two front page stories:
the first pictured the prime minister strumming an electric guitar (the home secretary
was on drums) (Daily Mail, 14 February 2003); a week later, the second story
announced that British pop stars had ‘blitzed’ Tony Blair over his policy towards
Iraq (Daily Mirror, 21 February 2003). The politicians were playing at being pop
stars; the musicians were playing at being politicians. In the US, they were doing
it for real. Arnold Schwarzenegger, hero of Hollywood blockbusters like Terminator,
was elected governor of California. Meanwhile, as if to confirm the message
that politics and popular culture were being ever more intimately linked, elections
themselves were being franchised to the makers of reality television game shows.
In 2002, an Argentinian television channel launched a programme called The
People’s Candidate (BBCi, 13 September 2002; Christian Science Monitor, 21 November
2002). Modelled on the successful Big Brother and Pop Idol TV formats, the game
was to involve the weekly elimination of contestants, who were to be subjected to
the critical scrutiny of a judging panel and the decision of an audience vote. The
prize was not, however, a mountain of cash or a recording contract. It was, instead,
to be a nomination to run for Congress, the cost of the campaign being borne by
the television company. Not to be outdone, a US cable company also announced
that it was to organise a similar competition, The American Candidate (van Zoonen
2004). The winner in this case was to run for US president. The station chief
expressed the hope that they might find ‘a Detroit plumber who tells it like it is’
(quoted in the Drudge Report, 8 January 2003). And finally, in April 2004 in the
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436 JOHN STREET
UK, ITV heralded a Pop Idol-style show to select potential MPs (The Guardian, 16
April 2004; also www.itv.com/voteforme).
Such incidents can be seen to mark the rise of a phenomenon that has been dubbed
‘celebrity politics’, and, in so doing, to raise profound concerns about what is happening
to the democratic process. As two US academics have written recently:
If we don’t take back the celebrity politician system, citizens might well
face a political contest between a basket-ball player versus a football
player, or a comedian versus rock star, or a movie star versus a television
situation comedy star. Elections are a key vehicle by which representative
democracy takes place. Unless citizens receive proper information
and candidates provide meaningful choices, it short-circuits the democratic
procedures that all Americans value. We all deserve better choices
than that [sic] currently provided in our regime based on celebrity politics
(West and Orman 2002, 119).
In this article, I want to address such concerns about celebrity politics, first by
briefly documenting its rise, the reaction to it and the causes for it, and then by
asking about its significance and implications for ideas of political representation.
When conventional politicians adopt the guise of the celebrity, when they pose as
rock stars, do they appeal to images and identities that have no place in representative
democratic politics, or are they establishing the very connections (between
represented and representative) upon which ‘representation’ depends? Equally,
when celebrities claim to speak for the people, when they criticise the decision to
go to war, does their voice have any democratic legitimacy?
Both types of celebrity politics are typically treated with a mixture of mockery and
hand-wringing. What is Blair doing pretending to be Eric Clapton; what do pop
stars know about foreign policy? 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, resort to new forms of political communication, but in so doing further
damage the very credibility and trust that they sought to salvage. One image
embodies this general thought: that of the deputy prime minister, John Prescott,
drenched in water at the Brit music awards by the band Chumbawamba. Here was
a politician courting the celebrity limelight and being subjected to the humiliation
of a pop group dousing him as a political gesture.
We are, however, not obliged to share the view that celebrity politics falls outside
the bounds of proper political representation (or, for that matter, proper political
study). We do not have to see the bedraggled Prescott as iconic of popular culture’s
relationship with politics. 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.
CELEBRITY POLITICIANS 437
Celebrity Politicians
The word ‘celebrity’ refers to those people who, via mass media, enjoy ‘a greater
presence and wider scope of activity and agency than are those who make up the
rest of the population. They are allowed to move on the public stage while the rest
of us watch’ (Marshall 1997, ix). This general definition covers a wide variety of
public figures. Darrel West and John Orman (2002, 2–6) identify five categories,
covering those who acquire celebrity status by birth (the Kennedys), to those
embroiled in political scandal, to those who, like Jesse Jackson, become celebrities
through their charismatic public performances. They also include those ‘famed
non-politicos’ who move from careers in show business into politics. While West
and Orman offer a comprehensive overview of the political celebrity, my concern
here is with particular examples of the phenomenon, those with a distinct and
identifiable relationship to popular culture. By this I mean either those ‘famed nonpoliticos’—Sonny
Bono or Jane Fonda—who move from careers in popular culture
to politics, and those with careers in politics (‘politicos’) who make use of the
artefacts, icons and expertise of popular culture. By focusing on the connection
between popular culture and political representation, I hope to show how each
draws on elements of the other in the relationships they establish. This article,
therefore, uses only two categories of celebrity politician. The first refers to the traditional
politician—the legitimately elected representative (or the one who aspires
to be so)—who engages with the world of popular culture in order to enhance or
advance their pre-established political functions and goals. This is the celebrity
politician (CP1). They can be captured in the following ways:
1. An elected politician (or a nominated candidate) whose background is in entertainment,
show business or sport, and who trades on this background (by
virtue of the skills acquired, the popularity achieved or the images associated)
in the attempt to get elected. Examples of this would include Schwarzenegger,
Ronald Reagan, Clint Eastwood, Jesse Ventura (the professional wrestler who
became governor of Minnesota) or ex-athlete and now peer, Sebastian Coe.
