Spiritual Stars: Religion and Celebrity in the Career of Spiritualist Mediums
Simone Natale, University of Cologne, Germany
simone.natale@uni-koeln.de
Scholars in celebrity studies have posited a similarity between cinematic stardom and the formation of religious and magical beliefs about the powers of spiritual leaders. Steve Nolan, for instance, claimed that both film and liturgy invite their constituent subjects to identify with one another: as audiences tend to build a relationship of identification with the main character of a film, Christian believers might identify with the priest .1
Following this line of thinking, I aim to show how celebrity studies can be used in studies of religion and its history to interpret and understand the role played by spiritual leaders, providing useful insights into both celebrity theory and to the history of spiritualism. I focus here on the case study of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century spiritualist mediums. In so doing, I hope such an analysis will not only contribute to a more broadly historicised approach in celebrity studies (Morgan 2011), but also elucidate how a religious movement such as spiritualism was inserted into the rising nineteenth-century consumer culture.
From its origins, spiritualism was a highly personalised field: this is evident, for instance, in the fact that a large part of the public discourse on spiritualism focused on the role played by spirit mediums, and that their biographies were one of the most successful genre of spiritualist literature.2 It is sufficient to open one of the most widely read
a gallery of eminent personalities – most of whom were spirit mediums.3 Frequently, it
was the appeal exercised on the popular press by famous mediums that allowed
spiritualism to ‘break the news’, acquiring the attention of a public that went beyond the boundaries of believers in spiritualism. Just as the so called ‘star system’ contributed to the international rise of the film industry, celebrity mediums contributed to the cohesion of spiritualist communities by spreading the fame of the movement and furnishing a shared ground of recognised personalities.
It is not my intention to propose a rigid comparison between mediums and cinematic or theatrical stars. A structural difference between show-business stardom and the forms of celebrity to be found within the spiritualist movements certainly exists. After all, mediums never fully acknowledged the performative character of their séances. Nonetheless, employing ideas from celebrity studies might ultimately help to understand the dynamics between nineteenth-century spiritualism and the rising realm of modern show business. Although mediums were neither ordinary actors nor cinematic stars, some of them certainly used, consciously or not, strategies that are similar to those which accompanied the rise of the many celebrities of film and the theatrical stage, and
‘celebrity’ mediums were to a large extent accountable for the popularity of spiritualism in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
As I have argued elsewhere , spiritualist mediums in the nineteenth and early twentieth century had much in common with professional performers. Their séances were often presented on the stage, in theaters and public halls, before a paying audience. Like performers in the show trade, they hired managers, toured countries, and advertised in the
press. Their séances mingled entertainment with religious beliefs, and frequently offered some spectacular manifestations of spirit presence.
Beside the performative character of spiritualist séances, other aspects of
mediumship have much in common with celebrity culture. As widely known, the public image of film stars and theatrical celebrities is often built upon a combination of their private lives and their fictional character(s) or, in other words, of the spectacular with the everyday . Often, the depiction of famous mediums followed a similar pattern, with the medium being described as a combination of his/her trance performance at the séance table and her everyday identity: two faces of the same person that are clearly separated yet mutually enforced. The comparison between mediums and celebrity is suggested also by the fact that mediumship was considered a profession. Mediums usually charged a fee from those attending their séances, or relied on patronage. Furthermore, spiritualist mediums were often supported by assistants, whose function was similar to the role played by agents or managers in show business .
