The Everyday Use of Celebrities

This chapter explores what celebrities may do for us when we are not especially aware of them, combining the work Dutch popular culture and everyday media use, using the prerogative of the long-term media researcher who aims to theorize from empirical material. The chapter first introduces and explores the place and meaning of the precelebrity media personality in everyday media use, and how this has changed, by comparing Mies Bouwman, the popular Dutch television media personality before the introduction of commercial television in 1989, to Linda de Mol and her fellow celebrity Marco Borsato. Then, it shows how Linda features prominently as a commentator on questions of national identity and multiculturalism in the Netherlands during the early 2000s, as expressed in the special "Dutch dream" issue of LINDA., a women's monthly glossy based on Linda's celebrity persona. Role models are not what celebrities are used for in everyday life.