Newspapers, magazines, TV talk shows, album covers -- all display a proliferation of film star images. In the past we have tended to see celebrities as cogs in a mass entertainment industry selling desires and ideologies. But since the 1970s, new approaches have explored the active role of the star in producing meanings, pleasures and identities for a diversity of audiences. "Stardom" brings together some of the best recent writing which represents these new approaches. Drawn from film history, sociology, textual analysis, audience research, psychoanalysis and cultural politics, the essays raise important questions for the politics of representation, the impact of the star on society and the cultural limitations and possibilities of stars.
Contributors: Christine Gledhill; Janet Staiger; Richard de Cordova; Charles Eckert; Thomas Harris; Karen Alexander; Richard Dyer; Charlotte Cornelia Herzog; Jane Marie Gaines; Charles Wolfe; Behroze Ghandy; Rosie Thomas;Jackie Stacey; Barry King; John O. Thompson; Andrew Britton; Michael Mourlet; David Lusted; Tessa Perkins; Miriam Hansen; Andrea Weiss; Kobena Mercer.