Spaces of Celebrity

Abstract

This article addresses the ways in which Irish working-class teenagers utilize national and global discourses in assessing the quality and entertainment value of television talent shows. Viewers’ preference for British shows over the nationally produced show, You’re a Star, indicates an identification with “spaces of celebrity” that are simultaneously geographic/geopolitical spaces with centers such as Britain and the USA and peripheries like Ireland. Viewers valorization of the global and denigration of the national can be understood, it is suggested, in terms of the historical development of urban workingclass sub-cultural taste which demonstrated a preference for ‘foreign’ entertainment and a distaste for aspects of ‘official’ national culture. Arguing against the idea of talent shows creating a national “imagined community”, the author calls for greater attention to be paid to how the differential positioning of audiences within national cultures influences sub-cultural taste and, in turn, reception of specific media texts.