Paul McDonald (Kings College London)<\/p>\n
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Wednesday 15 November, 5pm \u2013 Keynes Lecture Theatre 5<\/p>\n
Whatever happened to Hollywood film stardom? Throughout the 1990s, the top tier of Hollywood\u2019s North American domestic box office was annually populated by hits fronted by major star names, mainly associated with action and, to a lesser extent, comedy. From the following decade onwards, however, the value of Hollywood stars diminished at the box office. Instead, animated and various forms of fantasy-inspired film series came to define the most commercially popular form of Hollywood film. This paper has two main purposes, one conceptual, the other historical. Initially the paper offers a critique of how neglect of the economic status of film has left film scholarship with unsatisfactory conceptualizations of genre and stardom. Departing from this tendency, the paper outlines a form of analysis aimed at situating generic formations and star identities in the commercial context of the film market. Secondly, the paper uses this approach to explore the historical transition that saw the waning of star value and the rise of animated and fantasy film series redefining commercial popularity for conglomerate Hollywood. Reflecting on this context, the paper concludes by outlining a series of ways in which stardom still plays a significant – although diminished – role in shaping commercial popularity.<\/p>\n
Biography Paul McDonald is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, and Vice Dean (People and\u00a0Planning) for Arts\u00a0at King\u2019s College London. His work on stars includes\u00a0Hollywood Stardom<\/em>\u00a0(2013) and\u00a0The Star System: Hollywood\u2019s Production of Popular Identities<\/em>\u00a0(2000). His book George Clooney and Modern Hollywood will be\u00a0published next year in the British Film Institute\u2019s film stars series.\u00a0He is a co-editor of\u00a0Hollywood and the Law<\/em>\u00a0(2015) and\u00a0The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry<\/em>\u00a0(2008), and of the\u00a0International Screen Industries<\/em>\u00a0series from the British Film Institute (2003- ).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Paul McDonald (Kings College London) Wednesday 15 November, 5pm \u2013 Keynes Lecture Theatre 5 Whatever happened to Hollywood film stardom? Throughout the 1990s, the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52103,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1455"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1457,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455\/revisions\/1457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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