Celebrity Push, Celebrity Pull

Understanding the Role of the Notable Person in Pilgrimage

Authors

  • Alex Norman University of Sydney Author

Keywords:

Pilgrimage, celebrity, serious leisure, travel, tourism, meaning

Abstract

Pilgrimages have been argued to be ‘journeys redolent with meaning’ (Digance 2006). Celebrities, those noted for their fame, have a gravitas, credibility, and power of association an unknown person does not possess, and status and functions that are arguably religiously equivalent. It is thus no surprise that celebrities are also used to promote tourist destinations. Similarly, the fame and attributed worth of celebrities results in their status in some fans’ eyes becoming similar to saints or holy people. Celebrity has been said to be an equivalent of religion in the modern world. Indeed, a famous person, or the sites associated with their life, can become destinations for pilgrimages in themselves at which the pilgrim-fans gain an experience of what Victor Turner termed ‘the Centre’. Sites such as Elvis Presley’s home Graceland, the graves of celebrities, their current residences, and even events they attend all become sites of celebrity pilgrimage. This study combines theories from the sociology of celebrity and religion, psychological studies of celebrity worship, and leisure involvement theory to explain this process. These are combined with theories from pilgrimage and tourism studies concerned with the dynamics of site popularity, and ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors as a method of thinking through the issues of ‘celebrity pilgrimage’. It argues that celebrities both push and pull fans towards them in ways that are functionally pilgrimage.

References

Badone, Ellen, and Sharon R. Roseman 2004 Approaches to the Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism. In Intersecting Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism, edited by Ellen Badone and Sharon R. Roseman, 1-23. University of Illinois Press, Chicago.

Bærenholdt, Jørgen O. et al. 2004 Performing Tourist Places. Ashgate, Aldershot.

Bartholomew, Richard 2006 Publishing, Celebrity, and the Globalisation of Conservative Protestantism. Journal of Contemporary Religion 21(1): 1-13. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13537900500381278.

Beeton, Sue 2005 Film-Induced Tourism. Channel View Publications, Clevedon.

Berger, Peter 1967 The Social Reality of Religion. Faber, London.

Boorstin, Daniel J. 1963 [1961] The Image: Or, What Happened to the American Dream. Penguin, Harmondsworth, Middlesex.

From Hero to Celebrity: The Human Pseudo-Event. In Marshall 2006: 72-90.

Brooks, David 2000 Bobos in Paradise: The New Upperclass and How They Got There. Simon & Schuster, New York.

Brown, Peter R.L. 1981 The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Campbell, Colin 1972 The Cult, the Cultic Milieu and Secularization. A Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain 5: 119-36.

The Easternization of the West. Paradigm, Boulder.

Carr, Annabel 2006 Beauty, Myth and Monolith: Picnic at Hanging Rock and the Vibration of Sacrality. In The Buddha of Suburbia: Proceedings of the Eighth Australian and International Religion, Literature and the Arts Conference, 2004, edited by Carole M. Cusack, Frances Di Lauro, and Christopher Hartney, 123-31. RLA Press, Sydney.

Cashmore, Ellis 2006 Celebrity/Culture. Abingdon: Routledge.

Chidester, David 1996 The Church of Baseball, the Fetish of Coca-Cola, and the Potlatch of Rock ‘n’ Roll: Theoretical Models for the Study of Religion in American Popular Culture. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64(4): 743-65.

Coleman, Simon, and John Eade 2004 Introduction: Reframing Pilgrimage. In Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion, edited by Simon Coleman and John Eade, 1-25. Routledge, London.

Collins-Kreiner, Noga 2010 Researching Pilgrimage: Continuity and Transformations. Annals of Tourism Research 37(2): 440-56. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2009.10.016.

Collins-Kreiner, Noga, and Jay Gatrell 2006 Tourism, Heritage and Pilgrimage: The Case of Haifa’s Baha’i Gardens. Journal of Heritage Tourism 1(1): 32-50. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17438730608668464.

Cusack, Carole M., and Justine Digance 2008 ‘Shopping for a Self’: Pilgrimage, Identity-Formation, and Retail Therapy. In Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance, edited by Graham St. John, 227-41. Berghahn Books, New York.

Dann, Graham M.S. 1977 Anomie, Ego-Enhancement and Tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 4(4): 184-94. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0160-7383(77)90037-8.

Demerath, Nelson J. 2000 The Varieties of Sacred Experience: Finding the Sacred in a Secular Grove. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 39(1): 1-11. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/0021-8294.00001.

Digance, Justine 2003 Pilgrimage at Contested Sites. Annals of Tourism Research 30(1): 143-59.

Religious and Secular Pilgrimage: Journeys Redolent with Meaning. In Timothy and Olsen 2006: 36-48.

Frey, Nancy L. 1998 Pilgrim Stories: On and Off the Road to Santiago. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Giddens, Anthony 1991 Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford University Press, Stanford.

Goffman, Erving 1959 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor Books for Doubleday, New York.

