School of English, Journalism and European Languages

Free Public Lecture

Murray Pomerance presents:

Deep Depp: Travails of Celebrity in a Global Era

Image © Jade Crawford-Lehman. Used with permission of the artist.

Friday, September 30 3-4pm
Centenary Lecture Theatre 118 (Entrance off Grosvenor Crescent)

Johnny Depp is considered as a paradigm of celebrity in the context of a history of movie stars and the Hollywood studio production process.  A theory of “amplification” is introduced to help account for the dual career he is maintaining, that in which he consistently gives penetrating but relatively esoteric performances for what are called “localized” audiences, and that in which he is widely accessible across the globe to audiences in which members share almost no characteristics whatever.  Depp is regarded as the only movie star who is both “amplified” and “unamplified,” in two parallel and intriguing presentations of self.

Murray Pomerance is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Director of the Media Studies Working Group at Ryerson University in Toronto. He has written extensively on cinema, and is the author of several books including Johnny Depp Starts Here (Rutgers, 2005), The Horse Who Drank The Sky: Film Experience Beyond Narrative and Theory (Rutgers, 2008) and, most recently, Michelangelo Red Antonioni Blue: Eight Reflections on Cinema (California, 2011).

Light refreshments will be provided after the lecture

RSVP: Wednesday 28 September
Phone (03) 6226 2347 or email sejel.admin@utas.edu.au  

For more information, please contact the School of English, Journalism and European Languages on 6226 2347 or at sejel.admin@utas.edu.au