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A superstar is someone who has great popular appeal and is widely known, prominent, or successful in their field. Celebrities referred to as "superstars" may include individuals who work as actors, musicians, athletes, and other media-based professions.


History

The origin of the term in the context of celebrity is uncertain, but a similar expression is attested in
John Nyren John Nyren (15 December 1764 – 30 June 1837) was an English cricketer and author. Nyren made 16 known appearances in first-class cricket from 1787 to 1817. He achieved lasting fame as the author of '' The Cricketers of My Time'', which was fir ...
's 1832 cricket book '' The Cricketers of My Time''. Nyren described the 18th-century cricketer John Small as "a star of the first magnitude".John Nyren, ''The Cricketers of my Time'', Robson, 1998, p.57. The earliest use of the term "superstar" has been credited to Frank Patrick in reference to the ice hockey players on his
Vancouver Millionaires The Vancouver Millionaires (later known as the Vancouver Maroons) were a professional ice hockey team that competed in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association and the Western Canada Hockey League between 1911 and 1926. Based in Vancouver, British C ...
teams of the 1910s and 1920s, specifically Cyclone Taylor. In the June 1977 edition of ''
Interview An interview is a structured conversation where one participant asks questions, and the other provides answers.Merriam Webster DictionaryInterview Dictionary definition, Retrieved February 16, 2016 In common parlance, the word "interview" ...
'' magazine, pop artist
Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...
was asked by editor
Glenn O'Brien Glenn O'Brien (March 2, 1947 – April 7, 2017) was an American writer who focused largely on the subjects of art, music, and fashion. He was featured for many years as "The Style Guy" in ''GQ'' magazine and published a book with that title. He ...
who invented the word "superstar". Warhol, known for popularizing the term, responded, "I think it was Jack Smith." O'Brien then asked, "And who were the first superstars?" Warhol responded, "They were all Jack Smith's stars." The term received widespread and commonplace use from the title of the musical '' Jesus Christ Superstar'', in particular the 1970 concept album of the musical and the eponymous hit song. "Super Star" is also the name of a hugely successful rose which
Harry Wheatcroft Harry Wheatcroft (1898–1977) was a famous English rose grower. He did a great deal to popularise roses among British gardeners. He was known for his flamboyant appearance and opinions. Early life Wheatcroft was born at 23 Handel Street, ...
introduced and named in 1960. By 1909,
silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when ...
companies began promoting "picture personalities" by releasing stories about actors to fan magazines and newspapers, as part of a strategy to build "brand loyalty" for their company's actors and films. By the 1920s, Hollywood film company promoters had developed a "massive industrial enterprise" that "peddled a new intangible—fame". Hollywood "image makers" and promotional agents planted rumours, selectively released real or fictitious information to the press, and used other "gimmicks" to create public personas for actors. They then "worked oreinforce that persona ndmanage the publicity". Publicists thus "created" the "enduring images" and public perceptions of screen legends such as
Rock Hudson Rock Hudson (born Roy Harold Scherer Jr.; November 17, 1925 – October 2, 1985) was an American actor. One of the most popular movie stars of his time, he had a screen career spanning more than three decades. A prominent heartthrob in the Golde ...
,
Marilyn Monroe Marilyn Monroe (; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; 1 June 1926 4 August 1962) was an American actress. Famous for playing comedic " blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as wel ...
, and
Grace Kelly Grace Patricia Kelly (November 12, 1929 – September 14, 1982) was an American actress who, after starring in several significant films in the early to mid-1950s, became Princess of Monaco by marrying Prince Rainier III in April 1956. Kelly ...
. The development of this " star system" made fame "something that could be fabricated purposely, by the masters of the new 'machinery of glory'". In 1976,
Mattel Mattel, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational toy manufacturing and entertainment company founded in January 1945 and headquartered in El Segundo, California. The company has presence in 35 countries and territories and sells products in more ...
produced a "Superstar" variation of its Barbie doll. According to Sofia Johansson, the "canonical texts on stardom" include articles by Boorstin (1971), Alberoni (1972), and Dyer (1979) that examined the "representations of stars and on aspects of the Hollywood star system". Johansson notes that "more recent analyses within media and cultural studies (e.g. Gamson 1994; Marshall 1997; Giles 2000; Turner, Marshall and Bonner 2000; Rojek 2001; Turner 2004) have instead dealt with the idea of a pervasive, contemporary, '
celebrity culture Celebrity culture is a high-volume exposure to celebrities' personal lives on a global scale. It is inherently tied to consumer interests where celebrities transform their fame to become product brands. Whereas a culture can usually be physically ...
'". In an analysis of "celebrity culture", Johansson states that "fame and its constituencies are conceived of as a broader social process, connected to widespread economic, political, technological, and cultural developments". In the 1980s and 1990s, entertainment publicity tactics became "more subtle and sophisticated", such as using press releases, movie junkets, and community activities. These promotional efforts are targeted and designed using market research "to increase the predictability of success of their media ventures". In some cases, publicity agents may create "provocative advertisements" or make an outrageous public statement to "trigger public controversy and thereby generate 'free' news coverage".


