3. Making Stars
Exposed Artifice: Singin’ in the Rain
Early film viewer idolized actors and actresses of the silent film
industry
Advent of sound exposed imperfections of talkies, artifice that
had once been easily concealed
Stars, Fans, and Profits
“The industry that makes motion pictures also manufactures
movie stars, with the aid of the press and other media—movie
stars who have played and continue to play a crucial economic
role…” (89).
provide studios with a tangible attraction, a marketable image
4. Star Power
“Stars can save studios
because stars sell films”
(90).
entertainment journalism
Tom Hanks: A Case Study
American everyman
Emerges as the “moral
compass” in modern
morality plays
5. Persona: A Variety of Masks
Essentially, stars consist of three personalities—the
star, the actor, and the actual person (95).
actor
Stars consist
of three
personalities
actual
star person
6. Stardom and Mass Culture:
From Persona to Star
The Role of the Media
Actors
✮construct personas, few become stars
✮persona masks the real person
Stars
✮secondary mask reproduces and transforms original persona
✮uncontrolled persona recirculates through media, acquires new
meanings
“A star is an actor whose persona transcends the sum total
of his performances.”
7. Mickey Mouse: A Case Study
purely imaginary form of existence
could consider him a star without ever being an actor
based on wide circulation of image.
8. Stars, the System, and the Public
Marilyn Monroe: A Case Study
“Only the public can make a star…It’s the studios who try to
make a system out of it.”
Marilyn Monroe’s account of stardom, challenged studio
attempts to manufacture a replacement (she was known to push
the limits, defiance, resisted strict demands imposed by studios-
arrived late, walked off set in mid-production)
Stardom and Public Acceptance
Stars function as “sociocultural barometers, giving expression
to and providing symbolic solutions for specific
fears, desires, anxieties, and/or dreams that haunt popular
consciousness”
Fans as intelligent agents! Fans are aware of the fantasy involved
in stardom; public has the power to “break stars” when they
violate social norms (100).
9.
10. The Early Years
The First Stars United Artists was founded by, from left, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin
and D. W. Griffith.
Prior to motion pictures, star system thrived in theater, vaudeville and the music
hall, and the opera throughout the 19th century.
Late Victorianism
Stars were transitional figures for audiences in the 1910s and helped bridge social
transformation, namely rural/agricultural urban/industrial
women gained new freedoms as they entered the workforce.
Pickford, Fairbanks, and Chaplin
Pickford: Victorian ideal of woman amid profound social changes
✮ Onscreen: “America’s Sweetheart”
✮ Offscreen: modern working/businesswoman.
Fairbanks
✮ Onscreen: double image of hardworking male in an emerging corporate America and frustrated
individual coping with Protestant work ethic ideologies.
✮ Offscreen: pleasure, relaxation, leisurely pursuit of athletics
Chaplin: The Tramp persona = old-world aristocratic values of Victorian society +
the new-world egalitarianism of the impoverished immigrant and defiant opponent
of all arbitrary authority-especially policemen.
11. Exoticism, Eroticism, and Modern
Morality: Stars of the 1920s
The Jazz Age
Atmosphere of Sexual Liberation: SEX sells; sex plays a major role in the
construction of stardom
New World innocence of Valentino and Garbo
Women’s movements: suffrage/voting rights in 1920, temperance impact on
institution of Prohibition in 1919
✮ Roaring Twenties: “flappers” and “jazz babies” expressed sexual liberation and defended their
actions in terms of a modern morality (104).
✮ Victorian Puritanism replaced by explicitly confronting female desire and behavior;
however, endings often returned to traditional virtues, sexual fidelity, marriage, and family.
Having “It”: Clara Bow and Rudolph Valentino
“It” = having beauty, being desirable: pretty/handsome, sexy, fun-
loving, impudent, worldly-wise.
Valentino: “foreign-born screen idol” appealed to American women, cast in roles
ranging from misogynist, brutal romantic, passionate bullfighter, Latino lover
Greta Garbo: From Divinity to Humanity
12. Depression/Repression: The 1930s
New Realities, New Images
The transition to sound ushered in a new breed of movie star
made up of actors and actresses from the theater, vaudeville, the
recording studio, and radio.
Working class stars of the 1930s
All-American Kids: Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, and
Judy Garland
Hollywood’s response to audience demands/interest in less
fantasy, more realistic stars; more human/accessible stars
Clark Gable: Populist Hero
The most representative star of the 1930s
the all-American guy, projected a no-nonsense honesty
13. Sex, Censorship, and Star Images
“Sex continued to play a major role in the construction of
stardom in the 1930s” (110).
The Production Code of 1934
resulted from protest by civic organizations (mostly religious
prohibited depictions of crime, violence, and sexual themes such
as adultery; scenes of passion, seduction, or rape; sexual
perversion, and miscegenation
sex films screwball comedy
Sexual self-censorship made actors more desirable, drove
sex underground-repression during war years led to
explosive resexualization of Hollywood in postwar years
(e.g. sexually explicit themes, film noir).
14. World War II and Its Aftermath
A New Generation
Postwar transformation of stardom
performers pushed the limits of classical social, sexual and
psychological behavior.
Transformations
stardom changed during and after the war; performers pushed the
limits of “classical social, sexual, and psychological behavior”
Rebellious/revolutionary nature of American female sexuality
revealed briefly empowering women who embraced it (111).
The Darker Side: Psychology and “the Method”
Postwar realism—emphasis on imperfections, focus on flaws;
training method based on personal experiences/emotional
histories (e.g. Marilyn Monroe).
15. Stars and Anti-Stars
Resisting Tradition: Nicholas, Eastwood, and Their Peers
by-product of 1960s counterculture
Resistance, reluctance, refusal to cooperate with the
press, publicity avoidance
Anti-stars: Television as Training Ground
Since the breakup of the studio system, contemporary stars have
entered Hollywood from a variety of other media, developing
star status outside of motion pictures that they translate into
stardom in Hollywood.
Stars’ Children: Déjà Vu
Emergence of 2nd generation stardom
“contemporary stars enable us to see the ghost of Hollywood
past in the faces of Hollywood present” (116).
16. Different Faces: The Rise of Black Stars
From Sidney Poitier to Blaxploitation
Sidney Poitier: first black star to achieve success at the box office, attracted
white spectators
1970s Blaxploitation movement aimed to attract growing population of
black moviegoers, films dramatized crime, addressed lower-class concerns
Fame in Other Fields: “black actors from noncinematic backgrounds
because Hollywood had never invested in the development of black stars”
(117).
60s and 70s: Hollywood capitalized on the celebrity of African
Americans, cast former fashion models, football stars and other athletes.
The Eddie Murphy Generation: 1980s increase in minority acting careers;
black actors cast regularly (e.g., Denzel Washington in The Siege, 1998
among others) by liberal white executives who grew up during the 1960s, a
decade marked by the emergence of “racial sensitivity” (119).
17. Economics and Contemporary
Stardom
Essential artifice emerges in the economic context of film
industry where images are worth money: “Stars are and always
have been commodities…not born, but made with a purpose—
to sell films” (119).
Phenomenon of stardom is essential to the reproduction of
Hollywood motion picture production; presence of stars
equates profit; stars play a role in stabilizing an otherwise
unstable industry
Stars provide unique pleasure to audiences who appreciate
stars as performers; we derive appreciation from the interplay
between star and character.
Ever been disappointed or shocked by a particular star’s
behavior or appearance in public? What might your response
to negative publicity suggest about prevailing ideologies?
