celebrity,)campaigns)andcitizenship:)‘competing populisms ... · 1...

1

AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL STUDIES ASSOCIATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2013

Celebrity, Campaigns and Citizenship: ‘Competing

Populisms’ in the 2012 United States Presidential Election

Stephanie Brookes1*, David Nolan2 (presenting author asterisked)

1Monash University, Melbourne, AUSTRALIA

2University of Melbourne, Melbourne, AUSTRALIA

Abstract In the 2012 US Presidential election, cultural icons Clint Eastwood and Bruce Springsteen were prominent supporters of the Romney and Obama campaigns. Each was co-‐opted by the campaigns as part of their efforts to lay claim to the values of an imagined ‘grassroots’. As a storyteller of the American experience, Eastwood would offer the Republicans, and Springsteen the Democrats, a link to the fans for whom the myth of cowboy hero or blue-‐collar solidarity was a familiar foundation of American identity. Celebrity involvement in politics is an increasingly prominent element of the professional mediatised campaign. This paper argues that, and analyses how, contemporary US politics is characterised by a battle between ‘competing populisms’, where the struggle to claim popular support relies on and enacts broader cultural narratives and idealised notions of identity. In doing so, we draw on theoretical engagements with celebrity politics as both a product and productive of shifting practices of governance, wherein the symbolic power of cultural narratives becomes tied to the symbolic power of electoral marketing. Our analysis of Eastwood and Springsteen’s role in the 2012 election provides a window into how this relationship can be read as a product of particular US cultural and political traditions, and also broader processes of social, cultural and industrial transformation that have, transnationally, worked to transform celebrity, democracy and their mutual imbrication. In this articulation, it is through positioning the cultural preferences of voters as a legitimate element of citizenship that political engagement is activated and political preferences negotiated. While citizens’ cultural preferences thus structure the conditions of their political engagement, however, the political process also actively works to harness such preferences to both mobilise and organise authentic ‘grassroots’ modes of populist politics.

2

Introduction

In the 2012 election, high-‐profile celebrity endorsements functioned as one

element of the campaigns’ carefully managed presentation of citizen

empowerment. Placing Bruce Springsteen and Clint Eastwood, along with a

range of other celebrity endorsers, in the foreground worked to legitimise

citizens’ cultural preferences, co-‐opting the intellectual and emotional

connections formed in popular culture into electoral politics. This was

undertaken as part of the process of selling the nation to itself through campaign

rhetoric. The parties attempted to tap into – and at the same time, worked to

construct – a familiar image of the ‘American people’ with which they could

associate themselves, their values, and their Presidential candidate. In this

paper, we engage critically with work on celebrity politics, focusing particularly

on the work of John Street and P. David Marshall as a ground for both

conceptualising and providing a framework for analysing mobilisations of

political celebrity during campaigns. Following this, we move to consider how

Eastwood and Springsteen’s particular political valences can be read as deriving

from the accrual of textual meanings that they have mobilised, and which have

been mobilised around them, and how these serve to provide particular cultural

articulations of, and affective vehicles for, American identity and values that

operate as a cultural capital that politicians seek to draw on the campaign trail.

Following this, we focus on how such capital is deployed by politicians, and how

the polysemic connotations of celebrity form a basis of cultural meanings that

can be inflected to different ends. Thus, we consider the manner in which

Springsteen’s articulation of working class identity and values was not only

incorporated into President Obama’s 2012 campaign, in which ‘The Boss’

3

actively participated, but was also appropriated by New Jersey Governor Chris

Christie as a basis for celebrating Republican values of individual self-‐reliance.

Finally, we consider how Clint Eastwood’s deployment within the Republican

campaign both provided kudos and presented problems for the Romney

campaign, and how this can be read as deriving not only from events during the

campaign itself, but also from Eastwood’s particular positioning as a cinema

celebrity. Finally, we conclude by reflecting on the implications of our analysis

for considering the complexity that arises from the convergence of the fields of

politics and celebrity.

Celebrity Politics and Political Branding

While there is now a growing field of work addressing celebrity politics, a

predominant characteristic of that work has been a tendency to either seek to

critique or defend the presence of celebrity in democratic politics. On the critical

side, celebrity is positioned as an empty and insubstantial politics of spectacle

that reduces the substance of politics to mere image. Such a critique is

exemplified by Sean Redmond’s recent reading of ‘Avatar’ Barack Obama, which

draws predominantly on Douglas Kellner’s (2003) critique of media spectacle as

a continual succession of breathtaking but ultimately empty performances that

perform the ideological work of constantly distracting citizens and rendering

them passive. Similarly, Redmond (2010, 90) claims that ‘Avatar Obama’

represents a figure that is manufactured to represent ‘all things to all people’.

While the image of Obama offers great promise, he argues, he remains forever

insubstantial and, because always fluid and manufactured, offers only a

temporary intensity of feeling that ultimately is empty and devoid of meaning.

4

Here, Redmond reiterates (albeit perhaps unwittingly) the terms of

Daniel Boorstin’s (1962) critique of celebrity as a product of a culture that is

‘impelled by its fascination with the image, the simulation, but losing its

grounding in substance or reality’. Redmond’s suggestion that the 2008 Obama

campaign’s use of signifiers of ‘hope’ and ‘change’ that could be filled with a wide

range of potentially contradictory aspirations rightly points toward the

inevitability of a certain disappointment. However, this quotation exemplifies

how his analysis tends to dismiss rather than explore the politics of affect, and

the significance of its capacity to produce feelings of commonality (Ahmed 2004)

in ways that are both theoretically and empirically questionable. Theoretically,

the dismissal of feeling in politics reproduces a gendered privileging of

rationality over affect, and a ‘distrust of representation’ (Peters 1993), that has

been extensively and justly questioned. Empirically, Redmond’s reading of

feeling as transient, empty and insubstantial also appears to ignore what feeling

can substantively achieve – in Obama’s case, contributing to the installation of an

administration that has pursued significant, if necessarily limited, policy

initiatives.

By contrast, the work of John Street has, among other things, developed a

defence of celebrity politics on the grounds that ‘it is not to be dismissed as a

betrayal of the proper principles of democratic representation, but as an

extension of them’ (2004, 445). This rests upon the suggestion that appearance

and ‘style’ are not new aspects of politics, but rather central to it, and that

cultural performance is a necessary and constitutive, rather than distortive,

5

aspect of political representation. While this is fairly unexceptionable, we have

previously questioned this reading of celebrity as an extension of democratic

representation’s ‘proper principles’ for its tendency to assume ‘democracy’ itself

as a stable and singular ground of political assessment (rather than a term that

can embody, and is routinely used to signify, quite different political

arrangements), such that contemporary celebrity can be positioned as merely an

extension of this singular essence (Brookes and Nolan, 2013). This is to gainsay

the specific processes of social, cultural and industrial transformation that, in

specific economies and polities, have served to transform celebrity, democracy

and their mutual imbrication (Turner 2004; 2010).

