Stars and Star Theory

Stars & Star Theory

Helen Mirren wins leading actress award @ the Oscars 2007 

See also British Women Actors

Introduction 

As can be seen from the above image and the 'appreciation' web site linked beneath it the role and status of stardom is an essential part of developing and maintaining significant audiences for the film industry. But the creation of stars wasn't always a part of the film industry. In the early years of the industry it was technical feats, stunts etc forming a 'cinema of attractions' which were the successful ingredients of cinema.

Audiences soon began to tire of these though and more complex stories told in more exciting cinematic ways began to develop. At the same time genres and stars were also developed as ways of increasing the industries communications with their audiences, for audiences are fickle things and must be continuously seduced. By the time Hollywood developed a sophisticated studio system it had also developed a 'star system'. There was a hierarchy of stars and frequently they were associated with specific genres. John Wayne was usually associated with Westerns and then later on war films as well for example.  

Much of the writing on stars is hagiographical and sychophantic. This is of course all part of creating an aura of myth around those upon whom 'star' status has been conferred. It is a notion which has spread from primarily Hollywood stars into the whole culture of 'celebrity'. Scandal and gossip is all an essential part of creating the necessary 'spin' around stars and potential stars. In reality the whole business is very tightly managed with agents, promotions and public relations companies playing an important role in star discourse. You will never see an interview with someone of star or celebrity status on TV or hear one on the radio unless there is an upcoming, film, record thatrical production etc. In this sense all interviews with a star are nothing else but indirect advertising. The interviews by chat show hosts are undemanding with prearranged questions which usually border on sychophancy. There very rarely any critical or probing questioning. If there was any danger of that the agents & PR people wouldn't put the stars onto the shows!

A study of the construction of stars inevitably involves issues of audience and reception. With no audiences there are no 'stars' ! The webliography has several links to articles about audience and the relationship to stars.

Star as Capital Value

The French film industry was the first to recognise the method of using stars to generate audience interest. After the radical reduction in power of the French film industry due to World War 1 the star system really developed in Hollywood in 1919.

Mary Pickford became the first star. Charlie Chaplin soon followed. Not only could stars make money for the studios they could make big money as well provided they generated big profits for the studios. 

After the coming of sound there was a shift in the way that Male stars were represented whilst the position of female stars remained largely the same. Vamps / Virgins or Sex Goddesses. In this way they tended to function as objects of beauty and desire. By comparison male characters started to become more complex. They could not only be heroes but rebels or even anti-heroes.

Stars contributed to the successful growth of Hollywood and its increasingly dominant position over other countries. This meant that thet could export their stars into the exhibition system of other countries. It also meant that Hollywood could attract the most popular European stars by outbidding any opposition. Great Garbo is a good example from the silent era.

By the end of the 1950s the star system was weakened with the collapse of the Hollywood studio system after anti-monopoly regulation and the growth of TV caused a consolidation and restructuring of the industry. 

Stars were still being manufactured but there were far fewer of them. There was still fierce in country rivalry as Britain and Europe tried to create sex godesses such as Diana Dors, Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot to compete with Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. 

Sophia Loren "At Home"                             Sophia Loren front cover of Life 1960

The creation of celebrity through different parts of the media was a crucial part of gaining and maintaining star status. The scandal potential and events coming back to haunt you cross over into star as deviant (see below). This is a recent image from the National Enquirer. Was a certain young woman really the daughter of the famous film star Sophia Loren? (Does anybody really care?)

Stars have far more than a direct capital value. Their ability to attract audiences has the ability to attract money. Getting a popular leading and fashionable star lined up for a script considerably increases the chances of getting financial backing.

Films are both vehicles for stars but also genres become associated with particular stars. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were iconic for the musical which was an American genre.  

Star as Construct

We can understand stars as primarily constructed by the film industry, but stars are also agents in their own right and they play some part in creating the myths which float around them. Stars are also authenticated by other parts of the media but they also use these channels to help construct their chosen myths. If Marlene Dietrich was sexually charged we can see Catherine Denueve as an 'ice-maiden'.

A star is about putting on a face representing something that actually isn't there:

Yet we as spectators accept this construct as real. ( Hayward, S. 1996 p 340) 

Of course this is open to question and research. Exactly how much spectators do accept these constructions is exactly one of the realms of research which can be undertaken through qualitative research from sixth form projects on women and film to far higher academic levels. 

