The scrapbooking detective: Frederick Porter Wensley and the limits of ‘celebrity’ and ‘authority’ in inter-war Britain

Frederick Porter Wensley was one of Scotland Yard's ‘Big Four’ detectives, head of the Metropolitan Police Criminal Investigation Department and responsible for establishing the Flying Squad. On his retirement in 1929, he used the two bound scrapbooks of press clippings and photographs he had collated to document his personal life and career to inform his 1931 autobiography Detective Days and serialized press articles. Through examining the interaction of material between scrapbooks and autobiographical writings, this article explores how Wensley constructed his post-retirement persona as ‘celebrity detective’ from a canny understanding of what had made him a commercial subject for the press. It argues that Wensley recast his life to promote his own successes at the expense of a narrative of police unity, providing a vehicle for him to suggest further changes to the structure of the police force without official sanction. By juxtaposing this against tightening legislation on police communication with journalists during the inter-war period under the Official Secrets Acts, this article demonstrates how the ‘celebrity’ that Wensley sought to occupy was increasingly regarded as irreconcilable with police ability to effect ‘impartial’ regulation, anticipating the concerns raised by the 2012 Leveson Inquiry into the Culture, Practice and Ethics of the Press. The article thus charts a turning point in defining the relationship between police and press.     

Doctors offline,activists online: an analysis of Chinese celebrity physicians’ politically oriented social media activities

This study explores the social media activities of politically oriented Chinese celebrity physicians. The results of the semi-structured in-depth interviews indicated that the celebrity physicians were dissatisfied because the government treated them as the scapegoats of the failed health care reform. They thus turned to social media to challenge the dominant narratives about the public health system and repair their professional reputations. To achieve these goals, the celebrity physicians produced media content that challenged the dominant governmental discourse about the public health system, and they collaborated to correct conventional media narratives about the medical profession when crises occurred. The findings of this study indicate the formation of a new type of online civil activism that was initiated by a group of professionals and intellectuals.     

论齐鲁名人文化在山东经济文化建设中的作用

文章从六个方面系统论述齐鲁名人文化资源在山东建设经济文化强省工程中的作用.一、以齐鲁名人文化为主题,打造"文化名片",增强软实力;二、城乡规划建设和管理,要充分重视名人文化;三、旅游开发要充分挖掘整合名人文化资源,增强文化内涵,提升文化品位;四、市场经济建设,弘扬齐鲁名人文化的诚信精神;五、行政事业队伍建设,大力宣扬人本精神;六、"和谐社会"、"平安山东"建设,注重挖掘齐鲁文化名人的典型意义.     

The use of celebrity scandals and sensational news for identity negotiations: analyzing gossip among the queers within Taiwanese families

Since the late 1990s, Taiwanese celebrity scandals and sensational news stories have addressed how the families of gay children understand the latters' idiosyncratic sexual identity. Conducting studies on audience reception and searching for divergent readings were once useful means of understanding resistance and resilience among marginalized groups. This study of the interactive interpretive practices among viewers in a family further contextualizes the dialectical formation of queer1^1. In this study, I use the term queer to refer to the larger lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and questioning (LGBTQ) community in Taiwan. However, since the usage of gay and lesbian is more common than that of queer in Taiwanese everyday conversations, I use gay and lesbian when referring to the context of family conversations. Since the early 1990s, Tóng-zhì (vernacular for queer) has become the most common name for the younger generation in the LGBT community in the Greater Chinese area. According to Chou Wah-Shan (2000 Chou, W. (2000). Tongzhi: Politics of same-sex eroticism in Chinese societies. New York: Haworth Press. [Google Scholar], p. 2), Tóng-zhì was coined as a means of signifying “politics beyond the homo-hetero duality” and “integrating the sexual into the social”. Specifically, the social networks I am referring to here are the Taiwan Tong-Zhi Hotline Foundation and the Persons with HIV/AIDS Rights Advocacy Association. In the former Tong-Zhi Hotline, I worked as a volunteer and an advisor; in the latter, I am a member of the steering committee, and I serve on the advisory board. subjectivities in Taiwan, a society that emphasizes the performance of an appropriate self in social relations and maintaining family harmony. Over a three-year period of fieldwork in Taipei, this study employed ethnographic methods to interview 16 gay men and lesbians and their mothers in order to clarify how celebrity scandals and sensational news function as a site for identity negotiation within families with gay children. This study argues that vernacular interpretive practices within families produce resources of resistance, accommodation and even pleasure, which can be used to understand the nascent Taiwanese gay identity in relation to significant others.     