A recent approach that has explicitly sought to move away from

positioning contemporary trends as more or less democratic has been developed

by James Hay (2011). Hay combines a critique of Henry Jenkins’s appraisal of

‘convergence culture’ as democratising phenomenon with an alternative

approach to reading of contemporary US politics. This, he suggests, is marked by

a range of competing and specific populisms engendered through networks of

expert practices and economic resourcing that work to produce ‘the people’,

rather than any general rise of popular or ‘bottom-‐up’ empowerment. It is

through the circulation of such resources, Hay suggests, that individuals locate

themselves in relation to, and performatively enact, particular articulations of

‘the people’ that are neither simply expressive or mythical, but profoundly

historical and organizational in form:

…rather than assuming that what has occurred since the mid-‐2000s is

generally an example of a (‘convergence’) culture that is more democratic

6

than in prior decades of ‘old’ broadcast media, it would be more useful

politically to ask first how something called ‘democracy’ always has been

produced through historically and geographically specific convergence, of

which media technologies and networks are implicated only partially, and

then to figure out how ‘democracy’ works and is put to work now (2011,

667).

This approach shifts attention away from the question of whether contemporary

formations of democracy, including both the mobilization of celebrity figures and

the production of politicians as celebrities, are more or less democratic, and onto

the question of what is distinctive about contemporary forms of democratic

engagement and participation, and their political implications.

This also aligns with a shift in focus on work that addresses celebrity

politics towards an analysis of the ‘potential significance of celebrity politics…in

terms of emerging forms of governance’ (Street 2012: 351, see also Marsh, t‘Hart

and Tindall 2010; Wheeler 2012). Notably, however, this work has tended to be

inflected by a concern to develop a case for celebrity as not only a legitimate but

also an important aspect for political analysis. Thus, for example, as Street has

sought to develop an analysis of the significance of celebrity in contemporary

politics, he has been concerned to argue for the importance of considering

celebrity in its own right, rather than simply a vehicle of political marketing.

Indeed, he mounts an explicit critique on a field of work that focuses on

processes of political marketing and branding (cf. Marsh and Fawcett 2011;

Lees-‐Marshment 2001; Scammell 1999). The problem, he argues, is that such

work emerges from an economic and instrumental model of democracy that

7

approaches celebrity as an epiphenomenon of branding and marketing

strategies, and is based on an approach whereby politics itself is positioned as a

business of selling political brands as a good, all but excluding consideration of

its cultural dimensions:

Politicians may be commodities, just as pop and film stars are

commodities, but the way they are sold does not fit into the pattern set by

consumer goods. Instead, they belong to the field of cultural goods, which

are significantly different in kind and character than other cultural

goods. Their value lies in their meaning as texts, rather than their use as

commodities. (Street 2006, 365)

In developing this argument, Street draws on the work of Marshall (1997), who

expands a focus on celebrity politics to incorporate a consideration of the

‘irrational’ and affective dimensions of politics. For Street, this move is vital

because how celebrities and politicians (or celebrity-‐politicians) seek to appeal

to the audience’s/ voters’ sentiments is crucial to the formation of relationships,

‘the feelings and meanings that constitute them and motivate the actions that

follow from them’ (2006, 365). On this basis, he argues for an analysis that shifts

from a focus on political products to political performances:

Just as there are good and bad performances in popular culture, so there

are good and bad political performances. Just as cultural critics assess

cultural performance in terms of the fidelity to democratic ideals, so

political performances may be assessed on similar lines…[As] competing

parties may lose elections because they fail to win customers in the

political market place, so competing politicians may also lose because

8

they fail to evoke symbols and styles that their audience responds to.

(2006, 370)

While there is much of value in Street’s call to pay attention to the cultural

and affective dimensions of celebrity politics, there is a slippage here towards a

view of celebrity politics as a (more or less well realised) embodiment of

democracy, whereby the successful use of celebrity involves an expressive

representation of audiences’ affective identities. This move is, moreover, based

on a very partial representation of Marshall’s work, that does not position

celebrity as more or less expressive of audience sentiment, or irrationality, but

rather ‘articulates the transformation of types of cultural value into the

rationalizing system of the commodity’ (1997, 55). Indeed, rather than

expressive of popular sentiment it is positioned as a terrain for the latter’s

construction through the power relations between producers and audiences:

To a great degree, the celebrity is a production of the dominant culture. It

is produced by a commodity system of cultural production and is

produced with the intention of leading and/or representing.

Nevertheless, the celebrity’s meaning is constructed by the audience. An

exact ideological ‘fit’ between production of the cultural icon and

consumption is rare. Audience members actively work on the

presentation of the celebrity in order to make it fit into their everyday

experiences. (Marshall 1997, 46)

For Marshall, the indeterminacy of celebrity emerges not only because of

its production between cultural production and consumption, but also because

9

of the multiple connotations that are provoked by celebrities as polysemic

textual signs. Thus celebrity is not simply expressive of the irrational

investments of audiences, but exists at the interplay between these and their

ongoing production through the rationalizing processes of cultural production,

thus aligning an analytical approach to celebrity with approaches to media texts

as sites through which relations of political hegemony are produced and

negotiated. Here, too, an important dimension of Marshall’s work is its emphasis

not just on individual celebrities, but on celebrity as an variegated industrial and

cultural system that works to produce individual celebrities as commodities and

sites of audience investment that are both differentiated as cultural signs and

products, and by their position within a wider cultural system of celebrity. It is

also through the celebrity system, and its multiple sites and processes for the

production of meanings around celebrity, that the meaning of particular

celebrities is produced, while the figure of the individual celebrity (following

Foucault’s reading of the ‘author-‐function’) ‘is a way in which meaning can be

housed into something that provides the source and origin of its meaning

(Marshall 1997, 57).

Revisiting Marshall’s work, then, allows an approach that significantly

builds on Street’s call to focus on political celebrity as cultural texts in several

ways. Firstly, it enables a rapprochement with work on political marketing, by

focusing on the manner in celebrity politics is rationalized as it is appropriated

into and put to work as part of marketing strategies. Secondly, it enables us to

consider how, in such processes, the meaning of celebrity is inflected by their

multiple textual constructions, and the historical and affective investments these

10

evoke in audiences. Thirdly, it enables us to consider the manner in which the

meaning of celebrity politics is inflected both by the politics inherent in the

production of celebrity identities in other industries, and also how

indeterminacies of meaning may also carry across to the political domain. With

these ideas in mind, we turn now to consider how the particular positionings and

textual constructions of Eastwood and Springsteen serve to produce them as

figures with particular valences in US identity politics.