Christine Gledhill argues that stars reach their spectators primarily through their bodies in other words their appearance. Female stars have historically bemoaned the fact that there have been few serious roles for older and more mature women. On the whole the audience dislikes the audience to age:

Curiously, the process of aging matters when it is a woman star - it recalls our own age, ageing is too real - not the 'real' we want to see. (ibid) 

But is that necessarily the case? Certainly the Oscars of 2007 offer a challenge to this perception. Are things changing since Hayward first wrote this? The photograph of Helen Mirren gaining her Oscar for her leading role in Stephen Frears' The Queen, signifies possible change. Below is the list of nominees from the BBC website

Best actress
Penelope Cruz, Volver
Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal
Helen Mirren, The Queen
Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada
Kate Winslet, Little Children

Three out of the five are highly regarded as actors and are clearly in the 'mature woman' category. Does this finally mean that there is the recognition of an audience who are also more mature mentally ?

Dame Judi Dench                                               Dame Helen Mirren

Does this begin to break down the traditional delineation of the star as construct with three basic parameters which Gledhill identifies?

• Star as real person
• Star as 'reel' person (on-screen character)
• Star 'persona' (combination of the above two categories) 

For Richard Dyer the star image has four key components:

• What the industry releases promotionally
• What the various media critics say
• What the star says and does
• What the those who make up the audiences say and do. (Lookalikes etc at one extreme).  different audiences will probably make up different meanings to the point of reading the star 'against the grain'.

Stars can become intertextual as the image gets picked up and used by others in advertising for example.  A star can be seen as a constellation of meanings rather than any one single meaning. 

Star as Deviant

In general the star colludes readily in the construction of themselves as a star led by the studio.  Where there are exceptions, such as with Meryl Streep and Robert de Niro, then this resistance becomes incorporated in the essence of their stardom. 

On the whole stars comply with and wish to be represented as 'normal'. There are 'lavender' weddings for example to cover up homosexuality. Star performance for gays then becomes a double masquerade.

Being a star is about excess. Excess - being larger than life- is what is specifically according to a 'star'. Without an excessive lifestyle how can they be a star? Provided this 'excess' is well managed then it is of positive value to a studio. If it becomes genuinely excessive then the 'norms of excess' are transgressed and a star can start to take on a negative value for a studion. Excess is usually in the realms of consumption (drugs alcohol) and / or sex. This threatens to expose the masquerade of stardom.

Star as Cultural Value: sign & fetish

Stars can function as signs of changing cultural value. In the 1950s American teenagers quickly took on board the look of James Dean or Marlon Brando. in Europe teenage girls mimicked Brigitte Bardot. Stars then act within wider society to precipitate new mores. 

Stars can be mediators within the society as a whole. Hayward traces the changing representations of female sexuality in Hollywood to clarify the point:

• 1930s / 40s: 2 types of female eroticism - independent as good as the boys Bette Davis & Katherine Hepburn / weak vulnerable type (Vivien Leigh)
  
• 1950s: The independent type replaced by dutiful supporting wife as US society needed to absorb excess labour after the war or a self-parodying brunette who 'settles down' (Doris Day & Jane Russell)/ the weak vulnerable type is replaced by the 'dumb blonde' (Marilyn Monroe)
  
• 1960s late in the decade the more self assertive radical-liberal feminist eroticism (Jane Fonda)

These change relate to a combination of changes in the social / political / economic conditions in society as a whole.  

Star-Gazing & Performance 

Audiences come with expectations of certain stars. There are basically two differnt modes of acting:

• Personification
• Impersonation
  

Personification

Here a star plays roles inline with his or her perceived personality. They know what to expect of say the taciturn gunman Clint Eastwood, or grinning machismo bravura with Jack Nicholson.

Impersonation

These actors are far fewer in number. Meryl Streep is a good example. For those who come to see stars rather than good acting this can cause a problem. For the person concerned with impersonating a role then a sign of their excellence is the ability to 'disappear' as a star. Hayward remarks that this is the case with Meryl Streep and suggests that this is why she has usually received very mixed reactions to her performances. 

Bibliography 

Published February 2007 

Introductory Bibliography 

Hayward, Susan. Key Concepts in Cinema Studies. Routledge 

Nelmes, Jill. 2007. Now in 4th Edition (which has just come out). An Introduction to Film Studies. Routledge.

3rd Edition has section Stars and Hollywood Cinema from page 169.

