The Economic Other: Inequality in the American Political Imagination by Meghan Condon & Amber Wichowsky

Author:Meghan Condon & Amber Wichowsky [Condon, Meghan & Wichowsky, Amber]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780226691879
Google: u7jtDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 49414352
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2020-01-15T08:26:48+00:00

There is a clear commercial benefit to casting the rich and famous as regular folk; like narratives that make the audience feel superior, this tack allows the audience to consume celebrity culture without feeling less-than. Athletes, actors, and other celebrities understand this strategy. Though the ordinary-person photographs for “Stars—They’re Just Like Us!” were once exclusively provided by intrusive paparazzi, who caught stars without makeup and couture, the photographs are now often taken by the celebrities themselves and posted on Instagram and other social media outlets.

Whether the celebrity’s goal is to sell endorsed products or promote their body of work, there is little to be gained from offering viewers and followers a social experience that feels demeaning. So, instead, wealthy celebrities, from actors to athletes, rely on mediated contact to encourage the audience to feel as though they are peers, even friends. The wealthy reality television star Kim Kardashian is perhaps the most skilled modern purveyor of such an image. In addition to several television programs, Kardashian reaches fans through her social media presence carefully crafted to make followers feel as though they are in a peer relationship with her. One study of her endorsement activities showed that though nearly half of the posts on her active Facebook account (in 2011) were product endorsements, a full third were about her family and friends, mimicking the type of activity followers would see on the Facebook pages of their own families and friends and creating an illusion that Kardashian was a peer.75 Kardashian is not alone. For example, a recent study of professional athletes’ social media behavior shows much the same thing, with a random sample of athletes from the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL “willing to break down traditional barriers that once existed between themselves and the everyday fan . . . providing fans with unprecedented access to their lives.”76 These athletes talk about their personal lives more than sports on Twitter and often post simple, friendly conversational greetings to followers, like good morning messages.

Socially equalizing communication in this vein serves to create a parasocial relationship for the audience, a form of indirect contact in which a person feels and behaves as though she or he is in a real relationship with someone whom she or he has never actually met.77 Parasocial contact feels real, and is therefore quite powerful. But importantly for the questions we ask in this book, it does not produce discomfort like direct contact often does; this comfort contrast is particularly strong when the celebrity is a member of an out-group.78 As a result, parasocial relationships may reduce prejudice and bias when the celebrity or fictional character is a racial or sexual minority.79 The research on parasocial contact from which we are drawing here focuses exclusively on the reduction of racial, gender, and sexual prejudice when the parasocial relationship is with an intentionally positively portrayed, likable media figure, like the gay men on the popular television show Will and Grace, which debuted twenty years ago and has recently returned to the screen with new episodes.

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