American Storytellers: Cultural History and the Production of Celebrity

Bruce Springsteen and Clint Eastwood are positioned in industry narratives,

publicity, media discourse and scholarly discussioni as celebrities with a unique

ability to speak to the American experience and history; contemporary national

storytellers whose insight is a product of their personal histories, hard work, and

longevity. This locates them firmly within narratives of American national

identity: stories about who ‘we’ are and ‘our’ national values told in film, art,

sport music, history, education, the news and popular media and political

discourse. Analysing these ‘narrations’ offer a way of understanding the nation

as a ‘powerful historical idea’ (Bhabha 1993, 1) whose very impossibility is at the

source of its cultural power. This notion of an ‘impossible unity’ is achieved by

appealing to common characteristics while eliding areas of difference, a

technique central to political communication:

When politicians speak of the American nation or the American people they

can do so only by sweeping important differences of class, race, ethnicity,

gender, sexuality, geography or religion between millions of people under the

national rug (Puri 2004, 6).

11

These constructions of national identity, in political communication, work to

narrate the nation to its own citizens; in election campaigns, they are part of the

battle over ownership of the national story and national character. In the same

way that politicians and political parties (through the increasingly sophisticated

techniques of the political ‘ground game’) represent themselves as connected to

particular constructions of ‘the people’, celebrities (and their agents, media

managers, stylists, publicists, critics and so on) position themselves as enjoying a

unique connection to their fans. More deeply, Bruce Springsteen and Clint

Eastwood have carefully cultivated a connection to the central myths and

narratives of American identity: to ‘frontier’ and working class stories which

position hard work, independence and opportunity as key aspects of the national

character. In doing so, they offer their fans a connection to these same stories,

and a framework through which to understand challenges, hardships and

opportunities in their own lives. The celebrity personas that come into play here

are historically rooted but constantly re-‐imagined in contemporary media and

politics, offering fans (and voters) a way to understand today through a nostalgic

re-‐telling of the American past. In tracing the cultural histories mobilised in the

production of Springsteen and Eastwood’s personas – the ‘star’ persona which is,

as Richard Dyer (2011, 152) argues, a ‘semiotic construction’ – we can begin to

understand more clearly what these two figures ‘represent’ in their work, their

politics, and in the narratives formed around them by the campaigns in 2012.

While speaking, in 2012, to the issues of the current campaign, both figures bring

with them a history of inter-‐textual meanings developed across their work, the

legacy of the always present relationship between production and consumption

that lies at the heart of the ‘celebrity’ persona (Dyer 2011, 9).

12

Bruce Springsteen has explicitly placed himself, and has historically been

placed in media and critical narratives, as working in the tradition of the

American folk singer. Springsteen has acknowledged the influence of artists like

Elvis, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and James Brown in his work and as a vital

guide in his project to help to explain America to itself (see, for example,

Springsteen 2012). In doing so, he associates himself with ‘a lineage of artists

who have used popular culture to address social injustices in American,

particularly those endured by the working class’ (Garman 1995, 69). Speaking at

Bob Dylan’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, for example,

he told Dylan: ‘I wouldn’t be here without you’ (Springsteen 1988).

These influences play out explicitly in Springsteen’s music through inter-‐

textual references drawn from popular culture and from his own earlier work.

Stylistically, he draws on a range of genres from rock, folk and country to gospel

and blues. 1975’s ‘Thunder Road’, for example (from the Born to Run album)

draws its title from the Robert Mitchum cult-‐classic film of the same name,

references Roy Orbison ‘singing for the lonely’, and introduces themes of small-‐

town frustration and the desire to ‘escape’ that Springsteen would develop over

the next three decades. For Springsteen, it is as much the politics as the music of

these artists that finds a legacy in his own work. This was evident in his 2012

South by Southwest keynote address, where he reflected on why folk-‐singer and

working class hero Woody Guthrie’s voice spoke to him ‘very, very deeply’:

Woody's gaze was – it was set on today's hard times. But also, somewhere

over the horizon, there was something. Woody's world was a world

13

where fatalism was tempered by a practical idealism. It was a world

where speaking truth to power wasn't futile, whatever its outcome

(Springsteen 2012).

Here, Springsteen links himself to a longer tradition, the ‘hurt song’ in which ‘the

individual experience of suffering is connected to the larger human experience’

(Dolphin 2012, 45). Bruce Garman (1995, 71) has argued that working in this

tradition allows Springsteen to ‘reclaim popular music as a cultural space in

which class relations are both taken seriously and historicised’ as part of a

familiar genre and cultural tradition. At the time, Garman drew a comparison

between the two, arguing that Springsteen (unlike Woody Guthrie) had chosen

to limit his political involvement to a ‘cultural politics which seeks to transform

people’s values’ rather than any formal electoral politics. Since 2004 Springsteen

has regularly lent his support to Democratic Presidential candidates; however, a

deeper comparison between Guthrie’s critical politics and Springsteen’s more

mainstream positions is revealing. Springsteen’s positioning as the new Guthrie

distracts, in some ways, from a key difference in their performance as ‘voice of

the people’: where Guthrie spoke to broader social structures in call for

collective change, the more identity-‐oriented nature of Springsteen’s work sees

him take an individual approach in his populist narratives of heartbreak and

hope.

The transition from emerging rock star to troubadour can be read in the

evolution of social and political themes in Springsteen’s music; in the careful

stylistic choices that guide his personal ‘look’ in live appearances, publicity and

album covers (for example, the button-‐down shirts and jeans that have become

14

his ‘uniform’); and the responses he gives in interviews and songs he chooses to

cover. On 2012’s Wrecking Ball album, for example, Springsteen wove elements

of Curtis Mayfield’s soul-‐gospel classic ‘People Get Ready’ into the song ‘Land of

Hope and Dreams’, elements which he extended in his live performances while

on tour in 2012-‐13. All of these strategies work to position Springsteen in a

particular place in the cultural landscape – as the natural inheritor of the legacy

of his own musical heroes – while at the same time ‘producing’ him and his music

as a something that can be marketed and sold to fans.

Clint Eastwood’s positioning as American storyteller similarly relies on

the production of his simultaneous location in a particular cultural tradition and

myth of American identity, and within the Hollywood ‘celebrity’ system. This

dual identity rests on the notion that he has an ‘intimate knowledge of the

American marrow: its juices, its toxins, its contradictions’ (McGilligan in Erisman

2000, 129), a notion that has developed in his films and his media appearances

across half a century. Eastwood (in Turan 1998, 246) attributes this ‘feeling’ for

the stories of the American frontier partly to his childhood, growing up ‘through

a whole era’ of Westerns from John Ford, Anthony Manne, to John Wayne and

Jimmy Stewart. The story of Eastwood’s evolution from small-‐screen actor

(playing Rowdy Yates in long-‐running tv Western Rawhide) to holding deep

cultural significance as inheritor of the myths of the American West is one in

which his significance becomes more than that of the leading man:

I’ll say that you can see the man in his work just as clearly as you see

Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms or John Cheever in his short stories.