Graburn, Nelson H.H. 1989 Tourism: The Sacred Journey. In Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism, edited by Valene L. Smith, 21-36. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.

Hahn, Cynthia 1997 Seeing and Believing: The Construction of Sanctity in Early Medieval Saints’ Shrines. Speculum 72(4): 1079-106. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2865959.

Havitz, Mark E., and Frederic Dimanche 1997 Leisure Involvement Revisited: Conceptual Conundrums and Measurement Advances. Journal of Leisure Research 29(3): 245-78.

Heelas, Paul 1996 The New Age Movement: The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity. Blackwell, Oxford.

Ingham, Roger 1987 Psychological Contributions to the Study of Leisure: Part Two. Leisure Studies 6(1): 1-14. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02614368700390011.

Jenkins, Henry 1992 Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. Routledge, New York.

Jenson, Joli 1992 Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization. In The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, edited by Lisa A. Lewis, 9-29. Routledge, London.

Jindra, Michael 1994 Star Trek Fandom as a Religious Phenomenon. Sociology of Religion 55(1): 27-51. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3712174.

King, Christine 1993 His Truth Goes Marching On: Elvis Presley and the Pilgrimage to Graceland. In Pilgrimage in Popular Culture, edited by Ian Reader and Tony Walter, 92-102. Macmillan, Basingstoke.

Laurent, Gilles, and Jean-Noel Kapferer 1985 Measuring Consumer Involvement Profiles. Journal of Marketing Research 22(1): 41-53. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3151549.

Laverie, Debra A., and Dennis B. Arnett 2000 Factors Affecting Fan Attendance: The Influence of Identity Salience and Satisfaction. Journal of Leisure Research 32(2): 225-46.

Lee, Soojin, and David Scott 2009 The Process of Celebrity Fan’s Constraint Negotiation. Journal of Leisure Research 41(2): 137-56.

Lee, Soojin, David Scott, and Hyounggon Kim 2008 Celebrity Fan Involvement and Destination Perceptions. Annals of Tourism Research 35(3): 809-32. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2008.06.003.

Lofton, Kathryn 2011 Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.

Long, Phil, and Nicola J. Palmer 2007 Royal Tourism: Excursions around Monarchy. Channel View Publications, Clevedon.

Lyon, David 2000 Jesus in Disneyland: Religion in Postmodern Times. Polity Press, Cambridge.

Maltby, John, James M. Houran, and Lynn E. McCutcheon 2003 A Clinical Interpretation of Attitudes and Behaviors Associated with Celebrity Worship. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 191(1): 25-29. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/00005053-200301000-00005.

Maltby, John et al. 2001 The Self-Reported Psychological Well-Being of Celebrity Worshippers. North American Journal of Psychology 3(3): 441-52.

Mannell, Roger C., and Douglas A. Kleiber 1997 A Social Psychology of Leisure. Venture Publications, State College, PA.

Margry, Peter J. (ed.) 2008 Shrines and Pilgrimage in the Modern World: New Itineraries into the Sacred. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam.

Marshall, P. David 1997 Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Marshall, P. David (ed.) 2006 The Celebrity Culture Reader. Routledge, New York.

Maslow, Abraham 1943 A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review 50(4): 370-96. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0054346.

McCracken, Grant 1989 Who is the Celebrity Endorser? Cultural Foundations of the Endorsement Process. Journal of Consumer Research 16(3): 310-21. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/209217.

McCutcheon, Lynn E., Rense Lange, and James Houran 2002 Conceptualization and Measurement of Celebrity Worship. British Journal of Psychology 93: 67-87. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1348/000712602162454.

McIntyre, Norman, and J.J. Pigram 1992 Recreation Specialization Reexamined: The Case of Vehicle-Based Campers. Leisure Sciences 14(1): 3-15. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01490409209513153.

Misra, Shekhar, and Sharon E. Beatty 1990 Celebrity Spokesperson and Brand Congruence: An Assessment of Recall and Affect. Journal of Business Research 21(2): 159-73. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0148-2963(90)90050-N.

Moore, Alexander 1980 Walt Disney World: Bounded Ritual Space and the Playful Pilgrimage Center. Anthropological Quarterly 53(4): 207-18. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3318104.

Nash, Dennison 2007 The Study of Tourism: Anthropological and Sociological Beginnings. London: Elsevier Science.

Nolan, Mary Lee, and Sidney Nolan 1989 Christian Pilgrimage in Modern Western Europe. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.

Norman, Alex 2009 The Unexpected Real: Negotiating Fantasy and Reality on the Camino de Santiago. Literature and Aesthetics 19(2): 50-71.

Spiritual Tourism: Secular Examination of the Self in the Mirror of Religious Practice. PhD dissertation, University of Sydney.

Olsen, Brad 2007 Sacred Places Europe: 108 Destinations. CCC Publishing, San Francisco.

Olsen, Daniel H., and Dallen J. Timothy 2006 Tourism and Religious Journeys. In Timothy and Olsen 2006: 1-21.

