412: Stars + Celebrity

King mentions the idea of typecasting in his “Articulating Stardom” essay.  In reading this, I wanted to compile a small, contemporary list of the stars today that are typecasted to roles.  Do you agree with this list? Do you have other examples of actors being typecast?  Michael Cera – comedically awkward, dorky, (Scott Pilgrim, Barbie, Superbad) Jesse Eisenberg – I feel like he’s always coded as autistic in the roles he plays; nerdy, super intelligent, socially unaware characters (Social Network, Now You See Me, Zombieland) Ryan Reynolds – essentially plays himself, comedic, regular dude, often a love interest (Deadpool, The Adam Project, The Proposal) Melissa Mccarthy – comedic relief, disorganized mess, funny “fat” girl (Tammy, The Heat, Identity Thief, Bridesmaids) Keira Knightly – heroine of period pieces, not the "proper" lady of the time (Pride and Prejudice, Atonement, Imitation Game)

In an interview in 2019, Robert Pattinson said “I always say about people who do method acting, you only ever see people do the method when they’re playing assholes… You never see someone being lovely to everyone while they’re really deep in character.” The type of method acting Pattinson referenced is the school of thought Konstantin Stanislavsky practiced, where actors should live their characters “as fully as possible” (Dyer 132); basing their performance on inner feelings. In direct contrast with this, Dyer talks about Diderot and Coquelin’s method where they believed that through traditional skills or observation, actors should be able to master a performance without losing themselves in it. Pattinson’s statement about method brings up the question of what really defines identifiable method acting. Its popularization in the 40s/50s of actors in Elia Kazan’s films led to the more heightened (and sometimes toxic) examples of method acting we associate with actors today like Ro...

     In the eternal struggle to make a performance “real,” King’s framework of the relationship between actor and character offers a look at some of the practices that modern casting directors, actors, and audiences sense to break free from in 2024. We’ve now reached a period of filmmaking where the notion of a “real” performance and the “hyper-semiotization,” of actors has become a point of discussion in the massive online forums of social media. The shared consciousness of the entertainment world has now completely absorbed King’s theories as a matter of fact. The way that casting directors were previously able to toy with the perception of actors, an example being Hitchock’s use of James Stewart in Vertigo, now comes under far more scrutiny. If the end goal of these actors is to play authentically on the screen, it’s odd to consider how “method” acting has become so distorted. Obviously the first example to come to mind is Jared Leto’s Joker. I believe Jared Leto even ...

I want to take a moment to talk about esports players, which, similar to regular sports athletes, occupy their own positions within stardom. Earlier this week, I met the Manager of Education Partnerships at Gen.G, one of the most successful esports organizations. What I was shocked to learn was that Gen.G considers education as a core part of their mission. They run Gen.G Global Academy out of Seoul, South Korea, which is essentially a preparatory high school that provides students with a regular educational curriculum, as well as gaming and esports training. Students that graduate can either go on to college as regular students, become professional players if they possess the aptitude, or go into the esports industry through other roles. Essentially, this high school helps nurture young talent within esports through Gen.G. Firstly, I had no idea that such an institution could exist. But it got me thinking about the ways in which stars are made . Throughout the semester, we have read v...

  Hi all! I hope you all had a chance to watch the SAG Awards last Saturday evening. It was quite a show! I was so impressed with how they decorated the theater with all the beautiful lanterns hanging from the ceiling and the wood accents on the stage.  Did anyone else stand behind the fence on campus to watch the stars arrive or leave the SAG Awards? Amidst the crowd of other excited USC students and celebrity fans, I had the honor of spotting the one and only Pedro Pascal after his SAG Award win for Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series, The Last of Us. It was so fun to watch the show from my apartment just down the block from the Shrine theater, then run out to watch the stars leave for the after party in an entourage of black Cadillac Escalades. We also saw lots of other notable starts from behind the fence on Jefferson street including Anne Hathaway, Robert Downey Jr., Jeremy Allen White, Cillian Murphy, Lisa Ann Walters, Elizabeth Debicki, and President of SAG-AFTRA h...

