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//-->Television & New MediaKaty French: National Identity, Postfeminism, and the Life and Death of aCeltic Tiger CubAnne SextonTelevision New Mediapublished online 7 September 2012DOI: 10.1177/1527476412457080The online version of this article can be found at:Published by:Additional services and information forTelevision & New Mediacan be found at:Email Alerts:Subscriptions:Reprints:Permissions:>>OnlineFirst Version of Record- Sep 7, 2012What is This?Downloaded fromtvn.sagepub.comby Anna Dom on October 30, 20124570802457080Television & New MediaFrenchTVNXXX10.1177/152747641Katy French: NationalIdentity, Postfeminism,and the Life and Deathof a Celtic Tiger CubAnne Sexton1Television & New MediaXX(X) 1–17© The Author(s) 2012Reprints and permission:sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/1527476412457080AbstractIn 2007, model Katy French was arguably the most talked about and photographedwoman in Ireland. Rising to prominence via tabloid scandal and reality TV, Frenchexperienced a sharply pitched fame trajectory that culminated in her death that sameyear, which was attributed to a drug overdose and created a national media andpolitical furor over cocaine use. Building on the work of scholars working withinBritish or American contexts, I scrutinize French as a tabloid and reality star in Ireland.Both lauded and castigated as an icon of the so-called “Celtic Tiger,” French, I argue,acted as nexus point for hot-button social issues related to sexuality, femininity,consumerism, multiculturalism, and national values. My examination highlights theworkings of postfeminism in a neoliberal Ireland and reveals the persistence ofconservative patriarchal ideologies distinctly at odds with the national self-imageduring a boom period of unprecedented economic growth.KeywordsCeltic Tiger Ireland, postfeminism, consumerism, authenticity, scandal.IntroductionIn January 2007, the model Katy French came to public notice in Ireland via a tabloidscandal splashed across the front pages of a popular Sunday newspaper. Over thecourse of 2007, French became “Ireland’s best-known model” (O’Toole 2007). Hercelebrity reached its apex in October on reality television screened by Ireland’s1University College Dublin, IrelandCorresponding Author:Anne Sexton, University College Dublin, 1 The Mews, Fairfield Park, Rathgar, Dublin 6, IrelandEmail: anne@annesexton.ieDownloaded fromtvn.sagepub.comby Anna Dom on October 30, 20122Television & New Media XX(X)national broadcaster and culminated in her death, attributed to a drug overdose,1inDecember the same year. Born in Switzerland to British and Australian parents andeducated at private school, French was regarded as emblematic of a generation ofmiddle-class young people who had come of age during the 1992-2007 “Celtic Tiger,”a period of unprecedented economic growth and an era in which media discoursefrequently styled Ireland as a progressive country that had shrugged off the repressiveCatholic ideology of the past. In this article, I argue that French acted as a nexus pointfor a number of pressing social issues in Ireland—sexuality, femininity, and nationalvalues, such as consumerism, multiculturalism, immigration, and whiteness. Althoughthe Celtic Tiger was widely seen, both positively and negatively, as a time duringwhich the Catholic Church’s authority had been undermined and moral strictures hadloosened, the narrative of rapid national and social progress was dependent on thesuppression of evidence to the contrary (Meaney 2010, xiv–xv). My examination ofher celebrity here reveals the workings of postfeminism in a neoliberal Ireland and thepersistence of conservative patriarchal ideologies distinctly at odds with national self-image during the Celtic Tiger years.French’s celebrity highlights Ireland’s predisposition to lodge national hopes anddisappointments in the figure of a symbolic female. Related to this is the long traditionof symbolically representing the country and the Irish as feminine (Haslam 1999, 2).As Gerardine Meaney notes, there is a slippage between how Ireland-as-a-woman hasbeen traditionally represented and how Irish women were and are perceived—In visualculture, particularly in film, representations of Irish women have stood for representa-tions of Ireland (2010, 22–23). Two figures in particular run parallel—Ireland as asweet but untamed girl and Ireland as a suffering and/or nurturing mother (Meaney2010, 27). In the Victorian press, Ireland was popularly depicted as Hibernia, a deli-cate young girl on the verge of catastrophe, who needed the protection of the wiser,older, and stronger Britannia (Haslam 1999, 2; Meaney 2010, 23). From the earlytwentieth century, the image of Hibernia was displaced and updated by the trope of the“wild Irish girl”—a young woman characterized by “rebelliousness, seductiveness,tragic potential, moral ambiguity and red or very dark hair” (Meaney 2010, 24). Thisrepresentation of the Irish woman/Ireland-as-woman is most famously depicted (andin part parodied) by Maureen O’Hara as Mary Kate Danaher in John Ford’s 1952 filmThe Quiet Man(Meaney 2010, 25). In her cinematic depiction, the wild Irish girlrefreshes the sexual, political, and/or social order through love and romance, but isalso tamed by marriage.While French might be read as contemporary take on this trope, she conspicuouslyfailed to be “tamed”—Rather, she appeared to revel in her “wildness” and was dulypunished for it. Although the switch to a neoliberal economy brought about changes inIrish conceptions of the family, sex, and sexuality (Kennedy 2003, 95), and CelticTiger Ireland was seen as discarding Catholicism, there remains a “deep ideologicalconflict about sex and sexuality” (Inglis 2005, 33). An examination of French’s starimage reveals an Ireland grappling to integrate postfeminist discourses of “empow-ered,” sexually performative essentialized femininity into a culture where traditionalDownloaded fromtvn.sagepub.comby Anna Dom on October 30, 2012French3and patriarchal tropes of ideal femininity as well as Catholic sexual morality still holdsignificant sway.Stars versus “Tabloid Trash”:A Question of AuthenticityIn January 2007, French achieved