Celetoids and the City: Tabloidization of the Working Class in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and Martin Amis’ Lionel Asbo: State of England

Abstract

Cultural criticism in the post-Brexit era has sought, in part, to understand the impact of the media environment on twenty-first-century working-class subjectivity. This chapter examines the history of this relationship by chronicling allusions to tabloid culture in working-class fiction, specifically in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and Martin Amis’ Lionel Asbo. In these novels, characters identify with the celetoid, a form of celebrity sui generis, but fail to recognize the means by which tabloid celebrity culture subjects the working class to harmful racist and classist archetypes. The novels demonstrate how tabloid culture provides both a discursive space for community formation and a locus for aspirational identification. At the same time, however, both novels criticize tabloids for limiting working-class access to legitimate forms of economic or social empowerment.