Influencers collapse the split between star and industry that once defined celebrity.

Evidence

Richard Dyer, in his book Heavenly Bodies, focused on how specific stars—Marilyn Monroe, Paul Robeson, Judy Garland—ultimately resisted or protested the labor of the star, the culture industry’s absorption of person in favor of image. They refused the subsumption of personhood by capital, the replacement of person by image. Other stars, however, fully embraced this capitalist logic of performance and stardom. Dyer mentions how stars like Fred Astaire and Joan Crawford were notable because of their willingness to reduce their entire existence to the mastery of their craft. But the star that Dyer discusses that seems to be most relevant for the contemporary context is Barbra Streisand, who demanded control over both her performance and the conditions of production, producing and directing the products in which she starred. Streisand the person asserted control over the industry designed to produce the image of Streisand the star. Today, rather than an entire industry designed to generate and police these images—the profits they generate, their use as public relations and marketing, ensuring the articulation of person and image—these tasks are outsourced and embodied in the domestic architecture found in the background of YouTube videos. The model of celebrity characterized by Streisand—both star and manager of the capitalist infrastructures for producing stardom, both image and industry—has been transferred to individuals and their homes. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 140

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Dyer’s Heavenly Bodies; the star/manufacturer fusion maps onto the Corpocene thesis of the self-becoming-firm.