Hell, yes, he’s an artist. I even think he’s important. Not just a fabulous

15

success at the box office, but important. (Norman Mailer, Parade

Magazine, 1983, quoted in Avery 2011, 1).

Eastwood’s ‘importance’ as an artist, here, is located in a cultural tradition in

which the most valuable products of the Hollywood system (its ‘stars’) are put to

work, mobilising and re-‐imagining the familiar myths and heroes of national

identity in order to maintain the popularity and cultural relevance of the both

‘the cinema’ and ‘celebrity’ (Ray 1985, 297-‐298). Robert Ray’s (1985)

examination of the way that Hollywood films have both ‘reflected’ and ‘excluded’

the world in their response to its changing contexts offers a reading of the role of

myth and ideology in American cinema. In particular, he argues that the popular

films of the late 1960s and early 1970s ‘divided conspicuously into a Left and

Right’, seeming to offer different options in their polarisation of audiences:

Superficially, these films separated the outlaw hero from the official hero,

making the former the subject of Left films and the latter the hero of the

Right. Almost all the Left movies, in fact, used outlaws or outsiders to

represent counterculture’s own image of itself in flight from a repressive

society. The Right films, in contrast, typically centred on cops or vigilantes

engaged in wars against criminals (Ray 1985, 299).

Both sets of films were designed to appeal to a viewer who would choose Right

or Left before entering the cinema, speaking to audiences who had ‘already

settled on a set of values’ before purchasing a ticket. In choosing The Graduate or

Cool Hand Luke over Patton or Dirty Harry, Ray argues, a larger choice had

already been made, with each set of films offering a ‘different perspective’; a

different reading for audiences on the same set of historical events and

contemporary feelings (while, at the same time, ultimately ‘maintaining

16

Hollywood’s tactical blurring of apparent differences’ in order maximise ticket

sales) (Ray 1985, 300). The inclusion of Dirty Harry and Coogan’s Bluff as two of

the most popular ‘Right’ films of this period, highlights that Eastwood’s efforts to

‘reinvent and reinterpret… two American icons, the cop and the cowboy’

(Bosworth 1997; see also Smart 2012, 19) can be read as both ‘reflecting’ and

‘excluding’ the dominant cultural, political and social themes of the day.ii

Particularly in his later work, the construction of Eastwood as a ‘creative

visionary’ works to lend a deeper authority to the narratives of American

identity played out in his films. A key element of the industrial construction of

Eastwood’s celebrity, here, is the attribution of authorship of the key elements

(and values) of the films with which he is involved to him – both in his capacity

as ‘star’ and in his other behind-‐the-‐camera roles (Dyer 2011, 154). This

construction of an a image of the ‘genius artist’ whose authentic,

uncompromising vision can be seen across Eastwood’s body of work, but

strengthens in his later work, the so-‐called ‘Clint movies’ (Junod 2012) which are

‘intractably American, depicting life on the margins in a collapsing American

Dream, whether in the Wild West or today’ (Sullivan 2011).

A Contested Terrain: ‘No-‐One is Beyond the Reach of Bruce’

In 2012, part of both Springsteen and Eastwood’s appeal was the idea that they

were unwilling to be co-‐opted into the electoral process or to be pigeon-‐holed

according to partisan preferences or party lines. Contemporary American

politics seems to reflect an increasingly fractured population, a series of ‘red’ and

‘blue’ states with very different values and priorities. Over the past five years, the

Annual PEW Research Centre for People and the Press’ studies of American news

17

audiences and political partisanship, have painted a picture of a media landscape

where news consumption aligns with partisan preferences and rarely crosses

over (see, for example, PEW 2012). In 2012, however, Eastwood and Springsteen

seemed to be speaking to the same group of Americans, with what political

commentator Paul Begala (2012) described as a ‘remarkable consonance’

between ‘two of the most enduring and powerful players on [the American]

cultural stage’. Begala’s (2012) argument that ‘Springsteen’s songbook and

Eastwood’s script sound a lot alike these days’ glosses over the deep differences

in their values and politics; however, the shift that he is identifying highlights the

way that both presented a different vision of the same group of Americans, a

different frame through which to tell the story of ‘the people’. Rather than simply

allowing the parties to extend their claims to, and control of, particular

narratives of American identity, Springsteen and Eastwood’s campaign

performances of a contested populism opened up a new terrain whose meaning

and significance became part of the battleground of campaign politics. Here, the

identity myths of the small town and the frontier, the working class and the Wild

West are a site of struggle, despite the active campaigning of these two

celebrities on either side of the campaign.

This was most visible in mediated campaign performances of New Jersey

Governor Chris Christie, a Republican rising star and high-‐profile Springsteen

tragic. Christie’s simultaneous performance of the roles of compassionate

Republican, New Jersey boy and Springsteen fan at the Republican National

Convention worked to lay claim to core elements of the Springsteen narrative of

American identity for the conservative side of politics. In his address, Christie

18

(2012) connected his own personal values and political priorities to his working-‐

class New Jersey upbringing as the son of parents who ‘came from nothing’. He

spoke at length about his mother who ‘spoke the truth bluntly, directly and

without much varnish’, constructing this as a legacy he has carried through his

life and career:

I was her son as I listened to Darkness on the Edge of Town with my high

school friends on the Jersey Shore. I was her son when I moved into that

studio apartment with Mary Pat to start a marriage that's now 26 years

old... I was her son as I coached our sons, Andrew and Patrick, on the

fields of Mendham, and as I watched with pride as our daughter Sarah and

Bridget, marched with their soccer teams in the Labor Day parade. And I

am still her son today as governor, following the rules she taught me, to

speak from the heart, and to fight for your principles (Christie 2012).

Christie’s ability to ‘fight for your principles’, here, are a direct legacy of his

upbringing, personal history and dedication to his family. The politics of place

plays a key role here: the giant screen backdrop used for the early parts of his

speech clearly grounds the Governor as both from New Jersey and a Springsteen

fan (Figure 1). The ‘Greetings from New Jersey’ backdrop constructs Christie as

always deeply connected to his home state and his constituents, styled to evoke

the ‘Greetings From…’ postcards traditionally sold at holiday resorts on the New

Jersey shore. However, this backdrop was also a clear visual reference to the

iconic cover of Bruce Springsteen’s first album, Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ,

which featured a coloured ‘postcard’ wrap around on the album sleeve (Figure

2).

19

Figure 1: New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie’s Keynote Address to the Republican National Convention, 28 August 2012 – screenshot showing Greetings from New Jersey backdrop

Source: Screenshot taken by the authors, CSPAN Youtube Channel, ‘Chris Christie addresses the GOP Convention’, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_23yQ925aA.

