Today, I’m stepping outside my usual zone a little bit and ruminating on television and celebrity at Anne Helen Petersen’s fantastic blog, Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style.
I’ve been a fan of The Hills since the beginning – though my viewing has dropped off lately – and after rewatching some early seasons, I suggest that Heidi can be read as a tragic character. With the benefit of hindsight, and the inundation of media coverage of Heidi and Spencer, her transformations over the past few years (including her recent extensive plastic surgery) take on a more sinister cast. I’m not wedded to this idea – it’s still floating around while I make sense of it, and this blog post is a start.
Last week my Twitter feed was burning up with w00tstock 2009, versions 1.0 and 1.01 in San Francisco, and version 1.1 in Los Angeles. Featuring Adam Savage (of Mythbusters), Wil Wheaton (of ST:TNG and superblog WWDN: In Exile) and comedy musicians Paul and Storm, as well as various special guests, the festival honored the cultural rise of the geek/nerd.
Here, Wheaton kicks things off, making fun of and celebrating his own geek status. W00tstock also happened to coincide with the geek-gasm of Wheaton’s appearance (as himself) on The Big Bang Theory on CBS.
But one of the most interesting elements of the LA performance was the popularity of Felicia Day, who has become an icon of the geek world in the past year through gaming-themed web series The Guild. Below, she and her castmates perform an acoustic version of their hit promotional music video “Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?”
Day has had a speedy rise to near-fame – from bit roles on television to starring inDr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, and writing/producing/starring in The Guild, and appearing in the best-received (and never aired) episode of Dollhouse season one. She’s a gamer, she’s part of the Joss-verse, and throughout, she’s used social media to build her star image and interact with fans. Day’s Twitter feed is more popular than Wheaton’s; her Goodreads account makes her reading habits public; she’s run a personal blog for nearly three years; and she’s on Flickr, Facebook, and delicious, to name a few. I’m watching her use of social media and her rising star pretty closely – could she be the first person to turn social media success into a bona fide subcultural stardom?
Today, I’m stepping outside my usual zone a little bit and ruminating on television and celebrity at Anne Helen Petersen’s fantastic blog, Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style.