Page 218 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

STAR CULTURE

is impossible to simply create a star on demand. For every rising star we see,
many never get off the ground despite expensive e fforts to circulate and market
their images, and some even fall off the launch pad in flames. In the final
analysis, Aristotle was correct when he insisted that we should look beyond the
source to determine the effect of renown. Fame, it must be said, depends upon
the audience; it is in the consumption of pop culture imagery that stars are
made.

Consuming stardom
Stars grant pleasures to their audiences. Through gestures, manners of speech,
and body movements, actors, singers, and sports figures create performances
that build on their reputation and previous symbolic work (Naremore 1988;
Smith 1993). We watch an actor navigate a role with knowledge of his or her
previous performances, and we delight in how the actor assumes a new iden-
tity. For instance, Robert DeNiro plays a man paralyzed by a stroke. Audiences
will be impressed by the degree to which his performance di ffers from previous
roles, while at the same time they appreciate his skill enacting a condition he
clearly does not have in real life. In music, the performer’s voice or instrument
creates an identity as well, as it makes manifest the sound of personal feelings
(Frith 1996: 211). When, for example, Celine Dion sings a series of deeply felt
notes, her audience assumes the pain or joy signified to be hers, something she
has experienced in the past and perhaps is re-experiencing now. In sports, we
watch stars bodily enact a series of physical skills that define their public per-
sonality (Rowe 1994: 8). Kobe Bryant makes a move that is at once in the
tradition of basketball, yet seems new, exciting, never imagined until now. Stars
of all kinds fascinate because they consistently create and delight. They invent
and challenge within formulaic confines.
Their personalities, the repertoire of techniques at their disposal, and their
public and private histories all help make up the potential pleasures that stars
can inspire. Engaging stars repeatedly, audiences begin to invest their heroes
with qualities that brim with individuality. Especially when a star gets caught in
a media scandal, fans ‘personally’ begin to evaluate in great detail a media figure
they have never met (Lull and Hinerman 1997). The bigger the star, the more
the celebrity is assumed to be known, and the more interest the story will
inspire.
This idea that the public ‘knows’ a star gives rise to a central aspect of how
stardom is consumed today. Audiences assume they know what a star ‘is really
like’ away from the screen, concert hall, or sports arena. Modern media stars
thus have two distinct personae: a public, external persona (made up of physical
appearances and images), and a private, internal persona (made up of the star’s
‘real’ feelings, thoughts, and private concerns). A major fascination for fans is
the blurring and narrativizing of the space between the public and private
domains of celebrities. Audiences know the singer is not always the song, the

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