The reading this week presented very distinctive and unique voices such as Dyer, Eckert, and Laplace. Dyer, as someone else mentioned already, went further and deeper in his analysis of what makes a star and how those stars were eventually transformed into the most effective tool to promote a film. He explores different stars’ stories and their specific rise to stardom. Whereas Laplace and Eckert focused their study on how stars’ “persona” was used not only to sell movie tickets but extended to a wider economic market. Eckert article emphasizes how the idea of stars crosses disciplinary boundaries, being a product of mass culture and an industrial marketing device, while also being a significant element in the performing arts field carrying ideological values that have the power to express the intimacies of individual personality. While all of these three where eye-opening readings, I found Laplace piece to be the most provocative one.
She explains that the studio at the time conducted gender-differentiated surveys in order to discover what was that women were craving to see of the big screen. As a result, they developed a set of criteria for attracting women to the movies; they preferred female stars over male, serious dramas, love stories, and musicals. Moreover, the survey showed women wanted “good character development” and stories with “human interest.” Although the studios might have tried to accommodate this, all female movies would still revolve around the “traditional realms of women’s experience: the familial, the domestic, and the romantic.”
Another central issue was, in fact, the problematic of “female subjectivity, agency, and desire” in Hollywood cinema. Laplace underlines that a dominant argument and explanation for this is that masculinist discourses inevitably “reposition the woman’s film for patriarchy.”
Looking specifically at how consumerism applies to this concept, it can be argued that as mass production came into place providing many goods that women once produced by themselves at home it also become necessary to substitute buying and consuming as equally worthy activities. As a consequence, women were seen as the perfect targets for “the indoctrination into the idea that these activities were life’s ultimate gratification.” This created a new role for women as the administrators of the house.
Another technic used to merchandise beauty products was by introducing the notion that beauty was not a “natural given, but achievable by any women – though only through the use of the correct goods: cosmetic, grooming aids, and fashion.” Advertisement constantly convinced women that their ability to win and keep a husband was correlated on the “acceptability of their looks.” Therefore, Hollywood cinema was built around the presentation of women as glamorous objects to be “emulated and consumed.” with its message that happiness for women solely depended on their “self-creation as desirable objects through the consumption of mass-produced products.”
In “Now, Voyager” the primary signs that Bette Davis is sick is the way she looks, she’s “deviant in her femininity.” This is represented as a symptom of her neurosis. Her cure is conveyed through a glamorous transformation which then leads to the love of a handsome man. Laplace argues the promotion of the film is “How to be Beautiful guide with Bette Davis as chief instructor.” The very first shot of Bette Davis in the film is from Dr. Jacquith point of view, we, in fact, share with him the shock and the horror of her appearance. In addition, Davis’ character, Charlotte, barely speaks, the other “speak for her, to her, of her.” She’s only capable to react. This symbolizes how being unattractive means having no voice. In order for Charlotte to stop being the butt of abuse and ridicule, she needs to become what men want: a beautiful glamorous woman.
