The present issue of Film Fashion & Consumption emerges from the desire to explore the world of celebrities – and their role – in moments of crisis. It tackles a set of features apparent in prominent personalities and idols of many sorts, found on-screen and off-screen, in photographic reportage or discourse. These features are critical aspects that have traditionally been kept away from celebrities’ polished images. Celebrities stand out, in effect, for their being a winning model, capable of conveying an image close to perfection. Exploring how and when celebrities show, narrate and present themselves in a condition of imperfection or in an unconventional, disputable or defective position, is instrumental to understanding a society’s conceptualization of a number of critical conditions, such as cultural marginalization, impairment, ageing or death (Andò et al. 2018). Crisis emerges in the following pages as a multifaceted and complex concept. It can be an epoch-shattering flux of media phenomena, a sanitary crisis, or instead a transition in individual self-representational strategies induced by technological overturns. Celebrities manifest themselves in ways that are embedded in economic and social systems. They can therefore express resilience. Their fame's extended lifespan can be inspirational. They can convey the potential to overcome the impact of a crisis showing innovation dynamics and flexible adaptation to an environment where risk and uncertainty is high. Crisis can open up to innovative glimpses, which branch out from the fields of film, media and fashion and become rooted in society. The core question here regards the influence that celebrities’ image, media-narrative and behaviour have on the collective perception of crisis, on crisis reaction and intervention models (Roberts 2000). This influence is conveyed in the first place through celebrities’ enhanced visibility. This journal issue’s privileged point of view is, therefore, celebrities’ dress choices and fashion statements, seen in on- and off-screen dynamics. Celebrities’ fashion behaviour’s impact on audience’s affect and media evolution is the common attention focus conveyed through eight different perspectives on crisis – by scholars of film, media, fashion, philosophy and communication. Celebrities mirror collective crisis; they epitomize crisis through their illustrious bodies and contribute to crisis metabolization. In some cases, crises can generate new kinds of celebrities that are revelatory of the changing makeup of our society. As observed by historians and social scientists from a variety of perspectives, in specific historical moments and social situations, critical circumstances (Koselleck 2006; Kuhn 1999; Masur 1973) can create, in a very short space of time, new experimentation and forms of creativity that reveal internal mechanisms of cultural processes. Crises can therefore become engines of change (Martin 2010). Everett Rogers highlights the advantages of combining innovation with the known and settled values of a social group. Among the factors leading to the adoption of an innovation he identifies the innovation’s marked visibility, plus the social prestige and the satisfaction derived from it (Rogers 1983). Experimentation regarding self-construction on the part of established celebrities as a response to crisis can shake cultural fundaments and shared values as much as the rise of new celebrities in times of crisis. They also bring to the surface, and negotiate with, deep cultural motives. Moreover, they are performed in terms of high visibility, personal and collective satisfaction and enhanced prestige. In the field of celebrity studies, several authors have underlined how studying celebrities means conducting research at the crossroads of multiple disciplines, schools, theories – using different perspectives and issues that mix the political context with society and entertainment. © 2023 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.
