Richard Dyer. Stars. London: BFI Publishing, 1998.
The aim of the book it to survey and develop an area of work in film studies, namely, film stars.
Within film studies, reasons for studying stars have largely come from two rather different concerns that may broadly be characterised as the sociological and the semiotical.
Sociological: centres on the stars as a social phenomenon and as being an aspect of film's 'industrial' nature. Films are only of significance in so far they have stars in them.
Semiotic: stars are only of significance because they are in films and therefore are part of the way films signify.
Dyer's book assumes that, on one hand, the sociological concern can only make headway when informed by a proper engagement with the semiotics of the stars (their signification in media texts). This is because, sociologically speaking, stars do not exist outside the media texts, therefore it is the media texts that have to be studied with due regard of the specificities of what they are (significations).
Equally, on the other hand, the semiotic concern has to be informed by the sociological, partly because it is on the basis of proper theorisation of an object of study, that one is able of to pose questions of it. Semiotics has to make assumptions about hos texts work before proceeding to analyse them. Granted that texts are social facts, it follows that textual assumptions must be grounded on sociological facts. You need to know what kind of thing a text is in society in order to know what kinds of question can be legitimately proposed, what kind of knowledge you can reasonably expect it to yield.
Within film studies, reasons for studying stars have largely come from two rather different concerns that may broadly be characterised as the sociological and the semiotical.
Sociological: centres on the stars as a social phenomenon and as being an aspect of film's 'industrial' nature. Films are only of significance in so far they have stars in them.
Semiotic: stars are only of significance because they are in films and therefore are part of the way films signify.
Dyer's book assumes that, on one hand, the sociological concern can only make headway when informed by a proper engagement with the semiotics of the stars (their signification in media texts). This is because, sociologically speaking, stars do not exist outside the media texts, therefore it is the media texts that have to be studied with due regard of the specificities of what they are (significations).
Equally, on the other hand, the semiotic concern has to be informed by the sociological, partly because it is on the basis of proper theorisation of an object of study, that one is able of to pose questions of it. Semiotics has to make assumptions about hos texts work before proceeding to analyse them. Granted that texts are social facts, it follows that textual assumptions must be grounded on sociological facts. You need to know what kind of thing a text is in society in order to know what kinds of question can be legitimately proposed, what kind of knowledge you can reasonably expect it to yield.
