Week 4 Readings (Core Post #2)

This week, I was fascinated in reading Charles Eckert's essay on stars' fashions and their influence over consumer society. Today, a lot is said about how we are becoming an increasingly consumerist culture that finds happiness in material things like never before. Almost everything today is an advertisement and we are constantly being drawn in and manipulated by them. Eckert's essay really opened my eyes because I never realized how similar consumers are today to consumers 50 or 60 years ago and that Hollywood's influence on consumerism was embedded early on in the Hollywood system. For example, I was completely unaware of such early product placement and star/brand name tie-ins. I know that today, many television shows are terrible when it comes to product placement to the point where it almost feels like a 30 minute or hour long advertisement (perhaps among the worst are One Tree Hill and a slew of reality shows including America's Next Top Model). It is at the point where shows look like they are not even trying to hide product placement anymore. Also, I was at first surprised when Eckert said that products were often integrated in a script and that sometimes products were designed specifically for a film, however, I realized that this is still the case today and it continues to surprise me how invested filmmakers and/or studios are in tying films and other products together. Also, the way Eckert puts it, it sounds like product placement was more of a trend in the early days when it began. However, whenever I or any of my friends see product placement in a movie or TV show we roll our eyes and protest. Today I think product placement has become tacky and is almost like selling out. It makes me think that the show or film needed the extra bucks so they called Apple and placed an iPhone in Chad Michael Murray's hand.

The most astonishing part of the essay to me was when Eckert discussed how Bernard Waldman's company would receive sketches or photographs of a star's film costume and create trends based on those outfits. This surprised me a lot because this is not as common today and it seems as though it should be since we are already so invested in stars. However, I think this is a result of early audiences’ interest in a star’s character that exceeds our interests with a star’s character today (However, I wasn’t aware of what Veronica said in her previous post about Gossip Girl, I think it’s really fascinating that you can purchase the clothes worn on the show so easily!). Practically copying clothes off of a star's costume is like becoming the star herself and it allows the buyer to become a star or a certain kind of person for a day and perhaps fulfill a dream of success and wealth. I read somewhere that Entourge has its own clothing line for men and women called AG. When I heard that I actually thought it was a bit strange because I had never heard of something like it before and did not understand why they would make a clothing line for a TV show in the first place. But, if you think about it, Entourage is a show about a famous movie star, Vincent Chase. The concept is very intertextual and in turn makes buying a pair of AG’s jeans important because Vincent Chase wears them and he is famous within the world of the show. And, on top of that, the jeans are worn on a very popular hit TV show. The jeans are practically tailor made to “look” hip and Hollywood. If you are a girl, you want to wear something that the movie stars portrayed on the show would think is hot. However, I think the reason why we may not see as much of this today as in the early days is because today, people may be more interested in creating "individual identities" and I feel like wearing something that copies a show may be going against that.

Overall, I feel that the copying of many stars’ costumes in the 1930s has faded out and in its place comes the novelty of designer clothing and accessories. Because stars in films today usually wear what can be viewed as "normal" or "everyday" clothes, fans can turn to the red carpet gowns and designer bags that stars are photographed with. Instead of a fascination with the clothing of the star's character, we are now obsessed with the clothing of the star him/herself. Strange and unexplainable fads have emerged from the Hollywood elite that take over the fashion industry and eventually filter down to more affordable and less expensive commercial stores. For example, there was a sudden pirate fad last year in which many stars were photographed wearing skulls and crossbones or the like on their shirts, hats, or scarves. Eventually, stores like H&M were turning out tank tops and such with pirate related things on them (I admit to owning one). I think it’s interesting how we desire and strive for the extremely expensive designer clothing that stars wear and how the fashion industry recognizes this and knows how to cater to our needs. In a sense, it is like recreating a star’s costume in the 1930s, it just happens to be the star’s actual clothes that we tend to copy.

I want to note what Eckert said about many of the stars' fashions of the 1930s being very costly and therefore only readily available to the wealthy. Today, not only have trends trickled down the commercial line and become available for reasonable prices, but stars themselves have made a trend out of making their own clothing lines. Jennifer Lopez, Sarah Jessica Parker, Gwen Stefani, and Amanda Bynes are only a few that have started their own lines for fans and "ordinary" people. In doing this, I think stars may be trying to emphasize that you do not need to be rich to look like a celebrity or to be fashionable; you can still look great for a good price. These stars are in turn showing their fans and the public that they are just like us and that they also like and look for good prices. This makes me wonder whether the stars may in part do this because they believe that their fans want to connect with them on a more personal level. But, do we really want stars to be like us? Or, do we actually like putting them on a pedestal?

As a side note, I was interested in what Dyer said about the fact that all the beliefs and hopes surrounding the star system are all based on the assumption that success is worth having. And furthermore, I wonder, does success mean the same thing to everyone? How does each individual interpret success? In whose eyes are stars even successful? Do stars get put on a pedestal and their lives become important because we think that is what success looks like?

(By the way, in my last post I titled it Week 2 Readings, it was actually in response to Week 3 Readings, sorry!)