Cultivo de Orina

As this chapter demonstrates the newspaper reporting of celebrities is on success but also on failure, when contempt for the excesses of celebrities is manifest especially in relation to those who have succeeded in achieving ‘empty’ fame, have no proper ‘occupation’ and no discernible talent. These celebrities are the prime target of tabloid and fan attack. In autumn 2009 the previously successful Jordan experienced a serious setback to her image and career and possibly for the first time since her glamour model days, experienced the audience’s contempt for her, as Andre’s fans organised into ‘Team Pete’ and let their hatred for Jordan be heard via Internet blogs and social networking sites. The press played Jordan and Andre against each other, but Andre was winning the battle. With Jordan’s reputation at a low ebb after a summer of what was represented as hedonistic partying and public mudslinging against Andre, Jordan did not seem to mourn her divorce but had immediately started dating a new man, the controversial Alex Reid, who was often described as a ‘cross-dressing cage fighter.’ However, realising that she needed to repair her damaged image, Jordan (or her PR team) made a decision to return to the Australian jungle and join the new series of I’m a Celebrity…Get me Out of Here!.

Her autobiography explains that Jordan’s reason for entering the series was to achieve

‘closure on my marriage’ (Price, 2010: 232):

When it was revealed that I was going back into the jungle there were some people who said that I was only doing it in order to win back the popularity that I worried I’d lost since the marriage break-up […] but that really wasn’t the reason why I signed break-up for it.

However, I did want people to know that I was a completely different woman from the heartless bitch the press had portrayed me as over the past six months (Price, 2010: 235).

But the press and the public saw it as an opportunity to punish ‘the most hated woman in Britain’. The mission of redemption and to show Jordan as ‘authentic’ and ‘genuine’ was interpreted as simply manipulative and false. The Sunday Mirror wrote: ‘Watching “the Pricey” is like gawping at a car crash. You don’t feel good about it, but you just can’t stop yourself’ (O’Sullivan 2009: 25). The public repeatedly voted Jordan to undertake

‘bushtucker trials’ – tasks to earn food for the camp of celebrities. These often involved large numbers of insects, rats and reptiles. As Carroll puts it, ‘primetime reality TV is the perfect platform for a public beating’ (2009a: 21). The viewers seemed to be punishing

Jordan by nominating her to do every single ‘bushtucker trial,’ eventually causing her to leave the programme after only a week. The vengefulness of the viewing public caused a debate in the press about the cruelty of contemporary reality TV and about audience bullying of disliked stars. The Sunday Independent claimed:

Ant and Dec’s theatre of cruelty offers the chance to decide who has to eat a kangaroo’s anus and then delight as they fall apart under the strain. […] It was evident from the start that Jordan wasn’t to be given a chance. Her only role in this circus was to be kicked around for our entertainment. […] More credit to Katie Price then, for refusing to go along with it any longer. What has Jordan done, after all, to deserve this kind of bullying? Because that’s what it was (O’Hanlon¹⁰ 2009).

Jordan was an easy target for a hate campaign. When she entered I’m a Celebrity…Get me out of Here! for the first time, Jordan was a despised glamour model but she became admired by many through her relationship, marriage and family life with Peter Andre. After the break-up her reputation was ruined by what seemed to be her reverting back to her glamour model ways. Her redemption bid on I’m a Celebrity…Get me out of Here! failed to convince the public of her ‘authentic’ sincerity. Instead it was seen as a cynical attempt to repair the wholesome ‘Katie Price’ image.

The appeal of celebrities relies on mystery and revelation. If there is nothing more to reveal, celebrities may find that people lose interest and their fame fades. Jordan exemplifies the cycle of success and failure, and how this is often tied to personal life. The issue of manufacture and the search for the ‘authentic’ dominate celebrity culture. As this chapter has shown, celebrities often need to engage in constant revelations to stay in the limelight.

However, this can work against them as no one can fully control their image. This chapter has revealed how autobiographies are used as a counter-narrative to media revelations. The Jordan and Andre divorce became a game and a popularity contest, and as a result, Jordan became so overexposed that by the time she entered the jungle the public showed signs of tiring of her constant revelations. This exemplifies the fact that too much exposure can prove a hindrance to the celebrity’s success. The next chapter will show that more reclusive celebrities can keep the audience’s interest by staying out of the limelight. If a celebrity is not constantly in the media, revelations come to have more value.

As we have seen, Jordan dealt in public with a private matter and although this had served her well previously, being in many ways the core component of her celebrity persona, this

10 http://www.independent.ie/…/mean-girls-replayed-as-reality-tv-in-the-jungle-1951888.html

time it backfired. It seems to be the famous for being famous celebrities like Jordan that have become an occasional target for public contempt. According to You Only Live Once, Jordan acknowledges her failure and blames it on the media: ‘I felt as if I was being bullied:

that I had been bullied for the last year. It was like a mental torture where every single thing was ripped apart, where nothing but lies was written about me, where I was constantly made out to be a bad person. I didn’t know how much more I could take’ (Price, 2010: 290).

At the end of year 2010, the seemingly untouchable Jordan had finally tired of the relentless scrutiny. She no longer seemed to enjoy the limelight. She implies in You Only Live Once that she has made a decision to partly retreat from the media: ‘I had come to the decision that I was going to cut back on the interviews I did in the future. I was sick of the gossipy slanging matches I had got involved with in the past. […] I’d had such negative press, seen so many lies written about me, that now I’d had enough of it’ (Price, 2010: 265). Jordan’s ordeal also revealed that even the most successful celebrities will, at some point, be exposed to the downsides of fame – occasional failures are inevitable in a fast-moving celebrity culture.