In this article, we define the notion of ‘celebrity news’, emphasizing the fact that the portrayal of film stars embodies the imitable and the inimitable and, consequently, points towards values. In that context, we discuss the results of a thematic content analysis of a wide corpus of the daily and weekly European, French-speaking printed media to reveal which values are highlighted in celebrity news; we also compare these results with the contemporary values which emerge from recent European and global surveys of values. We then compare the various types of printed media. Finally, we focus on a specific aspect emerging from the main content analysis: the ‘meltdown’ or ‘fall from grace’, which records the decline of a star figure. Such narratives are good examples of syncretism in values, in which very contradictory attributes in celebrities are made to coexist, yet in which the subversive aspect of such a confrontation is passed over. We conclude by showing that the widespread negotiation of different values perceptible in reporting on celebrity figures is a sign of an era of change and re-evaluation, and therefore deserving of study.

This article examines the linkage between entrepreneurship and the making of popular culture in East Asia. The central argument presented here is that the notion of entrepreneurship is central for understanding and conceptualizing the process of constructing trans-national markets for popular culture and for building new circles of ‘Asian’ recognition. In other words, entrepreneurial vision is not only transforming the local cultural markets by underpinning a region-wide cultural production system but also un-intentionally spurring feelings of ‘Asian’ sameness. The study itself focuses on four cases of entrepreneurship which exemplify the driving forces and the intended and unintended consequences of entrepreneurship, and outlines the wider theoretical and methodological implications for this concept by defining the relations between structural determinism and human agency in popular culture.