Star Theory - Richard Dyer

Richard Dyers star theory is the idea that certain icons and celebrities are manufactured by institutions for financial gains, he claims that celebrities are constructed to represent "real people" that experience real emotions. He claims that the stars are manufactured for one purpose which is to make money out of the audience through them responding to the stars "personality" and doing things such as purchasing the artists music and becoming their fans. The three sections which his theory are split into are constructions, audience and institutions and culture (Hegemony).

Constructions:
Richard Dyer believes that artists are constructed through artificial images such as advertisements, films, magazines and music videos and that institutions basically pick a type of personality for that celebrity to have and these personalities are manufactured solely for financial gain. These celebrities are constructed as "real people" which experience real emotion which is also these celebrities unique selling point (USP), an example of this is Britney Spears where she was basically constructed to raise female identity within pop music and was initially constructed as a role model for the teen girl market, this USP was well done as Britney's identity was originally placed within a male - dominated society where there were limited stereotypes of femininity and not many female singers or bands to begin with.

Industry and audiences:
Dyer believes that stars are manufactured in order to make money for their record labels by appealing to target audiences, Record labels have to market a number of different artists in order to cater for different target audiences and their preferences so for example a record label may have multiple different artists such as a boy band to cater to the target audience of younger girls and may also have a dominant and scantily clad female singer in order to appeal to males from teenagers to adults. So for example again with Britney Spears she was portrayed as innocent and very girly with pigtails and pink etc. which enabled her to be able to better relate to the teenage girl target audience.

Culture (hegemony):
This is the idea that the audience relates to the star as they have something in common with each other which can be anything from the personality or the clothing style all the way to liking the same things such as things or themes which the star talks or sings about, A good example of this is with the Beatles where people not only attempted to replicate their clothing style but also copied their hairstyles where they were such a big an popular band.