2. An elected politician or candidate who uses the forms and associations of the
celebrity to enhance their image and communicate their message. Such techniques
include:
i) the use of photo opportunities staged to link entertainment stars with
politicians (Tony Blair posing with the England football team; Jim Davidson,
Errol Brown and the Strawbs performing at Conservative party conferences;
the German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, on stage with the
Scorpions rock band; the Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi,
singing Elvis Presley songs with Tom Cruise). A variant of this is the use
of stars in party advertisements. One Labour party election broadcast featured
ex-Spice Girl Geri Halliwell and cricket umpire Dickie Bird (and no
politicians); the voice-over was provided by Kevin Whateley (of Inspector
Morse and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet);
ii) the exploitation of non-traditional platforms or formats to promote the
politician: Bill Clinton playing the saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show, or
the MPs Charles Kennedy and Boris Johnson presenting the satirical quiz
show Have I Got News for You?, or other politicians appearing on light enter-
438 JOHN STREET
tainment chat shows (Mrs Thatcher with Michael Aspel, Tony Blair with
Des O’Connor, William Hague with Jeremy Clarkson). One of the most
notable recent examples was Blair’s decision to appear in The Simpsons;
iii) the adoption of the techniques and expertise of those who market celebrities.
A Le Monde journalist complained that during the 2002 French
presidential campaign, the left-wing party Lutte Ouvriere borrowed its
‘tactics from movie stars’ agents. Accreditations have to be applied for,
there are waiting lists and you only get three timed questions with the
star. It’s as though you were interviewing Julia Roberts or Andie
MacDowell’ (quoted in The Guardian, 14 April 2002). Established feature
film-makers such as Spike Jonze, Stephen Frears, Hugh Hudson and
John Schlesinger have all directed election broadcasts, as has the
documentary-maker, Molly Dineen.
While this first type of celebrity politician (CP1) has received much recent attention,
the phenomenon is not new. Nearly 20 years ago, Neil Postman (1987, 135)
wrote: ‘Political figures may show up anywhere, at any time, doing anything,
without being thought odd, presumptuous, or in any way out of place. Which is
to say, they have become assimilated into general television culture as celebrities’.
The second kind of celebrity politician (CP2) describes a phenomenon that was
perhaps less visible at the time Postman was writing. It refers to the entertainer
who pronounces on politics and claims the right to represent peoples and causes,
but who does so without seeking or acquiring elected office. Their engagement
tends to take the form of public gestures or statements aimed at changing specific
public policy decisions.1
Thus, the key features of CP2s are:
1. They use their status and the medium within which they work to speak out
on specific causes and for particular interests with a view to influencing political
outcomes. This includes the many stars of show business who signed the
published petitions against the war in Iraq and who used the other platforms
to which they had access to draw attention to their political views. Those
involved included Hollywood stars like Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Robert
Redford, Bruce Willis and Cher; or musicians like Madonna, Damon Albarn
(Blur), Chris Martin (Coldplay) and Ms Dynamite, among many others. They
also include people like Bono who has had audiences with President George
W. Bush, President Chirac and Pope John Paul in his campaign to reduce third
world debt, as well as touring Africa with the US Treasury secretary.
2. The celebrity politician (CP2) is taken seriously in respect of their political
views. The measure of this might be found in:
i) media focus on their politics (as opposed to their art);
ii) political attention (e.g. a willingness by politicians to meet to discuss the
particular concerns);
iii) audience support, measured by a willingness to contribute money to the
cause (as with Live Aid) or other gestures beyond those typically required
of a fan.
There are, of course, ambiguities and overlaps in these definitions of CP1 and CP2,
but they serve to establish two forms of celebrity politician. Both engage with
politics (conventionally understood) and both claim, albeit by different means, to
CELEBRITY POLITICIANS 439
speak for others. Where they differ is in the means by which the claims to represent
others are legitimated and understood.
The Critique of Celebrity Politics
Both types of celebrity politics have provoked criticism, and I want to look briefly
at the terms of the critique. In particular, I want to concentrate on those criticisms
that relate to the representative claim; that is, criticism which focuses on the ways
that particular accounts of representation are privileged over others. The gist of the
complaint is that celebrity politics undermines any claim to ‘representativeness’.
