Synopses & Reviews
Star Studies: A Critical Guide provides a lively introduction to the major approaches and key developments within this key area of film studies. It identifies a number of dominant themes, explains major theories, concepts and methodologies, and explores the diversity of approaches that have helped shape the international study of stars and stardom.
Comparing the stars and star systems of Hollywood, Bollywood, China and many European countries, from the early-twentieth to the first decade of the twenty-first century, Martin Shingler considers the multiple functions of stars: as an elite workforce within the film industry, as actors and performers, as role models and cultural representatives, as icons and images, as transnational and
national symbols, and as commodities.
The scope of star studies is wide, historically and geographically, but this book helpfully focuses on salient features of the discipline, providing a cogent overview of star studies, while suggesting some useful avenues for further research. Published in the BFI Film Stars series, Star Studies provides an essential theoretical and historical companion to the individual star volumes in the series.
Synopsis
Star Studies: A Critical Guide, mother volume of the Film Stars series, maps the progress and future of star studies, and identifies a set of research methods for film students to apply to their work on star studies or one film star in particular.
About the Author
MARTIN SHINGLER is Senior
Lecturer in Radio and Film Studies
at the University of Sunderland, UK.
He is the co-author of On Air:Methods and Meanings of Radio
,
with Cindy Wieringa (1998) and
Melodrama: Genre, Style andSensibility
, with John Mercer (2004).
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Star Studies: Mapping Out the Field of Star Scholarship within Film Studies2 Methods: Ways of Analyzing Screen Studies3 Star Quality: In Search of the Prerequisites for Stardom 4 Star Systems: The Mechanics of Star Production 5 Star Identities: From Image to Persona and Publicity to Gossip 6 Unstable Symbols: On the Representativeness of Film Stars Conclusion Notes References Index