Figure 2: ‘Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.’, Bruce Springsteen Debut Album Cover

Source: Album cover image downloaded from BruceSpringsteen.Net, 2013, ‘Music-‐ Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.’, BruceSpringsteen.Net Official Website, http://brucespringsteen.net/albums/greetings-‐from-‐asbury-‐park-‐n-‐j-‐2.

20

In the same way that the songs on Greetings… located Springsteen firmly in his

New Jersey hometown, the images that fill in the letters on the cover (and the

Christie backdrop) feature iconic New Jersey locations. In words and images

here, Christie is positioned as steeped in both working-‐class and Republican

values and as unproblematically in line with the Springsteen myth of American

identity; an embodiment both of ‘the people’ of New Jersey and ‘the people’ of

Springsteen mythology. This move builds on the established media image of

Christie as ‘Springsteen super-‐fan’, played out in media constructions of Christie

as having a ‘passionate’ and ‘complicated’ attachment to The Boss (for example,

Goldberg 2012). In a June 2012 profile in The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg (2012)

explores Christie’s politics and values in the context of his Springsteen fandom,

probing the inconsistencies between his conservative values and the collective

ethos espoused in Springsteen’s work. In response, Christie explains that he

‘compartmentalises’ the elements of Springsteen’s message he does not agree

with – but ultimately feels that ‘no one is beyond the reach of Bruce’, whose

message is closer to the Republicans’ than it might appear: ‘If Bruce and I sat

down and talked, he would reluctantly come to the conclusion that we disagree

on a lot less than he thinks’ (Goldberg 2012).

While Christie positions his Republican values and the Springsteen story

as compatible, there are clear distinctions in the populist constructions of the

American story and identity offered by the Governor and ‘the Boss’. Christie’s

(2012) narrative of the ‘American dream’ places individual hard work at centre,

with the ‘dream’ accessible to those willing to sacrifice in order to achieve it. At

the Republican convention, he again drew on his own family story, connecting

21

his father’s willingness to put himself through college by working days at the

Breyers Ice Cream Factory (becoming ‘the first in his family to earn a college

degree’) to his call on voters to ‘do whatever it takes’ to ‘take our country back:

We are taking our country back because we are the great-‐grandchildren

of the men and women who broke their backs in the name of American

ingenuity, the grandchildren of the greatest generation, the sons and

daughters of immigrants, the brothers and sisters of everyday heroes, the

neighbours of entrepreneurs and firefighters, teachers and farmers,

veterans and factory workers and everyone in between who shows up,

not just on the big days, or the good days, but on the bad days, and the

hard days…You see, we are the United States of America.

While Christie speaks of the generations of working-‐class Americans for whom,

in his conception, the triumph of the American dream is achieved through

individual determination and hard work, Springsteen’s narratives speak to those

for whom the dream remains out of reach and the promise is unfulfilled.

Springsteen’s music and his politics place the individual into a community; and

tell of the external forces that work to dislocate and disenfranchise those at the

margins. Implicitly both constructions speak to and about the same Americans;

the hard-‐working people who live on Christie’s ‘Jersey Shore’ and who, in

Springsteen’s music, have frustrated dreams (Darkness on the Edge of Town);

suffer the after-‐effects of war and conflict, whether Vietnam (Born in the USA),

9/11 (The Rising) or the war in Iraq (Devils and Dust); experience dislocation and

economic depression; have been let down by the system (Nebraska; Wrecking

Ball); and are looking to escape (Born to Run).

22

It is in this contested space that the Democrats could restate their claim to

the same centre ground constructed by Christie as held by ‘ordinary’ hard-‐

working Americans. This played out in the final weeks of the campaign, in the

aftermath of ‘Superstorm Sandy’iii. Christie’s call for urgent government support

for those affected presented solidarity as an essential element of the American

ethos, which played into the Democratic campaign’s effort lay claim to both the

disaffection and the hopes of the grassroots that Springsteen was positioned as

representing. The Governor’s endorsement of the President’s support for New

Jersey, at a crucial late stage in the campaign, combined with gratefulness for the

efforts of Springsteen and others in the relief effort positioned the musician (and

through him, President Obama) as legitimately aware of and interested in the

hardships faced by these communities. This was reinforced by the Governor’s

much-‐reported emotional response to a phone conversation with Springsteen

while the musician was on the campaign trail with the President and meeting

with him backstage at the Hurricane Sandy Benefit Telethon on November 2nd

(see, for example, Fox News 2012; Moraski 2012). Springsteen’s involvement,

here, did not facilitate a call for bipartisanship in the campaign but rather

allowed the Democrats to claim the victory of their brand of populism, which

privileges the liberal values of equality, solidarity and ‘fairness’ as reflecting the

true values of ordinary Americans.

The folding of popular culture into politics, here, puts a contested terrain

into play where the parties’ attempts to extend the careful management

practices of professionalised politics into the everyday (where fans are re-‐

produced as citizens and organised as voters) also creates spaces that the

23

individual campaigns cannot control. The question of who ‘owns’ the Springsteen

narrative leads to a cultural space in which a range of competing constructions

(including those put into play by the celebrities themselves) exist

simultaneously. These can be overlapping or even inconsistent constructions; in

2012, they reflected the ‘contradictory and conflicting components’ of the

Springsteen persona. This tapped into a longstanding battle in which ‘many

people from different backgrounds and with entirely different political

perspectives have attempted to appropriate his image and so grab the cultural

authenticity of the working class’ (Seymour 2012, 61 – for example, in the

infamous misuse of ‘Born in the USA’ by the Reagan campaign in 1984).

‘I’m Joe Citizen’: ‘Extraordinary Ordinariness’

Clint Eastwood’s political and cultural persona sits in a similarly ambivalent

space; in 2012, his ‘maverick’ persona and performance of a politics led by

ideological rather than partisan concerns led to him being described in political

commentary as a ‘political wanderer’ (Orr, 2012) with a ‘consistency problem’

(Rainey, 2012). Traditionally, Eastwood has been seen as appealing to an

‘independent’ American spirit in his politics, and his films reflect this ‘refusal to

make a clear-‐cut moral choice between social commitment and personal

independence’ (Kehr 2004). In doing so, Eastwood’s work ‘approaches one of the

fundamental contradictions of American life, the conflict between democratic

collectivism and capitalist egoism’ (Kehr 2004) and is therefore also open to be

mobilised in support of competing visions of ‘the people’. This played out in the

outraged conservative response to his narration of the ‘Halftime in America’

Chrysler advertisement at halftime in the 2012 Superbowl, read by many on both

24

sides of politics as an endorsement of the President’s auto-‐industry bailout (see,

for example, Blow 2012; Marinucci 2012).

