Gender and Public Relations by Daymon Christine;Demetrious Kristin;

Author:Daymon, Christine;Demetrious, Kristin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1344575
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

Gendered professionalism and celebrity brands

Institutional legitimacy and brand values at the BBC are converted into conventions of self-presentation (Ytreberg 2002: 759) not only by celebrity performers but also in the public appearances of the BBC executive and board, and its Director General in particular (Boyle and Kelly 2010). These performances require professional skill to achieve the right style and appearance and forms of social interaction. Norms of gendered professionalism discipline such performances, which historically have been premised on the bureaucratic ideal embodied in white, male, middle-aged and middle-class modes of self-presentation whose restraint and formality express rationality, authority and control (Ytreberg 2002: 763–4; Weber 2007). At the BBC this mode of presentation emerged out of the dominant discourses of early public service broadcasting and is therefore integral to its historical sense of its brand identity, especially in news, documentary and current affairs, where the BBC’s role as impartial mediator of political stories was foundational to its statutory purposes. Compliance with bureaucratic ideals also governs the rule-bound procedures laid down in the BBC’s editorial standards; although, as previously noted, this is held in tension with artistic ideals of creative autonomy that allow producers the freedom to innovate in programming and presentation styles.

Women have had a difficult time negotiating this hegemonic style of self-presentation, so it is unsurprising that there has yet to be a female Director General. While they can work to achieve the technical skills required, their feminine attributes of style, appearance and social interaction alongside a lack of social acceptance into professional male networks have been barriers to success (Lair, Sullivan and Cheney 2005; Nadesan and Trethewey 2009; Seabrook 2012). In modern Western cultures the association of female embodiment with emotional expressiveness and as objects of sexual desire positions women in a binary opposition to rational masculine authority and power. But on-air, the bureaucratic ideal has largely been replaced by charismatic modes of self-presentation, a more feminine code of social interaction relying on the presenter’s ability to simulate intimacy, immediacy and emotional rapport with the audience through gestural expressiveness and conversational informality (Sennet 1992; Ytreberg 2002).

Charismatic norms have arisen from the transformation of broadcasting into a global entertainment medium where popular tastes challenge the values of an elite male-dominated establishment. Entertainment genres in pursuit of new markets are more open to the development of individuated personal brands for celebrity presenters which redefine gendered performance. In comedy, for example, carnivalesque disruptions of gender in ambivalent forms of feminized masculinity or unruly female appropriations of masculine power signify the genre’s licensed transgression of institutionalized authority. This transgressive mode of gender performance is more often a preserve of the male comedians who dominate the genre (Arthurs 1999, 2004). We can see this gender ambiguity in Russell Brand’s avant-garde style, which attracts a cult following among young fans in which self-reflexive modes of performance incorporate a deliberately provocative mode of address marked by ‘ a high level of uncertainty and social aggression’ and ‘an atmosphere saturated with risk’ (Ytreberg 2002: 770). The experimental

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