Starring Research Articles

Construction of New Female Image in Early Modern China - Review of <i>Performing China: Female Stars, Performance Culture, Visual Politics, 1910-1945 </i>by Huiling Zhou

The author of the book <i>Performing China: Female Stars, Performance Culture, Visual Politics, 1910-1945</i>, Huiling Zhou, through the method of careful cross-text reading of cultural and video data and the theory of performance cultural studies, studies the tortuous course of constructing new female images of Chinses women represented by female film stars in the early 1920s and 1930s. They are not only “theater actresses” on the screen, but also “social actresses” in social practice. In face of various social opinions, gossip and party comments at that time, early Chinese female stars found ways to release themselves in their screen roles and real lives in the real society. Their performances in the process of China’s modernization revealed the society’s conception of the country, urban scene and female image at that time. Hollywood’s influence on Chinese films in the 1930s was profound and extensive, from the portrayal of urban women in China to the demonstration of film marketing strategies. From the perspective of film performance, the author analyzes the process of cross-cultural communication and interaction between China and the United States in the 1930s, involving various aspects of film, literature, politics, painting and industry. The difficulty of reading this book lies in its strong theoretical nature. Then, the film documents and image data selected by the author in the early 1920s and 1930s are relatively unknown to many people today. The author’s cultural research method with visual as core of cross-cultural interaction research can make us have some new thinking about many popular cultural forms at present, and broaden our vision and thinking.

Biopics of Female Hollywood Stars Speak to #MeToo Era: The Case of Judy (2019) and Blonde (2022)

This article analyzes two recent biopics, Judy (2019, Rupert Goold) and Blonde (2022, Andrew Dominik), which reimagine the icons from the Hollywood Golden Era, Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe respectively, under the prism of the #MeToo movement. By examining the way in which these movies treat abusive experiences within the film industry, along with their placement in the public arena, this paper exposes how contemporary biopics dedicated to female movie stars face the consequences of #MeToo in Hollywood. In terms of textual construction, both movies presumptively adopt a female perspective in portraying actresses’ experiences of exploitation –such as sexual harassment, eating disorders, substance abuse, and more– under a male-dominated Hollywood studio system. Meanwhile, directors’ articulated intentions, promotional campaigns, reviews, and film critiques seeking to convincingly place the films in the domain of public discussion around #MeToo. Despite this ‘feminist’ assumption, this article will argue that these movies, while appearing to confront and re-address injustices in Hollywood through revisiting the mythical narratives of well-known female stars, fail to challenge the melodramatic victimization plot familiar in traditional biopics about women. In doing so, it will explore how they reinforce a representation of the female Hollywood star after #MeToo as a mentally troubled woman struggling to survive in an exploitative film industry.

The celebrity effect on gaze following in older and young adults

BackgroundIn daily life, people often follow others’ gaze direction to infer their attention and mental state. This phenomenon is known as gaze following.ObjectiveThis study aimed to explore whether gaze following in different age groups is influenced by celebrity identity.MethodsWe recruited 70 participants, including 35 older adults and 35 young adults. The experimental materials consisted of three faces with different identity information (a political leader, a movie star, and an ordinary person). Each face had left and right gaze conditions. Targets and cues were presented with both longer and shorter stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) conditions.ResultsBoth older adults and young adults exhibited similar gaze following behaviors. Importantly, the celebrity effect on gaze following was observed in both groups, with stronger effects induced by the leader’s and star’s gazes compared to the ordinary person’s gaze. Older adults showed a larger facilitation effect under the longer SOA condition compared to the shorter SOA, while no such SOA-related facilitation effect was found for young adults.ConclusionThese findings suggest that older adults can integrate social information from others’ faces (celebrity identity) into the process of gaze following as effectively as young adults.

