About the Festival

 

Texas State University is excited to announce its International Film Festival and Symposium on Celebrity: Between Fame and Infamy in San Marcos, Texas, in February &  March 2024. The festival will explore the topic of celebrity through a series of feature films, an art exhibition, and conclude with a day-long symposium dedicated to the scholarly discussion of celebrity from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

Historical and Theoretical Background

Going back to eighteenth-century Europe, when the notion of celebrity arose, two models come to mind. On the one hand, an unknown writer publishes a text the paradoxical argument of which creates a scandal among literati who, by publishing counterarguments and stoking the writer to continue the controversy, gather a sizable audience and designate a philosopher in the making—Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Achieving fame within a few years, the author of The Social Contract nonetheless sees his work condemned to be burnt upon its release in 1762. On the other hand, and on the opposite end of the social hierarchy, is Marie-Antoinette, Dauphine of France, facing rival image-makers who create, subvert, or degrade the future royal icon, regardless of her own disposition to personify royalty and make herself personable to the public. Fame and infamy work in a seesaw manner in the production of celebrity.  In the early twentieth century, German sociologist Max Weber laid the groundwork for a modern concept of celebrity as the secularization of charismatic authority in the age of capitalism. For Weber, charisma–a notion rooted in theology that alludes to the supernatural or superhuman qualities of an individual as a gift from God–has evolved into celebrity in the “disenchanted,” secularized age of modernity. Writing at the dawn of mass media and increasing popularity of motion pictures, Weber pointed to the development of celebrity culture as a phenomenon created and sustained by moving images and their global circulation. 

Today, film and short videos often mediate whose histories and art we celebrate. Global celebrities like Viola Davis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Timothée Chalamet, Harry Styles and Zendaya, to TikTok influencers and micro-celebrities, use their platforms for social critique, whether in film, documentaries, music videos, or edited clips. Celebrity is sometimes criticized as vacuous, dictated by likes, views, and followers—often quantity over quality, and amusement over art. We make celebrities into idols and watch as they negotiate their fame and infamy. Importantly, no discussion of celebrity is complete without a discussion of political accountability and the publicists, fans and paparazzi who often enable and produce celebrities. We invite participants and guests to consider issues related to: 

  • Celebrity and image-making from style to fraud; politics of authenticity versus hyper-constructed roles
  • From celebrity to icon to genius: how does celebrity morph into exceptional creativity? • Using celebrity for cultural change; mainstreaming subcultures; micro-celebrity and the rise of niche cultures
  • Celebrity, the shaping of polity, and vice versa
  • Celebrity, censorship, “cancel culture,” and accountability
  • Mapping celebrity; influencer geopolitics and the circulation of influence
  • Celebrity and hyper-consumerism • Celebrity and the vicarious life
  • Scandal as origin of the celebrity phenomenon
  • The aftermath of celebrity; surviving celebrity; posthumous celebrity

Texas State is a public university in Central Texas and a Hispanic Serving Institution with a diverse student population of 38,000+. Located 30 minutes away from Austin, where the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival will take place March 8-16, the university is dedicated to increasing access to the arts and internationalizing higher education in the state. 

Festival Organizers and Speakers

Carole Martin is a professor of French at Texas State University. Author of a monograph on utopias during the Age of Absolutism, Imposture utopique et procès colonial: Denis Veiras—Robert Challe, Martin has widely published in the major, peer-reviewed journals of seventeenth and eighteenth-century studies and participated in numerous collective works, notably on the proto-philosophe Robert Challe and on the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Thanks to several FACE foundation grants, she has organized five international film festivals and symposia at Texas State University, with topics ranging from Filmmaking and Civic Responsibility to Consent to the current iteration on Celebrity.  

Louie Dean Valencia is an associate professor of digital history at Texas State and studies how young people create social change through art, countercultural spaces, activism, media, celebrity, and in the streets. He is currently completing a book on identity, the internet, celebrity, and British musician Harry Styles. He also actively researches the history of HIV/AIDS in Europe and how why people are celebrated historically. He is a member of the editorial board of Popular Culture Review. His books include Far-Right Revisionism and the End of History (2020) and Antiauthoritarian Youth Culture in Francoist Spain (2018). Prior to coming to Texas State, he taught at Harvard University and worked for brands such as GOOP, LOFT, PepsiCo., Tiffany and Co., Patrón Tequila, amongst others. He is a co-organizer of Between Fame and Infamy film festival.

guest Speakers and Artists

Mary Beltrán is Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Radio-Television-Film and a faculty affiliate of Mexican American & Latina/o Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research, located at the junctures of film and media studies, Latina/o and critical race studies, and gender studies, has focused on Latina/o representation and media authorship; mediated celebrity; and diversity, inclusion, and the U.S. television and film industries. Her publications include the books Latino TV: A History, Latina/o Stars in U.S. Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film and TV Stardom, and the co-edited anthology Mixed Race Hollywood.