In 2012, the campaigns drew on Springsteen and Eastwood’s cultural

position as ‘navigational markers’ as part of their attempts to construct

particular images of the ‘grassroots’ that aligned with their political priorities

and values. This was reliant on the ability of both celebrities to function as

symbolic shortcuts at a time of political and economic change, achieved through

a simultaneous performance of being both ‘one of the people’ and member of the

celebrity elite. This performance of an ‘extraordinary ordinariness’ is

characteristic of the ‘paradoxical common humanity of the hero’; something that

Cathy Greenfield and Peter Williams (in their reading of the media rhetoric

surrounding the Memorial Service for Australian cricketer Don Bradman) have

argued functions to support the ‘populist invocation of the rhetorical figure of

‘national unity’ and a supposedly homogeneous [national] ‘people’ and culture’

(2003, 285; see also Dyer 2011, 43-‐46).

The contradiction between notions of celebrities as ‘ordinary’ and

‘extraordinary’ played out most clearly, in 2012, in the Republican campaign’s

use of Clint Eastwood, and in the multiple, contested readings of his role and

value in the campaign. Eastwood’s appearance introducing Republican candidate

Mitt Romney at the Republican National Convention, at the end of August,

delivered a clear indictment of both President Obama and Washington politics,

calling on Americans to take matters into their own hands (for a longer

discussion, see Brookes and Nolan, 2013). However, this message was upstaged

25

by Eastwood’s improvised ‘conversation’ with Barack Obama, in which he

addressed a series of questions about the state of the nation to an empty stool

representing the President. This ‘conversation’ quickly went viral, with the

#Eastwooding memeiv overwhelming both social and traditional media coverage.

This satirical discourse, in which citizen-‐led interpretations dominated, painted

Eastwood as a rambling, out-‐of-‐touch old man, a symbol of the Republican

Party’s problems connecting with the electorate. Here, it seemed was further

evidence that Romney and the Republicans were struggling to articulate a clear

message, unable to connect to their base or to relate to ordinary Americans.v The

Obama campaign added their voice to the chorus (while simultaneously

demonstrating their own popular culture know-‐how) by tweeting, simply, ‘this

seat’s taken’ (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Barack Obama Campaign Tweet, ‘This seat’s taken’, 31 August 2012.

Source: Screenshot taken by the authors, Barack Obama twitter feed: http://www/twitter.com/BarackObama.

26

In the furore that followed Eastwood’s speech the Romney campaign

sought to regain control of the narrative, arguing that this was reflective of

Eastwood’s maverick approach which was a key element of his appeal. Rather

than ‘manage’ Eastwood, campaign organizers argued that they had ‘simply

turned the podium over’ expecting a reprisal of his ‘powerful and typically

gruff/charming’ performance earlier in the month’ (Halperin 2012). However his

speech was predominantly constructed in media coverage as over-‐time and off-‐

topic (Barbaro and Shear 2012), despite Romney campaign spin that they were

honoured by Eastwood’s ‘classic improv sketch’ in which he spoke ‘from the

heart’ (Devaney 2012).

However, Eastwood’s explanation for – and defense of – his appearance

provided a different reading of the value of his involvement, while at the same

time highlighting the careful production of his connection to ‘the people’ who, in

this context, are called to think as both fans and citizens. In an ‘exclusive’

interview with his local newspaper, the Carmel Pine Cone, Eastwood (in Miller

2012, 22A) explicitly separated himself from professional political actors who

give carefully rehearsed, focus-‐group tested speeches:

It was supposed to be a contrast with all the scripted speeches, because I’m

Joe Citizen… I’m a movie-‐maker, but I have the same feelings as the average

guy out there.

Here, Eastwood positions himself the voice of the American people, able to speak

for them because he is one of them – not a professional politician or even a

Hollywood celebrity but a ‘movie-‐maker’ (itself a word choice which positions

making movies as a craft or trade rather than a profession or artistic calling) who

27

shares the same values as ‘ordinary’ people. This construction echoes

Eastwood’s interpretation of the ‘Dirty Harry’ character, whom he has described

as ‘a hero to the everyman, middle America, the working guy who’s like to tell his

boss where to put it’ (in McGilligan 1999, 27; quoted in Allison 2005).

At the same time, however, as he is ‘Joe Citizen’ Eastwood also has a

privileged ability to express his ‘average feelings’ in a national forum before a

prime-‐time audience of nearly 33 million people (James 2012), and the tension

between ‘stars-‐as-‐ordinary and the stars-‐as-‐special’ (Dyer 2011, 43) remains

acute here. Both elements are crucial: Eastwood’s ‘ordinariness’ – his

independence, blue collar-‐upbringing as the son of a California coast steel mill

worker – offered him a deep and ongoing connection to the community of his

youth, while his ‘extraordinariness’ as an unquestioned member of the

Hollywood elite granted his endorsement both visibility and legitimacy in a

system where media ‘stardom’ is, itself, a source of cultural authority. These

contrasting elements of ordinary and extraordinary identity can, in addition, be

read as products of a cinematic apparatus that has been analysed by Marshall

(1997) as producing a particular celebrity formation that, even as it emphasises

its accessibility (as evidenced in textual constructions of the ‘ordinary’

backgrounds of stars), also evokes desire through its production of a distant,

fantasy world of Hollywood stardom. This ‘auratic distance’ can be read, on one

hand, as working to bolster Eastwood’s positioning as an extraordinary icon of

American values, but also, at key moments, also served to bolster positionings of

him as esoteric and out of touch, a ‘distant’ positioning extended by Eastwood’s

28

cultural location as a high culture, ‘auteur’ director whose films have gained

‘arthouse’ status.

While Springsteen’s interventions mostly accorded neatly with the Obama

campaign, Eastwood’s maverick approach (part of his initial appeal) made it

harder to use him unproblematically as a tool of the campaign. His ‘empty chair’

speech was more an indictment of Obama and of organised politics rather than a

resounding endorsement of Romney (whom he barely mentioned except to call

him a “stellar businessman”), but this key message was lost amongst the media

noise about the Eastwood’s unconventional speech, coverage of social media

reactions, and ruminations on what the episode said about the campaign’s lack of

organization. However, these problems can be read not only as a failure of the

campaign itself, as it was partially as a consequence of Eastwood’s own

positioning through the celebrity system of cinema that it was possible to draw a

link between his construction as ‘out of touch’ and Romney’s own distant image

as a ‘patrician’ whose background could not be comfortably aligned with

‘ordinary people’. By contrast, popular music and rock star celebrity, Marshall

(1997, 193) suggests, is constructed through a positioning that emphasises an

authentic and communitarian relation to the audience, such that ‘the concert is

the ritualization of this claim to authenticity and this associative identification

with the audience’.

