I get regular updates on Jennifer Lopez in my email because I’ve been writing about her as an actor and star/celebrity. What is very clear from the daily coverage is the level of scrutiny and speculation she, her partner, and family lives with which she navigates through carefully curated media appearances and regular updates on…
Tag: Star Studies
Kóblic: A Troubling Perpetrator Story
I am currently on a trip to Buenos Aires as part of a project on commemorative practices. My work will focus on Mexico, but Argentina is a locus for much of the critical work around this in Latin America and I wanted to see some of the physical spaces first hand. Whilst here, I got…
YouTube as Archive: Fans, Gender and Mexican Film Stars Online
I am completing the final edits of a chapter, “YouTube as Archive: Fans, Gender and Mexican Film Stars Online” for a book entitled Revising Star Studies edited by Guy Austin and Sabrina Yu. In the chapter I’m exploring what it means to access YouTube in order to carry out star fan studies and to gain…
The lady with the tutti-frutti hat
Review: Lisa Shaw Carmen Miranda London: BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. I recently reviewed the first three books in this series: Martin Shingler’s Star Studies: A Critical Guide, Ginette Vincendeau on Brigitte Bardot, Susan Smith on Elizabeth Taylor and Pam Cook’s Nicole Kidman. The review will appear in the Celebrity Studies journal. Shingler’s text is an overview…
Monkey Business in Hollywood and Mexico
Me Cheeta: The Autobiography James Lever London: Fourth Estate (2008) 2009. I spoke at the Revisiting Star Studies conference in June held at the University of Newcastle about the online presence of Mexican male stars from the so-called Mexican Golden Age. As part of this I made reference to my article on María Félix and…
Bardem in Bond
Joint Blog Post with Fiona Noble Shadows and Mirrors: Otherness and Stardom in Skyfall *Spoiler alert In his seminal work Orientalism, Edward Saïd exposes the constructedness and mutual dependence of the categories of the West and the Orient. His claim is as follows: as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea…