I’m enjoying the comfort of my usual chair in Curtin 939, C21’s conference and meeting room. The room’s large windows offer incomparable views of the neighborhood that surrounds UWM. Most days, the lake is visible. Today, Friday October 5th, my view is met with a solidly grey sky that obscures the lake. Mist coats the windows.
Just a week ago, chairs in a classroom just several floors below this room were filled with participants of the C21 event, A Discussion with Sharon Marcus. Marcus engaged in lively conversation with faculty and students about their new project, “The Drama of Celebrity: Imitation” as well as a pre-circulated essay, “Eric Auerbach’s Mimesisand the Value of Scale.” In the time since Marcus’ presentation, I’ve turned over in my mind insights that Marcus shared about celebrity culture and imitation, especially. As a student and instructor of Women’s and Gender Studies, many of the themes and critical lenses Marcus raised and utilized rang familiar to me. Using gender, class, and race as categories of analyses, Marcus argued that copying celebrities – their visage, their style, their patterns of consumption – is a privilege afforded only to few.
Methodically working their way through illustrations and examples – from historical cartoons to advertisements — Marcus interrogated a particular point of tension in attempts to imitate. Based on their social locations, (false) imitators are derided as second-class fakes. A particular piece of evidence that Marcus shared emphasized the idea that it is absurd for certain groups of people to attempt celebrity imitation, emphasizing that factions of people (Jews, Irish people, etc.) should know their place. In stark contrast, a certain faction of imitators are celebrated for their ability to take on the likeness of a black man or a white woman. The minstrel show genre is one such example in which imitation of black people by white men was not only acceptable, but wildly popular.
So what, then, makes certain forms of imitation not only possible but also encouraged, even celebrated? Contributing to scholarships and conversations that describe patriarchy as an overwhelming social force that grants both privilege and authority on the basis of gender, race, and class, Marcus concluded that upper-class white men alone were successful celebrity imitators. Through their consumption of branded and endorsed goods as well as through performances that imitated social ‘others,’ upper-class white men were able to do so, and be celebrated for it, because of their position of both social norm and social ideal. In short, successful celebrity imitation was reserved for a certain social stratum, based on gender, race, and class.
The brief summary I offer is, of course, simplifying the complex analyses that Marcus undertakes as well as multilayered historic artifacts Marcus considers. In the time that has passed since Marcus’ visit, I thought about whether or not the same argument could hold water in today’s sociopolitical climate, one that seems (at times, at least) to be more aware of systems that dictate privilege and oppression as well as intersectional approaches to viewing identity. Just this past week, however, an indelible line was drawn from the historical source material and climate Marcus considers to contemporary conversations regarding appropriate Halloween costumes – a national news anchor questioned why it shouldn’t be permissible to don blackface when a white person was “dressing up as…a character.” Perhaps in contrast to reactions to the minstrel shows Marcus refers to, the response to news anchor Megyn Kelly’s comment quickly and soundly deemed it racist and unacceptable.
Krista Grensavitch
PhD Candidate, History | MA, Women’s and Gender Studies