Stardom

A normal life is boring/But superstardom's/Close to post mortem
— Eminem (Lose Yourself)

Stardom: Untold Wealth. Power. Cool clothes & cars. Hilltop mansions. Global adulation. Acknowledgement that you are among the best of the best in your chosen field. Celebrity friends. Media speculation about your private life. Paparazzi stalking you at the supermarket. Politicians ranting about your use of language. Critics laughing at your latest efforts. Obsessive fans going through your garbage. Kidnap plots.

Who'd want it?

Most people, it seems. And it seems there have never been so many opportunities to be a star. When Andy Warhol commented "The day will come when everyone will be famous for 15 minutes" little did he know about Reality TV making this a distinct possibility.

In the old days, it was not easy to become a star, and took consistent hard work, good luck and knowing the right people. This was largely because there were less media outlets and therefore less stars needed. Movie studios, or record companies, controlled their stars carefully: they were an investment, and profit needed to be returned. They were expected to look and behave in a certain way, and the media only had access to them in certain situations. Their private lives (and private indiscretions) were kept a close secret, and any revelations of scandal would only be whispered in the tabloid press. Stars acquired their power through being untouchable, remote, mysterious, unreal. Through being totally dependent on the way their image was perceived by the public, and therefore totally at the mercy of their publicists and the company which owned the copyright on their work.

Stars: Some Historical reflections on the paradoxes of stardom in the American Film Industry - a thoughtful history, 1910-1960, covering the studio system.
Interview with Richard Masur - contains good background info on how the studio system was broken by stars who wanted more control over their own careers
The Trouble With Stars - What today's star and studio can expect from the relationship. EXCELLENT. Guardian may 2003 *********

Now, with the proliferation of the internet, cable television, and the cheap availability of digital production, there is a 24/7 global demand for stars - images that can hold meaning and provide some sort of cultural discourse, even if it is only for 15 minutes (or the 9 weeks it takes for all the Big Brother contestants to leave the house). hence we have a hierarchy of stars - with the A-listers at the top (those big Hollywood, sport and music stars who, in a complete turnaround from the old days, now own production companies), followed by B-list (TV actors who star in their own TV shows, lesser known movie stars, pop stars who do their own music, champion sports players who haven't landed that multi-million dollar sponsorship contract yet), C-list (TV presenters, pop stars who do what other people tell them to do, footballers with bad haircuts) and all the way down to Big Brother contestants from three years ago who still haven't quite given up trying to break into showbiz. it seems that the public is fascinated with stardom - the process of taking someone ordinary, cleaning them up a bit, exploiting their personality traits and selling them to a credulous audience. There is a ready supply of hopefuls lined up to appear on these shows, people who want nothing more than their 15 minutes of fame. And, with the deficit disorder that public attention has, 15 minutes is all they are going to get.

It is important to understand that stars serve a purpose, to communicate a particular message to a particular audience. They are vehicles for that message, which is more likely to come from an institution than from the person behind the star, and their main function is to return a profit for the institution which has distributed the image - either on the cover of a CD or the cover of a magazine.