Media coursework

3. STARS AND STARDOM
• In order to understand the relationship between the music industry and its audiences, it is important to
consider the roles of music stars
• The term ‘star’ refers to the semi-mythological set of meanings constructed around music performs in
order to sell the performer to large and loyal audience.

4. RICHARD DYER
• Dyer has written extensively about the role of star in film, TV and music.
• Irrespective of the medium, stars have some ket feature in common:
• A star is an image, not a real person, that is constructed ( as any
other aspect of fiction is ) out of the range of materials ( eg
advertising, magazines etc as well as films [music] )
• Stars are commodities produced and consumed on the strength of
their meanings.

5. RICHARD DYER
• Stars depend upon a range of subsidiary media – magazines, TV, radio, the internet – in order to
construct an image for themselves which can be marketed to their target audiences.
• The star image is made up of a range of meanings which are attractive to the target audiences.

6. SOME COMMON VALUES OF MUSIC
STARDOM
• Youthfulness
• Rebellion
• Sexual magnetism
• An anti-authoritartion attitude
• Originality
• Creativity/talent
• Aggression/anger
• A disregard for social values relating to drugs, sex and polite behavior
• Conspicuous consumption, of sex, drugs and material goods
• Success against the odds

7. RICHARD DYER
• Fundamentally, the star image is incoherent, that is incomplete and ‘open’ .
Dyer says that this is because it is based upon two key paradoxes

8. PARADOX 1
• THE STAR MUST BE SIMULTANEOUSLY ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY FOR THE CONSUMER

9. PARADOX 2
• THE SAR MUST BE SIMULTANEOUSLY PRESENT AND ABSENT FOR THE CONSUMER

10. THE STAR IMAGE
• The incoherence of the star image ensures that audiences continually strive to ‘complete’ or to
‘make sense of’ of the image.
• This is achieved by continued consumption of the star through his or her products.
• In the music industry, performance seems to promise the completion of the image, but it is always
ultimately unsatisfying.
• This means that fans will go away determined to continue consuming the star in order to carry on
attempting to complete their image.

11. THE STAR IMAGE
• Finally, the star can be used to position the consumer in relation to dominant social values ( that is
hegemony)
• Depending upon the artist, this may mean that the audience are positioned against the
mainstream ( though only to a limited degree, since they are still consumer within a capitalist
system) or within the mainstream, or somewhere in between.

12. THE STAR IMAGE
• “ In these terms it can be argued that stars are representations of persons which reinforce,
legitimate or occasionally alter the prevalent preconceptions of that it is to be a human being in this
society stress what makes them like others in the social group/ class/gender to which they belong.
This indivialising stress involves a separation of the person’s “self” for his/her social”roles”, and
hence poses the individual against society. On the other hand society suggests that certain norms of
behavior are appropriate to given groups of people, which many people in such groups would now
wish to contest ( eg the struggles over representation of blacks, woman and gays in recent years ).
Stars are one of the ways in which conception of such persons are promulgated.”
• Richard Dyer ( Stars, BFI,1981 )

13. END