Core Reading Response: January 24, 2018 - Benjamin Noble

DeCordova provides an interesting description of the evolution of the notion of star. In particular, I really enjoyed how he differentiated the 3 different stages of the star system, going from Discourse on Acting (how people began to become interested in the actions and gestures of the actors), to Picture Personality (people progressing to wanting to know who the actors were and what other work they were doing), and then, finally, the Star (when people began to focus on the personal lives of actors and how they related to their acting roles). Particularly, his belief that the ‘Stars’ imply that there is a focus on trying to gather knowledge about the personal lives of actors is very clear and a great concept that I agree with. It is interesting to examine this concept of the evolution of the star system, focusing on the way that actors moved and gestured to slowly becoming a desire for more and more information. DeCordova appears to consistently focus on the importance of knowledge, and the desire for the audience to find more and more about the stars that are on the screen. Today, it’s almost always a given that we want to know more about stars, reflected in the articles of People or other Gossip Columns. It’s cool to see how this desire for knowledge, according to DeCordova, came about and resulted in the Star System that we know today.

            Additionally, there was one moment in DeCordova’s article that was very interesting, which was also echoed in Staiger’s article: the concept of theatre stars not wanting to be recognized/known in films very early on. Particularly today, where we have people making TV shows centrally around a group of people all desperately trying to gain Stardom (think America’s Got Talent and American Idol), this notion seems very strange; why would a star want to avoid the spotlight? It almost feels like a reversal of today, where the majority of people admire and desire to even be a part of the star system, while, back then, professionalism and maintaining one's reputation were more important.