First Comes Love Power Couples, Celebrity Kinship and Cultural Politics

With the prominence of one-name couples (Brangelina, Kimye) and famous families (the Smiths, the Beckhams), it is becoming increasingly clear that celebrity is no longer an individual pursuit-if it ever was. Accordingly, First Comes Love explores celebrity kinship and the phenomenon of the power couple: those relationships where two stars come together and where their individual identities as celebrities become inseparable from their status as a famous twosome.

Taken together, the chapters in this volume interrogate the ways these alliances are bound up in wider cultural debates about marriage, love, intimacy, family, parenthood, sexuality, and gender, in their particular historical contexts, from the 1920s to the present day. Interdisciplinary in scope, First Comes Love seeks to establish how celebrity relationships play particular roles in dramatizing, disrupting, and reconciling often-contradictory ideas about coupledom and kinship formations.

Shelley Cobb is Lecturer in English and Film at the University of Southampton, UK. Her research interests center on women and post-feminist media culture. She has published on women filmmakers, celebrity culture, and film adaptation. Her monograph Women, Adaptation and Post-feminist Filmmaking will be published in 2014.

Neil Ewen is a Lecturer in the School of Creative Arts, Film and Media at the University of Portsmouth, UK. His research concerns aspects of globalization, national identity, nostalgia, and celebrity, particularly in relation to sports. His most recent article appeared in the Sport in History special edition, 'Britain, Britons and the Olympic Games'.

Introduction: The Cultural Politics of Celebrity Relationships
Shelley Cobb (University of Southampton, UK) & Neil Ewen (University of Portsmouth, UK)

I. Historical Couples
1. ‘The Champion Lovemakers of Two Nations’: Greta Garbo and John Gilbert as ‘Gilbo’
Michael Williams (Southampton, UK)

2. “Sturdy Companionship”: Carole Lombard and Clark Gable
Michael Hammond (University of Southampton, UK)

3. Careless People: The Invention of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald
Sarah Churchwell (University of East Anglia, UK)

II. Textual Production
4. Coupled Cupidity: the Incest Narrative and “The O’Neals”
Maria Pramaggiore (North Carolina State University, USA)

5. The Return of Liz and Dick
Suzanne Leonard (Simmonds College, USA)

6. Mr and Mrs Jane Fonda: Aging stardom and celebrity-by-marriage.
Linda Ruth Williams (University of Southampton, UK)

III. Political Couples
7. The Glocalization of the Political Celebrity Couple: Kim Jong Un and the
Politics of Reform
David Zeglen (NTNU Trondheim, Norway)

8. Diana’s Rings: Fetishizing the Royal Couple
Margaret Schwartz (Fordham University, NY, USA)

9. Commissioned chapter on Female Politicians and their husbands
Anthea Taylor (University of Queensland, Australia) - TBC

IV. Identity Politics
10. In a Galaxy Far Away: The Beckhams as a Global Family.
Neil Ewen (Portsmouth, UK)

11. The Smith Brand: Keeping it in the Family
Julie Lobalzo Wright (Kings College London, UK)

12. Ellen and Portia’s Postfeminist Wedding: Celebrity Couples and the Politics of Gay Marriage.
Shelley Cobb (Southampton, UK)

13. Commissioned chapter on Bollywood/Asian Celebrity Couple
Author TBC

V. Celebrity Industries
14. Commissioned chapter on agents/managers who work for celebrity couples (e.g. Simon Fuller)
Author TBC

15. The Perfect (Pornographic) Marriage?: Audrey Hollander and Otto Bauer
Beccy Collings (University of East Anglia, UK)

16. The Making, Unmaking and Re-Making of Robsten
Diane Negra (University College Dublin, Ireland)

Index