Take, for instance, the example of the Neapolitan Eusapia Palladino, who was between the 1890s and the early 1910s arguably the most famous medium in the Western world. Born in Southern Italy, she garnered acclaim by spiritualist circles in Europe and the United States, and sat at the séance table with prominent personalities of her time, including Pierre and Marie Curie and the Harvard psychologist and film theory pioneer Hugo Münsterberg.4 Much in Eusapia’s story calls for a consideration of celebrity theory
as a useful tool to interpret her career. Firstly, like a theatrical celebrity, Eusapia toured many European countries and the United States. Secondly, she was always assisted by managers and agents, the most important of them being Ercole Chiaia, who promoted her
mediumship through contacts and interviews with journalists of the popular press.5
Thirdly, descriptions of her astounding performances on the séance tables coupled with details about Eusapia’s life and personality were used to reinforce her credibility as a medium. In particular, her sensitive temperament was often posited as an evidence of her superior sensitivity, which was the basis of her mediumistic powers; moreover, her modest origins and poor culture were highlighted to claim that she was too naïve to be a trickster. The extraordinary medium and the emotional Italian peasant were two faces of the same person, which mutually conspired to build her public image. Fourthly, Eusapia practiced mediumship as a profession, and her séance performances were rewarded with money and other goods. Eusapia was usually paid a quite generous fee: during her American tour in 1909, for instance, the New York Times reported that her honorary was US$250-300.6
In conclusion, was Eusapia Palladino a celebrity? Yes, if we rely on this definition given by Morgan: ‘the celebrity is a known individual who has become a marketable commodity. The point at which a public person becomes a celebrity is the point at which a sufficiently large audience is interested in their actions, image and personality to create a viable market for commodities carrying their likeness and for information about their lives and views’ . And yet, pointing to the case of spiritualist mediums such as Eusapia Palladino makes evident another important element to be considered by scholars in celebrity studies: spiritualist mediums pertain to the kind of celebrities who do not openly acknowledge their status, at least not in relation to the market. Performativity, celebrity strategies, the use of managers and agents were, to spiritualists, extremely problematic issues, since they were immediately related to the
doubts about the good faith of the medium.7 In this sense, celebrity mediums were
marketed commodities who struggled to demonstrate that they did not pertain to the market. Paradoxically, their denial of the market, given as a testimony of their honesty, was also one of the foundations of their success as mediums and of their celebrity status. Similarly to a pilgrimage site where everything is marketed but at the same time this commercial approach is never openly acknowledged , the medium needed to deny the market, in order to become the market’s hero.
Works cited
Alvarado, C. S., 2011. Eusapia Palladino: An Autobiographical Essay. Journal of
Scientific Exploration, 25 (1), 77–101.
Anon, 1909. Paladino Tells about Her Stunts. The New York Times, 13 November, p. 3. Chidester, D., 2005. Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture, Berkeley,
Calif.: University of California Press.
Doyle, A. C., 1926. The History of Spiritualism, London: Cassell. Dyer, R., 1998. Stars, London: British Film Institute.
Kaufman, S. K., 2005. Consuming visions: Mass culture and the Lourdes shrine, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Morgan, S., 2011. Celebrity: Academic 'Pseudo-Event' or a Useful Concept for Historians? Cultural and Social History, 8 (1), 95-114.
Natale, S., 2010. Spiritualism Exposed: Scepticism, Credulity and Spectatorship in End-of-the-Century America. European Journal of American Culture, 29 (2), 131-144. Natale, S., 2011. The medium on the stage: Trance and performance in
nineteenth-century spiritualism. Early Popular Visual Culture, 9 (3), 239-255
Nolan, S., 2009. Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion: A Psychoanalytic Approach to
Religious Film Analysis, London: Continuum.
Richet, C., 1922. Traité de métapsychique, Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan.
Rojek, C., 2006. Celebrity and Religion. In: Marshall, P. D. (ed.) The Celebrity Culture
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Turner, G., Bonner, F. & Marshall, P. D., 2006. Producing Celebrity. In: Marshall, P. D. (ed.) The celebrity culture reader. New York: Routledge, 771-798.
1 On religion and stardom, see, also, Chidester , Rojek .
2 Celebrity mediums often published autobiographies. See, among others: Home (1864), Morse (1877), Palladino
(1910).
3 Take, for instance, .
4 On Münsterberg’s dramatic encounter with Palladino, see Natale . 5 For an instance of press reports on Palladino, see Alvarado .
6 Approximately US$6,100-7,300 in 2011 prices (www.westegg.com). Her manager was reportedly ‘trying to arrange
an American premier for the Italian woman where seats will be US$200 each’ .
