To what extent does the star phenomenon appear to be expanding and assuming new forms
In the post-classical star system, the star, and its image, is not only a media text in its own right, but a means of generating large profits, an amalgamation of investment (guarantee of profit) and outlay (the star wage often takes up a large portion of the whole budget), culminating in economic stability.
In this way, the star may (or may not) contribute to the critical or artistic success of a film, but the star persona offers a guarantee for commercial success, through personal monopoly (e.g. there is only one Arnold Schwarzeneggar) and generic expectation (you know what you get with a Schwarzeneggar film). Paul McDonald, in ‘The Star System’, describes the commercial role of the star.
Film-making is a high cost and high risk enterprise. Stars are used by the film industry as a means to try and manage audience demand for films. Distributors use the presence of stars to sell films to exhibitors in domestic and overseas markets. Exhibitors, who own and run the theatres showing films, are attracted to films with stars because it is believed the presence of stars help to draw audiences to films. In this circuit of commercial exchange, the star therefore becomes a form of capital.
Selling the Star Image as a commodity
I intend to examine how the star image is sold as a commodity, and how this relates to the emergence of the high concept film, a product which can be succinctly marketed through a combination of star persona and iconic imagery. I will then discuss how the continuing reliability and market potential of the star persona has led to an increased influence of the persona not just in marketing, but in project conceptualisation, using Arnold Schwarzeneggar as an illustrative example.
Evolving from the ashes of the studio system, the high concept film owes its emergence to the made-for-TV movie. Originally designed with the kind of succinct synopsis that would suit a TV listings guide in mind, the films concentrate on a vivid style, an easily conveyed concept or narrative, and integration with marketing. In fact it can be said that the film style and marketability of the high concept film share a symbiotic relationship: the image of Schwarzeneggar’s cool yet dangerous reformed Terminator in Terminator 2: Judgement Day (James Cameron, 1991) contributes much to the film, whilst the borrowing of his character as a marketable image not only goes toward selling the film, but also toward turning the character into a popular culture icon, even a brand image, appearing in video games, on coffee mugs, and on bed-spreads. In this way we can see the star persona as a means of product differentiation. In his influential book ‘High Concept’, Justin Wyatt states:
“The reliance on bold images in the films reinforces the extraction of these images from the film for the film’s marketing and merchandising. The reduced narrative and emphasis upon style, which often has a potent visual representation, permit, even encourage, the extensive reproduction of these key images from the film in mass marketing in some cases, the style of the productions seem to seep through onto the narrative; issues of style or image become crucial to the functioning of the characters and the development of the narrative.”
Of course not every high concept film relies on star persona big budget disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow (Roland Emmerich, 2004) relies on the concept that global warming is about to plunge New York into a new ice age but what we can say is that the continued search for films with a succinct, easily conveyed style and high market potential, combined with the continued reinforcement of the star system, has meant that the star persona has become as much a part of the conceptualisation of the film as the marketing of it.
The use of the star persona in these films as a marketing tool can come about in the form of a reinforcement of the persona, or an inversion of it. The striking use of Schwarzeneggar’s image in the marketing of Terminator 2: Judgement Day is an example of the former. Throughout the 1980s, Schwarzeneggar had cemented his persona as the ruthless yet heroic action hero through his roles in some of the most successful action films of the decade Conan the Barbarian (John Milius, 1982), Commando (Mark L Lester, 1985), The Running Man (Paul Michael Glaser, 1987), Predator (John McTiernan, 1987), and Red Heat (Walter Hill, 1988).
In the original Terminator (James Cameron, 1984), Schwarzeneggar’s image as the ruthless action hero was reinforced whilst his typical heroic alignment was inverted in other words, he was made the villain of the piece, but it was his image which adorned the posters and video boxes, not Michael Biehn or Linda Hamilton, the two heroes of the film. The film’s synopsis boiled down to: ‘what if the world’s greatest action hero played an unstoppable killing machine from the future?’, and it was this concept which the film’s marketing relied upon, conveyed in its simplest form by Schwarzeneggar’s face, with dark glasses and growling demeanour, under the film’s title. What could possibly hold a greater market potential? Simple the villainous protagonist of the original film returns for the sequel as a sympathetic hero, keeping the iconic image of the Terminator from the first film, but blending it with Schwarzeneggar’s tried and tested world renowned persona as the action hero, a public reinforcement of star persona.