This is either because 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). Or it is because the celebrity (CP2) boasts irrelevant qualities and superficial
knowledge that do not justify their claim to ‘represent’. As the website, ‘Citizens
against Celebrity “Pundits”’, declares: ‘We the undersigned American Citizens
stand against Wealthy Hollywood Celebrities abusing their status to speak for us.
We do not believe that they have a clear understanding of how we live, what we
fear, and what we support’ (ipetitions.com/campaigns/hollywoodceleb/).
This is not a new complaint. It builds on familiar distinctions between the trivial
(entertainment) and the serious (politics), and a concern about the infection of the
second by the first. This was Postman’s (1987, 4) worry: ‘Our politics, religion,
news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial
adjuncts of show business’. Appearances and images, according to Postman (1987,
4, 129), had come to dominate politics, so that ‘we may have reached a point where
cosmetics have replaced ideology as the field of expertise over which a politician
must have competent control’. In such a world, he continues (1987, 7), politics is
diminished: ‘You cannot do political philosophy on television’. It is not, therefore,
arguments that decide whether voters will support one candidate rather than
another, but ‘style’; that is, ‘how they [the politicians] looked, fixed their gaze,
smiled, and deliver one-liners’ (Postman 1987, 100). In such circumstances, complains
Postman (1987, 137), it becomes impossible to determine ‘who is better than
whom, if we mean by “better” such things as more capable in negotiation, more
imaginative in executive skill’.
Postman’s concerns can also be detected in Joshua Meyrowitz’s (1985) elegy for
traditional forms of political leadership. He claimed that the increasing reliance on
television as a medium of communication tends to shift the criteria by which politicians
are judged and by which they operate. Television’s intimacy, its use of closeups
and one-to-one conversations, focuses attention on politicians’ ‘human’
qualities. The result is that populist empathy rather than elite leadership becomes
valued. In such a world, either politicians learn the skills of the medium or those
already skilled in it (the celebrity) come to dominate it. This anxiety is still present.
Thomas Meyer (2002, 79), for example, has written:
If democracy is nothing but legitimation by the most successful form of
communication, then the communication artist is the best democrat, with
no effort whatsoever. And if the authentic play of body politics is the most
440 JOHN STREET
efficacious form of entertaining communication, then ‘briefcase politics’
with its institutionalised procedures and long-winded arguments might
as well bow out now.
For such critics, ‘telegenicity’ has become the measure of ‘representativeness’ (see
Zolo 1992, 162) and ‘mob rule’ replaces deliberation (Crick 2002, 85–90).2
The themes of these critiques of celebrity politics continue to echo through the
current debate. While critics acknowledge that celebrity politics may ‘reinvigorate
a political process that often stagnates’ (West and Orman 2002, 112), these potential
benefits tend to be outweighed by the costs. In their more even-handed assessment
of celebrity politics, West and Orman (2002, 112) argue that 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). This finds
expression in the popular discourse around the question of why we should listen
to television actors on the dangers of the MMR injection (Catherine Bennett, The
Guardian, 18 December 2002) or pop stars on the fate of the planet (Rod Liddle,
The Guardian, 3 July 2003). Furthermore, 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).
These criticisms of celebrity politics are premised on a set of assumptions about,
inter alia, the proper nature and character of political representation. Their particular
claim is that representatives owe citizens a duty of informed political judgement.
Both types of celebrity politician threaten the principles of representative
democracy either because they privilege style and appearance over substance, or
because they marginalise relevant expertise.
In Defence of Celebrity Politics
One line of defence is to note that what is being discussed is not as new, or as
atypical, as is sometimes implied by critics, and that the criticisms are misplaced,
at least in so far as things are seen as changing for the worse. With respect to CP2,
there is a long and respected tradition of celebrated non-politicians engaging with
politics (Milton, John Dryden and Andrew Marvell all contributed to the political
debate during the English Civil War). And with respect to CP1, Leo Braudy (1997)
points out that the 18th
century saw the proliferation of public representations of
political figures in the form of busts and portraits. The subsequent development of
photography—used in particular by Abraham Lincoln—gave further impetus to the
drive towards visual representations in politics. With the advent of photography,
CELEBRITY POLITICIANS 441
appearance and style assumed an ever greater part of the politician’s armoury. Film
compounded the trend. As Braudy (1997, 556–557) explains, movie stars like
Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin helped to:
‘sell’ the [1914–1918] war to a strongly isolationist American public uninterested
in European problems ... War was a commodity that had to be
advertised, and the alliance of performers and politicians is as emblematic
as Lincoln’s frequent trips to Mathew Brady’s photographic gallery in
the dark days of the Civil War.
A defence of contemporary celebrity politics in terms of its historical precedents
draws upon the idea that the phenomenon is a necessary or inevitable product of
social and political change. In particular, celebrity politics, and the cult of the personality
that it embodies, can be seen as a product 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). In such a world, the focus shifts on to individual
politicians and, with this, politics is ‘personalised’. This trend is accentuated by a
mass media whose generic conventions favour this form of politics (Mancini and
Swanson 1996, 13). The new styles of political communication are logical extensions
of this reality. The advertisement (and the conventions of advertising) come
to define political communication. Politicians become stars, politics becomes a
series of spectacles and the citizens become spectators.
