Emma Smith – Core Post #3

 Thomas Harris brings up how Americans choose their stars of the time in his essay “The Building of Popular Images: Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe,” using Kelly and Monroe as case studies in his analysis of the stars that become the figureheads of the industry and the audience perception of the two.  Given how dated the essay is, 1957 to be exact, I think the landscape of how stars are pushed to the public has drastically changed since that period, but the images themselves, that are pushed, remain somewhat the same, or at least similar, to the images pushed in the 50s and 60s.  What is interesting to me is how stereotyping is discussed and perceived in the essay.  Under today’s context, the word stereotype carries a negative connotation, often relating back to the limiting attributes it prescribed to the individual being stereotyped.  In the essay, it feels as if stereotyping is just a tactic used to create and spread a specific image of the star.  Even more important, the two stars used, Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe, are two white women.  While I’m not suggesting that white women cannot be limited by stereotypes, and I’m sure Kelly and Monroe had issues with the same types of roles they often played, I feel as if stereotypes have a far worse effect on people of color, stars of color.  The tactics used to promote these white women as a certain stereotype are from the same vein that produce crude and insulting images of people of color in the film industry.  In short, I just think the kind of two-faced apparatus of the stereotype being both limiting and standardized in the industry would be an interesting topic to dive into deeper. 


I guess a question I would pose to the class is, knowing that Kelly and Monroe were limited by the stereotypes placed on them, can there really be any good stereotypes? Or are all harmful in their nature? 

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