Cover; Taking Fame to Market; Contents; List of Tables; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Coming to terms; Acting and the semiotics of visibility; 1: Unsettling Identities: From Custom to Price; The new order of the market as a risk society; Merchant psychology; Theatre and the market; From politeness to etiquette; To be is a matter of taste; 2: The Formation of Stardom; Garrick's path to stardom; Garrick's progress: from wage labourer to impresario; The space of stardom; The tactics of identity; The representational grammar of acting; 3: Garrick as a Personage. The spatialization of identity in actingKEY; Early stars and the vestigial persona; Enter Kean; 4: Emergent Modes of Stellar Being; The market erosion of personage; The transatlantic transfer; A proto-cinema; Americanizing cinema; 5: Writing the Stars; Positioning stardom; A small history of synoptic binding; Parsing stardom; Anagraphic positioning; Biographic positioning; 6: The High Tide of Biography; The context for Autography; The other side of the field: the gauge of the audience; 7: The Rise of Autography; Enter Confidential; The seeding of autography; People Magazine. Sharon writes herself8: The End of Seeming; (1) Macaulay eats a pizza; (2) Lady Gaga; Stardom, celebrity and commodity life; Fame as tokenism; Notes; Introduction; 1 Unsettling Identities: From Custom to Price; 2 The Formation of Stardom; 3 Garrick as a Personage; 4 Emergent Modes of Stellar Being; 5 Writing the Stars; 6 The High Tide of Biography; 7 The Rise of Autography; 8 The End of Seeming; Bibliography; Index.
This book explores, from a sociological perspective, the relationship between acting as symbolic work and the commercialization of popular culture. Particular attention is paid to the social conditions that gave rise to stardom in the theatre and cinema, and how shifts in the marketing of stars have impacted upon contemporary celebrity culture.
Fame -- Social aspects -- United States.
Motion picture actors and actresses -- United States.