The logic of this is explored in the literature on the connection between politics
and marketing (Lees-Marshment 2001; see also Scammell 1999). The suggestion
is not that politics just makes use of the practices and techniques of marketing, but
that politics is marketing. As the logic of marketing takes hold, it necessarily shapes
the conception of ‘representation’. Representatives sell themselves to their market;
successful parties are like successful entrepreneurs, and this is a fact to be welcomed,
not condemned. To the extent that celebrity politics is a form of marketing,
then the celebrity politician is simply making use of the techniques of
marketing, either—as with CP1s—selling themselves, or as with CP2s, endorsing a
product (a policy or a politician).
In short, it is possible to counter the claims of critics of celebrity politics by offering
a different account of the emergence of the phenomenon, an account which
sees it both as having historical precedents, and, in so far as it is new, as being part
of a process of modernisation and the enhancement of political communication.
But offering an alternative account of the emergence of CP1 and CP2 does not go
to the heart of the various criticisms. The critics’ main objection, as we have noted,
is based on two elements—the first has to do with the excess attention given to
image and appearance, and the second has to do with the irrelevance of the expertise
which celebrity politicians possess. The fact that there are precedents or contributing
social trends for CP1 and CP2 does not invalidate these criticisms. That
we can explain the rise of the celebrity politician in terms of media trends does not
provide a validation for them. Those media trends may be the product of the com-
442 JOHN STREET
mercial and political interests of the press, which leads to the ‘tabloidisation’ of the
news agenda (Franklin 1998). The celebrity politician is then simply the result of
a celebrity-obsessed media, acting for reasons other than for some notional public
good. In these circumstances, the question remains as to whether the use of images
or the involvement of stars undermines representative government. To address the
core criticisms, it is important to ask whether forms of celebrity politics can actually
enhance, in principle, representative government.
To defend celebrity politics on these lines requires paying attention to the character
of the link being established between the represented and the representative.
Can the involvement of popular culture strengthen the representative relationship?
Stephen Coleman (2002, 254), for example, argues that forms of popular culture
can resonate with people in ways that traditional forms of political communication
cannot. The popularity of Big Brother, he suggests, owes much to the fact that
the contestants were seen as ‘representative’, as ‘people like us. They spoke and
behaved in ways that appealed to sections of the public who traditionally feel intimidated
by the language and discourse of politics’. It may be, as Coleman (2003, 31)
acknowledges, that the Big Brother housemates are no more typical of the population
than are MPs, but what is important to the perception of them as ‘representative’
is ‘the ordinariness of their preoccupations: what to eat; when to sleep;
wanting to be liked’. These constitute the realities of daily life which condition the
legitimation of representation. The Big Brother contestants are scrutinised by their
audience in respect of their authenticity, itself a measure of integrity and trustworthiness,
and in so doing they establish criteria of representativeness that could
be applied to politics (Coleman 2003, 32).
In a similar vein, John Keane (2002, 13) has argued that the success of maverick
political figures (like Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, Pauline Hanson, Martin Bell and
Pim Fortuyn) owes something to the fact that they can ‘claim to champion the
interests of the unrepresented, all those who don’t identify with politicians’. 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.
However, this argument is unlikely to impress the critics of celebrity politics for
one important reason: the critics’ notion of representation is different to that
adopted by the defenders of celebrity politics. Where the former are concerned
with the capacities and skills of the representative, the latter are concerned with
their resemblance to the represented. This is, of course, a familiar divide, captured
in A. H. Birch’s (1964, 16) tripartite distinction between representation by activity,
selection or personal characteristics, or in Hanna Pitkin’s (1967) distinction
between ‘standing for’ and ‘acting for’. The critics of celebrity politics appeal to the
notion of representation captured in the idea of activity and acting for, while the
defenders favour an account couched in terms of resemblance or mirroring.
Coleman too (2003, 30) acknowledges a similar divide between competing notions
CELEBRITY POLITICIANS 443
of representation, couching it in terms of the contrast between representation as
a product of procedures (‘selection’, in Birch’s terms) and reflection or resemblance.
If the distinction between the competing modes of representation was an essentially
contested one, then we would be compelled to conclude that the debate over
celebrity politics may as well end here. The debate would be based on fundamentally
different values which could neither be reconciled nor eliminated. But for
Pitkin at least, the distinction is not an essentially contested one. The notion of
representation as ‘standing for’, she writes, does ‘not exhaust the concept of representation’
(Pitkin 1967, 111). However, to open up the concept of representation
to include a variety of facets and forms does not in itself legitimate the claims
entailed by either CP1 or CP2. For that it is necessary to challenge the formal distinctions
which have tended to dominate discussion of representation.
