108 SURYANSU GUHA
was premised on a willingness to believe, by which it is meant that there is a certain
presupposition that the act did take place ‒ which is not the same as belief. It is, on
the contrary, a suspension of disbelief, a presupposition utilised to encourage a
reflexive circulation of discourse. The two final sections of the essay will elaborate
further on the reasons for this willingness to believe.
Stardom and the Question of Psychological Access
Alberoni, discusses how stardom operates through the underlying and recessive forms
of subliminal envy and mass aggression. These aggressive components are controlled
by a kind of psychological accessibility to the star: “[t]he absence of direct interaction
is often felt by the public as a limitation, a hindrance to full and entire knowledge of
the stars. But this last aspiration, if it were satisfied would lead to a moral critique and
the freeing of components of aggression and envy which exist all the time but
controlled” (Alberoni 2007: 72). Alberoni talks mainly about physical proximity, but
this limitation can also be psychological. The visual and candid picture of an
otherwise inaccessible luminary of the political world putting his private parts inside
a dead pig’s open mouth causes a collapse in the distance between more than the
representation and the person. Not that this suggests that David Cameron indulges in
this debauchery, rather what is suggestive in the word ‘person’ is who the political
star in private life is and his occasional non-normative modes of being. The distance
between the eminent and those who have conferred upon him this social status
collapsed, ensuring the celebrity becomes susceptible to moralizing judgment. The
public gained a psychological accessibility that limits his sanctity as a celebrity, and
thereby released their aggression, envy and moral reproach. This signifies a
momentary loss of stardom ‒a moment of pure shock.
Ehrat (2011: 15) calls the two sides of the relation between the actors of a scandal and
the addressee of the scandalous discourse the “powerholder” (those who can do) and
the “powerless” (those who can judge what was done). A way of interpreting the
tweets and newspaper articles springing from the original act of disclosure is to see
them as attempts on the part of the author or tweeter to be a part of the spectacle: to