The music industry likes to create stars. The word 'star' refers to the semi-mythological set of meanings constructed around the music performers in order to sell the performers to a large and loyal audience.
A recent example of an artist that I believe this applies to is Justin Bieber. He became famous at the age of just 16 for his fairly controversial 'girly' voice; which most people seemed to hate but he then developed his fan base of 'Beliebers'. Bieber now has 70 million followers on twitter and his fame all developed from he media attention he was given, with one of his first songs released ('Baby') now above 1.2 billion views with 5 million dislikes. This shows that even if people aren't too keen on you you can be a star, linking to the values of stardom.
Values of Stardom
- Youthfulness- when Bieber first came on the scene he was young and youthful.
- Rebellious- Bieber was seen to not care what his haters thought about him, and was even seen to spit on one of his fans; maybe not the best attitude but definitely rebellious.
- Sexual Magnetism- A huge amount of females saw Justin Bieber as very attractive, securing himself multiple modelling jobs for famous brands (eg Calvin Klein)
- Originality- every song he brings out has a different element to it; he used to do pop music mainly and now he has incorporated a little bit of house music into his songs too
- Creativity/Talent- No matter how much people don't like him there is no denying he can sing. To have the majority of your hits to reach over 30 million views on YouTube you have to be talented and creative
- Disregard of social values- In his recent music video ('What do you mean?') he is seen to get very intimate with a girl in a hotel room, and there has been multiple news stories about him and other females relationships. He is often caught smoking and doing various other drugs fairly conspicuously and this is published in news papers, proving the disregard for social values.
- Success against the odds- Bieber started off with a large amount of haters, but now his status has increased massively and even I'm a fan of his music now!
Richard Dyer said that irrespective of the medium, stars do have things in common.
They are an image, not a real person that is constructed from a range of different materials, they are commodities produced and consumed on the strength of their meanings, to get their image they depend on a different subsidiary media,
The star image is made up of a range of meanings which are attractive to the target audience; this links to Bieber because everything he does is targeted towards his target audience and helps to make his fan base grow- they may like the fact that he is a bit of a rebel, they might like the fact he models for Calvin Klein; it makes them fonder of him.
Star Image
For a star to continue people want to know more about them personally; so people can connect and complete the image they have of them. This is done by continued consumption of their products e.g Justin Bieber has brought out a film called 'Believe' which tells audiences more about him and his private life keeping the his star image.
Performances (concerts) are set up to complete the image of the artist but ultimately are unsatisfying as the audience doesn't find out the full image of the artist so therefore makes them more determined to carry on consuming the products so they can find out the full image of the artist. This ultimately keeps the audience interested and ensures the star doesn't die out.
Justin Bieber regularly performs at concerts/does his own concerts to keep his audience interested in him, and it also makes his fan base grow.
Depending on the artist the audience may be positioned against the mainstrain or within the mainstream; or possibly even somewhere in between. Bieber's fans are positioned within the mainstream and are seemingly in love with anything he does- so no matter how bad his actions are his 'star image' clouds it.
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