One key challenge has been launched by those who want to stress the symbolic
and aesthetic dimensions of representation. Jean-Pascal Daloz (2003), for example,
has argued that representation in any of its forms exists as a symbolic relationship
that negotiates principles of identification and of distinction. Michael Saward
(2003a) pursues a similar line in his argument that Pitkin’s account excludes the
way in which ‘representation’ is symbolically evoked. For such writers, representation
necessarily entails ‘appearance’ and claims to ‘represent’ can emerge in a
variety of contexts and can be validated in a variety of ways. The rest of this article
is given over to exploring the basis of this move, and its implications for an understanding
and evaluation of celebrity politics. How does popular culture help to symbolise
representation? In answering this question, I shall argue that representation
has to be understood as both a political process and a cultural performance, and
that the issue of whether celebrity politics, in either form, constitutes a legitimate
basis for representation depends on the characteristics of both the process and the
performance.
The Rationality of Appearance
One of the assumptions of the critics of celebrity politics is that judging by appearance
is an inappropriate basis for the evaluation of representatives. Rather, they
claim that representatives should be judged in terms of the quality of their policy
proposals, the ideological coherence of their manifesto, the sophistication of their
political skills or the legitimacy of their selection procedures. But while such issues
are indeed important to the representative–represented relationship, they do not
exhaust its character and content. Working within rational choice theory, Geoffrey
Brennan and Alan Hamlin (2000) argue that ‘appearance’ has a legitimate place
within the relationship. In their defence of the argument that representative
democracy is not to be seen as a ‘second best’ to direct democracy, they argue that
voting has to be seen as an ‘expressive act’, indeed as a ‘speech act’, and not as an
instrumental act (in the Downsian sense) directed to specific policy outcomes. As
an expressive act, the vote is understood as allowing the voter to identify with
politicians and to seek out what they (the voters) find ‘politically attractive’.
Although ‘attractiveness’ can be measured along many axes, included amongst
them is ‘appearance’. Brennan and Hamlin write (2000, 178): ‘it would be perfectly
rational (in the strict sense) to vote on the basis of a candidate’s appearance
444 JOHN STREET
or speaking voice if those are the characteristics the voter identifies with’. The more
typical basis for assessment, according to Brennan and Hamlin, is ‘character and
competencies’. But whatever the focus of the assessment, the suggestion is that
rational actors faced with the decision of whom to select as their representative
will do so on the basis of factors other than policy coherence, political skilfulness
or ideological consistency. ‘Appearance’ may stand as a proxy for such things, but
it is the appearance of competence, not the fact of it that is being discerned. In this
context, the repertoire of gestures associated with celebrity politics assumes a
greater importance for CP1s who use them to demonstrate their political character
and CP2s who use them to establish their authenticity or integrity.
One implication of this argument that appearance matters is that political analysis
must develop methods of ‘reading’ appearance, as well as taking cognisance of the
traditional aspects of political communication and action. In the words of John
Corner and Dick Pels (2003, 16), it means ‘straddling the “higher” dimension of
political rationality and political speech and the “baser” one that admits affect, body
language, “looks”, dress code, and other stage props of political performance’.3
An
example of this straddling can be found in an edited collection of studies of postwar
political communication in Italy (Cheles and Sponza 2001). It describes the
aesthetics of political advertisements, the sound of campaign anthems, the dress
sense of political leaders; it foregrounds the ritualistic dimension of political representation.
As well as making a case for the place of rituals and symbols in
political representation, the book furnishes evidence for a larger claim: that
representation does not just mean the use of symbols and rituals, but that it is
constituted by them. As one contributor contends: ‘Political parties can exist only
through symbolic representation’ (Kertzer 2001, 100). Without necessarily accepting
this radical constructivism, the suggestion remains that the performative, aesthetic
dimension of the representative relationship cannot be eliminated. This
certainly is the thesis developed by F. R. Ankersmit, to whose arguments we now
turn, as a way of locating celebrity politics within ‘normal’ politics.
The Aesthetics of Representation and Political Style
Ankersmit has developed an aesthetic account of political representation. His
argument begins from the observation, first, that political representation predates
democracy and, second, that it borrows its meaning from aesthetics, from the way
works of art stand in relation to some notion of reality. Ankersmit (2002) begins
with the two familiar, competing accounts of representation. The first is representation
as resemblance; the second is representation as substitution. Ankersmit dismisses
the ‘resemblance’ version on the grounds that it is incoherent to claim that
marks on a canvas or words on a page ‘resemble’ the things to which they refer.
They are ‘substitutes’; they literally re-present objects or ideas. Furthermore, the
suggestion that reality can only exist in representational form is used to underpin
Ankersmit’s claim that politics too can only exist in representational form. This
argument is not simply the familiar one about the practical limits to direct democracy,
but rather that ‘without political representation we are without a conception
of what reality—the represented—is like; without it, political reality has neither
CELEBRITY POLITICIANS 445
face nor contours. Without representation there is no represented’ (Ankersmit
2002, 115).
