A Brief Note On Stardom

Movie stars. They are celebrated. They are perfect. They are larger than life. The ideas that we have formed in our minds centered on the stars that we idolize make these people seem inhuman. We know everything about them and we know nothing about them; it is this conflicting concept that leaves audiences thirsty for a drink of insight into the lifestyles of the icons that dominate movie theater screens across the nation. This fascination and desire for connection with celebrities whom we have never met stems from a concept elaborated on by Richard Dyer. He speculates about stardom in terms of appearances; those that are representations of reality, and those that are manufactured constructs. Stardom is a result of these appearances—we actually know nothing about them beyond what we see and hear from the information presented to us. The media’s construction of stars encourages us to question these appearances in terms of “really”—what is that actor really like (Dyer, 2)? This enduring query is what keeps audiences coming back for more, in an attempt to decipher which construction of a star is “real”. Is it the character he played in his most recent film? Is it the version of him that graced the latest tabloid cover? Is it a hidden self that we do not know about? Each of these varied and fluctuating presentations of stars that we are forced to analyze create different meanings and effects that frame audience’s opinions about a star and ignite cultural conversations.

The nature of comedy has always left it somewhat resistant to critical analysis, and to some extent the same can be said for comedic actors. The class-clowns of Hollywood like Will Ferrell are often times constructed as being nothing more than amusing, so they seem lik...

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...masculine “norms”. He has portrayed an overly masculine bigot in an entirely ridiculous manner that pokes fun at those characteristics. It comes down to his comical portrayal of issues that would be a much bigger deal in any other setting coming from any other actor, and it is extremely refreshing.

Ferrell’s films and his comic fame certainly raise stimulating thoughts within a grander discussion of contemporary masculinity, sexuality, and social politics. The majority of his films, present idiotically archaic varieties of “normative” masculine conduct and in nearly every case, Ferrell’s humor develops completely on devaluing and growing these gender norms. He instills both earlier and existing representations of manliness with both a juvenile approach and comedic tendency to go over the top, thus discrediting these stereotypes and opening them up for ridicule.