Dr. Andrew Connolly will speak at the upcoming Diversions event on March 1st at 12 pm, in Buchanan Tower 241. His talk is titled “Queen of the New Age: How Booksellers, Publishers, and Journalists Used Shirley MacLaine to Rebrand the Occult”.
This event is hybrid: if you are unable to join us in-person, please register here for Zoom access.
“Queen of the New Age: How Booksellers, Publishers, and Journalists Used Shirley MacLaine to Rebrand the Occult”
In December 1987, Time magazine ran a story on the popularity of “New Age” spirituality and religion. There was little surprise regarding who the magazine chose of as the face of the “New Age” for their cover: Shirley MacLaine. The actress and activist had undergone a very public spiritual epiphany that she chronicled in her 1983 memoir, Out on a Limb, which adapted for a TV miniseries in 1987. She had become so synonymous with the New Age” that journalists began to refer to her as the “Queen of the New Age.” Not everyone was happy with this development. Many practitioners felt that MacLaine trivialized their “serious” spiritual pursuits, and that led to negative coverage in popular news media. While some scholars mention, in passing, the influence of publishers and booksellers on the news media coverage of the “New Age,” they have not fully examined that influence. This paper argues that publishers and booksellers defined “New Age” by linking the label to MacLaine, and that the media coverage of the sale of “New Age” books is what established that definition as the dominant one for a broader public in the United States. In so doing, this paper reveals the power that publishers and booksellers had to direct public discourse, especially on religion and spirituality.
