Stars

FILM STARDOM AS A CULTURAL INSTITUTION

In his 1990 history of the formation of the star system in American cinema, Richard DeCordova argues that after an initial period when the names of film performers were not publicly circulated and films actors remained anonymous to the moviegoing public, the first move towards a star system came with the earliest advertising of performers' names from 1909 onward. Ever since, film stardom has worked through the circulation of performer names and it is through the distribution of those names that the identities of film stars enter the broader public culture.

Star names appear in film credits, trailers, posters, interviews, talk shows and fanzines as a familiar and taken-for-granted feature of popular film culture. Why are star names so important to popular cinema? What is the function of star names and what do those names do to films? While a moviegoer may have seen many films, sufficient differences exist between single films as unique cultural artifacts. Moviegoers can therefore never be entirely certain what they will get at the first viewing of a new film. Audiences pay for their tickets at the box office or rent DVDs with an incomplete knowledge of what they are buying. As film production and distribution requires high levels of investment, the film industry bases its business on trying to sell expensively produced products to audiences who have very little idea of what they will get. Like systems of genre classification, stars names are one of the mechanisms used by the film industry to predetermine audience expectations.

A star's name places a film in relation to a string of other films featuring the same performer, working as a marker of continuity. "Tom Cruise" situates Collateral (2004) in relation to Top Gun (1986), Mission: Impossible (1996) or The Last Samurai (2003). Although one Tom Cruise film will never be exactly like the last, nevertheless the name of the star serves to cultivate a range of expectations and to guarantee the delivery of similar performer qualities. At the same time, the name is also a marker of difference: "Cruise" differentiates the aforementioned films from the chain of Mad Max (1979), Lethal Weapon (1987) and Signs (2002) linked by the "Mel Gibson" label.

Star names serve a commercial function similar to product brand names: a star's name links together a string of film performances or appearances, labeling the continuity of certain physical and verbal characteristics across a number of film performances and so creating a "branded" identity. Simultaneously, in the crowded marketplace of films, the star name differentiates a film from the many others in the market. Continuity and difference therefore define the function of star names in the commerce and culture of cinema.

History demonstrates the significance Hollywood placed on the names of performers. In the case of Frances Gumm, it is widely known that MGM renamed

her Judy Garland to give the child performer a more glamorous title. In other cases, renaming worked in the opposite direction to deexoticize of the performer's name. When MGM's head of production Louis B. Mayer supposedly claimed the name of the new contract player Lucille Fay LeSueur sounded too much like "sewer," a competition in Photoplay magazine saw moviegoers voting to rename her Joan Crawford. In other cases, renaming has served to mask the racial or ethnic roots of performers: for example, when Columbia signed New York-born dancer Margarita Carmen Casino, her Spanish patrilineage was obscured when the studio gave her the more Anglicized name of Rita Hayworth.

While film stars are known for their performances in films, their fame does not rest upon cinema alone. Aside from film roles, film stars make numerous appearances in other media. During the production of a film, stories frequently appear in magazines or newspapers about a star's work on the set. It is the role of the unit publicist to arrange for stories from the production unit about a film's stars to be prepared and made available to the press. Once the film is completed, the star becomes one of the crucial instruments used to market the film. While the average feature film is a relatively long media text, the poster or trailer must promote the idea of that film in a comparatively small amount of space or time. Stars are therefore frequently foregrounded in these media as a way to summarize and crystallize the larger body of the film. For example, posters for As Good As It Gets (1997) condensed the whole idea of the film into a single image of Jack Nicholson smiling. The star alone was used to represent the larger idea of the film and communicate it directly to the moviegoing public.

Trailers, posters, and advertisements are all forms of paid promotion. Alongside these marketing channels, stars are also used to give interviews for newspapers, magazines, or television. By holding a press conference or a high-profile premiere with stars in attendance, a film may gain front page coverage in a newspaper without paying for print advertisements. While costs are attached to running such events, these channels are classified not as paid promotions but rather as publicity, for they give a film relatively free exposure compared to the high costs of promotional campaigns.

Films, together with promotion and publicity, therefore result in a star's identity circulating across a range of media channels. However, for a star's profile to endure, his or her performances must be critically well received. Critical opinion, as published through the press, is important to a performer becoming recognized as a star. Criticism also works to evaluate stars by circulating opinions about performers. While members of the movie-going public will ultimately decide whether they like a star or not, and those responses may or may not correspond with the opinions voiced in published reviews, professional film criticism nevertheless mediates responses to films and their performers.

Film stardom is therefore a multiple-media construction. Promotion, publicity, and criticism provide various contexts in which the names of stars circulate across a wide range of mass media. While film stardom cultivates belief in the power and significance of the extraordinary individual performer, that individuality is always dependent upon the industrial conditions of mass communication that plan and organize the circulation of star names; without those conditions, the making and dissemination of star identities would be impossible. It is the persistence of those conditions that has made film stardom a modern cultural institution.