María Félix in Italy

ABSTRACT By the end of 1940s the Mexican film star, María Félix, had risen to the status of living legend at home and piqued the attention of filmmakers abroad. While her participation in Spanish and French productions has been studied, her performances in films produced in Italy, Incantesimo tragico (Dir. Mario Sequi, 1951) and Messalina (Dir. Carmine Gallone), have received less critical analysis. Building on scholarship about the regional and international reverberations of Mexican Golden Age cinema, studies on transnational stardom, as well as star theory, this article reveals how Felix’s projects in Italy constituted transnational experiments within a broader Southern European postwar strategy to counter Hollywood’s market dominance. In contradistinction to her Spanish and French films in which Félix was cast as a foreigner, in Italy Félix played Italian characters. Close film analysis illustrates how to varying degrees, Félix’s roles in Italy engaged her preestablished type known as the mujer sin alma (woman without a soul), and the examination of archival materials shows how the Italian popular press blended Félix’s onscreen characters with the actress off screen. Ultimately, Félix clashed with the ideals of postwar Italian female stardom and was met with an ambivalent financial and critical reception.

Prevalence of Smoking Among School Students in Iraq.

Background Developing communities like Iraq are critical to building a good community environment. Many complex patterns of behaviors like smoking among adolescents have been exacerbated rapidly in the current era which led to changes in the Iraqi community's perspectives and life expectancy. This study aims to find out the prevalence of smoking among secondary school students in Iraq and their perceived contributing factors. Methods A cross-sectional study design was used with a representative sample of Iraqi school students recruited through a multistage cluster randomization from the Nineveh Governorate's intermediate and secondary schools to ensure the representation of the general public strata. A total of 330 students were randomly selected from eight schools distributed all over Mosul city (the center of Nineveh Governorate) and its boundaries semi-rural areas. Data collection utilized a standardized, anonymous questionnaire based on the Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) administered within classrooms with the researcher's presence. The questionnaire included questions related to sociodemographic characteristics of the students, smoking state, smoking types, frequency of smoking, relative smoking state, opinion on predisposing factors for initiation of smoking, and knowledge about hazards of smoking. Data analysis was done using SPSS version 26 to calculate frequency distribution with further logistic regression analysis was performed to identify statistically significant factors contributing to initiation of smoking among the student participants with p-value estimation of any compares considered significant below 0.05. Results Prevenance of all types of smoking was 24.5% from 330 students with 30% from 246 males and 7%from 84 females has been encountered. Hookah (Shisha) was the most prevalent type of smoking.About a third of the smoker sample reported smoking at least once daily. Peer pressure (OR=3.49, P< 0.001) or family smoking (OR=1.769, P=0.019) emerged as the strongest influence for initiation of smoking, besides stress (OR=2.23, P= 0.04) and personality traits like stammering and jealousy (OR=2.58, P= 0.013), (OR=2.22, P= 0.017, respectively) have also significant odds. Interestingly, media (movie star) influence played a significant role also. (OR=1.492, P= 0.045). Conclusion The prevalence of smoking among the study sample was 24.5 % out of 330 participating students. Significant influencing factors were found that raised the concern and necessitated the development of targeted interventions. Implementing evidence-based strategies, such as comprehensive school-based educational programs and smoke-free indoor air policies, can significantly improve public health outcomes.

Reasons to understand the symbolic importance of Ricardo Darín in the Argentine audiovisual universe

Argentine actor Ricardo Darín is the one who attracts the largest audiences in each of the films he stars in. He occupies a very important symbolic place within the national star system, and even in the country’s public arena. In this article, I go back to his television career to explain how, in his long career, there were two key products that helped to consolidate his persona, and at the same time allowed him to turn it around: the sitcom Mi cuñado (Carlos Berterreix, 1993-1996) and the feature film Nueve reinas (Fabián Bielinsky, 1999). I propose that his star text was shaped by the tension between the stereotype of the chanta (the rogue) –of long tradition and popularity in Argentine arts– and the measured middle-class young man. The qualitative leap between the two occurred between the peak of his television popularity and his consolidation as a film star of international scope.

