Assignment 2: Multiplicity in a star image

Final Project due: Monday May 10 8:00 a.m.
Project Proposal due: Friday April 16 via email. A proposal is required. Your paper/proposal must be approved by me.
Final Project Presentations: April 26 and May 10. A sign up sheet will be circulated later in the semester.

Objective: To “explore complexity, contradiction, and difference” in star images. Your project can take on many forms: a critical/research paper, a video, a game, a zine etc. The one requirement is that your project must offer at least two different readings of a celebrity. These readings should offer distinctly different ways to view the star. For example, in our reading of Marilyn Monroe we saw her both as a figure of sexual objectification and a feminist icon. We also saw multiple ways of reading Elvis Presley: he has been embraced as an embodiment of American Dream ideology, a figure who rejects middle class values/taste culture; an entertainer who is impersonated by working class white men who want to re-experience a perceived or imagined past of white male working class power; and a trans-racial figure who brings together the abject and powerless of all races and classes in a quasi-religious way.

Your project will take the form of either a 10-12 page critical paper OR a creative project with a 4-5 page critical paper. In addition to turning in your paper/project to me, you will present your paper/project to the class at a time TBD. Your presentation should be 10 -15 minutes.

Requirements:
1. Your project MUST offer at least two different readings of a celebrity. You may choose, like Dyer, to situate your star in the social and cultural discourses of the period of their celebrity (e.g. the specific discourses of race, gender, and sexuality he sees Monroe and Robeson through: ideas about sexuality as “natural” articulated by Playboy and The Kinsey Report; notions of black “authenticity” and “naturalness” articulated by black and white intellectuals of the 1930s; racial discourses that saw black men as violent savages . . .). Or, you may want to examine how a celebrity functions BOTH as a brand that is marketed as a specific persona and a personality that fans project desires onto – desires that contradict or resituate the star’s intended marketing (See Dyer on Judy Garland or Miriam Hansen on Valentino.) Or, you may want to do a reading that both examines the pervasive idea of a star and then offer your own “oppositional” or “against the grain” reading of the same star. Or, you could consider how a star helps us understand ourselves as both psychological beings who make our own choices and participants in systems (economic, political etc.) that determine who we are and what we can be (See Haralovich’s exploration of Joan Crawford’s abusive behavior as both evidence of individual pathology and a reaction to working within a studio system that put pressures women to embody impossible ideals.) Or . . . the list of possibilities goes on and on.
2. Make specific use and reference to our required readings. Our readings offer multiple ways to approach stardom and celebrity -- your papers should make specific use of them. Your paper should quote, summarize, and/or cite at least two course readings. You must engage with author’s ideas in a substantive way; merely inserting random quotes in a paper or project is not sufficient.
3. You must turn in a project proposal to me by 4/16 via email.

Your project will be graded on how well you do the following:
• Develop and articulate distinct readings.
• Define your terms. We’ve learned from our readings that “Masculinity”, “Femininity” and other categories/qualities embodied by stars are not abstractions – they are determined by particular ideologies that operate in particular periods and social, cultural, and geographic contexts. (e.g. Julia Roberts and Mary Pickford are both “America’s Sweethearts” but they embody this ideal in distinct ways that are partially determined by the different time periods they were/are famous in. And in any given time period there may be competing ideals (e.g. John Wayne, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart are contemporaries but embody different modes of masculinity.) So, when speaking about how stars are “masculine”, “feminine”, “strong”, “weak” etc. be sure to define what you mean by those terms – acknowledge how they are culturally “constructed” terms.
• Utilize the ideas raised in lectures and discussions.
• Engage with course readings in substantive ways.
• Creatively approach the topic.