Socio-psychological theories

According to Roger Caillois, superstars are created by the interplay between "mass media, free enterprise, and competition". Superstars are produced by a mixture of effort on the part of the superstar and mere chance (due to the many arbitrary factors influencing sports, film releases, etc.) and the superstar usually has "extraordinary natural talent augmented by an even more extraordinary perseverance and drive". However, small and relative differences are of decisive importance for "winning or losing by a hair's breadth". It is here that chance plays a role, with Caillois noting that "a sudden gust of wind at the end of a yachting race can mean the difference between stardom and defeat". He states that the role of chance in superstardom is paradoxical because
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is such a "predominantly
meritocratic Meritocracy (''merit'', from Latin , and ''-cracy'', from Ancient Greek 'strength, power') is the notion of a political system in which economic goods and/or political power are vested in individual people based on talent, effort, and achi ...
society" which champions the importance of hard work, competition, activity, and determination. Caillois states that "
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only one may be first, person maychoose to win indirectly through identification with someone else" and that the triumph of the superstar as the most popular actor or musician is in part due to the actions of "those who worship the hero". He says the public believes that the concept of "the manicurist elected beauty queen, the sales girl entrusted with the heroine's role in a super production, the shopkeeper's daughter winning the
Tour de France The Tour de France () is an annual men's multiple-stage bicycle race primarily held in France, while also occasionally passing through nearby countries. Like the other Grand Tours (the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España), it consists ...
, and the gas station attendant who basks in the limelight as a champion toreador" represents the possibility from the public's perspective that they too may become wealthy and successful. For example, Levine points out that Lars Ulrich, the drummer for
Metallica Metallica is an American heavy metal band. The band was formed in 1981 in Los Angeles by vocalist/guitarist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich, and has been based in San Francisco for most of its career. The band's fast tempos, instrume ...
, was a service station attendant before becoming a wealthy rock star and that Harrison Ford was a cabinet maker before becoming a rich and famous actor. Caillois calls superstars' huge incomes and accolades "disguised lotteries" and a "special kind of game of chance". For example, the grand prizes for literary competitions "bring fortune and glory to a writer for several years". Caillois notes that a superstar cannot merely be successful at some activitythey must also be richly rewarded. He says that the "material reward of the superstar is a necessary ingredient (for the glory of the star) for the identification of the public with the star, or whether it is the excellence or the private life of the star which is of more importance". He states that superstars' extravagant incomes play an important psychological "compensating mechanism" role for the public. According to Madow, "Fame is a 'relational' phenomenon, something that is conferred by others. A person can, within the limits of his natural talents, make himself strong or swift or learned. But he cannot, in this same sense, make himself famous, any more than he can make himself loved. ..Fame is often conferred or withheld, just as love is, for reasons and on grounds other than 'merit'. This means that regardless of how strenuously the star may try to 'monitor' and 'shape' it, the media and the public always play a substantial part in the image-making process."


Economics of "superstars"

In 1981, Sherwin Rosen examined the economics of superstars to determine why "relatively small numbers of people earn enormous amounts of money and seem to dominate the fields in which they engage" Rosen argues that, in superstar markets, "small differences in talent at the top of the distribution will translate into large differences in revenue".super star: Rajabaskar is the real super star. The Market for Rock Concerts in the Material World. Alan B. Krueger,
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and
NBER The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic c ...
April 12, 2004
Rosen points out that "sellers of higher talent charge only slightly higher prices than those of lower talent, but sell much larger quantities; their greater earnings come overwhelmingly from selling larger quantities than from charging higher prices". Microeconomist Alfred Marshall explains that technology has greatly extended the power and reach of the planet's most gifted performers. He referenced classical opera singer Elizabeth Billington, a well-acclaimed soprano with a strong voice who could only reach a small audience and naturally did not have access to a microphone or amplifier in 1798, let alone "
MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...
,
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iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...
, and Pandora". This limited her ability to dominate the market in the way that artists to do today. Marshall wrote, "So long as the number of persons who can be reached by a human voice is strictly limited, it is not very likely that any singer will make an advance on the £10,000 said to have been earned in a season by Mrs. Billington at the beginning of the last century, nearly as great
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as that which the business leaders of the present generation have made on those of the last." Furthermore, the trends in popular music indicate that the price of the average concert ticket increased by nearly 400% from 1981 to 2012, much faster than the 150% rise in overall consumer price inflation. Some scholars argue that superstardom plays a useful role in society. Caillois cites Rawls, who states that the "premiums earned by scarce natural talents serve to cover the costs of training and to encourage the efforts of learning, as well as to direct ability to where it best furthers the common interest". Cowen cites Rosen to argue that "the superstar effect is welfare-improving (consumers get better performances) even if it leads to raising
income inequality There are wide varieties of economic inequality, most notably income inequality measured using the distribution of income (the amount of money people are paid) and wealth inequality measured using the distribution of wealth (the amount of we ...
" and adds that the "superstar phenomenon should not be overstressed ..indeed, fame is a positive-sum game, not a negative nor a
zero-sum Zero-sum game is a mathematical representation in game theory and economic theory of a situation which involves two sides, where the result is an advantage for one side and an equivalent loss for the other. In other words, player one's gain is e ...
one". Cowen states that "countervailing forces operate, such as a convergence of quality that limits the ability of the very best stars to dominate the market for long, or more radically the elastic supply of fame". This means that "when demand for fame increases, the numbers of prizes, rewards and whatever fame generating distinctions is rising too". On the other hand, it has been argued that "compensation systems that resemble prizes otteriescan also create
perverse incentive A perverse incentive is an incentive that has an unintended and undesirable result that is contrary to the intentions of its designers. The cobra effect is the most direct kind of perverse incentive, typically because the incentive unintentional ...
s by discouraging cooperative behaviour and may encourage some contestants to disrupt the performance of competitors". As well, Frank and Cook (1995) called into question "the way the winner-take-all markets operate, with their damaging features". They argue that the "winner-take-all payoff structure
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generates a spiral of individual and social occupational waste, since it leads both to increasing (monetary and non-monetary) reward inequalities and to overcrowding in the markets and occupations prone to an overestimation of one's chance to succeed". As a result, they argue that "when excess numbers of contestants are induced to invest in performance enhancement in order to raise their individual odds of winning, these investments will be mutually offsetting and socially inefficient; end consumers may get more valuable products but the social costs are excessive".