What a Desirable Woman Is Like: Hsia Moon and the Cultural Agenda of Leftist Film Companies in Hong Kong, 1951–1966

Hsia Moon (Xia Meng) was a famous leftist film star in postwar Hong Kong, whose social persona was tailored for specific cultural purposes under the prevailing star system. Her early cinematic roles generally portrayed exemplars of women’s empowerment, as derived from the programmatic ideas of the New Culture Movement in the early decades of the twentieth century. But from 1958 onward, Hsia Moon’s characters began to transform in a more traditional and family-oriented direction. In her film Garden of Repose (1964), for example, the female protagonist voluntarily retreats into the family space, offering a quite different answer to the question of women’s liberation. While this story, one among many, threatened to undermine Chinese women’s painstaking struggle for individual freedom that had been in train for many decades, Hsia Moon’s well-maintained social persona justified the harmonious landscape of family life and conjugal relations, redefining women’s family-oriented position as a kind of “Chineseness.” This Chineseness was not limited to the artistic level. Rather, it was a sociocultural representation of leftist filmmakers’ nostalgic memory of their distant homeland, that is, Mainland China itself. And at another level, Chineseness also embodied the Chinese Communist Party’s desire to maintain cultural ties with British-controlled Hong Kong through the political metaphor of a “big family,” which in China’s prescribed hierarchical order alluded to the state. In this sense, Hsia Moon and her characters provided an alternative option to women’s empowerment within the master narrative of the nation-state and the cinematic star system helped shape that narrative.

‘Unmitigated Cad’: The Dual Stardom of George Sanders 1

This article explores the dual star image of Hollywood film star George Sanders (1906-1972), drawing on fan magazines, and other media sources and interviews with a family member. The focus is on the ambivalence of Sanders’ persona and his role in establishing the archetype of the cad. Initially, Sanders was portrayed by fan publications as a pin-up, whose attractiveness even came to briefly have a propaganda function. His association with a type of masculinity that was misogynistic, queer and attractive was paradoxical. His duality was reinforced by the roles he played on screen and by the sudden appearance in Hollywood of his older brother, Tom Conway, who acted as his shadow and his double. Sanders hated his stardom, but he made use of his star status to attempt to establish alternative careers; in writing, singing, and in a particular ill-fated business venture.

Meet my baby daughter, Cardeigh Cobain

Abstract Pop singers, movie stars and presidents have all dramatically influenced baby names over the twentieth century. Chris Dalla Riva delves into US government data to reveal some intriguing facts

Celebrity and influencer philanthropy: Debating MrBeast and China

AbstractThis article examines the philanthropy/marketing interface with reference to celebrity philanthropy, focusing on the American YouTube star, MrBeast, and the Chinese government regulation of celebrities and social media influencers. Celebrity nowadays can refer to film and music stars with international broadcast media visibility and to people who create their own fame through social media and appeals to niche markets/audiences (social media influencers). While the United States of America has historically used tax incentives to encourage elite philanthropy as a matter of individual choice, the Chinese government is regulating the cultural industries to promote and direct celebrity and influencer philanthropy towards government‐endorsed development goals. Comparing debates about MrBeast philanthropy with the operation of philanthropy in China highlights different ideas about celebrity/influencer philanthropy and the role it can play in supporting public welfare.

Ibu(isme) dan Film Orde Baru: Representasi Ibu dalam film Jangan Menangis Mama

The representation of women in films is always an interesting topic in Indonesian film studies. This article aims to reveal the representation of women, especially in their identity as mothers in the film Jangan Menangis Mama (Don’t Cry Mommy) was produced in 1977. This film was directed by Sofia WD, a film star, screenwriter, and film producer who works both in the Old Order and the New Order of the Indonesian Film Industry. Based on Roland Barthes' semiotic analysis, this article uncovers two levels of meaning systems, namely denotation and connotation related to the mother's character in the film. The process of interpreting these signs cannot be separated from the concept of ‘ibuism’ (motherhood) as a gender-political ideology of the New Order and the context of the male-dominated film industry. Research findings show that the dominant representation of mothers is associated with the weak position of a woman with various roles: as a wife, a mother, a single mother, a citizen, and a daughter. However, this research found a 'limited' agency from Sofia WD as a woman director of the film Jangan Menangis Mama to offer gender representation that is not completely stereotypical as well as not just 'black and white' as in previous studies.

