Lateral Moves
Who decides your worth? Or if you are worthwhile? Culinary activist Stephanie Gorchynski http://www.pleasantvillecreamery.com/about/ offers powerful thoughts on making moves to restore worth in life and career. Read: “Life is now. Back is an illusion. So many these days are making ‘lateral’ moves, wanting different outcomes—to end dissatisfaction, suffering and pain with how things are. To have connection, be connected, ultimately be loved. Longing for more, while sitting on the sidelines instead of in the game. Regardless of how things seem, every move is a step forward....
Read MoreThe Good & The Bad
In one of Facebook posts, I mentioned the idea of writing my memoir. Will that book talk about all the good ideas that were expected of me in the past? I am a bad Canadian. I neither support political images of the Great White North nor do I buy hockey tickets. My book Fame in Hollywood North will tell us why. I am also a bad Bengali. I neither buy fish nor do I have to marry. Sometimes we conflate our belonging to a geographical place, a linguistic community or professional setting with what we are expected to identify. Often these expectations are associated with a sense of collective...
Read MoreIs there a Caitlyn Jenner in You and Me?
You know I talk about celebrity culture and the notion of popularity. The popular is not limited to celebrities. In fact celebrities are part of popular culture, and the signs of fame shed light on the successful functioning of many other popular representations. A recent example of popular representations is the way in which social media users displayed their affective response towards the US same-sex marriage laws. When a plethora of Facebook users applied a translucent rainbow flag on their profile pictures, I was inspired to support it. At the same time, I did not understand the hype....
Read MoreKim or Caitlyn? Breaking Boundaries in Fame
A question that often comes to our mind: why is fame an important area to reflect on? For me, fame has had a pervasive presence in how fans engage in pleasures and identification, and in how they develop para-social relations with celebrities. The relationship is both material and symbolic. Fan practices such as circulation and re-mixing of celebrity images and texts have physical components. The practices also reflect and reinforce imaginary relations that hold affective and cultural values While the Kardarshians offer pleasures of hybrid identities, they also silence articulations of and...
Read MoreAuthenticity in Kiera Knightley’s Nudity
The costs of style and style failure are evident in media. Yet both complement each other. The excess of nudity is an example. Is there authenticity in this irony? I felt the irony of style when I saw Kiera Knightley’s latest nude photograph. I asked myself if this is another case of nudity in which fashion fails and a celebrity needs to promote self through sensationalization of a nude body. Soon after Kiera Knightley stripped, Kim Kardarshian did a nude photo shoot for the cover of Paper Magazine. She broke many hearts as she intended to “break the Internet” with her fake self-inflated...
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