Conclusion

This consideration of the cultural histories and campaign mobilisations of Bruce

Springsteen and Clint Eastwood in the 2012 US presidential election analyses the

29

way in which these celebrities’ carefully-‐produced performances of a populist

politics are reliant on their broader construction as American storytellers and as

a legitimate ‘voice of the people’. More deeply, however, it has argued for the

importance of a critical consideration of the mechanisms of ‘cultural governance’

that emerge as popular culture is increasingly co-‐opted into politics and

mobilised by campaigning parties. Rather than look to a shift from ‘market’ to

‘cultural’ logic in reading celebrity politics (a move from focusing on the top-‐

down processes of political marketing to a bottom-‐up foregrounding of the

preferences and choices of audiences and citizens), we advocate a position that

sees both as implicated in a system of relations that ties the two logics closely

together. This works, in some ways, to extend the influence of the political

further into the everyday; however at the same time it brings with it the ‘cultural

baggage’ of the range of intertextual meanings that make up the layered celebrity

persona. Celebrities’ campaign performances, in this conception, are reliant on

the legitimacy developed through decades of media visibility. This operates as

part of cultural system of production which positions their identities, values and

politics as inherently connected to (and representative of) those of their fans,

who are constructed as ‘average’ or ‘ordinary’ Americans. This shift to reading

celebrity politics through the logic of cultural governance makes visible new

forms of connectivity – whether the feeling of ‘accessibility’ of the popular

musician or the intimacy-‐at-‐a-‐distance of the cinematic genius – while at the

highlights an accompanying instability and unpredictability. What is vital, here,

is that the critical understanding of celebrity politics operates in this complex

space: understanding the way in which drawing the celebrity as intertextual

cultural product into electoral politics opens a space that offers campaigns a way

30

to claim a connection to particular populist constructions of ‘the people’; a space,

however, that is always open to challenge, competition and re-‐appropriation.

References

Ahmed, S. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. London; New York: Routledge.

Allison, D. 2005. ‘Courting the Critics/Assuring the Audiences: The Modulation of

Dirty Harry in a Changing Cultural Climate’. Film International 29: 17-‐28.

Avery, K. 2011. ‘Introduction: The good, the bad…’ in Avery, K. (ed) Conversations

with Clint: Paul Nelson’s Lost Interviews with Clint Eastwood 1979-‐1983. London:

Continuum International Publishing.

Begala, P. 2012. ‘Springsteen, Eastwood point toward a gutsy American

comeback’, The Daily Beast, 13 February:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/02/12/springsteen-‐eastwood-‐

point-‐toward-‐a-‐gutsy-‐american-‐comeback.html.

Bhabha, H. K. 1993. ‘Introduction: narrating the nation’ in Bhabha, H. K. (ed)

Nation and Narration. Routledge: New York.

Blow, C. M. 2012. ‘It’s Halftime in America’, New York Times – Campaign Stops, 6

February, http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/its-‐halftime-‐

in-‐america/?_r=0.

31

Boorstin, D. J. 1962 . The Image; or What Happened to the American Dream? New

York: Atheneum.

Bosworth, P. 1997. ‘Clint Eastwood: Hollywood's Most Private Star’, Cosmpolitan,

January, p. 128-‐133.

Brookes, S. and Nolan, D. 2013. ‘The Boss, Dirty Harry and US Citizenship:

Celebrities in Election Campaign Communication and Coverage’. Full paper

presented to the Australian and New Zealand Communications Association

Conference. Murdoch University, Fremantle, WA: 3-‐5 July.

Christie, C. 2012. Speech at the Republican National Convention. Transcript

published on NPR.Org, 28 August,

http://www.npr.org/2012/08/28/160213518/transcript-‐gov-‐chris-‐christies-‐

convention-‐speech/.

Cornell, D. 2009. Clint Eastwood and Issues of American Masculinity. New York:

Fordham University Press.

Davison, A. 2012. ‘Does Chris Christie Deserve Respect without Love’, New

Yorker – Close Read Column, 29 August,

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2012/08/does-‐chris-‐

christie-‐deserve-‐respect-‐without-‐love.html.

32

Dolphin, D. M. 2012. ‘ “Believe Me Mister”: The Tradition of Woody Guthrie’s

Hurt Song in Springsteen’s The Rising and Devils & Dust’, in Womack, K., Zolten, J.

and Bernhard, M. (eds), Bruce Springsteen, Cultural Studies and the Runaway

American Dream. Surrey, England: Ashgate.

Dyer, R. 2011. Stars, New Edition. London: Palgrave Macmillan with the British

Film Institute.

Engell, L. and Cornell, D. (eds) 2012. New Essays on Clint Eastwood. Salt Lake City:

University of Utah Press.

Erisman, F. 2000. ‘Clint Eastwood’s Western Films and the Evolving Mythic

Hero’, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 6(2): 129-‐143.

Fox News 2012. ‘Christie: Call from Springsteen made me weep’, FoxNews.Com, 5

November, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11/05/christie-‐call-‐from-‐

springsteen-‐made-‐me-‐weep/.

Garman, B. 1996. ‘The Ghost of History: Bruce Springsteen, Woody Guthrie, and

the Hurt Song’, Popular Music and Society 20: 69-‐120.

Garman, B. 2000. A Race of Singers: Whitman’s Working-‐class Hero from Guthrie

to Springsteen. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

33

Goldberg, J. 2012. ‘Jersey Boys: The Governor and the Boss – a tale of politics,

rock and roll, and unrequired love’, The Atlantic, 13 June,

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/jersey-‐

boys/309019/.

Greenfield, C. and Williams, P. 2003. ‘Limiting politics: Howardism, media

rhetoric and national cultural commemorations’, Australian Journal of Political

Science 38(2): 279.

Hay, J. 2011. ‘ “Popular Culture” in a Critique of the New Political Reason’,

Cultural Studies 25(4-‐5): 659-‐684.

James, M. 2012. ‘Nielsen: 33 million people watched Republican convention

Thursday’, LA Times, 31 August,

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/31/entertainment/la-‐et-‐ct-‐nielsen-‐33-‐

million-‐people-‐watched-‐final-‐night-‐of-‐republican-‐convention-‐20120831.

Junod, T. 2012. ‘The Eastwood Conundrum’, Esquire, 20 September,

http://www.esquire.com/features/clint-‐eastwood-‐profile-‐1012.

Kaneko, M. and Mouly, F. 2012. ‘Cover Story: The First Presidential Debate’, New

Yorker – Culture Desk, 5 October,

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/10/cover-‐story-‐the-‐

first-‐presidential-‐debate.html.

34

Kehr, D. 2004. American Masters Feature Essay: Eastwood Noir, PBS American

Masters, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/clint-‐

eastwood/eastwood-‐noir/582/.

Kellner, D. 2003. Media Spectacle. London; New York: Routledge.

Lees-‐Marshment, J. 2001. ‘The marriage of politics and marketing’, Political

Studies 49: 692-‐713.