As we have seen in class, separating movie stars and, by extension, television and music from their socio-economic significance is almost impossible. Stars exist because of economic production systems and political ideology mechanisms that need them. In his article "Articulating Stardom," Barry King delves into the "political economy" behind celebrities in mainstream cinema and television (167). King points out some economic areas in which stardom operates, understanding the notion of economics in this text as "a system of control that mobilizes discursive resources in order to achieve a specificable effect" (167). What I find more interesting in the text is the conflicts around naturalism and the ideas of impersonation and personification.  Beyond ideas of genre, mainstream cinema always tries to make their stories visually believable, and the actor's role is to make a performance that supports that goal. Then, the physicality of the actor becomes the...

  In Barry King’s “Articulating Stardom” essay, he highlights the differences and similarities between stage acting and screen acting and how these differences came to be and what helps create a “skilled” performance of each.  A big point he analyzes is how actors often must “obliterate his or her sense of identity in order to become a signifier for the intentionality inscribed in character” or in simpler terms, they must suspend their own personality in order to assume the mindset of the character they are portraying.  This can be easier or harder to accomplish depending on the actor’s physicality, behavior, and previous notions of other roles they’ve held.  The issue of previous roles and the assumptions that the audience hold from them carrying over to a new role introduces the idea of typecasting to the King’s analysis.  One significant point of King’s analysis is his presentation, definition, and distinction of important terms like “image”, “persona”, “char...

     In “Stars and Performance,” Richard Dyer explores performance styles and techniques as they are intrinsically tied to how stars access the characters they either act out or inhabit on screen. Dyer begins by introducing two primary schools of thought when it comes to acting: the observational and traditional training championed by Diderot and Coquelin verses the more experimental qualities of method acting as promoted by Stanislavsky. Dyer summarizes the difference between these schools, stating that their “opposition is sometimes referred to as acting from the outside in vs. acting from the inside out” (132). Dyer then discusses differing types of performance and how each one has influenced popular conceptions and discourses surrounding acting. Perhaps most significantly in this section, Dyer draws out the way in which radio performance inspired modes of acting that rely upon notions of “domestic immediacy,” “instantly recognizable characters” (whether through arche...

     Last week I had the opportunity to work with Jill Alexander in USC Comedy Live. She is not only an actress, but she is also a USC school of dramatic arts professor. Though I did not get to meet her personally, I was able to see her perform and creatively improv throughout her set. I am part of USC’s Trojan vision in the production team. Through production I am able to get an incredible insight into how shows are produced, the stress behind coordinating a live show and seeing how actors and directors adjust to quick changes. I don’t meet famous artists often, so when I encounter someone who has acted professionally before, it's unreal. I wanted to ask so many questions, how it feels to be part of a professional production and how working on set differs from live productions. During the introduction of the show, the teleprompter accidentally stopped working and Jill had to improvise her speech. It was super interesting being able to see someone improvise so quickly in ...

I wanted to share this text that I wrote last summer for my personal blog, and I updated it using some of the elements we learned in class. In some way, it explores the idea of characters, types, and celebrities and how that combination can create social phenomena. I hope you like it. ******* The Barbenheimer Effect: Scorsese's "After Hours" turned into a marketing strategy. When "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" hit theaters in July of 2023, cinemas worldwide experienced ecstasy. Pure ecstasy not only in economic terms but as a feeling that moviegoers were back in theaters. I was in ecstasy too. It was unique, and from my perspective of analytical film analysis, the so-called Barbenheimer effect was fascinating. That is why I wrote a piece for my X-blog that I updated here with new thoughts.   "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" releases resulted in a triumph, with over $550 million grossed worldwide over four days, marking the best figures since ...

  Last week I had the most wonderful opportunity to meet Clea DuVall during one of my work shifts. I work in the theaters on campus in the projection booth, and while the classes I work for often have crew members as guests, it’s not often that I’m able to meet a star whom I really admire and who’s work was a part of helping me form my identity. To be completely honest, you’re not really supposed to be noticed as a projectionist until there’s a problem, so I kept my head down as I went my normal route through the class to give the professor her microphone. It wasn’t until I was up by the stage that I saw her and I had a complete meltdown (not really, but it felt like it). When I confirmed with the professor that I wasn’t just seeing things, she offered to introduce me to her (which I declined, but she insisted on doing it). The conversation I made with her was probably awful and I’m embarrassed she had to sit there and listen to my nervous yapping. They say not to meet your id...