He scores in the only poll that matters Photo: Reuters
HOW fleeting is fame. In Madame Tussaud?s, London, there?s a room devoted to the museum?s history. A sign on the wall explains the value of waxworks in the 19th century: ?Imagine not knowing what the Queen or Kylie looked like! Before photography -- Tussaud?s models were a highly prized visual resource.?
Clearly the sign was erected at a time when Minogue the Elder was such a household word that she needed no surname. That would have been ten years ago. Nowadays Kylie does not even appear among the exhibits (although there is a tiny picture of her in the outdated guidebook you can buy for five pounds, in addition to the 27 pounds admission fee).
I?d been searching for Kylie ? or indeed any Australian -- from the moment I walked out of the lift to a voice declaring ?Welcome to the red carpet of the A-list party? and joined a thousand tourists shuffling through the historic halls and posing for snaps with any figures they could identify. In the end the only Australian representation proved to be Hugh Jackman as Wolverine and a forlorn Nicole Kidman.
Only the real version remains Photo: AFP
Australia shares 70 per cent of its popular culture with Britain and north America, and since one of this column?s recurring themes is celebrity, I thought it would be instructive to examine the institution that has defined celebrity for more than 200 years. The Tussaud bosses need to know who is hot and who is not, because the survival of a potentially anachronistic artform depends on their ability to display individuals with whom customers of all nations will pay to share glory. Presumably Kylie is no longer a drawcard. It won?t be long before Nicole joins her in the melting pot.
Marie Tussaud arrived in London in 1802 with a number of death masks of aristocrats who lost their heads in the French revolution. When she set up her permanent exhibition in Baker Street, she added sculptures of the most notorious criminals of the day, and was able to charge an extra sixpence for entry to what came to be called the Chamber of Horrors.
After her death in 1850, her descendants added a few politicians to the rogues? gallery. In the 20th century, movie actors appeared -- of whom the most enduring has been Marilyn Monroe -- then singers, TV performers, and sporting heroes. Now the displays change on an almost monthly basis to keep up with election results, music sales, ratings charts, and box office returns.���
I lingered for the best part of a morning to calculate which waxworks work best. Here are the results of the Tussaud Poll for July, 2011.
Most popular figures to stand next to in photos: 1 Justin Bieber; 2 Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow; 3 Edward Pattinson; 4 Brangelina (Pitt and Jolie are inseparable); 5 Michael Jackson; 6 Marilyn Monroe; 7 Prince William; 8 Barack Obama; 9 George Clooney; 10 Nelson Mandela.
Least popular: 1 Alfred Hitchcock; 2 James Dean; 3 Patrick Stewart; 4 Camilla Parker-Bowles; 5 Nicole Kidman (until I took pity on her and volunteered myself).
And after all that, my favourite exhibit was not a person but the original guillotine blade that beheaded Marie Antoinette in 1793 (surprisingly small and dainty). It would have been different if they?d kept Kylie.
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You have just read The Tribal Mind column, by David Dale. It appears in printed form every Saturday in The Sydney Morning Herald, and also as a blog on this website, where it welcomes your comments.
David Dale teaches communications at UTS, Sydney. He is the author of Soffritto -- A return to Italy (Allen and Unwin). For daily updates on Australian attitudes, bookmark The Tribal Mind.
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