Page 215 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

STEPHEN HINERMAN

It is no coincidence that stardom emerged alongside the changing notions
of time and space that were under way at the start of the twentieth century.
Kern (1983) has shown how early conceptualizations of time and space were
linked with specific technological developments characteristic of the period
1880–1910, especially invention of the cinema. He argues that ‘the cinema
portrayed a variety of temporal phenomena that played with the uniformity
and irreversibility of time’, while the ‘close-up’ and the ‘quick cut’ altered
notions of space (Kern 1983: 29, 218). In addition, film distribution – with
American movies later beginning to dominate European markets – started
to alter perceptions of what constitutes ‘national’ entertainment, and what
temporal increment is necessary to distribute information across borders and
continents.
Examining the origins of modern celebrity illustrates these developments.
The modern star and the cinema developed together. DeCordova (1990) places
development of the film star between 1910 and 1914, and argues that, because
of the nature and pervasiveness of film distribution, the film star was a very
different kind of celebrity from the theater star which preceded it. The geo-
graphic reach of movie stars, of course, was much broader. Their recognizability
was faster and more certain. Stars who could traverse space and be preserved
limitlessly in time entered the stage. A new era of popular culture had begun.
Stars were born; so were fans.
The reshaping of fame that resulted was catapulted by new technological
media and capitalist business practices. Suddenly worldwide markets required
product, and the more this product could be uniform in content, the less capital
investment was needed for healthy economic returns. Modern stardom did not
arise by accident. Financial success was not a coincidence, and the stardom it
featured was not simply an extension of premodern forms of notoriety. Star-
dom resulted from film technology in the first two decades of the twentieth
century, the mass production and distribution of audio recordings in the 1920s,
and the beginning of worldwide media and pop culture markets created by the
global capitalist system for the rest of the century. Such developments required
stardom as much as stardom required them. Celebrity has always been organic
to modernity.

The star system
The star system may have begun with the development of the movies, but it did
not stop there. Development of multinational business practices coupled simul-
taneously with industry’s desire to reach large audiences have been central to
the function of modern communications technologies. Stardom and the star
system have been crucial to these processes.
According to Donald, stardom involves both industrial and psychic processes.
He suggests a connection exists between star as center of profit (the exchange
value), and star as granter of pleasure (the use value):

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