ABSTRACT
And yet, on another level, stars and celebrities have never seemed so manufactured, media-produced and simulated. Increasingly, the self-reflexive and ironic media commentary on the fame game draws attention to the artifice that sits at the centre of stardom and celebrification (Gamson, 1994). The famous person exists only at the level of representation, cut free from any existential potentiality or possibility. Stars and celebrities originate in sites that are virtual, digital or animated, so that at the material, cerebral or corporeal level they are literally hyperreal and technological. The fakery of fame, then, is found not just in the media myths and promotional material but in the 'new' ways that stars and celebrities are given a cultural presence. In this respect, Barbara Creed has explored the impact that digital film and special effects have and will have on stardom:
Now it is possible to create computer-generated objects, things and people that do not have referents in the real world but exist solely in the digital domain of the computer ... Central to these changes is the possibility of creating a virtual actor, of replacing the film star, the carbon-
based actor who from the first decades of the cinema has been synonymous with cinema itself. In the future, living actors may compete with digital images for the major roles in the latest blockbuster or romantic comedy (2002: 130).
