Richard Dyer's theory



That a star is an image that has been constructed from a range of materials (e.g. advertising, magazines, films etc.). He goes on to say that stars depend on subsidary media such as Tv, radio and so on, to allow themselves to create a certain image and attract their target audience by being made up of a variety of meanings which bring the audience to them. Overall, the star is incoherent incomplete and open. Due to the incoherence of this star image will mean that the audience will strive on understanding or completeling the overall star image.


How is this achieved?
A continued consumption of the star through their products.

 He explains 2 paradoxes:
Paradox 1:
The star must be ordinary and extrordinary. This will attract consumers to the star due to the originality.
Paradox 2:
The star must be simultaneoulsy present and absent for the consumer.

Hegemony
Dyer explains this as the star is used to position the consumer in relation to the dominant social values. However, this depends upon the artist. Either the audience is positioned against the mainstream, within the mainstream or somewhere in between.

Below is a quote that Richard Dyer said summarising his theory.

“In these terms it can be argued that stars are representations of persons which reinforce, legitimate or occasionally alter the prevalent preconceptions of what it is to be a human being in this society.  There is a good deal at stake in such conceptions.  On the one hand, our society stresses what makes them like others in the social group/class/gender to which they belong.  This individualising stress involves a separation of the person's "self" from his/her social "roles", and hence poses the individual against society.  On the other hand society suggests that certain norms of behaviour 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, women and gays in recent years).  Stars are one of the ways in which conceptions of such persons are promulgated.”

Richard Dyer (Stars, BFI, 1981)