Pamela An­der­son and Anna Nicole Smith, Brit­ney Spears and Whit­ney Hous­ton, Janet Jack­son and Amy Wine­house: a number of celebri­ties are cur­rently re­turn­ing to public in­ter­est, and more im­por­tantly, to public ad­mi­ra­tion. Since about the mid-2010s, a con­sid­er­able number of films, pod­casts, and lim­ited series have been de­pict­ing the re­demp­tion arcs of for­merly ma­ligned stars, using doc­u­men­tary to set the record straight. This dis­ser­ta­tion pro­jects aims to in­ves­ti­gate an emerg­ing corpus of work through the con­cept of the re­demp­tion doc­u­men­tary. Re­demp­tion doc­u­men­taries, I argue, are multi-modal con­struc­tions of celebrity image; gen­er­a­tive me­di­a­tions of truth, fame, power, and moral­ity that appear at a spe­cific moment in time and try to re­in­state or strengthen a star’s public value. Within this frame­work, I am es­pe­cially in­ter­ested in the way re­demp­tion op­er­ates in ac­cor­dance with dif­fer­ent di­men­sions of class, race, and gender. How do moral ab­so­lu­tion and mar­ketable po­lit­i­cal sen­si­bil­ity in­ter­act in what has been called a post-#MeToo moment, nav­i­gat­ing com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion and af­fec­tive recla­ma­tion? How are these doc­u­men­taries watched, lis­tened to, con­sumed, and (re)pro­duced? And what does it mean to fall from grace, and to be re­deemed, in the first place?

Marie Malina is a PhD can­di­date within the grad­u­ate re­search pro­gram “Con­fig­u­ra­tions of Film” at Goethe Uni­ver­sity, Frank­furt. She com­pleted her bach­e­lor’s degree in lit­er­a­ture, art, and media stud­ies at the Uni­ver­sity of Con­stance, as well as her master’s degree in the­ater, film, and media stud­ies at Goethe Uni­ver­sity, Frank­furt. Next to her re­search, she has been work­ing as an editor and trans­la­tor. Her re­search in­ter­ests in­clude dig­i­tal media, fem­i­nist and queer theory, fan stud­ies and doc­u­men­tary stud­ies.

malina[at]em.​uni-​frankfurt.​de