Classical stardom depended on separating manufactured image from private person

Evidence

The vertical integration of the studio system enabled the controlled management of celebrity image, feeding promotional material through corporate channels of production, distribution, marketing, and more. A star, consequentially, was not a person but a representation of one, a representation intended to attract popular attention, leading to the exchange of money for entertainment, a representation produced by an entire, massive cultural apparatus. This divorce between image and person was essential for the star, a separation that, for instance, fed and continues to feed the gossip and paparazzi industries, industries organized around the knowledge that the image of the “star” conceals the “person” beyond the image. Because the audience knows, to some degree, that the image of the star is itself manufactured, then there is a desire to get to the reality obscured by industry—a reality rife with scandal and abuse. One desires to move past the imaginary to the real, encountering the other as if the interpersonal separation between fan and star is merely an illusion of industry. The “real life” of the star—a fantasy of a life lived that is more full, more salacious, more exciting, more scandalous—promises a fullness foreclosed to the fan. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 130

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the studio-era star as image divorced from person, the baseline against which the influencer’s collapse of that separation must be read.
• XREF: The gossip/paparazzi industry driven by the image-person gap parallels the Frankfurt School account of celebrity; also connects to how influencer authenticity markets itself against exactly this manufactured star image. — connects to: Classic celebrity discourse centers on the gap between image and the real person — Theresa M. Senft, Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in…, 196