notoriety when an acrimonious argument with herthen-fiancé, restaurateur Marcus Sweeney, took place in front of photographers from theSunday Independentnewspaper. The public nature of the spat, and the accompanyingphotographs of French modeling lingerie, became a media sensation. From this point on,French became the focus of intense scrutiny in both old and new media platforms.Throughout her subsequent career, French’s celebrity was created by a series of newspa-per interviews and appearances, and reached its apex when she appeared onCelebritiesGo Wild,a reality television competition screened by Ireland’s national broadcaster,Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) in October 2007, less than two months before her death.French’s fame is best understood through Chris Rojek’s idea of attributed celebrity.Rojek (2001) distinguishes between three types of celebrity—ascribed, achieved, orattributed. While these categories may overlap, ascribed fame comes about throughfamilial lineage, achieved celebrity is based on an individual’s perceived accomplish-ments, and attributed celebrity “is largely the result of the concentrated representationof an individual as noteworthy or exceptional by cultural intermediaries” (Rojek,2001, 17–18). Fame is also, of course, hierarchical in that certain types of celebrity areseen as more valid than others across a spectrum that has arguably widened in recentyears (Collins 2008, 87–110; Turner 2004, 52–67). Those whose fame is constructedprimarily through the tabloid, reality, or lifestyle media are seen as lacking accom-plishment and occupy a subordinate position.As Graeme Turner notes, in popular culture, a number of contradictory discoursesinform the construction of celebrity. These opposing ideas play into how a celebrity isunderstood or written about:Audiences place individual celebrities somewhere along a continuum thatranges from seeing them as objects of desire or emulation or regarding them asspectacular freaks worthy of derision. Mostly celebrities attract one form ofresponse rather than the other . . . but it is possible to attract both from differentconstituencies—or even from the same constituency. (Turner 2004, 55)Turner describes celebrity as the human equivalent of Daniel Boorstin’s “pseudoevent”—“fabricated for the media and evaluated in terms of the scale and effective-ness of their media visibility” (2004, 5). French’s critics regarded her fame and theincident that brought her to public notice as pseudo events—She was “a celebrity . . .famous for doing nothing whatsoever” (Twenty Major 2007). French generated andgarnered much media interest throughout 2007, but the antecedents of her famemarked her as a subordinate celebrity less than deserving of public notice.Downloaded fromtvn.sagepub.comby Anna Dom on October 30, 20124Television & New Media XX(X)French’s celebrity was not only questioned in terms of whether or not it was mer-ited, but from early on questions were asked about the authenticity of the “breakingscandal” that brought her to public attention. In April 2007, during one of her firsttelevision appearances, French was asked if the spat with Sweeney had been a “stunt,”which she denied (O’Hara and Morrison 2007). The idea of authenticity is a key fea-ture in how celebrity is read—As Richard Dyer has argued, the media construction ofa star encourages us to believe we have access to the reality of the person behind theimage (1986, 2). Interviews and biographies “are devoted to the notion of showing usthe star as he or she really is. . . . ‘beyond the image’ . . . there is a rhetoric of sincerityor authenticity” (Dyer 1986, 11).While the rhetoric of sincerity is necessary, it is complicated by consumers’ skepti-cism. Mark Andrejevic argues,Contemporary image culture teaches both the inevitability of contrivance, andparadoxically, the need to penetrate it . . . to avoid the risk of being seen to bea dupe who is taken in by the lure of the image. (2009, 322)Reality television further complicates the ideas of authenticity. Despite its claim torepresent the “real,” reality programming contains scripted elements such as simulatedsettings, competitive rituals, or costuming, which change “participants’ performancesinto something considerably more . . . than everyday behaviour” (Ytreberg 2006, 432).Participants in reality television “may be told not to ‘act’. . . but they nonetheless per-form in a highly scripted field” (Lacey and McElroy 2010, 259). The demand for anunscripted feel in a scripted environment means participates are required to be “morethan themselves” yet are open “to condemnation for being inauthentic” (McElroy2009, quoted in Lacey and McElroy 2010, 259). Audiences may not expect realityprogramming to be wholly unscripted or unstudied—Audience reception studies indi-cate that, for certain viewers, the pleasure of reality television is largely the uncover-ing of “the ‘authentic’ moments within the tension between the constructed and thereal” (Collins 2008, 104). However, authenticity, or at least the performance of it, iscrucial for reality and subordinate celebrities to maintain media interest.2To be seenas authentic, minor celebrities must “stay within their designated personalities”—Bydoing so, “they can be assured attention and even respect” (Palmer 2005, 49). If, how-ever, the celebrity is seen as inauthentic, too striving for fame or deviating from his orher given role, a media backlash follows.After the gossip surrounding the end of her relationship with Sweeney, French’scontinued media presence was predicated on her, to use Boorstin’s term, “well-knownness” (Turner 2004, 79) to the media. Although French was not widely knownat the time, on January 21, 2007, Egan reported the split with Sweeney calling French“one of Ireland’s top models” (2007d) and claimed that she had “refused to commenton the incident.” One week later, Egan followed up his initial report with three piecesabout French, this time referring to her as an “Irish supermodel” in all three (2007a,2007b, 2007c). Egan’s reports included a number of abusive text messages allegedlyDownloaded fromtvn.sagepub.comby Anna Dom on October 30, 2012 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]