‘Star Image,’ celebrities and the Oscars
How do award ceremonies, celebrities and the media work together to sustain the entertainment industry and its major players?
The night my nephew was born was the night of the 89th Academy Awards — the night when “La La Land” was mistakenly called for best picture instead of “Moonlight,” shocking viewers everywhere. To this day, whenever I mention that my nephew was born when “La La Land” was called, I’m met with knowing head nods. Everyone knows about the Oscars, and how “La La Land” was nominated for best picture. They likely also know that Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling were the leading actors. The Oscars is a night filled with prestige as the public eye scrutinizes every move the celebrities in the audience make. While it’s highly unlikely that the viewers at home have seen every movie nominated, millions tune in to see who wins best actor or to judge the glamorous gowns. Celebrities — whether through their achievements as an actor, their innate style or something intangible — are a huge selling point for movies.
The Oscars is a manifestation of the power celebrities have to promote movies to the public by way of their visual appearance, press interviews and speeches. As the Oscars demonstrate, celebrities serve to bring enormous amounts of attention to movies, which results in the audience engaging with the celebrities, films and the accompanying media.
While it’s true that there are fewer people viewing movies in theaters, films continue to be watched and enjoyed at home on a number of streaming services. Celebrities are crucial components of the movie industry as a whole, with the Oscars as the ultimate representation of celebrities’ influence in generating buzz for movies. The Oscars would not exist in the way it does without universally acknowledged celebrities and the prestige associated with their stardom.
The Oscars provide a space where celebrities can create and reinforce their “star image,” or the persona created through media about a person, as Richard Dyer terms in his 1979 book “Stars.” The Oscars is the epicenter for media coverage of celebrities. The star image is created through the interviews and appearances of the movie celebrities that showcase who they are beyond the characters they play. With actress Zendaya’s appearances in “Challengers,” “Dune,” the Spider-Man movies and “Euphoria,” she’s become “the most in-demand actor in the US and worldwide,” according to data from Parrot Analytics. With her rise in prevalence in the industry, she’s also gained a greater influence on the public, which manifests from fashion to activism. By being public about dating “Spiderman” co-star Tom Holland, she’s bolstered by her star image, which mixes the fictional “Spiderman” dynamic with a level of reality that’s accessible to consumers.
In 2023, nearly 20 million people tuned into the Oscars, marking it a monumental night for garnering attention for movies and celebrities. However, even if people do not watch the Oscars live there is still an enormous industry that goes beyond the red carpet. A Variety article reads: “On social media, the show managed 27.4 million total social interactions across Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.” With countless best dressed lists and Tweets about celebrity couples, the Oscars is a place that allows celebrities to shine, which subsequently attracts viewers and brings attention to films.
As mentioned, the Oscars encompass more than just the actual show and seeps into various other forms of media. Not only do celebrities play a role in generating attraction for the Oscars, the awards also aid celebrities in building their star image and maintaining their status. In her novel “The Drama of Celebrity,” Sharon Marcus writes, “In the drama of celebrity, all three entities — publics, media producers, and stars themselves have power, and all three compete and cooperate to assign value and meaning to celebrities.” It’s a two way street, where the award ceremony benefits the celebrities in the form of exposure and prestige for nominees and winners — adding to their achieved status — and the network that runs the show receives viewership from fans of those public figures.
Take the example of social media, where celebrities are active in curating their star image by way of presentational media. Marcus writes that “platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and YouTube expanded astronomically after pop stars Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Beyonce, Adele, Rihanna, and Taylor Swift began to use them.” With this, the social media platforms gained popularity because of celebrity use, just as celebrity participation draws viewership to award ceremonies.
As mentioned previously, celebrities form or develop their star image partially through their public appearances, and the Oscars allow many opportunities for this. As Professor P. David Marshall puts it, “Celebrities perform in their primary art form — as actors, musicians, singers, athlete[s] — as well as the extra-textual dimensions of interviews, advertisements/commercial endorsements, award nights and premieres.” It is through this media coverage of the Oscars that the public can engage with celebrities and their social performance.
Marshall attempts to tackle this question of why celebrities are so fascinating to ordinaries. He comes to the loose conclusion that the “[c]elebrity taught generations how to engage and use consumer culture to ‘make’ oneself.” In other words, celebrities are a way for the public to view themselves in the world. This is seen in relation to the Oscars in the form of watch parties that people throw in their homes. Some parties even mimic the aesthetic of the Oscars with details like black and gold themed decorations, a red carpet, fancy outfits and paparazzi booths. This mimicry of the Oscars, particularly the red carpet and the paparazzi booth, is an example of consumers immersing themselves in this celebrity spectacle, even turning it into a social event. As Marshall would say, ordinary people are engaging with the media and then they “make oneself” from their observation. While these watch parties are a small-scale way of looking at Marshall’s general commentary, it speaks to how consumers tend to replicate a little bit of the perceived celebrity lifestyle.
The Oscars represent the role that celebrities play in the movie industry, namely their glamor and attraction to the public. Celebrities draw the public’s attention by exhibiting their star image, which audiences can engage with on an increasingly personal level. Even if one does not watch the Oscars live, there is an enormous amount of related programming and media that demonstrate its cultural impact.
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