To convey the concept, and hence to sell it, to the potential audience required little more than the already embedded image of Schwarzeneggar as the Terminator, and the ability to convey his change of allegiance (this was achieved in early trailers and commercials by the tagline once he was programmed to destroy the future. Now his mission is to save it). Schwarzeneggar’s star image served to create for the film a potent image, an uncomplicated, succinct and profitable logo.
We can see then that the reliability of the market potential of the star has come to affect not just post-production marketing, but pre-production conceptualisation. A further example of this can be seen in the inversion of Schwarzeneggar’s persona in Junior (Ivan Reitman, 1994). By 1994, the transition from ‘80s man to ‘90s man was well under way, and the glorification of power and brutality and muscle-bound physical prowess that characterised popular American cinema of the 1980s had begun to grow stale. What were once powerfully iconic images, that of Stallone in Rambo: First Blood (Ted Kotcheff, 1982) or Schwarzeneggar in Commando, no longer held the same market potential. By this point Schwarzeneggar had already began a process of softening his persona, with self-deprecatory, comedic roles in collaboration with director Ivan Reitman in Twins (1988) and Kindergarten Cop (1990). It was only a matter of time then before somebody saw the market potential in a complete inversion of Schwarzeneggar’s tough-guy image. Working on the foundations set in Twins and Kindergarten Cop, the marketing of Junior relied on a very simple and easily conveyed concept a concept which was in fact conveyed in one crucial poster-friendly image but one that nevertheless carried the ultimate contradiction of star persona: ‘Schwarzeneggar gets pregnant’. One can almost hear the reactions of his fan base ‘Schwarzeneggar gets pregnant?!’.
In fact, many of his fans did not react favourably the film was not received well critically, and gave an average performance at best at the box office, grossing $36 million in the United States compared to True Lies (James Cameron) which was released the same year and grossed $146 million. But commercial success is not the point what is most striking is how the star persona, as opposed to the star’s ability, can be so influential not just in a film’s marketing, but also in the conceptualisation and pitching of a project what is the betting that the phrase ‘Schwarzeneggar gets pregnant’ was exactly how the project was pitched to Universal?
It is impossible to characterise an over-arching star persona. From the likeable bad boy (Sean Penn, Russell Crowe) to the glamorous beauty (Nicole Kidman, Scarlett Johansen), the charming lothario (Sean Connery, Antonio Banderas) to the pure teen angel (Anne Hathaway, Lindsay Lohan), the muscle-bound action hero (Schwarzeneggar, Jean-Claude Van Damme) to the rubber-faced funny-man (Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler), there is a star for every niche. But what they all share is the kind of wealth, power and physical attributes which set them apart from their audience. They are aspirational models of success, and in fact, whether they like it or not, are models for capitalism, a part of how the dominant media tells the world, and in particular the United States, that their country works. This perhaps helps us understand how the California public found it so easy blur the lines between star persona and human personality, as the Terminator became Governor Schwarzeneggar in 2003. On channel 4’s ‘Newsnight’, one member of the California public, in a vox pop interview, was heard to say: it would be so cool to have the Terminator as governor (Channel 4, Newsnight, Chrysalis, 2003). Given the current blurring of his persona, we are perhaps not a million miles away from Arnold’s next big summer action blockbuster: The Governor.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
John Belton, American Cinema/American Culture, John Belton, McGraw/Hill 1994
Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark, Screening the Male, Routledge 1993
Paul McDonald, The Star System, Wallflower publishing 2000
Steve Neale and Murray Smith, Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, Routledge 1998
Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular Bodies: gender, genre and the action cinema, Routledge 1993
Justin Wyatt, High Concept, University of Texas Press 1994
Tags: commodity, film making, hollywood, Schwarzeneggar, star system, Terminator
