1. A2 Media Studies
Grade booster: STARS AND STARDOM
In order to understand the relationship between the music industry and its audiences, it is important to consider
the roles of music stars
The term ‘star’ refers to the semi-mythological set of meanings constructed around music performers in order to
sell the performer to a large and loyal audience
Some common values of music stardom:
Youthfulness
Rebellion
Sexual Magnetism
An anti-authoritarian attitude
Originality
Creativity/talent
Aggression/anger
A disregard for social values relating to drugs, sex and polite behaviour
Conspicuous consumption, of sex, drugs and material goods
Success against the odds
Richard Dyer
Dyer has written extensively about the role of stars in film, TV and music.
Irrespective of the medium, stars have some key features in common:
 A star is an image, not a real person, that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range
of materials (eg advertising, magazines etc as well as films [music])
 Stars are commodities produced and consumed on the strength of their meanings.
 Stars depend upon a range of subsidiary media – magazines, TV, radio, the internet – in order to construct
an image for themselves which can be marketed to their target audiences.
 The star image is made up of a range of meanings which are attractive to the target audiences
Fundamentally, the star image is incoherent, that is incomplete and ‘open’. Dyer says that this is because it is
based upon two key paradoxes.

2. Paradox 1
The star must be simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary for the consumer.
Paradox 2
The star must be simultaneously present and absent for the consumer.
The Star Image
 The incoherence of the star image ensures that audiences continually strive to ‘complete’ or to ‘make
sense of’ of the image.
 This is achieved by continued consumption of the star through his or her products.
 In the music industry, performance seems to promise the completion of the image, but it is always
ultimately unsatisfying.
 This means that fans will go away determined to continue consuming the star in order to carry on
attempting to complete their image
 Finally, the star image can be used to position the consumer in relation to dominant social values (that is
hegemony).
 Depending upon the artist, this may mean that the audience are positioned against the mainstream
(though only to a limited degree, since they are still consumers within a capitalist system) or within the
mainstream, or somewhere in between
“In these terms it can be argued that stars are representations of persons which reinforce, legitimate or
occasionally alter the prevalent preconceptions of what it is to be a human being in this society. There is a good
deal at stake in such conceptions. On the one hand, our society stresses what makes them like others in the social
group/class/gender to which they belong. This individualising stress involves a separation of the person's "self"
from his/her social "roles", and hence poses the individual against society. On the other hand society suggests
that certain norms of behaviour are appropriate to given groups of people, which many people in such groups
would now wish to contest (eg the struggles over representation of blacks, women and gays in recent years) .
Stars are one of the ways in which conceptions of such persons are promulgated.”
Richard Dyer (Stars, BFI, 1981)
In your blog post:
1. Introduce your star and their music genre.
2. Which record label are they signed to? What advantages / limitations might this have in terms of creating
their star image?
3. Which of the ‘common values’ are applicable to your chosen star? Use screen shots to illustrate.
4. Apply Richard Dyer’s features to your chosen star – illustrate your points as visually as possible.
5. Explore how Richard Dyer’s two paradoxes are working in relation to your star.
6. What kind of star image are you going to create for your artist / band? How and why are you going to do
this?