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Leah Shafer

Document Type

Review

Abstract

[First paragraph]

In Television Personalities: Stardom and the Small Screen, James Bennett argues that televisual fame needs to be addressed on its own terms, “distinct from the ”TV star’ and the wider milieu of television celebrity” (2). In order to forge this distinction, Bennett focuses his study on television personalities, those performers who host, announce, emcee, or otherwise facilitate programming in their own name, as themselves. Establishing the television personality as a legitimate figure allows Bennett to focus his analysis on specific modes of performance, performer labor, and an assessment of the economic and cultural values of that performer’s relationship to television’s personality system. In Parts I and II of the book, Bennett deliberately and systematically distinguishes the study of the television personality from that of film stars, television stars, and other media celebrities, citing “the apparent reluctance of film, television, media and celebrity studies to consider the television personality as worthy of extended attention” (190). This tactical rejection of the terms and concepts behind much recent film and celebrity study scholarship is explicitly motivated by the need to “reserve particular terms within the general field of celebrity for specific kinds of performers in order to better understand celebrity culture” (190) and the need to “move beyond film theory and an understanding of the term ”television personality’ as signifying a ”lack’ in relation to film stardom” (191). In Part III, Bennett frames recent shifts in televisual discourse by analyzing television personalities in their intertexual and multiplatform iterations and then links those modalities to a thoughtful critique of the ways that stardom bolsters conservatism and exploitative neo-liberal conceptions of labor.

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