2 :: THE REINVENTION OF PERSONS
performance, pastiche and parody. What powers the careers of celebrities today is
change, disjuncture, trauma and transformation. In a world that has less and less
time for long-term commitments and durable relationships, continual reinvention
has become a normative part of the field of celebrity. Indeed, how celebrities
undertake the reinvention of their private lives has today become a public obsession.
From media reports of the drug hell of Amy Winehouse to rumours about Rihanna’s
latest super-fast diet, from gossip about the marriage of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt
to the alleged drug habits of Nicole Richie, the stable regimen of magazines such as
OK and People concerns transformations in the private lives of public figures.
To speak of the fast shifting terrain of celebrity may be to speak too hastily. After all,
celebrity may look light and liquid when we consider X Factor or Pop Idol, but such
ephemerality is hardly the case for Robert De Niro or The Rolling Stones. Thus it might
be a mistake to believe that long-term fame has been completely eclipsed by short-
term celebrity, even if the latter has undeniably made inroads into the former in the era
of reinvention society. But perhaps such dualism is misleading. Perhaps like most
forms of popular culture, the powers and limits of reinvention are deeply interwoven
with the production and marketing of celebrities in a deeper sense too. Consider, for
example, Oprah Winfrey – who, having retired in 2011 from American daytime television
after 25 years in the business, could hardly be described as a stopgap celebrity. The
high priestess of change-your-life TV, Winfrey’s departure from the circuit of celebrity
was globally mourned as an exit of a unique, gifted individual. Her retirement was of
course surely that, but also – and perhaps equally interestingly – a fascinating insight
into what our culture values in these early decades of the twenty-first century.
Novelist Ian McEwan has written of daytime confessional TV as “the democrat’s
pornography” (1987), and there can be little doubt that Winfrey lifted this art to the
second power. In her book Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon (2011), Yale academic Kathryn
Lofton writes of Winfrey’s “confessional promiscuity” – the daytime television talkfest
by which people willingly submit to their personal makeovers in front of millions of
viewers and from which they adopt new identities. It is the zoning of makeover or
reinvention, I suggest, that takes us to the heart of brand “Winfrey”. One of America’s
richest women, Oprah is estimated to be worth in excess of $US1.5 billion. Winfrey’s
life story – of a girl who pulled herself up by her own bootstraps and made it on the
global media stage – is one her audience has enthusiastically embraced in the form
of escape from anxiety over getting stuck in the land of nowhere. Winfrey’s key
message – “you can reinvent yourself however you so choose” – is music to the ears
of contemporary women and men seeking to embrace the therapeutic mantra of
flexible reinvention.