Marinucci, C. 2013. ‘Eastwood “halftime in America” ad inspires debate’, San

Francisco Chronicle – SFGate, 30 January,

http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Eastwood-‐halftime-‐in-‐America-‐ad-‐

inspires-‐debate-‐3229986.php.

Marsh, D., t‘Hart, P. and Tindall, K. 2010. ‘Celebrity Politics: The Politics of Late

Modernity’, Political Studies Review 8: 322-‐340.

Marsh, D. and Fawcett, P. 2011. ‘Branding, politics and democracy’, Policy Studies

32(5): 515-‐530.

Marshall, P.D. 1997. Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture.

Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press.

Moraski, L. 2012. ‘N.J. Gov. Chris Christie “weeps” after meeting Bruce

Springsteen’, CBSNews.Com, 6 November, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-‐

35

207_162-‐57545670/n.j-‐gov-‐chris-‐christie-‐weeps-‐after-‐meeting-‐bruce-‐

springsteen/.

Orr, C. 2012. ‘Clint Eastwood, Political Wanderer’,The Atlantic, 30 August,

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/08/clint-‐eastwood-‐

political-‐wanderer/261808/.

Peters, J. D. 1993. ‘Distrust of Representation: Habermas on the Public Sphere’,

Media, Culture and Society 15: 541-‐71.

PEW 2012. ‘Section 4: Demographics and Political Views of News Audiences’, in

Changing News Landscape, Even Television is Vulnerable: Trends in News

Consumption: 1991-‐2012, http://www.people-‐press.org/2012/09/27/section-‐4-‐

demographics-‐and-‐political-‐views-‐of-‐news-‐audiences/.

Puri, J. 2004. Encountering Nationalism. Melbourne: Blackwell Publishing

Rainey, J. 2012 ‘Eastwood's got a new ad, and a consistency problem’, LA Times,

26 October.

Ray, R. 1985. A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930-‐1980. Princeton

NJ: Princeton University Press.

Redmond, S. 2010. ‘Avatar Obama in the age of liquid celebrity’, Celebrity Studies

1(1): 81-‐95.

36

Rucker, P. 2012. ‘Mitt Romney’s dog-‐on-‐the-‐car-‐roof story still proves to be his

critics’ best friend’, The Washington Post, 14 March,

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-‐03-‐14/news/35450454_1_tagg-‐

romney-‐romney-‐first-‐romney-‐supporter.

Scammell, M. 1999. ‘Political Marketing: Lessons for Political Science’, Political

Studies 47 (4): 718-‐739.

Seymour, E. M. (2012) ‘ “Where Dreams Are Found and Lost”: Springsteen,

Nostalgia and Identity’, in Womack, K., Zolten, J. and Bernhard, M. (eds), Bruce

Springsteen, Cultural Studies and the Runaway American Dream. Surrey, England:

Ashgate.

Smart, R. 2012. ‘ “Landscape as Moral Destiny”: Mythic Reinvention from Rowdy

Yates to the Stranger’, in Engel, L. and Cornell, D. (eds) New Essays on Clint

Eastwood. Salt Lake City UT: University of Utah Press.

Somnez F. 2012. ‘Mitt Romney: Wife Ann drives “a couple of Cadillacs”’,

Washington Post – Post Politics, 24 February,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-‐politics/post/mitt-‐romney-‐wife-‐

ann-‐drives-‐a-‐couple-‐of-‐cadillacs/2012/02/24/gIQAMBz6XR_blog.html.

37

Springsteen, B. 1988. ‘Speech at Induction of Bob Dylan into Rock and Roll Hall of

Fame’, 20 January/ Transcript and video at: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,

http://rockhall.com/inductees/bob-‐dylan/.

Springsteen, B. 2012. ‘South by Southwest Keynote Address’, South by Southwest

Festival, Austin TX, 28 March. Transcript at: Rolling Stone,

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/exclusive-‐the-‐complete-‐text-‐of-‐

bruce-‐springsteens-‐sxsw-‐keynote-‐address-‐20120328?print=true.

Street, J. 2012, ‘Do Celebrity Politics and Celebrity Politicians Matter?’, The

British Journal of Politics and International Relations 14(3): 346-‐356.

Street, J. 2006. ‘The Celebrity Politician: Political Style and Popular Culture’, in

Marshall, P. D. (ed) The Celebrity Culture Reader. New York: Routledge.

Street, J. 2004. ‘Celebrity Politicians, Popular Culture and Political

Representation’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 6: 435-‐

452.

Turan, K. P. 1998. ‘A Fistful of Memories’ – An Interview with Clint Eastwood’, in

Kitses, J. and Rickman, G. (eds) The Western Reader. New York: Proscenium

Publishers.

Turner, G. 2010. Ordinary People and the Media: The Demotic Turn. London: Sage.

38

Turner, G. 2004. Understanding Celebrity. London: Sage.

Wheeler, M. 2012. ‘The Democratic Worth of Celebrity Politics in an Era of Late

Modernity’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations 14: 407-‐422.

Womack, K., Zolten, J. and Bernhard, M. (eds), Bruce Springsteen, Cultural Studies

and the Runaway American Dream. Surrey, England: Ashgate.

i There is a wide range of critical and scholarly work in cultural studies, film studies and screen studies, for example, that considers the significance of Clint Eastwood and Bruce Springsteen for American identity. For recent examples, see Womack et al 2012; Engel and Cornell 2012; Garman 2000 Cornell, 2009. ii See, for example, Allison (2005) for a reading of how the Dirty Harry films spoke to the contemporary concerns of their audience. iii The storm devastated parts of Springsteen’s home state of New Jersey, as well as other nearby areas in the last week of October. He became involved in the fundraising recovery efforts and announced his intention to perform at the 12.12.12 relief concert; actions given legitimacy both by his personal connection to the area and by his previous support for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. iv The #Eastwooding meme – in which citizens uploaded images of people, animals, cartoon characters etc speaking to empty chairs – quickly became part of the popular narrative around the campaign. When the President’s performance in the first debate did not live up to expectations, the New Yorker featured a cover with Romney debating an empty chair (Kanecko and Mouly 2012); the spoof Twitter account @InvisibleObama gained an increasingly large number of followers; and in the election’s aftermath, actor Daniel Day Lewis carried an empty chair on stage when accepting the BAFTA for best actor, to congratulate the President on his campaign victory. v A series of campaign gaffes and missteps throughout the primaries seemed to underscore Romney’s awkwardness and inability to connect with ordinary voters or understand middle-‐class Americans, from his comment that he liked Michigan because ‘the trees are the right height’ (Somnez 2012); to revelations that he once strapped the family dog to the roof of the car on a vacation (Rucker 2012) or his comments his wife Ann drives ‘a couple of Cadillacs’ (Somnez, 2012).

celebrity,)campaigns)andcitizenship:)‘competing populisms ... · 1...

Documents