Celebrity Culture

“A provocative book that is frequently as delightful as insightful. Its ambitious scope—ranging from the selfie and hip-hop celebrity culture to Vietnam War photography and image/text relationships—and its deep engagement with theory and cultures will make this an exciting book for scholars across disciplines.”

This book is a unique study of the historical, theoretical, and cultural interpretations of ‘madness’ including interviews with those who have experiences of ‘madness’. It takes a transdisciplinary approach, employing historical, psychological, and sociological perspectives through an intersectional lens. This work explains how the prioritization of thinking over feeling in Western thought means the transrational imagination has frequently been negated in tackling mental health with detrimental results. This book, therefore, examines creative media, especially film, as a transrational form of human expression for healing and wellbeing, along with television, theatre, social media, music, and computer games. ‘Madness’ with regards to gender, sexuality, adolescence, and class in media and film is interrogated, as well as ‘madness’ and race through a focus on colonialism, post-colonialism, and psychiatry. It analyses group psychosis, including celebrity culture, and the ‘madness’ of leaders and gurus. This book challenges the lasting influence of the Age of Reason by furthering our understanding of the value of transrationality and the diverse ways of being human.