One of the implications of this argument, according to Ankersmit (2002, 116–117,
original emphasis), is that ‘the politician must possess the essentially aesthetic talent
of being able to represent political reality in new and original ways’. And this in
turn leads to a discussion of the character and importance of ‘political style’
(Ankersmit 2002, 132ff.). Style is the way in which politicians and parties communicate
their relationship to the electorate and to their future public goals. As
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’. 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. He writes (1996, 54):
When asking him or herself how best to represent the represented, the
representative should ask what political style would best suit the electorate.
And this question really requires an essentially creative answer on
the part of the representative, in the sense that there exists no style in
the electorate that is quietly waiting to be copied.
Although such arguments have typically been applied to fascism, especially that of
Mussolini’s Italy (see Falasca-Zamponi 1997), they have also been applied to liberal
democracies (see Corner and Pels 2003; Cheles and Sponza 2001; Meyer 2002).
In summary, what emerges from the arguments of Brennan and Hamlin, Ankersmit
and others is the thought that in analysing forms of political representation in
modern democracies, we need to be aware of the ways in which this relationship
is constituted and experienced aesthetically. From this perspective, the phenomenon
of the celebrity politician takes on, I would suggest, a different aspect. 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).4
What it does suggest is that we need to approach differently the analysis
and understanding of political representation. The last part of this article
explores the implication of this for the two types of celebrity politician we have
identified.
Politics as Performance: The Case of CP1
The process as it applies to CP1s is captured in John Corner’s (2000) account of
the construction of a political persona, a process which he contends has been over-
446 JOHN STREET
looked by political scientists. Corner argues that the contemporary representative
politician has to be understood in terms of the persona that they construct or that
is constructed for them. 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, original emphasis). Rather than
siding with those who bemoan the ‘personalisation’ of politics, Corner argues
(2000, 401) 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.
For Corner, the analysis of a political persona depends on an understanding of both
the intentions of the politician and of the interaction between him or her and the
available media systems. The analysis is of a performance that involves demeanour
and posture, voice and appearance (Corner 2000, 391).
Seeing political representation in these terms takes it much closer to the realm
of show business and the world of the celebrity. The logic of this is adopted by
P. David Marshall (1997, 203), who writes that ‘in politics, a leader must
somehow embody the sentiments of the party, the people, and the state. In the
realm of entertainment, a celebrity must somehow embody the sentiments of
an audience’. Marshall argues that the existence of politicians as celebrities has
to be understood as part of a process of filling out political rationality to include
the affective relationships as well as the instrumental ones. If they are to be the
objects of affection, to be ‘attractive’, then this intent informs the way in which
they seek to communicate. It suggests that spindoctors are the equivalent of
PR people in film and record companies, managing the image and appearance
of their clients. It is about deciding what interviews, with whom, when; it is
about rationing the supply of images and information to coincide with the release
of the latest record/policy initiative. Explaining the political success of Governor
Jesse Ventura, his media adviser said: ‘Jesse’s worked in movies, he’s been a
pro-wrestler, he understands pop culture. He gets it. He knows what’s going to
play in public, and he’s not afraid to take chances’ (quoted in West and Orman
2002, 11).
Political representation is an art that draws on the skills and resources which define
mass-mediated popular culture. Thomas Meyer (2002, 32) writes of the ‘logic of
mass media’, which casts—and the theatrical metaphor is intended—politicians as:
embodying qualities, forces, tendencies, virtues, programs or powers that
carry powerful resonance in a country’s political culture and mythology.
Thus Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder were cast as men of will, virtue,
innovativeness and the ‘can-do’ spirit, regardless of the actual content of
the programs they stood for.
These characters occupy ‘dramas’ and ‘narratives’ that draw from myth and
popular heroes, sliding between life and art. Meyer (2002, 33) talks of the ‘artistry
of entertainment in politics’, referring to the way in which politicians use the
formats of entertainment ‘to prove that they have the common touch and know
how to relax’. Meyer sees politics as being ‘revisualised’ (made visible) by the technologies
of mass communication, drawing on the rhetoric and devices of popular
culture.
CELEBRITY POLITICIANS 447
What Corner, Marshall and Meyer suggest is that we need to understand the representative
relationship as one that is not just analogous with other forms of
popular performance, but is derived from it. Adoption of the trappings of popular
celebrity is not a trivial gesture towards fashion or a minor detail of political communication,
but instead lies at the heart of the notion of political representation
itself. In the case of CP1, therefore, the representative claim has to be analysed as
a performance which reveals and establishes certain qualities and values. In this
process, two things can happen: first, the CP1 may succeed or fail in conveying
those values and qualities in their use of the various devices and gestures to which
they resort; and second, their performance may be judged as successful or a failure
(they may be seen as ‘cool’ or ‘stupid’). Either way, the judgement of their claim
to represent the people legitimately is not directly linked to whether or not they
engage in celebrity politics. Put differently, all politicians are celebrity politicians,
only some are more convincing, more ‘authentic’ performers than others.
