It makes sense to refer to certain types of celebrities as “stars”. At their heights, these people inspire the rest of us. She shines, larger than life, above us, and around us. They suggest, in their appearance everywhere, a specific arrangement for the world. Seeing the stars – or more specifically, to believe in them, from the categorical point Put it“On a plane between us and the gods of the gods.”
But: Why are they specifically “stars”? Why are Hollywood celebrities filled with a pale pink color, instead of another arbitrary form? Why the “stars” who are, clearly and incorrectly, Just like us?
The answer has a relationship with OVID. Shakespeare. And Thomas Edison. And Mary Beckford. The stars are the stars, for sure, because they shine and shine – because, even when they are shower in the lights, they seem to have their own outbreak. But they are “stars”, more specifically, because they are part of the tendency of the long Western culture to connect the human to the sky. They are “stars” because their fans want them – and so to some extent they need them.
The wide use of the word “star” to refer to a leader between us dating back to. Peter DavisThe theatrical historian at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champin, to the Middle Ages. Choser, which was also The first registered user From the word “celebrities” and One of the first to use The word “famous” also Glimpse The lexical convergence of man and heavens: in House of fameThe dreamer of Choser worries that he may find himself “prepared”. “Oh God, who made nature,” The dreamer thinks“Am I to die in any other way? Will Jove turn me into a star?”
Choser, Dean of Swinford Indicate In his book Through the hidden portalHe remembered Ovid’s The idea of transformationThe idea that humans can, in this case, turn into shiny things of the constellations. Choser words also Holding architectural effects This is likely to be clear to its fans: “Installing with Stars”, Swinford notes, “It means creating a mosaic orgastured decoration inside the cathedral.” The building was an intended tradition of the sky, and an unintended expectation of a kind of stability in Hollywood: he presented stars as a constellation of bright lights, always above.
the US weeklyThe mobile version of Stellification is in many ways, directly to Chaucer’s: It emphasizes the role of celebrities as a distant and accessible body, shines and sparkling, but represents her shoes. The stars have long suggested a kind of system – and trend – with anarchic human life. They have long been hinted at the existence of something bigger, something behind something more.
A small surprise, then, that – especially when the world of science became more aware of the works of heavenly bodies – the world of theater seized their symbol. Moliere, Peter Davis told me, the use of Chaucerian from the stereoscopic “star”: Wives SchoolIn 1662, Horas Describe “This young star of love is decorated with a lot of magic.” Shakespeare also expected Hollywood to mix the character and heavenly in both of his plays and poems. “We are chasing our disasters in the sun, moon and stars,” Edmund inherits in King Lear“As if we were the wicked on necessity, fools of heavenly coercion. “Love, also, in the mind of Shakespeare, logically higher as a heavenly power, reassured in its stability: in”Sonnet 116“The poet finds that love” … a sign / is always proven on the storm and never shake; / It is the star for every wand’ring bark, / whose value does not know, although its length is taken. “
In this context, Davis explains that the idea of the human star was, in particular, to the constant on the basis of the theater – and to the human person of the actor. According to Oxford English DictionaryThe first reference to the “star” of the theater came in 1751, with Boys in the council Advertising, “You can shine a brightest theater star, who was ever proven by the audience.” Almost at the same time, in 1761, the book Historical theaters in London and Dublin “That star has shortly after a star in the first size.”. Garik will appear again in 1765, in A very high article written about it in Gentman and London Magazine: “Rumors of this bright star who appeared in the east quickly flew in the city, and drew all theatrical Magi to push their loyalty to his birthless son, genius …”.
By the 1920s, it was common to refer to actors as “stars” – for the purposes of sale as much as anything else. The theater tour became common during that time, in England and America. Davis told me that British actors, in particular, have been often promoted as “stars” for their tours in the United States as a way to ensure that large audiences will witness their performance. Actors like Edmund Kaneand George Friedrich CookAnd Charles and Vi Kimbel It was thickly sold to the American masses. Sometimes, Davis notes that the actors had passed their pride in Britain; They used their American tours to restart their career in the country. It was appropriate: Through the dynamics of public relations, Star was born in the United States.
The duration that was implemented through theatrical acting allows for acting – as silent films gave the way to speak. Janine Basinger notes in her book: “The glow” that could be observed from potential stardom has existed since the beginning of the movie’s history. Stars. But it also took it, as with a lot of another in Hollywood history, appropriately. like Jan-Cristopher HorakThe director of the California Film and Television Archives in Los Angeles told me that the first films did not call the actors who starred in it. It was partially because the actors, many of whom were trained in the theater, were initially embarrassed at putting their hard -working skills to serve this strange new method.
However, this was also due to the same means mechanics. In the movie, Ann Helen Petersen suggests in her book Classic Hollywood scandals: Sex, deviation and drama from the golden age of American cinemaHollywood star was a function of technology as much as a culture. In the first cinema developed in the early twentieth century, huge and non -professional cameras made it difficult for cinematographers to capture anything that goes beyond full shots of actors. “Because the viewers were unable to see the actor’s confrontation closely,” Petersen writes, “It was difficult to develop feelings of admiration or affection that we tied to movie stars.” As cameras improved, the closest became more common, focusing on the faces of the actors and humanitarian parties. Since the sound has become part of the cinema experience, the sounds also replaced the complete people to give up the images. The “image personality” arrived. The “star” was born again.
However, the stars system that will give a structure to Hollywood came throughout his little life. Mary Beckford, Hurak notes, one of the first cinematic actors described under her name (theater), soon started making films under her own slogan. Charlie Chaplin, long before Andy Warhol The term seizureHe became a star. Soon, the same star became in the era of hepatic lights and Marquis Banners, an advantage – a comfortable and suitable way to describe the people who absorbed the new and expanding constant in Hollywood. The term that took life in the era of Shakespeare and Molier and the early romance – the time when you will find, in some places, that art becomes obsessed with the dignity of the individual and fireworks of the human spirit – alive again in the glow of the screen.
It may be strange, today, to talk about “movie stars”. This is a specific era, after all, by the other Chukiri term: “Celebrities”. It is an age Lifestyle brands established and The famous internet interviews People are in the same reality. But our current celebrities, too, suggest something similar to what the “star” has long raised: guidance, transgression, and a kind of union between humans and the gods they chose for themselves. “Celebrities” It comes from ancient French For “rituals” or “celebration”; It indicates that even the most trivial among famous people fill a deep role on his way. The stars – a person and personality, have presented from the gentle person and the updating image on the stage and the screen – a long time ago a kind of structure within the homing homosexuality. They have long promised that the most basic things and inspiration: we can be more than what we are. “I am great”, Norma Desmond, that faded star, Insist. “These are the pictures that have become small.”