Reading Response #4 - Week 6

While reading Harris’ essay on building images in Hollywood, I realized what I had already kind of known.  We all recognize that our favorite stars are usually cast in the same types of roles, and usually made to look like that kind of person in the public eye.  For instance, Britney Spears is a great example, as always.  We’ve known her since she was about sixteen, and she was always supposed to be the sweet, innocent virgin teenager.  However, when it came out that she was getting married to Kevin Federline and her reality show exposed a completely different side of her, the public was taken aback.  This is an unreliable way to judge someone though, because the image of her before could have been completely fabricated.  The problem with “building images” of stars is that once their true self leaks out it gets blown way out of proportion, as we have seen with Britney.  There are, of course, other celebs that have stayed true to the image built for them by their publicists.  But those are not the ones we become obsessed with knowing about.

Modifying a role for the actor, or modifying an actor’s public perception for a role, are two things I never really thought about before reading this article.  I always thought that studios would chose an actor based on the role, rather than the other way around.  But in the case of Marilyn Monroe, she had such a particular personality and look that if the studio put her in a film, there was already a strong perception of her and what to expect from her performance.  When I think of actors in films today, I like to think that they have been chosen for that role because they have the talent necessary to play it.  The fact that film has become all about marketing and money-making takes away from the movie-watching experience.

Discussing Marilyn Monroe this week, I find it only appropriate to bring up the Lindsay Lohan photo shoot for New York magazine (I too saw it on perezhilton.com).  I guess it is because Marilyn Monroe is such an iconic figure that I can’t call Lindsay the “new Marilyn.”  Although the two share many of the same public image characteristics (party girl, posing nude, etc.) I am standing firm that there can only be one MM.  Still, it is shocking to see Lindsay doing a photo shoot like this, when her publicity image prior has been trying to keep her a “nice girl.”  Clearly she is fighting hard to keep her good girl image non-existent.