Not Ready to Make Nice: Aberrant mothers in contemporary culture

The story of motherhood in popular culture has never been a simple one. Cross-cut by race, class, and sexuality (and, importantly, marital status), interwoven with changing psychological and biological theories and fantasies, tied up with nation-building and citizenship claims, images of motherhood remain both template and signpost upon which we project our desires for kinship and care and our most vexed understandings of womanhood and femininity. This essay examines fictional motherhood in an era of real-life Octomoms and presidential candidates. We argue that a new type of mother has emerged—particularly on TV—that presents a radical departure. From the suburban mom/drug dealer of Showtime's outré series Weeds to the vapid 1960s wife of Mad Men, aberrant mothers abound in contemporary culture. But, unlike aberrant mothers of earlier eras, these mothers are by and large heroines, unapologetically non-normative in their maternal functioning. The parenting is cursory at best and often downright neglectful, behavior that has typically resulted in sure death for Hollywood mothers of earlier eras. We examine these images as a challenge to normative familialism and rigid gender ideologies.     

名人专题数据库建设的理论与实践探索——以沈从文专题数据库建设为例

名人数据库是一种以收集、整理、开发、利用具有公众效应的名人资料,并对名人资源进行重组、整合和分层次加工,实现多途径的检索和深层次地揭示名人文献的专题数据库。建设名人数据库应具备资源、数据、技术、网络和资金等方面的基础。名人专题数据库的组织结构应以人为主线,并充分发挥多媒体技术的性能,集图、文、声、像资料为一体,具体结构框架可由索引库、全文库、视频库、照片文献库、原始手稿库构成。     

明星代理广告法律责任的缺陷与完善分析

近年来明星代理虚假广告的事情屡有发生,明星代理广告因内容虚假而损害消费者权益。因此,应完善相关法律规定,改明星代理广告的连带责任为与广告经营者、发布者并列承担法律责任,提高惩罚的力度;同时,明确规定任何公民或组织都可以对执法机关提起渎职的公益性诉讼,是增强执法机关依法监管责任,减少或杜绝虚假广告的有效办法。     

学术性趣味性可读性完美融合的典范——读安藤更生吉川弘文馆本《鉴真和上》

吉川弘文馆本《鉴真和上》,是日本现代鉴真研究权威安藤更生博士生前撰写的最后一部鉴真传记。虽然写得比较通俗,但由于作者是在多年专题研究的基础上写成的,仍具有很高的学术价值。不仅如此,该传记在写法上还非常注重科学性、知识性、趣味性和可读性的完美融合,堪称名人传记的典范之作。同时也是一部研究鉴真和中日文化交流史的必读参考书。     

Not “Simply the Breast”

Two prominent media events involving breastfeeding celebrities prompted unprecedented transnational media attention to their bodies, their breastfeeding practices, and their beliefs about the act of breastfeeding. This study critically analyzes media representations of Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie that feature (or imply) a nursing celebrity breast to argue that discourses about celebrity breastfeeding are a semiotically potent phenomenon that destabilize boundaries of public and private, perpetuate normative beauty standards, and prescribe proper breastfeeding practices to audiences. The transnational celebrity of Jolie, Hayek, and others makes analyzing media discourses of their breastfeeding particularly necessary because they are prominent purveyors of femininity and have made activism about women's health a key aspect of their public personae.     

Developing a measure of celebrity reputation

This study was designed to develop a measure of celebrity reputation and attempt to identify key dimensions for evaluating diverse components of celebrity reputation, including personalities, relationship, appearance, expert abilities, private life management, and reputation. Using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, this study confirmed that the measure applied was both reliable and valid.