General Bibliography on Audience Studies

Jackie Stacey, Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and female spectatorship (1994)
Janet Staiger, Perverse Spectators: the practices of film reception (2000)
Janet Staiger, Interpreting Films (1992)
Tania Modleski, Loving with a vengeance: mass-produced fantasies for women ((1982)
Ien Ang, Living Room Wars; Rethinking Media Audiences for a Post Modern World (1996)
Ien Ang, Watching Dallas, (1985)
Ien Ang, Desperately seeking the audience (1991)
Richard Butsch, The Making of American Audiences: from stage to TV (2000)
Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: TV Fans and Participatory Culture (1992)
Shelley Stamp, Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon (2000)
Lauren Rabinowitz, For the Love of Pleasure: Women movies and culture in Chicago (1998)
Lisa Lewis, The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media (1992)
Miriam Hanson, Babel and Babylon (1992)
Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV (1996)
Janice Radway, Reading the Romance (1984)
Helen Taylor, Scarletts’ Women: GWTW and its female fans (1989)
Mary Ann Doane, The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s (1987)
Judith Mayne, Cinema and Spectatorship (1993)
M Stokes and R Maltby, American Movie Audiences (1999)
Greg Smith: Film Structure and the Emotion System (2003)
Kathy Fuller, At the Picture Show: Small town audiences and creation of movie fan culture (1997)
Jowett/Jarvie/Fuller, Children and the Movies: Media influence and the Payne Fund (1997)
Hadley Cantril. The Invasion from Mars: A study in the psychology of panic (1940)
Melvin DeFleur and Sharon Lowery, Milestones of Mass Communication research
Denis McQuail, Audience Analysis
Shaun Moores, book on ethnographic studies
Cheryl Harris, Theorizing Fandom (1998)
Sanders, Science Fiction Fandom (1994)
Barbas, Movie Crazy: fans and stars
Harrington, Soap Fans
Tulloch, Watching TV Audiences (2000)
Ellen Seiter, TV and New Media Audiences
Spigel and Mann, Private Screenings: Women and Television
Sut Jhally, Enlightened Racism
Robin Means Coleman, African-American Viewers and Black Situation Comedy
Mumford, Love and Ideology in the Afternoon (computer file)
Joyrich, Lynne, Re-viewing Reception: TV gender and popular culture (computer file)
Shattuc, The Talking Cure: TV Talk shows and women
Bernstein, Attack of the Leading Ladies (1996)
Pinedo, Recreational Terror (1997) computer file

Webliography 

Wikipedia on Richard Dyer the first academic to seriously study stars

Female Film Stars and the Dominant Ideologies of 1950s America: Jessica Freame

Senses of Cinema article on the Development of the Star Image of Dorothy Lamour

Using Early Cinema in Reassessing Feminist Theory 

Link to Matthew Tillman article on Stars

Review author[s]: Constance Balides
Signs, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 248-254. (This is a JSTOR article and requires subscription access.)

Reviewed Work(s):

• Cinema and Spectatorship by Judith Mayne
• Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship by Jackie Stacey
• Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film by Miriam Hansen

Unpacking clothes: a Senses of Cinema article by Tamar Jeffers who researches Doris Day.

Review of Kuhn, Annette: An Everyday Magic: Cinema and Cultural Memory. London, I. B. Tauris (2002). ISBN 1-86064-791 (pbk), pp. vii + 273

Link to review of Richard Dyer, 2nd Ed 2004. Heavenly Bodies: Films Stars and Society by Rebecca Feasey in The Jounal of Visual Culture

Link to handout from University of Surrey

Link to Culture Cinema and Society bibliography on stardom

A useful example of establishing a relevant research project (clicking will downloadthe proposal):  http://media.utu.fi/emy/JuttaHeikkila.rtf 

A Critical Assessment of Jackie Stacey''s Star Gazing Using the Tool of Feminist Epistemologies

A bibliography and course outline from University of East Anglia on Stars 

Link to an Exeter University MA Unit on Stars 

Link to interesting Fashion Worlds  Cultural Studies Blog page on the cult of celebrity relevant to star theory.

Link to Rebecca Feasey article on Stardom and Sharon Stone: Power as Masquerade. It comes from Taylor and Francis and will cost you a gobsmackingly ridiculous £13 to douwnload! Find it in your library. 

Article by Guy Austen from Scope the online film journal :

"In Fear and Pain": Stardom and the Body in Two French Ghost Films. Guy Austin, University of Sheffield, UK

Link to Framework article by Christine Geraghty

Link to Film Jounal article by Hunter Vaughan which discusses Eyes Wide Shut in relation to Laura Mulvey 

Link to article on American Fan Magazines and the Glamourous Construction of Femininity

Link to  Su Holmes University of Kent Revisiting Star Studies Article

See Also British Women Actors

: 07 Apr 2007 07:50 |  Tags: A Level Media Studies European Cinema Jackie Stacey Kinoeye Open Studies Richard Dyer Star Theory Women And Film |  Comments (8) |  Close comments |  Report a problem