[ecrea] call for paper: Ageing celebrities and ageing fans in popular media culture

*Ageing celebrities and ageing fans in popular media culture*

19-20 May 2016, University of Copenhagen

DEADLINE: 1 March 2016: 250-300 words for paper presentations

/Call for abstracts/

There is increasing interest in celebrity and age within media studies,
most recently represented by the edited volume /Women, Celebrity and
Cultures of Ageing/. The same goes for age in fan studies, with the
edited volume /Ageing, Media and Culture/ (2015) devoting a few chapters
to ageing and life course in fan culture. This seminar combines these
two strands of research, with a focus on both female and male
celebrities and fans. The seminar is dedicated to discussions of
representations of and meanings related to ageing in contemporary
celebrity and fan culture across a range of media, from fashion ads and
tabloid magazines to music, film, television, social media, and other
media platforms.

Ageing remains contentious in popular culture, with young stars being
cast to play much older characters. The ageing female body is either
contained or pathologized in audiovisual media, eloquently described by
Vivian Sobchack in the late 1990s. Nowhere is ageism as prominent a
logic as in media production. Celebrity culture is a culture of youth.
Recently, however, movements have emerged that run counter to this
pervasive notion of celebrities as young and beautiful. Much effort has
been made by mature female actresses to publicly call attention to the
lack of older female characters in film. Jane Fonda co-stars with Lily
Tomlin and co-produces the Netflix comedy series /Grace and Frankie/,
which deals with women starting over post-divorce late in life and
reinventing themselves as modern single women. An elderly celebrity,
writer Joan Didion, was chosen as the face of Celine’s spring campaign
of 2015, as was singer Joni Mitchell for Saint Laurent.

Just as with celebrities, fan cultures are mostly considered to be teen
or youth phenomena. However, an increasing number of mature adults and
seniors are active members of fandoms, both online on social media
platforms and as participants at fan conventions. Playfulness or
excessive enthusiasm for a media product or celebrity are no longer seen
as the exclusive property of the younger generations, but there is still
a lack of knowledge about what happens when fans become parents and
grandparents or when people become fans in later life. Similarly, we
seek to understand the possibilities new media and platforms, such as
Tumblr, offer fans and how social media encourage older people to
perform fan practices. One mature fan writes in her Twitter bio: ‘Old
enough to know better, old enough not to care.’ Finally, a range of
television and film series have returned with updated versions of the
original older shows (including /Sherlock/ (2010-), /Doctor Who/
(2005-), /Twin Peaks/ (2016), /X-Files/ (2016)), creating an opportunity
for fans of the original series to engage on social media platforms and
immerse themselves in the narratives once again. This seminar examines
the role fandom plays in the life course of mature and elderly fans.

In summary, we hope to shed light on new tendencies related to ageing in
celebrity and fan culture in popular and entertainment media by bringing
together the two research traditions and the cultural spaces in which
they overlap.

/The seminar includes but is not limited to: /

-Tabloid and celebrity media’s focus on age and ageing

-Representations of ageing celebrities at red carpet events

-Representations of ageing in popular media narratives

-The role of fandom for mature and ageing fans in online/offline fan
culture

-Old stories, old audiences? Audiences for revived narratives such as
Sherlock Holmes film and TV franchises, Star Trek, Doctor Who, the
X-Files, Twin Peaks, /etc./

-Gender studies in relation to ageing in celebrity culture and fan culture

-Genre and ageing: the action hero, ageing in comedy, /etc./

*We are proud to announce that the following keynotes are confirmed for
the seminar:*

Professor *Matt Hills*, Aberystwyth University, Wales.

Professor. *C. Lee Harrington*, Miami University, USA.

Reader, Dr. *Deborah Jermyn*, Roehampton University, England

Senior lecturer, Dr. *Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs*, University of Salford,
England.

Please send abstract proposals to the organizers:

Anne Jerslev, Professor, PhD, Department of Media, Cognition and
Communication, University of Copenhagen: (Jerslev /at/ hum.ku.dk)

Line Nybro Petersen, Post.Doc. Department of Media, Cognition and
Communication, University of Copenhagen: (linenp /at/ hum.ku.dk)
<mailto:(linenp /at/ hum.ku.dk)>

http://mcc.ku.dk/research/focus-areas/ageing-and-old-age-in-the-media-and-elderly-peoples-media/box/activities/arrangement1/

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