ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Macaulay Culkin's career was contingent on wider trends in the American media industries during early 1990s, reflecting on how his fame and star image were used to sell films and range of products. It explores interactions between commercial and cultural facets of Culkin's stardom. The chapter reflects on the conflicts that arise from competing claims over a child star's image. Child stars, observes Jane O'Connor, are often called upon to provide 'an idealised image of childhood', which can be based on 'an adult's ideal of what children should be like or child's ideal of what they aspire to be like'. The 'myth of the curse of child stardom', argues O'Connor, serves to promote 'the idea of childhood as private, family-oriented time of life separate from adult world of work and responsibility'. Early press coverage of Culkin's career and off-screen life often attempted to reconcile this contradiction, no doubt to delight of Culkin's management team and publicists.
