Week 7 Reading Response #1

After reading Dyer's discussion of star performance in Stars, I could not stop thinking about my favorite actors' lives and performances. Sometimes I could not fully separate the two and other times I could not figure out when or if they even were the same person, the actor and the character. The first of these two situations seems more prominent. Dyer did discuss different types of performance and ways in which actors create the characters on screen, as well as the editor and director, but I think that there are so many cases where the persona and the characters played match up.

Then I spent a little more time thinking about it and looking at parts of the reading again, and I have come to the idea that many stars have created a persona around the roles and types of roles they play or they are casted based on their preexisting persona. As Dyer talked about performances of stars like Paul Muni, Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn as being able to draw on their theater backgrounds to bring performance I could not think of many actors that are known just for their past and how that formed their acting style now. However, there is credit that needs to be given to actors and their ability to create characters on screen that we all want to watch. From the days of the studio system to today, stars are manufactured. One part of the process is by creating a story that people love or love to hate. I don't know if I am alone in my wanting and thinking that my favorite celebrities are some what like some of the characters they have played. Let me know how you feel about that. I want the cast of Friends to all be real life friends and be really funny, some might be and others might not, but I still want the show that I love to be possible in real life. I think that is where the desire lies, in us wanting what we see to be possible in real life. We all want to be bitchy sometimes, but cannot, or achieve great things like save the world, or meet our soul mate through a seemingly misfortune of events and live happily ever after, so we look to film and television to see someone be that way. The business of publicists and agents and managers is based on making a star image and maintaining that image.

The performance piece is part of how we digest the images on the screen. We want the performance to be natural and real. The actors ability to create a character well is how seamless and unnoticed the actor is in the role. With that, the actor is seen in their role more widespread than they are walking on a Friday with their family, as Annie talked about Tom Cruise, so when we see the actor in other places than the characters they play we want a piece of that to be who they really are creating the tabloids paying big money for shots of Britney Spears not being the pop princess she once was or of wholesome female celebrities sunbathing topless. Once the image is broken there is a whole new fascination created by the downfall, but they fall from the image they created on screen and off.