Introduction: Cultural Criminology and the Joy of Transgression

Abstract

Celebrity dominates contemporary society. It pervades across the modern media and encourages us to think of it as a new development, rather than the extension of a long-standing condition (Turner, 2004: 4). The visibility of celebrity is unprecedented and there is a continuing debate surrounding how to describe and understand this phenomenon. Attempts have been made by looking at celebrity as a commercial commodity relating to intellectual property, an object of consumption and desire as part of a celebrity industry, a cultural text which can be read to understand ideological conditions and a cultural phenomenon constituting a new way of perceiving the self and society. Celebrity is a multifaceted concept, which can and has been approached from a variety of angles each shedding more light upon this cultural phenomenon.