Other meanings


"Superstar" art museums

A small number of major art museums, including
Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...
's
Guggenheim Museum The Guggenheim Museums are a group of museums in different parts of the world established (or proposed to be established) by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Museums in this group include: Locations Americas * The Solomon R. Guggenhei ...
, the
Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
, and Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum, have become household names and major tourist destinations. With their striking, architecturally designed buildings and well-known masterpieces, they have been termed "superstar" art museums. With their huge visitor traffic, superstar museums are often able to derive a significant income from museum bookshops and restaurants and have a "major impact on the local economy". Superstar museums are able to use the popular appeal of their location and art holdings to produce their own books, videos, and television specials, which adds an additional revenue stream and further reinforces the public's awareness of the museum. Some superstar museums have also begun establishing museum networks. For example,
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's
Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
launched the additional art museums
Tate Liverpool Tate Liverpool is an art gallery and museum in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, and part of Tate, along with Tate St Ives, Cornwall, Tate Britain, London, and Tate Modern, London. The museum was an initiative of the Merseyside Development C ...
and Tate St. Ives. Cultural institutions such as art museums play a "gatekeeping" role for consumers, helping to screen and grade cultural artefacts and artworks, thus "reducing information and search costs" for consumers. Moreover, by channelling resources to a limited group of visual artists, cultural institutions also "enhance superstar phenomena within the visual arts".


Superstar CEOs

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's economic website argues that the multimillion-dollar salaries of superstar CEOs in the corporate world can be viewed as a type of tournament prize. The huge salaries of these executives "often seem to resemble prizes for the winners of contests rather than compensation in return for the value of the marginal product of labour". As an example, a company may "have many vice-presidents of roughly comparable ability and the vice-president (who may only be slightly more talented than the others) that is promoted to president receives a huge salary increase, which resembles a prize for winning the contest as best VP". The article goes on to argue, "Such a compensation system may be efficient if the organization is only able to rank its executives according to the relative value of their contribution to the organization (the organization cannot measure the productivity of each executive, only the productivity of the group of executives). ..Even if executives are paid a wage equal to the average productivity of the group, there will still be an incentive to perform in order be promoted and win the prize."


See also

* Supercouple


References


Further reading

* Hamlen, William A. "Superstardom in Popular Music: Empirical Evidence." ''Review of Economics and Statistics'' 73 (1991): 729–33. * Koutsobinas, Theodore
''The Political Economy of Status: Superstars, Markets, and Culture Change'' (Edward Elgar Publishing; 2015) 264 pages; on the societal impact of luxury consumption and status markets, and the media's fascination with superstars.
* MacDonald, Glenn M. "The Economics of Rising Stars." ''American Economic Review'' 78 (1988): 155–67. * Rosen, Sherwin. The superstar effect – "The Economics of Superstars", ''American Economic Review'', 71 (1981). * Salganik, Matthew J., Peter Sheridan Dodds, and Duncan J. Watts. "Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market." ''Science'' 311 (2006): 854-56. * Pattni, Anandi. 'Superstars: People who are good to me' ''Vanity Fair'' 157 (2007): 185–89. * Grinin L., "People of Celebrity" as a New Social Stratum and Elite. In Hierarchy and Power in the History of Civilizations: Cultural Dimensions (pp. 183–206). / Ed. by Leonid E. Grinin and Andrey V. Korotayev. Moscow: KRASAND, 2009 {{cite web , url=http://old.uchitel-izd.ru/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=184&Itemid=58 , script-title=ru:Работы на иностранных языках 2009г , language=ru , access-date=7 December 2010 1910s neologisms Acting Celebrity Film and video terminology