INTRODUCTION:
When is an actor also a star? What is the relationship between performance and stardom? What stake does the star hold in the processes of film production? is there a difference between stardom and celebrity? And why are film stars so fascinating and alluring to us? These are some of the questions that will be addressed in this section.Yet,while these questions have always proved troubling to riorous academic scrutiny as we enter into cinema's third century in the all-consuming context of hypermediated cultur,the answers to such questions become even more complex.
Star As Commodity:
Until recently there were three principal ways in which critics adressed the question of stardom. The first locates the star within the economic contexs of film production and film marketing. During the ara of the studio system, in which creative and ttechnical personnel were tiled to long-term contracts, stars provided one of the principal means by which Hollywood offered audiences guarantees of predictability by embodying a set of particular expectations and by extension particular kinds of pleasure Since the collapse of the studio system in the 1950 stars have become arguably the key element of the package around which movies are produced. Suan Hayward explains that producers will put up money for films that outherwise might not get off the ground Moreover enen a cursory glance at the promotional material surrounding a film's lauvch-paosters traillers, interviews in print, on TV and online as well as a host of further merchandising products-reveals the considerable stake stars hold in announcing its presence and generating an audience of suffient sixe to recoup costs. On this account then the star is understood as a speific form of industrial commodity insofar as like genre stars are a mechanism for selling movie tickets by guaranteeing certain pleasures and enaciting a commercial strategy for marketing films However a star's commercial capacity is inxtracably bound up with their ablity to be liked by large amounts of people from a range of cultural and national conexts The ramaining two aproaches to studying stars are sensitive to these more social and psychic aspects of stardom inasmuch as they turn away from industrial questions focusing instead on the ways in which the figure of the film star generates specific meanings and pleasures.