ABSTRACT
The analysis of stars has become one of the most significant areas of inquiry in recent film studies, largely in response to the limitations of apparatus theory. The study of stardom has obvious importance for the understanding of spectatorship in mainstream cinema. No matter how significant the textual details of individual films or the scope of a director’s vision, for instance, the role of the star is the most visible and popular reference point for the pleasures of the cinema. It has taken some time for the study of stars to re-emerge in film studies of the past ten years, and this is due in part to the changing definition of the field. One tradition of film criticism to which 1970s film studies reacted and situated itself negatively was characterized by a focus on the star, but in uncritical terms. In other words, so-called traditional film critics did not problematize or analyze the actor’s signifying role-i.e., the place of the star within the larger system of the classical cinema. If the study of stars and stardom has, then, re-emerged in film studies as an important area of concern, this is due both to the influence of theories of the apparatus, and to challenges to those theories.