Preston, James J. 1992 Spiritual Magnetism: An Organising Principle for the Study of Pilgrimage. In Sacred Journeys: The Anthopology of Pilgrimage, edited by Alan Morinis, 31-46. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT.

Priluck, Randi, and Brian D. Till 2004 The Role of Contingency Awareness, Involvement, and Need for Cognition in Attitude Formation. Academy of Marketing Science Journal 32(3): 329-44.

Rigby, Madeleine 2001 Graceland: A Sacred Place in a Secular World? In The End of Religions? Religion in an Age of Globalisation, edited by Carole M. Cusack and Peter Oldmeadow, 155-65. Sydney Studies in Religion, Sydney.

Rinschede, Gisbert 1992 Forms of Religious Tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 19(1): 51-67. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0160-7383(92)90106-Y.

Ritchie, Brent W., and Daryl Adair 2004 Sport Tourism. Channel View Publications, Clevedon.

Rittichainuwat, Ngamsom 2008 Responding to Disaster: Thai and Scandinavian Tourists’ Motivation to Visit Phuket, Thailand. Journal of Travel Research 46(4): 422-32. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0047287507308323.

Rojek, Chris 2006 Celebrity and Religion. In Marshall 2006: 389-417.

Rountree, Kathryn 2006 Journeys to the Goddess: Pilgrimage and Tourism in the New Age. In On the Road to Being There: Studies in Pilgrimage and Tourism in Late Modernity, edited by William H. Swatos, 33-60. Brill, Leiden.

Rubin, Alan M., Elizabeth M. Perse, and Robert A. Powell 1985 Loneliness, Parasocial Interaction, and Local Television News Viewing. Human Communication Research 12(2): 155-80. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1985.tb00071.x.

Scates, Bruce 2006 Return to Gallipoli: Walking the Battlefields of the Great War. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511481338.

Shinde, Kiran 2008 Religious Tourism: Exploring a New Form of Sacred Journey in Northern India. In Asian Tourism: Growth and Change, edited by Janet Cochrane, 245-58. Elsevier, Oxford.

Sirgy, M. Joseph 1982 Self-Concept in Consumer Behavior: A Critical Review. Journal of Consumer Research 9(3): 287-300. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/208924.

Smith, Melanie, and Catherine Kelly 2006 Wellness Tourism. Tourism Recreation Research 31(1): 1-4.

Smith, Valene L. 1992 Introduction: The Quest in Guest. Annals of Tourism Research 19(1): 1-17. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0160-7383(92)90103-V.

Stafford, Marla Royne, Thomas F. Stafford, and Ellen Day 2002 A Contingency Approach: The Effects of Spokesperson Type and Service Type on Service Advertising Perceptions. Journal of Advertising 31(2): 17-35.

Stebbins, Robert A. 1982 Serious Leisure: A Conceptual Statement. Pacific Sociological Review 25(2): 251.

Amateurs, Professionals and Serious Leisure. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Social World, Lifestyle, and Serious Leisure: Toward a Mesostructural Analysis. World Leisure and Recreation 35: 23-26.

New Directions in the Theory and Research of Serious Leisure. Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston.

Stever, Gayle S. 1991 The Celebrity Appeal Questionnaire. Psychological Reports 68: 859-66.

Stringer, Martin D. 2008 Contemporary Western Ethnography and the Definition of Religion. Continuum, London.

Stryker, Sheldon 2002 Symbolic Interactionism: A Social Structural Version. Blackburn Press, Caldwell, NJ.

Taylor, Charles 2007 A Secular Age. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Theodoret 1985 Historia Religiosa. In A History of the Monks of Syria, translated by Richard M. Price. Cisterician Publications, Kalamazoo.

Till, Brian D., Sarah M. Stanley, and Randi Priluck 2008 Classical Conditioning and Celebrity Endorsers: An Examination of Belongingness and Resistance to Extinction. Psychology and Marketing 25(2): 179-96. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/mar.20205.

Timothy, Dallen J., and Daniel H. Olsen (eds.) 2006 Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys. Routledge, Abingdon.

Turner, Graeme, Frances Bonner, and P. David Marshall 2000 Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in Australia. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Turner, Victor 1973 The Center Out There: Pilgrim’s Goal. History of Religions 12(3): 191-230. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/462677.

Turner, Victor W., and Edith Turner 1978 Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives. Columbia University Press, New York.

Wann, Daniel L. 1995 Preliminary Validation of the Sport Fan Motivation Scale. Journal of Sport and Social Issues 19(4): 377-96. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/019372395019004004.

Weber, Max 2006 The Sociology of Charismatic Authority. In Marshall 2006: 55-71.

Weed, Mike 2008 Olympic Tourism. Elsevier, Oxford.

Wilson, Jacqueline Zara 2004 Dark Tourism and the Celebrity Prisoner: Front and Back Regions in Representations of an Australian Historical Prison. Journal of Australian Studies 28(82): 1-13. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14443050409387951.

World Tourism Organisation (WTO) 1995 Collection of Tourism Expenditure Statistics, Technical Manual. World Tourism Organisation.

Published

2011-12-28