The Man at Noah’s Window—The Death of the Old King in Patrick Roth’s Novel Starlite Terrace

Starlite Terrace is a contemporary novel comprised of four interlinked stories about the American film milieu by the German-American writer Patrick Roth. Four protagonists tell their Hollywood-tinged, highly personal life stories to a fifth, who is also the main narrator. In each of their singular collisions with life, a universal and mythical pattern is gradually revealed that gives these so-called ordinary people a dignity they have long since lost in everyday life. Literary scholars are considering Starlite Terrace a brilliant portrayal of the so-called “seeker spirituality” found primarily on the West Coast of California. In fact, the novel is part of Patrick Roth’s own life story, a condensation of his 40 years of experience in Los Angeles, the center of the American film industry. The novel represents a new kind of literature, a new poetics that strives to give expression to an archetypal layer of the unconscious through the writing process, thus bringing together these separate spheres. The highly Jungian worldview is mirrored in the character of Rex, “The Man at Noah’s Window,” among others. In his fixation on the movies and movie stars, he represents an aspect of the narrator’s shadow, a content eventually recognized and accepted. Ultimately, Rex, the “eternal outsider,” embodies the old ailing king in desperate need of rejuvenation. On the level of the collective psyche, the figure of Rex conveys the end of the old God image and the beginning of a new one, as experienced and foretold in the narrator’s archetypal puer aeternus dream.

Introduction to the special issue on social media influencers: performance, authenticity, and social media visibility

ABSTRACT Social media influencers, content creators and micro-celebrities can be read as new forms of contemporary celebrity, and yet their rise to fame can be traced back to a century-old film star system. With this in mind, this introduction to the Special Issue on ‘Social Media Influencers’ offers a brief overview of pre-existing fame cultures, the importance of public curiosity and the significance of authenticity, or at least the perception of authenticity, to old and new forms of fame alike. The article concludes by offering an overview of each original contribution in the volume.

Encoding material female bodies through cosmetic surgeries: a study of cultural economy and the biometric dynamics of Indian Hindi film stars

The emergence of new body technologies has led to the deconstruction of a cosmetically enhanced celebrity body into a bioinformational data-self, which becomes a surveilled subject quantified through biometric proximity....

“Take my Moneybox”: The Symbolic Powers of the First Child Movie Stars in Early French Cinema (1906‐1916)

AbstractThis paper analyzes why child film star series produced by major French production companies (Pathé, Gaumont, Eclectic, and Éclair) in the early 1900s (Bébé, Bout‐de‐Zan, Willy, and the Maria Fromet series) were received with such interest by global audiences. This period, prior to World War I, was a brief era when French cinema held significant hegemony worldwide, before Hollywood's dominance began. There are ideas suggesting that child film stars emerged with American cinema. Contrary to this, however, French producers competed fiercely in the 10 years following 1906, producing series featuring child film stars. Substantial budgets were allocated for the marketing of these series, ultimately gaining a considerable fan base not only in Europe but also in America. When examining these film stars from the early 20th century within their historical context, they emerge as the first international child stars with international fame and financial success, unlike child musicians, vaudeville artists, and theater actors from the 18th and 19th centuries. Inspired by the field analysis of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, this article aims to establish a connection between the struggles within the field and the symbolic needs of the audience as reflected in the content of child star films. The films were viewed at the Eye Film Museum archive.

What is Valentino's syndrome?

AbstractThe eponym ‘Valentino's syndrome’ is used to describe patients with perforated peptic ulcer disease who present with right lower quadrant pain and suspected appendicitis. It is named for Rudolph Valentino, the film star who died on 23 August 1926 at the age of 31 from complications of perforated peptic ulcer disease. In the early 1920s, the Italian‐born actor had a meteoric rise to fame in the burgeoning film industry. His first starring role in the 1921 silent film, The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, was a sensation and was followed quickly by a string of commercially successful movies. He was in good health until he presented with an acute abdomen in early August of 1926. He underwent a laparotomy and was found to have a perforated peptic ulcer that was repaired with simple closure and an omental patch. He initially rallied after surgery but ultimately died on the eighth post‐operative day from complications of sepsis. This manuscript will review Valentino's brief acting career, his medical history, and how the eponym which bears his name describes a disease presentation that is different from his actual clinical course.

