Reading Response #5

I found myself considering the authenticity of stars as role models, idols, people we look to as representatives certain aspects of society: Jennifer Lopez for Latinas, Seth Rogen for affable Everymans, Matthew McConaughey for the shirtless…. As Dyer points out in Stars, “ Stars have a privileged position in the definition of social roles and types, and this must have real consequences in terms of how people believe they can and should behave” (p.8). And yet, as we read about the role of Judy Garland and Rock Hudson’s respective stardom in society, the desire and manipulation of that image by the audience must also be considered.

As we discussed last week, in the case of someone like Jennifer Lopez, she’s a star who wants to have it all – to be “Jenny from the Block,” and at the same time drive a Bentley, wear fur and diamonds, and build a baby nursery the size of my apartment. No one from my block rolled like that. So who is she? Is she what her audience wants her to be, a representative of a minority beating the odds and achieving the dream? Or is she just another wealthy celebrity, hungry for the fame that feeds her luxurious lifestyle? I bring this example up, because I believe Judy Garland and Rock Hudson’s star representation and idolatry are vastly different: Garland a more authentic representative for the gay community, whether that was ever her actual intention or not, and Hudson a manipulation of studio power and audience desire that buried his true self.

I consider Garland to be a more authentic icon for the gay community, for her representation was not merely superficial, but instead ran deeper, with more loyalty. She was not loved for what she looked like, she was loved for the hope she inspired in those also existing on the fringe of society’s “normal.” I found the following statement to be Dyer’s most powerful: “The ordinariness is a starting point because, like Judy Garland, gay men are brought up to be ordinary. One is not brought up gay; on the contrary, everything in the culture seems to work against it. Had Garland remained an image of ordinary normality… She would not have been so available as a gay icon… To turn out not-ordinary after being saturated with the values of ordinariness structures Garland’s career and the standard gay biography alike” (HB, 153). Quite simply, Garland was not loved for the image of simple American ordinariness MGM carefully constructed; rather, she was loved for being imperfect, for existing outside of what people expected her to be, and for fighting rejection.

Rock Hudson’s representation, however, was purely superficial and thus inauthentic; I wonder how powerful his star power could have been, had he been allowed to be a representative for the community he actually belonged to, rather than the one he was pigeon-holed in. The account of people’s anger and disappointment in him (most notably, Ruth Westheimer’s comment), when he acknowledged that he had AIDS, was painful to read; while Garland’s fans rallied around her when she fell, loving her all the more when she got back up, Hudson’s fans betrayed him, turning away from their idol because he wasn’t really who they’d forced him to be. It is shocking to me to learn that audiences believed Hudson deceived them, when all along, they’d given him no other choice: Hudson was constructed to be exactly how they wanted him – it was the audience molding his representation of cleanliness, respectability, and purity, of the “consummate safe sex object” (Meyer 265). The film industry supplied and reinforced the audience’s desire; as Universal Studios publicity head declared, “Rock’s fans won’t accept his doing anything shoddy…. They like him because he’s what they want their daughters to marry, or their children’s father to be, or their childhood sweetheart. If we let him break out of that character, they’d howl” (Meyer 271). The key words here are “if we let him” – clearly, Hudson had little control over who he was constructed to be, and was instructed to hide his true self behind marriage, living the stereotype he portrayed onscreen.
The case of Rock Hudson is deeply interesting because it demonstrates the dark and painful side of the role stars are expected to play offscreen: the model of a particular aspect of society. I wonder, to what extent should a celebrity be responsible for the values and stereotypes associated with their onscreen image? On the one hand, you have the power and strength brought to the transgender community from Felicity Huffman in “Transamerica,” and yet, you have Rock Hudson’s tragic fall from grace for not embodying the ideal safe-sex symbol he was onscreen. How much can we, as the audience, expect to have power over when it comes to stars and what we want them to represent for society? For ourselves?