If American mass media is an ecosystem, we cast the press as predators, and the celebrity as their prey. We envision the reporters grouped in a posse, arranged for an ambush. Camera flashes crack as they capture their quarry. By now, these perceptions have become truisms that obscure our own role as consumers in a matrix of violence, spectatorship, and stardom. If we condemn the paparazzi for their alleged violence, we also continue to revise and revisit their heyday in the age of print media. This seminar seeks papers that explore how violent desire—of the spectator, the press, the star – shaped the profusion of tabloid and true crime print culture across the Americas. 

For example, what do we do with the “sexual deviants” of Brazil and Argentina, who named themselves after American movie goddesses? For instance: Lana, for Lana Turner. Marilyn, for Marilyn Monroe. Madam Satan, after the 1930 DeMille film of the same name. Meanwhile, in the American press, papers rapturously trace how the “real” Lana Turner finds herself involved in a murder: her daughter, Cheryl Crane, kills Lana’s abusive mobster boyfriend. Now Cheryl is held in custody, just like the “Lana Turner” of the case files. Cheryl will later reveal that she is in fact a lesbian. What is the distance between fame and infamy? Between “Lana Turner” and Lana Turner? Cheryl Crane and the “sexual deviants” who also look to her mother for style and glamour?  

 “American” celebrity, understood in its broadest sense, is unique. We made it unique. How can we, as readers, consumers, and archivists, reckon with our own dark appetites? And how can criminals, deviants, and outcasts also become celebrities thrust centerstage by the desires of an audience hungry for sensation? 

For any questions, please contact Jesse Rothbard ([email protected]).