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140 8 Celebrity Travels Media Spectacles and the Construction of a Transnational Politics of Care Spring-Serenity Duvall A long history of celebrity involvement in politics and humanitarian efforts has contributed to the production of celebrity activism as an influential media phenomenon that now permeates popular culture. Such A-list celebrities as Bono, Angelina Jolie, Madonna, David Beckham, Brad Pitt, Paul Newman, Bruce Springsteen, and Robert Redford are well recognized for creating almost second careers out of political and social activism.1 The travels of Western celebrities to third world spaces on humanitarian and awareness-raising campaigns generate compelling narratives in mainstream U.S. media. Media coverage of actress and Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Council on Refugees Angelina Jolie offers a dynamic site from which to critically examine neoliberal, neocolonial , and postfeminist discourses that intersect in constructing a transnational agenda for humanitarian intervention. Celebrity activism is framed within a media space that privileges neoliberal ideologies of individualism and accentuates discourses about the agency of powerful Western women traveling to“save” women of the Global South. In the spectaclization of the strong celebrity heroine that follows, local women of the area are either marginalized or overlooked in the mediasphere. I focus on Jolie’s celebrity activism as promoting a style of engagement in a politics marked as noncontroversial and as capitalizing on the pervasive power and transnational appeal of Western celebrity culture. Examining the mediated spectacles of celebrity activism , I argue that these social and political celebrity interventions reproduce old colonial dynamics and promote a version of American exceptionalism intact with its racial and gendered scripts. Mapping the travel of celebrity icons reveals how humanitarian causes come into transnational visibility coded in racial and gendered terms. Celebrity activism is a distinctly global neoliberal phenomenon that has to be situated within a globally saturated and networked transnational environment. John Street argues that the extent to which celebrities gain legitimacy for their political activities depends on the type of media coverage they receive, the attention they gain from institutions, and the willingness of audiences to accept them as activists.2 While celebrities such as Jolie gain cultural currency and political 141 Celebrity Travels legitimacy through activism, others such as Richard Gere who advance controversial positions receive much less media attention for their political activities or, as in the case of Madonna, receive primarily negative media coverage that represents their political involvement as misguided or self-serving publicity stunts. At the same time, institutions such as the United Nations have long sought celebrity popularity to circulate their mission and message around the world. So what follows is a dramatic intersection of celebrities with popularity and good intentions, a networked media gaze waiting for spectacle, and institutions hoping to use the powerful commodity of celebrity status. The resultant visual and discursive contest is over who exerts the power to set an agenda for humanitarian intervention. In this chapter, I examine how scripts of sexuality are interwoven into the narratives of celebrity activism. Extending Street’s ideas, I argue that media coverage typically privileges celebrity activism that adheres to traditional gender norms. Western movie stars such as Jolie,Gere,Madonna,and others share a status as sex symbol first and as activist second in the public arena. Intense media concern with their bodies and personal relationships is inextricably linked to coverage of their activist undertakings.Jolie’s and Madonna’s have been most visible for their political actions and family “building,” and this has contributed to both the derision and deification of celebrities who advocate on behalf of and adopt children from third world nations. Jolie, in particular, embodies a postfeminist figure whose individual achievements are offered as evidence of a Western feminine empowerment that assumes both the success of feminism and its current irrelevance.3 Jolie is the ultimate example of one of the “ideal girls, subjects par excellence, and also subjects of excellence” who McRobbie argues represent the depoliticization of feminism.4 Jolie and Madonna are represented as postfeminist icons who appear not only to have achieved great professional success but also to have conquered gender inequality in their personal lives. In other words, the complex politics of sexuality and motherhood is bypassed as the media discourse remains firmly focused on normalizing heterosexual social and family values. I turn to a wide range of media texts in order to unravel these issues and understand the contestation underlying the construction of a transnational politics of care. Media Production of Star Benevolence Jolie...

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