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On the Stage and On the Page: A Reflection of Celebrity Culture in the Yellow Book

Caitlyn Ng Man Chuen

Ryerson University

The Celebrity in Society

Picture
Jane Avril, another 1890s celebrity, 1893
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
During the 1890s, there were many female performers, like Yvette Guilbert, that frequented the music hall. However, not all of these female performers grew to have presences beyond the stage. Actually, the vast majority of female music hall performers would not grow to attain celebrity status as Guilbert did. A major contributor to making a female performer into a celebrity was the media of the time (Pendley-Hindson 110). Things such as articles, images, and interviews of and about the performer were prevalent in newspapers and magazines (Hindson 126). All of this press coverage worked to make the performer relevant in the cultural landscape. Perhaps, the inclusion of Makower’s text is an example of this essential pop culture propaganda. This is not to suggest that a publication such as the Yellow Book would sell its pages for publicity, but rather that in a time when publications and the cultural landscape was saturated with images of these celebrities and so perhaps Makower’s text mirrors that cultural landscape. This would reveal the extent to which the influence and image of the celebrity would reach, as a text which was assumed to be a sort of counterculture product would feature someone that is the product of the masses. This would also perhaps relate to Sickert’s “The Old Oxford Music Hall” as images of celebrities, the people who would perform in music halls, were even more common than texts.
Visual memorabilia, such as postcards, figures, and posters, existed to cement the celebrity’s image in the public mindset. Perhaps the most common of all these pieces of visual memorabilia was the entertainment lithograph, which was essentially a poster that advertised a celebrity, sometimes when she was making a stage performance, but not always. Capitalism had given rise to a boom in the advertising industry and lithographs ubiquitously covered all public surfaces. While perhaps these lithographs were not images of the music hall or other similar points of interest that Sickert painted, the music hall remained in the public consciousness because of these celebrity lithographs. Rather than reflecting the highbrow, avant garde or bohemian culture of fin de siècle England, as current readers and studiers of the Yellow Book may assume, perhaps the publication rather reflects the culture of the general public as it surely reflects the general public’s consciousness and preoccupation with the female celebrities of the time.
Picture
A publicity poster from the 1890s
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec