The following is an essay I wrote a year ago for a class on celebrity culture. Over the next five Fridays, I will upload another part of the essay. I find it to be pretty relevant today for a number of reasons (the NBA lockout, the Occupy Wall Street protests, this recent article from Forbes ,etc.) and hope you find it to be an enjoyable read.
It was just this past summer where basketball fans across the country collectively scratched their heads at the six year, $119 million dollar contract Atlanta Hawks superstar-in-training Joe Johnson was offered and subsequently signed. Cited by some as just another greedy sports/media figure and defended by others as a financially smart businessman, Johnson was now known as one of the many faces of NBA excess, a player who had to worry equally about his skills on and off the court. The question, as it so often is when an abundance of new-found wealth is thrust upon a young figure, was as to whether or not Mr. Johnson was worth it. The coaches and head owners could could base their decision on Johnson's personal statistics (points, rebounds, assists, etc.) or his ability to lead the team to a higher winning percentage on a yearly basis. They could look at arena attendance figures and jersey sales, marketability and championship potential. While one star player cannot necessarily guarantee a trip to the prestigious NBA Finals (just look at an even larger NBA story that took place this summer: Lebron James, the Cleveland Traitor), the team's prospects would rise according to the leader. $119 million is a large number, but its value, in regards to the sporting world, can never concretely be determined; whose to say anyone is “worth” that kind of money? To everyone on the outside, the amount is staggering, but would $50 million make it less so? Although we often equate wealth to talent, it is perhaps more difficult to equate talent to wealth. A person's asking price fluctuates not on what they do but on what their agent convinces the employers they are to do next.
It is in this line of thought that we are able to look at the nature and peculiarity of the American movie star as an outlet for profit. The Hollywood process of securing stars can be conducted in a number of ways, all of which lead to a hopefully successful production. And yet there is an interesting question already being overlooked: how may a film actor graduate to a lucrative movie star? What does their stardom equal and what can it be attributed to? To come up with a satisfying and workable answer, we will have to, at least for the time being, dehumanize the glamorous men and women who so often find their names sparkling above a movie's title on a prominent marquee. We will also have to remove the artistic aspirations of any given product, as artistry is more subjective and opinionated than the mass saturated, four wall-booked, standard Hollywood movie. A film's aesthetic and narrative quality cannot be judged if only for its ability to translate strong critical notice into box office dollars – art houses all over the country are filled with great movies that no one sees.
In some cases, perception plays a key role. Personal views of certain movie stars' private lives can cloud the public's view of their work on the movie screen. In others, an actor's ethnicity can handicap their ability to obtain roles and gain mainstream acceptance; an actor's appearance is one of his greatest or weakest tools. A complicated matter such as this (the ability to identify and rank stardom) prompts studio executives to continuously go back to the drawing board and come up with intricate, more consistent strategies in selling movies based on famous faces and manufacturing new ones. To put it pessimistically, actors aren't people but rather flashy brands, disposable, vulnerable, and interchangeable.
A “movie star” is a title without a distinct definition. A person within this group is also commonly referred to as a celebrity, a media figure, a talent, and a famous personality, each description less distinguishable than the last. As a brand name, they can be many more things such as sexy, funny, compelling, commanding, stoic, romantic, dangerous, etc. – an actor with all of these traits should quit the trade and, following in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan, run for President of the United States; after all, a political campaign sells just as well as a movie trailer. A movie star is thus judged on his marketability, his knack for getting people to pay to see a movie he is starring in. Movie studios sell a movie based on the talent's (brand) name and moviegoers respond to the star by supporting (paying) him. What it is they enjoy about the actor has to do with one of the adjectives listed above.
With these multi-million dollar responsibilities come the desired perks. An actor may use his stardom to greenlight and fund smaller personal projects, working on scripts and with directors he strongly believes in (in this scenario, the star is also in many ways the boss and employer). The film will get made because of the star and will, in theory, get seen because of him as well. Usually, the independently made film will then have no trouble finding distribution – film festivals are as much about the movies as they are the star gazing – and will be labeled with more prestige and better tracking than a similarly budgeted indie with an unknown cast. The actor will look like a hero, a champion of the mantra “sacrificing for one's art”, and will desirably gain strong reviews featuring buzz words like “gritty”, “daring”, ad nauseum. The brave thespian will then act in a summer blockbuster to keep himself relevant in mainstream America (and to collect a payday which would have covered the budget of his previously worked on passion project). The process is cyclical and common.
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