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Gothic Celebrity : Fame and Immortality from Lord Byron to Lady Gaga.

Bloomsbury Collections: Literary Studies 2025 Available online

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Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
Fletcher, Harriet, author.
Contributor:
Bloomsbury (Firm), publisher.
Language:
English
Subjects (All):
Gothic revival (Literature).
Gothic revival (Art).
Celebrities.
Immortality in art.
Physical Description:
1 online resource (241 pages)
Edition:
1st edition.
Place of Publication:
London : Bloomsbury Academic, 2025.
Summary:
Covering literature, visual media and popular culture, this book explores how the Gothic is consistently used to disrupt the narrative of immortality that modern celebrity culture has created and how together they expose society's responses to ageing and death.
Contents:
Cover
Halftitle page
Title page
Copyright page
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Gothic Celebrity
2016: The year of celebrity death
Gothic celebrity
Mortality and immortality
The celebrity in modern culture
Gothic celebrities: Lord Byron to Lady Gaga
1 The Origins of Gothic Celebrity: Lord Byron, John Polidori and the Celebrity Vampire
Lord Byron's rise to fame and the Romantic cult of personality
Byromania and the desire for intimacy
The celebrity vampire and the Gothic
Byromaniacs: Readers as fans
Fan fiction and fantasies of intimacy
Vampiric portraits
Conclusion
2 Unstable Immortality: Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Victorian Celebrity Photography
Oscar Wilde and visual celebrity
The photograph and the Gothic
Gothic doubles: The photographer and the subject in The Picture of Dorian Gray
Dorian's portrait: A harbinger of celebrity decay
Technological immortality: Embodying the carte de visite
Confronting decay: Sibyl, the actress and the theatre
3 Faded Stars: The Gothic Performance of Ageing in Sunset Boulevard and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
The female star and the faded star
The Gothic faded star: Ageing and abjection
The dance of the seven veils: Abject striptease in Sunset Boulevard
Child star to faded star: The collision of age and youth in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Deathly doubles: The Baby Jane doll
4 The Death of the Star: Celebrity Decay in Andy Warhol's Gothic Portraits
Death and disaster: Celebrity in the 1960s
Andy Warhol, the portrait and the Gothic
Marilyn Diptych: The deathliness of mechanical reproduction
The decay of the star
Self-Portrait: A celebrity death mask
Gothic props: The wig as memento mori
Conclusion.
5 Transcendent Transformations: Lady Gaga's Reinventive Vampirism in American Horror Story: Hotel
Lady Gaga, reinvention and celebrity in the digital age
Lady Gaga, the tabloids and celebrity decay
The reinventive vampire
The corset and vampiric transformation
Viral Red
Vampiric red
Disco red
Vampiric veils: Contagion and transcendence
Conclusion: Reclaiming Decay
Bibliography
Index.
Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:
1-350-44753-6
1-350-44755-2
1-350-44754-4
OCLC:
1520506358

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