Celebrity in Thailand: meaning, identity, popular culture

Abstract

What is celebrity? Is it, as some claim, the wayward obsession of media outlets and audiences, leading to trivialization, sensationalism,  and the dumbing down of culture? Or does it signal, as others suggest, a new form of democratization, where mainstream elites no longer control media content, where especially through new forms of media content, where especially through new forms of media

- reality tv, life-style programming, Facebook, blogs, Twitter

- social hierarchies are flattened and new voices get heard and new faces recognized? Some time ago Andy Warhol, the American pop artist offered his own scenario: in the future, he predicted, everyone would be famous, for fifteen minutes.  In this paper, we want to argue that these issues have much relevance to Thailand, perhaps moreso now than ever. Evidence of the exponential growth over the past decade of what might be described as the industrialization of Thailand’s celebrity culture can be seen and experienced in daily life everywhere – ubiquitpus talk shows, entertainment up-date segments and reality formats on television; magazines specializing in celebrity gossip; public billboards and product packaging event launches, fashion shows and charity drives; and more recently on-line star and fan specific websites, Facebook pages, blogs and tweets. Even quality newspapers have begun to set aside considerable space for celebrity career and lifestyle profiles. Celebrity has been comprehensively incorporated into all aspects of contemporary media production, circulation and consumption. It is important to acknowledge that this tendency, in Thailand as elsewhere, is not simply a cyclical shift in the generation of content and audience preference but a major alteration to how mainstream media operate. As Turner (2010) notes, the focus on, engagement with and representation of celebrity has become a defining feature of popular media forms in the 21^st century.