Reading Response #3, Week 7

During the course of this semester we have discussed the many variations of actors/actresses to their roles as cultural icons and the implications of their status in terms of gender and sexuality amongst other social constructions. The insight of Barry King’s article on stardom, “Articulating Stardom”, comes from a change in perspective on stars as a product from within the industry rather than a cultural phenomenon. For this thesis, King sites various attributes of the production process (repetitious takes, editing, casting) that facilitate the growth of Hollywood stardom; the method of filmmaking itself develops stars as an inevitable side effect of mainstream film engineering. The difference, therein, for King is that the creation of the star actor relies upon not as much on the producers of the film but as a reaction of actors to the tenuous nature of their careers.

King, in making a point about the limits of film acting, discusses the lack of continuity and true relation to a character in film, “the actor as character must play to a character he has never seen or act our the aftermath of an affair that has yet to be enacted” (171): with this in mind, assuming you agree, does film acting necessitate a need to hide from the performance on the actor’s behalf? Does it cater to those actors who can not confront the audience and the character? Or, alternately, does it show a sort of sacrifice of artistic integrity for the sake of mass consumption and immortality (which only film delivers)? Can we say that film actors are inherently more likely to be stars because of their desire to promote themselves over a character or message? It is not that I wholly buy into King’s argument that film production robs the actors of “creative intentions” and, thus, limits the caliber of performers willing to take on the roles. However, it does beg the question of why film is the actor’s chosen medium. Rather than assuming that stars are the tools of producers for film marketability, could it be said that film (and tv more recently) as globally accessible mediums have been used as a catalyst for those who are in the business of self-promotion? While I would not go as far to say that this must be the case, I do believe the question complicates the matter even farther than what we have already discussed in terms of the psychological/ideological implications of celebrity. To look at Hollywood stars, it is no secret that they are considered amongst the upper echelons of society. They are not only idolized as glamorous but revered for their success in business (with exorbitantly inflated salaries and ostentatious lifestyles). They represent, very specifically, the economic system and social hierarchy of an individualist capitalist Western culture.

As to the point of those select truly talented actors, King points to the use of Method in terms of its transformational identity of the actor toward that of the character as being the security from which they maintain their art and career. For these actors, film may be an equally desirable medium to stage because of their ability to live with the character beyond the set and nurture it in the repetition of action while relishing the ability to challenge their skill in capturing those out of sync minutiae that compose their character’s psyche. However, even still, it would be only human for them to assuage their egos with the reward of filmic immortality and mass adoration. In each case, whether persona driven or Method driven, the fact of celebrity remains the same. Actors who choose to go into film must be striving for something unique that the medium offers whether it is their primary or subconscious goal, for themselves or their creative work, to achieve some form of stardom. This brings me back to the idea discussed much earlier in the semester, is stardom something that has always been desired by the social nature of humanity but only actualized within the time that such a medium of universal accessibility as film was developed?

Olivia Everett