Richard Dyer's Star Theory

Richard Dyer has written extensivley about the role of stas within film, TV and music. Dyer states that irrespective of the medium, stars have some key features in common:

• A star is an image, not a real person, that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials e.g. advertising, magazines as well as films
• Stars are commodities produced and consumed on the strength of their meanings

Stars depened on a range of subsidory media - magazines, TV, radio, the internet - in order to construct an image for themselves which can be marketed to their target audiences. The star image is made up of a range of meanings which are attractive to the target audience. Fundamentally, the star image is incoherent, that is incomplete and 'open'. Dyer says that this is because it is based on two key paradoxes...

Paradox 1
The star must be simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary for the consumer - somebody people can aspire to be like

Paradox 2
The star must be simultaneously present and absent from the consumer - leading us to want to know more about them

The Star Image
The incoherence of the star image ensures that audiences continually strive to 'complete' or 'to make sense of' the image. This is achieved by continued consumption of the star through his or her products.

In the music industry, performance seems to promise the completion of the image, but it is always ultimately unsatisfying. This means that fans will fo away determined to continue consuming the star in order to carry on attempting to complete their image.