Olivia Gruber Florek is an Associate Professor of Art History at Delaware County Community College in Media, Pennsylvania, where she also curates an annual exhibition of contemporary art. Her research focuses on celebrity portraiture in nineteenth-century Europe and the United States, and she has received funding from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, and the Fulbright Commission. In February 2023, she published The Celebrity Monarch: Empress Elisabeth and the Modern Female Portrait with the University of Delaware Press.

Jennifer Forrest is professor of French at Texas State University. She is the co-editor of Dead Ringers: The Remake in Theory and Practice (SUNY 2002) and the editor of The Legend Returns and Dies Harder Another Day: Essays on Film Series (McFarland 2008). Her most recent book is Decadent Aesthetics and the Acrobat in Fin-de-Siècle France (Routledge 2019). Her current book project – Silent French Film and the Acrobat, 1896-1914 – brings together her film research with her work on the cult and culture of the circus in the late 19th century.

Katy McCarthy (she/her) is an artist, filmmaker and educator based in Austin, Texas. She holds a BFA from UC Santa Barbara and an MFA from the Interdisciplinary Studio Arts program at Hunter College in New York. Her short films explore psychology and feminist issues from a surrealist perspective and have been screened at The Every Woman Biennial Film Festival, Boulevard Film Festival, CUNY Film Festival, NurtureART’s Single Channel: Video Art Festival. Her work has also been included in group shows at Tiger Strike Asteroid Gallery Los Angeles, Flux Factory in Long Island City, and the Santa Barbara Contemporary Art Museum among other venues. She has been an artist-in-residence at Lighthouse Works, LMCC Governors Island, SOHO20 Residency Lab, Grin City and The Wassaic Project. In 2018 Katy was the inaugural and sole recipient of the St. Elmo Fellowship at UT Austin. In 2021 she received the Austin Film Society short film grant for her short film “The Violinist.” She is an assistant professor at UT San Antonio.

Sonia Touz is a PhD student in film studies under the supervision of Professor Antony Fiant, Research Unit – Arts : Pratiques et Poétiques, Rennes 2 University. Her dissertation focuses on the filmography of Portuguese director Miguel Gomes. She also works at Rennes 2’s Centre International Rennais d’Etudes de Français pour Etrangers, where she incorporates film in her teaching.

 

bibliography

Celebrity auto/biography

The Crafting of Celebrity (Self) Image Bateman, Justine. Fame: The Hijacking of Reality. Akashic Books, 2019. Bernhardt, Sarah. My Double Life: The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt. CreateSpace Publishing, 2016. Crawford, Christina. Mommy Dearest. Morrow, 1978. Winehouse, Janis. Loving Amy: A Mother’s Story. Thomas Dunne Books, 2016. The Intersection of Royalty and Celebrity Harry, Prince. Spare. Penguin Books Ltd, 2023. Obama, Michelle. Becoming. Crown, an Imprint of Random House, a Division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2019.

Celebrity culture

The Intersection of Media and Celebrity Worship Beltrán, Mary. Latina/o Stars in U.S. Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film and TV Stardom. University of Illinois Press, 2009. Dyer, Richard. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. Routledge, 2004. Lawrence, Cooper, and Scott Baio. The Cult of Celebrity: What Our Fascination with the Stars Reveals about Us. Skirt!, 2009. Sales, Nancy Jo. The Bling Ring: How A Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped off Hollywood and Shocked the World. It Books, an Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2013. Ward, Pete. Celebrity Worship. Routledge, 2020. The Role of Media and Fans in Shaping Celebrity Narratives Dederer, Claire. Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma. Knopf, 2023. Jones, Landon Y. Celebrity Nation: How America Evolved into a Culture of Fans and Followers. Beacon Press, 2024. Marcus, Sharon. The Drama of Celebrity. Princeton University Press, 2020. Montell, Amanda. Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism. Harper Wave, 2021.

Celebrity and related terms (glory, popularity, reputation, influence.)

How Circumstance and Opportunity Shape Celebrity Status Bogutskaya, Anna. Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate. Sourcebooks, 2023. Douglas, Susan J., and Andrea McDonnell. Celebrity: A History of Fame. New York University Press, 2019. Florek, Olivia Gruber. The Celebrity Monarch: Empress Elizabeth and the Modern Female Portrait. University of Delaware Press, 2022. Jenner, Greg. Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2021. Lilti, Antoine, and Jeffress Lynn Carol Bird. The Invention of Celebrity: 1750-1850. Polity, 2017. Zitelmann, Rainer. How People Become Famous: Geniuses of Self-Marketing from Albert Einstein to Kim Kardashian. Management Books 2000, 2021. Celebrity Influence on Society and Consumer Behavior Debord, Guy, et al. The Society of the Spectacle. Critical Editions, 2021. Moeran. The Magic of Fashion: Ritual, Commodity, Glamour. Routledge, 2015.