Performers as Representatives: The Case of CP2
In considering the case of CP2s, we return to the question of whether or in what
sense, if any, unelected persons can claim to ‘represent’ popular views? I do not
intend to contribute to this theoretical question here (see Saward 2003b for a thorough
analysis of the claims involved), and instead I want to suggest that it is at
least conceivable that unelected persons may legitimately represent politically the
views and values of others. What is important in this context is how the claim to
representative legitimacy is made. What conditions underlie the making of the
claim by the unelected that they ‘represent’ a view or a constituency? What logic
operated, for example, in the thoughts of those who sought the support of stars
who opposed the war in Iraq (Damon Albarn, Julian Barnes, William Boyd,
Tracey Emin, Harry Enfield, David Gilmour, Nick Hornby, Jeremy Irons, Elton
John, Emma Thompson ...)? The assumption was that these stars mattered as commentators
on the war, as representatives of popular opinion.
One suggestion is that these stars are ‘in touch’ with popular sentiment, a claim
that itself derives from assumptions about how the celebrity and their admirers are
related. It is a claim about fandom. John Thompson (1995, 220–225) has argued
that being a ‘fan’ is an important, even defining, characteristic of modernity. It
entails formation of relations of ‘intimacy with distant others’ (Thompson 1995,
220), and this can be seen to be the basis of a form of (political) representation.
As a fan of Bruce Springsteen once said: ‘I think it’s good that, say, someone in his
position, or anyone in that position, when they write a line on a piece of paper,
millions of people get to hear it, as opposed to when I write something only I get
to hear it’ (quoted in Cavicchi 1998, 118). This sense of being represented in the
experience of fandom is captured by Nick Hornby in his account of his life as a fan
of Arsenal football club. Writing of a championship victory, he says: ‘The joy we
feel on occasions like this is not a celebration of others’ good fortune, but our own
... The players are merely our representatives, chosen by the manager rather than
elected by us, but our representatives nonetheless, and sometimes if you look hard
you can see the little poles that join them together, and the handles at the side
that enable us to move them’ (Hornby 2000, 179). This representational relation-
448 JOHN STREET
ship is established by the ‘affective’ capacity of the cultural performance. Indeed,
Lawrence Grossberg (1992, 86) suggests that this very capacity is intrinsically
political in that it can generate a sense of ‘empowerment’ that makes possible ‘the
optimism, invigoration and passion which are necessary for any struggle to change
the world’. Liesbet van Zoonen (2004, 49) also draws this affective connection
between fandom and politics when she argues that ‘fan communities and political
constituencies bear crucial similarities’.5
But ‘fandom’ or cultural consumption do
not of themselves establish a claim to represent politically.
It might be observed that certain performers—Britney Spears, for example—do not
establish the same kind of (political) relationship with their fans as does Bono or
Springsteen. Why? One of the other factors involved is the genre in which they
work. It is apparent that certain genres establish conventions and opportunities for
political engagement (e.g. folk, rock, hip-hop, country music) in ways that others
do not (teenpop, easy listening). And even genre-based accounts of the representative
claim have to take account of the ways in which these genres are themselves
constituted by media representations and business strategies as ‘political’. Folk
music is not ‘intrinsically’ political; its politics are the product of the ways in which
certain political movements (e.g. the Popular Front or CND) ‘captured’ the music
for their purposes (Cantwell 1996; Denning 1997). Ron Eyerman and Andrew
Jamison (1997) argue that, during the 1960s, the capacity of folk and rock stars to
assume a political role was a product of the context created by the social movements
active at the time, which required of them the role of ‘truth bearers’. What
this suggests is that the claim by celebrities to speak for others is conditional upon
a number of factors, which includes generic conventions but extends to the larger
social and political context in which they operate.
Furthermore, the capacity to ‘represent’ is not simply a product of the artist and
their genre’s conventions. Bob Geldof’s ability to represent the conscience of those
concerned about starvation in Africa was dependent on the BBC’s willingness to
make airtime available for the broadcasting of the Live Aid concerts in London and
Philadelphia. Without the mediated public sphere provided by the broadcaster,
Geldof’s claims would have been silenced. In a similar way, the oppressive actions
of states can, unintentionally, create platforms and opportunities for performers to
become political representatives. Recent studies of the role of musicians in communist
states have shown how performers become representatives almost by
default. When other forms of constitutional representation are denied, musicians
assumed responsibility for organising and representing political opposition to the
regime (see Cushman 1995; Ramet 1994; Szemere 2001; Sheeran 2001; Wicke
1992). 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. Anna Szemere (2001) highlights the role of popular musicians in the management
of the transition from communism within Hungary. Robert Cushman
CELEBRITY POLITICIANS 449
(1995) and Peter Sheeran (2001) document the ways in which the rock underground
articulated political opposition to the Soviet authorities. Sheeran (2001, 8)
claims that ‘it was the dissident content of coded Soviet lyrics that caused most
damage to the longevity of the Soviet system’. Even allowing for the hyperbolic
character of such remarks, these studies make a powerful case for crediting musicians
with more than a decorative role in the course of political events. In so far
as these musicians articulated political sentiments and organised political action,
they acted to represent those associated with political opposition.
