| Contents > Big Fish/Little Fish: Perceptions of Celebrity by Joyleen Christensen |
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Big Fish/Little Fish: Perceptions of Celebrity
Introduction
The central aim of this paper is to investigate how the public perception of celebrity functions on multiple, geographically-determined levels. In particular, I wish to examine the notion that a local celebrity, in this case, Hong Kong superstar, Andy Lau Tak—wah, can simultaneously exist in the public consciousness as both ‘Little Fish in a Big Pond/Big Fish in a Little Pond’.
The key hypothesis to be tested with this case study is the idea that celebrity is, essentially, the mediation of the projection of personality and audience (popular and critical) perceptions of that personality. In my exploration of the mechanics of celebrity, I will be scrutinizing the perceived differences between the local and global star with a view to reconciling this imposed theoretical hierarchy with a more realistic view of contemporary celebrity culture.
Motivations
The impetus for this investigation into local vs. global celebrity arose from my increasing frustration with traditional methods of measuring the status of Hong Kong film stars who are virtually unknown outside of Asian communities. The subject of my PhD thesis - the aforementioned Andy Lau – is one of the most popular entertainers in Asian history, yet in the bewildering absence of any substantial analysis of his film career in English-language texts, I find that I am often forced to rely upon conventional sources, such as box office receipts, various honours and awards, etc., to establish his popularity. Although these statistics can be quite impressive – Lau was recently recognised as being the biggest box-office draw in Hong Kong cinema for the past twenty years and he also has a Guinness World Record title for his achievements as a Cantopop singer – they fail to convey the full extent of Lau’s social status.
For this reason, I have decided to look to alternative sources of information that document Andy Lau’s critical and popular reception. In addition to conventional techniques, such as a critical and contextual analysis of individual texts considered significant or in some way representative of a particular theme or historical moment I decided to base my research upon empirical evaluations of popular Hong Kong cinema that draw upon relevant sources, such as English and Chinese-language media, businesses dependent upon the Hong Kong entertainment industry and its audience, fan clubs and websites, as well as various other internet-based sources that document the complex social implications of organized and spontaneous interaction between fans of Hong Kong entertainers. Finally, I made a decision to include personal and acquired anecdote that I felt would provide valuable and unique insight into specific topics of discussion.1
Quantitative Measurement of Celebrity Status
One quick, novel, and surprisingly effective method of classifying celebrity status that I stumbled upon during the course of my research was the quantitative Google ‘hit’ count method outlined by Eric Schulman in the satirical science journal, Annals of Improbable Research (AIR).2 Although the AIR has become somewhat notorious in recent years for its ‘research that makes people laugh and think’ – including special issues on such far-flung topics as ‘Feline Reactions to Bearded Men’ (Vol. 5, No. 5) and ‘Chicken and Fish’ (Vol. 9, No. 4) - its quirky articles have the added benefit of promoting an enhanced, lateral approach to a variety of academic topics.
Employing modern technology (i.e. the Google search engine) as a starting point for his quantitative method of celebrity classification, Schulman constructs a model for gauging the fame of individuals within the universally-recognized ‘A’ List, ‘B’ List, … ‘Z’ List Celebrity hierarchy structure. Explaining that his method eschews problems inherent in traditional celebrity studies that rely upon such devices as informal surveys of various research journals, for example, “subjectivity, lack of reproducibility, and a notable failure of the methods to properly classify people with low levels of fame”, Schulman devises a ‘logarithmic international standard unit of fame’ (the dBLw), “where fame (Lw) is the number of Google ‘hits’ for the person divided by the number of Google ‘hits’ for Monica Lewinsky”.3
Fame (dBLw) = 10 log [fame (Lw)]
Schulman’s adoption of the Weber-Fechner Law of human perception requires a decreasing classification of celebrity which suggests that, “people we perceive as ’A’ List Celebrities are on average ten times more famous that people we perceive as ‘B’ List Celebrities, who are on average ten times more famous than people we perceive as ‘C’ List Celebrities, and so on.” In keeping with this rationale, Schulman argues that it is necessary to apply the following formula:
| ‘A’ List | fame | > | +5 dBLw | ||
| ‘B’ List | -5 | < | fame | < | +5 dBLw |
| ‘C’ List | -15 | < | fame | < | -5 dBLw |
| ‘D’ List | -25 | < | fame | < | -15 dBLw |
| ‘E’ List | -35 | < | fame | < | -25 dBLw |
| ‘F’ List | -45 | < | fame | < | -35 dBLw |
| ‘G’ List | -55 | < | fame | < | -45 dBLw |
| ‘H’ List | fame | < | -55 dBLw |
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| Contents > Big Fish/Little Fish: Perceptions of Celebrity by Joyleen Christensen |