Classwork: Theory of Stardom

In class today we studied the Theory of Stardom by Richard Dyer. Here I will include the summary of the class. I decided to transfer the summary I had written in my notes to this blogpost. This post is written by me (Chelsea). 

The Theory of Stardom by Richard Dyer refers to the idea that a 'star' is created by institutions or companies in order to make money, they typically have a unique selling point (USP) to differentiate themselves and stand out among other stars. 

REEL persona: A curated version of a star, designed to fit the expectations of an audience (e.g. performances, music videos, social media) 

REAL persona: The authentic personality of an individual - the way they are in their personal life, away from the public eye (e.g. interviews, documentaries, behind-the-scenes footage) 

Celebrities are appealing to audience due to 5 aspects: 

- Love: We are fascinated with the love lives of the stars, we can also feel a romantic affiliation with them.

- Ordinariness: We like to see them doing routine things, living normal lives just like our own.

- Success: We like the idea of overnight success, and failure before success. This appeals to our sense of fair play (why we like reality TV so much).

- Consumption: We are fascinated by the huge material wealth brought by media success. Not just luxury homes and cars, but also strict dietary regimes set by expensive nutritionists, holidays etc. 

- Dream turned sour (downfall): The one thing we enjoy more than building up a celebrity is tearing one down, we like to exploit their misery.

Here are my classroom notes about the celebrity, Olivia Rodrigo. This will help me in my music video because I need to create a persona for my artist. I did this work with my teammate, Kalista. 

View link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10eTJaeYuPvc6B8GuIPvn_dAMWv3hEOht30NQxedx7kY/edit?usp=sharing 

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I've never heard of this theory before, but I found it fascinating right away. I discovered that each star's persona was intentionally created to appeal to and influence audience engagement by building a recognisable brand in which viewers can connect emotionally. It was interesting for me to learn that a star persona can greatly impact culture, spark trends, and shape public perception. My teammate and I also had a lot of fun analysing our chosenstar. Since she is also in the same group as me for this (component 3) project, it made it easier to choose the star and share our ideas because it aligns to our proposed star later. As a result, while our genre is pop, we chose Olivia Rodrigo as the star to analyse as she is one of the biggest pop artists out there, and her age, gender, and style are all in line with ours. This will make it easier for us to create our own star persona while taking inspiration from her. I also want to make sure that our star persona has a strong public image and can be easily recognised by the audience through their authenticity. 

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