“Women are not in love with
me but with the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas on which
women paint their dreams.” – Rudolph Valentino
In this week’s reading, I found it very
interesting how Staiger and deCordova’s texts complement each other. However,
deCordova’s argument of how there were three significant transformations in the
development of the star system stood out to me the most as I found it to be a
very objective and clear way of understanding the emergence of the star.
As deCordova argues, a star
is characterized by the combination of their picture personality, their
professional experience, and their private life. Hansen’s text, however, shows
how stars could (and still can) go one step further to augment stardom. As Hansen
demonstrates, Valentino was the first male actor to emphasize his body and
create an image (or a brand, as many would call it today) of virility that
would feed into the sexual desire of cinema’s predominantly female audience. By
doing so, he elevated his stardom, as he understood how to target an audience
and make them obsessed with him mostly from drawing on sexuality. Valentino’s
persona even seemed more manufactured to represent women’s desires than to
represent his true self. I found this interesting because it shows how Hollywood
has been profiting from exploring women’s minds and desires since the first
male superstar until today.
Valentino’s case study made me think of how many Internet celebrities are becoming famous nowadays. By exploring sexuality and appealing to a female audience, a web celebrity like Cameron Dallas, who went from Vine to the 2016 Met Gala, is able to establish a huge fan base of girls that is obsessed and in love with him, which attracts investors interested in social media presence and, consequently, elevates his stardom.
Valentino’s case study made me think of how many Internet celebrities are becoming famous nowadays. By exploring sexuality and appealing to a female audience, a web celebrity like Cameron Dallas, who went from Vine to the 2016 Met Gala, is able to establish a huge fan base of girls that is obsessed and in love with him, which attracts investors interested in social media presence and, consequently, elevates his stardom.
This is definitely a good example of a modern 'Valentino' esc celebrity. The appeal to younger woman on the basis of looks alone can also be found in stars like Justin Bieber. Their draw is broad and they manipulate their audience by seemingly coming across as personably through music and media.
ReplyDeleteCameron Dallas is an interesting case becuase much like the Kardashians, he's famous for being famous. I watched ten minutes of his docu-series on Netflix about his life "on the road." His stardom was so broad that he was able to have major events where he literally danced around on stage to music that wasn't his then took pictures with fans. He does this with a handful of other internet stars and through this they can make millions off ticket sales and advertisement.