Reading 'Stars'

By Richard Dyer

• Stars only have ideological power rather than being able to actually do anything
• Despite being elite they don't excite envy as there is the belief that anyone can become one
• Demand for stars is constant as opposed to demand for genres or even stories
• Carl Laemmle in the St Louis Post Despatch
• Already stars in vaudeville - people expected from entertainment
• Stars are images of media texts and therefore products of the film industry

Economics wise...

• They are a form of capital possesed by studios and help Hollywood studio's monopoly as they are usually in major studio's films etc
• Act as a guarantee of investment
• Cost a lot so must be handled carefully
• Used to sell films
• Used to organize the market
• Protect from story or acting
• Problematic neccessity but are not necessary or sufficient for a film's success
• Help create a standardised product similar to any other business
• Aesthetic importance - centre of film, star image

Development of the star system broke the MPPC's hold on the film industry, but they have also saved film companies/battled with introduction of TV.

But they do not guarantee a successful film. The public's opinion and interest in them shifts.

Manipulation...

• Time, money and energy spent building up images
• Manipulation of advertising
• Perpetuation of star stereotype is important - publicist must fit role in
• Star is merchandise intended for mass consumption
• Pseudo-events - appear to be meaningful but aren't (Daniel Boorstein)
• Culture merely reproduces the status quo whereas previously it has pointed out an other
• Artists, rebels, whores etc were the precursors to stars, star characters act very differently as they serve as an affirmation rather than negation of the established order

But

• Not all stars make it eg Anna Sten
• There is content to star images other than appearance
• Humans have to deccode star images

Fashion...

• ultimate in manipulation due to its superficiality
• Stars fix a type of beauty
• Define norms of physical attractiveness
• Change in physical style indicates social change
• See Mary Ellen Roach and Joanne Bubolz Eicher

The Film Medium...

• Inherent to it that makes stars? eg CUs, more intimate medium, captures uniqueness
• Theatre star process intensified
• Did the CU lead to the 'discovery of the human face?' Bela Balazs
• But how we read facial expressions is dependent on editing, lighting higlighting features, iconography/artistic, cultural
• Stars go beyond a particular character or play - performer more important than role
• Not inherent to film but inherent to cinematic institutions
• Have hero figures that save the world been replaced by those that just enjoy the fruits of the world? 'The Triumph of Mass Idols'
• Aesthetic of realism - foregrounds their personality

Talent?

• Ideally have Photogenic and striking looks, acting ability, presence on camera, charm, personality, sex-appeal, attractive voice and bearing
• Skill at being a certain sort of person or image

Phenomenon of consumption?

• Empahsis on filmmakers who cause stars to exist
• Star/audience relationships not based on sexual attraction as fave star is often same gender as you - homosexuality as taboo but cinema provides way of expression
• Emotional affinity and self-identification lead to imitation
• Imitation turns to projection when it becomes more than mimicking appearance and behaviours like hair and kissing - use star as a way of dealing with reality
• Audience's role in shaping star phenomon is limited

Characters (in the novelistic form):

1. particularity - uniqueness
2. interest - acknowledgement of individuality, characteristics as good in themselves, plurality of beliefs and values
3. autonomy - no longer just representations of ideas, must appear to be more than just part of plot, unaware of characters's construction
4. roundness - mulitplicity of traits
5. development - should change
6. interiority
7. motivation
8. discrete identity
9. consistency

• Must be unique but empathizable
• bourgeois concept of character condemns collectivity and typical people and is deeply concerned with individual interior motivation
• fiction legitimizes emotions and aspirations, transmits norms
• individual masking ideological conception of character
• Star images are often types
• both normative in respect to social types and individualated
• Stars usually have proper names rather than emblematic ones
•  notion of 'manipulation' tends to undercut the autonomy of the star
• Star images do not have to change unlike novelistic characters - change can sometimes end in box-office failure though some do change or deepen but must have some consistency
• sameness becomes the overriding feauture
• because stars are always in different films playing different characters the star must stay the same
• stars ambition and success are shown to be rooted in their psychology but they are also shown as passive consumers
• stars are supremely figures of identification which is acheived in relation to social types
• 
  

Extras!

• Film has become more focused on character instead of plot - plot often illuminates elements of characters
• tomboys - ok to want to be superior sex but not the other way round
• men as history women as ahistoric and eternal
• secondary charecters tend to be types