HOLLYWOOD STAR

Why movie stars are critical to advertising and therefore to the success of a film:

People go to the cinema to see their favourite stars, bringing with them to the film a set of expectations about the performer. We see them in magazines, pin ups, newspapers, coverage in the press, promotions of films, and we all tend to have our favourite stars and will flock to see themin their movies. The Hollywood star system is a business strategy designed to generate large audiences and differentiate entertainment programmes and products, and has been used for over seventy years to provide increasing returns on production investments.

The star's function was important in the economy of Hollywood, including their role in the manipulation of Hollywood's market, the audience. Stars are images in media texts, and as such are products of Hollywood. Stars represent a form of capital possessed by the studios, they are used to sell films, to organise the market and importantly to draw audiences.

The success of stardom and stars has been attributed to the manipulation of the market, ie advertising. One of the major mechanisms which established the standards for quality filmmaking was advertising discourse. Advertising is important because it is the economic practice directing consumers to the products possibilities for exchange value. Advertising stressed grounds for competition and a large part of the set of standards for film practices. Techniques for advertising rapidly proliferated from ads in newspapers and magazines to posters on billboards and barnsides.For more on wild celebs and nude celebrities.

When nothing new in the films themselves was worth promotiong, the advertisers turned to related material. Ads would focus on the high cost of spectacles, acknowledging the artists as creators and the stars as evidence of a films value. Advertsing created standards and exploited innovations, it established the ground on which competition would occur and set up prescriptive values, which became requirements for film practice in the United States. Stars became necessary for a film's success.