Page 220 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

STAR CULTURE

the process of self-formation becomes more reflexive and open-ended,
in the sense that individuals fall back increasingly on their own
resources to construct a coherent identity for themselves. At the same
time, the process of self-formation is increasingly nourished by
mediated symbolic materials, greatly expanding the range of options
available to individuals and loosening – without destroying – the
connection between self-formation and shared locale.
(1995: 207)

In this world, Thompson continues, ‘the self is a symbolic project that the
individual actively constructs’ (1995: 210). Mediated texts – including those
concerning the lives of stars – provide a constant flow of material used by
modern individuals to piece identities together and affix them in a relatively
stable way.
Stars frequently embody idealized appearances or behaviors, while at other
times they are effective because they represent ‘typical’ ways of being (Dyer
1979: 24). But stars can also be admired for being completely outrageous.
Audiences thus look to stars to gauge the ideal, the typical, and the
unconventional, and count on stars to illustrate the perfect, the mundane, and
the extraordinary. Stars become personal guides to the imagined future who
sensitize audiences to the limits of everyday life, while at the same time they
transcend those very limits. Such images may appear to be contradictory, but
they are not. As Frith notes, ‘identity is always already an ideal, what we would
like to be, not what we are’ (1998: 274). Through their private and public sides,
stars encourage us to think that the unreachable may actually be within reach.
Rather than bemoan the star-studded situation (as Horkheimer, Adorno,
Ewen, and other cultural theorists do) by arguing that the distance between star
and audience only creates dashed hopes and passive acceptance of a highly
orchestrated, oppressive social order, some critics argue that stardom should be
theorized instead as a stabilizing anchor for the kind of identity transformations
described by Thompson (1995). I return here as well to the ideas of Anthony
Giddens, who argues that trust in modernity must be enacted in a dynamic
tension between faceless systems and persons with whom facework is possible.
We achieve trust by ‘re-embedding’ (that is, by sustaining faceless commit-
ments via facework) through ‘access points’, spaces where individuals or groups
can meet abstract systems (Giddens 1990: 88). Stardom is just such an access
point. It is here we meet, non-reciprocally, the ‘faces’ who help us to form our
social and personal identities. Giddens speaks of these faces as doctors, dentists,
and travel agents (each representing a larger institution), but popular culture
stars are every bit as powerful as any professional person. Through stars we learn
to trust our own ideals, determine where we ‘fit’ in the global milieu, and
formulate our social and cultural identities.

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