Stardom, celebrity and the para-confession

In this paper I situate the television talkshow in the historical context of the religious ritual of confession, tracing its vernacular developments in the mass media. Foucault's work has been cited in support of the pervasiveness of a therapeutic culture on television. Although agreeing with this general point, I argue that television's recasting of the confessional process has generated demotic and celebrity formats of self-disclosure. The celebrity talkshow, unlike its demotic variant, is a controlled process of revelation that I term the “para-confession” – a commercial rendition of repentance designed to display the star or celebrity's persona from a position of persuasive authority. The paper concludes with a brief analysis of the Tom Cruise–Oprah Winfrey May 2005 interview and subsequent revelations. Cruise's performances of self-disclosure reveal the para-confession in crisis, exposing the taken-for-granted pragmatics of the media confessional.