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.
Conclusion
There is a risk that the preceding arguments, which have tried to locate celebrity
politics within the conventions of representative democracy, might be read as an
argument for uncritical populism. That is not the intention. To see certain forms
of behaviour and styles as examples of the logic of celebrity politics is not to treat
the political views as equally valid or the actors as genuine representatives, any
more than it is right to see the prime minister strumming a Fender Stratocaster as
an effective way of establishing a representative link with young people or to see
Bono as an authoritative political commentator. To draw attention to the role of
‘style’ and ‘aesthetics’ and ‘attractiveness’ in political representation is not to see
all styles as plausible or appealing.6
The analysis of political representation does not
commit the analyst to celebrating all forms of celebrity politics (any more than we
are committed to celebrating all forms of culture—Jeffrey Archer and Jane Austen).
The point is that the process of discrimination must acknowledge the aesthetic
character of the representative relationship, in which notions of ‘authenticity’ or
‘credibility’, style and attractiveness, are legitimate terms.
This article has tried to suggest that the celebrity politician is not in fact an exaggerated
form or exceptional form of all political representation, but rather characteristic
of the nature of political representation generally. In so doing, I have drawn
on literature emerging both from within political science and within the study and
experience of popular culture. This cross-disciplinarity is becoming more commonplace.
Just as discussion of citizenship has focused on its relationship to culture
(e.g. Stevenson 2001), so we need to see political representation as a cultural act
which seeks to realise a form of political attractiveness through the gestures and
images of popular culture. This is not just a matter of seeing representation as a
cultural performance, of noting the use of the icons and images of popular culture
in politics, nor just of appreciating the use of politics by celebrities, but of seeing
both as symptomatic of the link between politics and popular aesthetics. For some,
450 JOHN STREET
this may signal the demise of representative politics, but it might also indicate an
added dimension to our appreciation of political representation, one which needs
to be sensitive to the aesthetics and politics of its performative character.
About the Author
John Street, School of Political, Social and International Studies, University of East Anglia,
Norwich NR4 7TJ, email: j.street@uea.ac.uk
Notes
An early version of this article was presented to the ‘Political Representation’ workshop at the 2003 ECPR
conference in Edinburgh, and to audiences at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and Oxford
Brookes and Bournemouth Universities. My thanks is owed to these patiently critical audiences, to John
Greenaway and to the anonymous BJPIR readers.
1. For the purposes of the discussion here, this does not include the many examples of political expression
to be found throughout popular culture. Though these are clearly political acts, the performer
is in these cases acting as an artist first and as political activist second; they are addressing an audience
of fans rather than citizens.
2. Crick’s particular criticism is addressed to the ‘democracy’ of Big Brother which, he argues, gives
expression to a hatred of society. His arguments echo those of Joseph Schumpeter’s (1976 [1942])
on collective irrationality.
3. Jon Simons (2000) evokes a similar mode of analysis with his concept of ‘imagology’.
4. Take these two examples of celebrities taking on the guise of politicians. In the UK general election
of 2001, the Daily Star’s front page headline (24 May 2001) read: ‘JORDAN: I’VE GOT THEM BY THE
BALLOTS’. The opening paragraph continued: ‘Britain’s sexiest political candidate whacked the three
main political parties in the ballot boxes yesterday. Fun loving Jordan, the 34F independent candidate
...’. Two weeks earlier the same paper had the headline: ‘BRITNEY BACKS LABOUR’ (Daily Star,
16 May 2001). The claim that Jordan or Britney Spears ‘represents’ the people is being constructed
in very obvious and crude ways by the Daily Star. There is no requirement to accept at face value the
representative claim being made. The right to represent is not a simple product of making the claim;
nor is it a matter of being ‘popular’. And what is true for CP2s is also true for CP1s. The ways in
which elected politicians or aspiring candidates represent themselves are part of a process, and the
results are open to evaluation in similar ways.
5. In a similar vein, Murray Forman (2000) talks about the way popular music ‘represents’ locality to
its fans and followers through the narratives and histories it constructs.
6. John Kane (2001, 10) uses the idea of ‘moral capital’ to explain why some politicians succeed in
delivering a useful service, and as he points out: ‘It is possible to be popular while lacking moral
capital, or to possess moral capital while not being popular’.
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