Week 13: Celebrity: Performance as Self

Andre the Giant publicity shot

Donald Trump

This week I am asking you to read a short graphic biography of the wrestler/entertainer Andre the Giant by Box Brown. It is interesting to see how Brown tells the story in words and pictures. It is not told in a particularly bravura style that one sees in many graphic novels that aspire to certain greatness of effect. It is a more vernacular and rough cast; more wrestling in style and tone. It is at times coarse, not ulike the book's subject,  a personality who is in the most literal senese, larger than life.
I hope to discuss other celebrity phenomena like Kim Kardashian who has mastered private life as a mode of performance in a fluid and mobile mediascape. We will read an essay in class on politics as entertainment and discuss it. We will consider the representation of Donald Trump as a political meme. What elements of performance, entertainment and celebrity are evident in the current climate of political discourse? What are the objects of this discourse, what are the subjects?  What are the effects?