Seeing stars

the reception and ontology of movie stars

David Goldblatt

pp. 329-354

in: Garry L. Hagberg (ed), Wittgenstein on aesthetic understanding, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

To paraphrase what Jacques Lacan has said about pictures, movie stars are traps for the gaze. As an aesthetic ingredient of mass art, the image of stars, as well as their persons, are as much an object of aesthetic predication and critical assessment as any inanimate artwork—items of attention and appreciation within a larger work. Associations with movie stardom may include a witches brew of qualities we may call "auratic." Although there are numerous overlaps and intersections between literary fiction and fictional films, one stark difference among them is that novels have protagonists, but no stars. Our acquaintance with movie stars suggests the paradox that they are strangers we believe we know well. And, stars may well be the most important commercial element in widely distributed movies—not only for their box office success but also in a movie's coming to be in the first place. For what happens when we see stars and how we come to know them and for the issue I will call inside/outside of movies, I will turn to Wittgenstein's work on seeing-as and its set of related concepts.

Cited authors

Lacan Jacques

Wittgenstein Ludwig