Hollywood’s current game plan: it’s the IP and not the actor

ABSTRACT Ever since the success of Star Wars in the 1970s, Hollywood’s obsession with blockbusters and their sequels (prequels) has been evident. The exploitations of successful intellectual properties (IP) have, in many instances, served the studios well, with many going on to reap hundreds of millions at the box-office. However, in recent times, such strategies have gone to new levels, to the extent that studios’ annual portfolio of movies is now virtually dominated by IP-related projects hence the endless list of sequels, prequels and so on. The implication of such phenomenon is that the key resource to success in the industry no longer resides with human capital (i.e. movie stars) but instead the IPs. One should expect fewer standout original standalone movies should this practice continue.

Kepribadian Tokoh Utama Laki-Laki Pada Film Yowis Ben Dan Film Star Syndrome

This research aims to examine the character personality experienced by the main male characters in the films Yowis Ben and Film Star syndrome using Sigmund Freud's theory. This research method uses a qualitative descriptive method with a literary psychology approach. The results of this research are First, the similarities, namely that they both use the comedy genre and discuss the world of music, the struggle of a soloist or group to achieve their dream of becoming a singer. Second, the difference in personality of the male main character is that Bayu in the film Yowis Ben has a personality that tends more towards the Id aspect. Meanwhile, Jay Adi in Film Star Syndrome has a personality that tends more towards the Ego aspect. Thus, there are differences in the psychology of the male main character in achieving his dream of becoming a singer in the films Yowis Ben and Film Star Syndrome.

Dual-space Hierarchical Learning for Goal-guided Conversational Recommendation

Proactively and naturally guiding the dialog from the non-recommendation context (e.g., Chit-chat) to the recommendation scenario (e.g., Music) is crucial for the Conversational Recommender System (CRS). Prior studies mainly focus on planning the next dialog goal (e.g., chat on a movie star) conditioned on the previous dialog. However, we find the dialog goals can be simultaneously observed at different levels, which can be utilized to improve CRS. In this paper, we propose Dual-space Hierarchical Learning (DHL) to leverage multi-level goal sequences and their hierarchical relationships for conversational recommendation. Specifically, we exploit multi-level goal sequences from both the representation space and the optimization space. In the representation space, we propose the hierarchical representation learning where a cross attention module derives mutually enhanced multi-level goal representations. In the optimization space, we devise the hierarchical weight learning to reweight lower-level goal sequences, and introduce bi-level optimization for stable update. Additionally, we propose a soft labeling strategy to guide optimization gradually. Experiments on two real-world datasets verify the effectiveness of our approach. Code and data are available here.

Destined to Change: Shifting Roles of Film and TV Stars in Shaping Canadian Mass Perception Amidst New Media Dominance

The transformative impact of new media and multiple media platforms on Canada's communication landscape has redefined how film and television stars shape and influence the mass population's thinking and behavior, in contrast to the traditional media era. This research explores these changes by examining the interplay between celebrity influence, media consumption, and societal dynamics. The mediatization theory serves as a theoretical framework to understand the relationship between media and society, particularly in the context of Canada. The study focuses on the shifting roles of film and television stars within this dynamic media landscape, and highlighting their evolving influence on public perceptions and behaviors. Qualitative content analysis, grounded in mediatization theory and guided by a comparative lens, has been employed as the research methodology. This method allows for a meticulous examination of diverse media sources, encompassing traditional and new media platforms, to unveil the multifaceted ways celebrities shape mass population thinking and behavior. The advent of new media platforms has facilitated direct and interactive communication between stars and their audiences, fostering personalized engagement and dismantling hierarchical barriers. The influence of film and television stars extends beyond entertainment, interacting with Canadian cultural narratives and societal issues. As celebrities leverage new media platforms to champion social causes, they contribute to reshaping cultural norms and values. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the dynamics of media influence in the digital age, showcasing the sophisticated bond between media, celebrities, and societal evolution within the Canadian narrative.