ISBN : 9782296125155
REFLECTIONS ON ICONIC CELEBRITY:...SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE ON.
Fernando Andacht
What is the semiotic nature of the much discussed phenomenon of celebrity ? In this text I will attempt to answer this query, but given the breadth of the phenomenon, I will focus my reflection on three contemporary celebrities drawn from a rather obscure part of the world, a Latin American nation placed in the southernmost part of that continent. Besides their having the same nationality and beyond their different fields of endeavor - a populist kind of welfare politics, a socialist revolutionary struggle and professional soccer - there is something these three famous Argentinians have in common, which, I believe, can be accounted for by means of C. S. Peirce's semiotic theory of the icon, the sign which is based on ressemblance and/or the sharing of a quality with its object.1 It is an inherent quality that makes these three celebrities a sui generis artwork. I construe this traditional notion in semiotic terms that I have drawn from Ransdell's (2002) insightful reflections to establish a P...