Week 11 [Reading Notes] - Stardom and Race

Reading 1:Quinn, Ethne (2013) “Black talent and conglomerate Hollywood: Will Smith, Tyler Perry and the continuing significance of race” Popular Communication 11:3

Abstract

This article offers a comparative study of the strategies employed by Will Smith (together with his partner James Lassiter) and Tyler Perry as they surmounted racial barriers to become two of the most successful people in film. What emerges in both cases—despite very different institutional, production, and marketing strategies—is that race has strongly determined the career development of black top-talent. Racial hierarchies have presented various obstacles hindering the progress of these individuals, but more surprisingly, such hierarchies have also indirectly facilitated their success. They were seized on by Smith, Lassiter, and Perry as both impetus and opportunity. The final section turns to a consideration of the racial implications of their breaking into film’s elite ranks, suggesting that neither the racially incorporative nor resistive dimensions of this achievement have been sufficiently considered.

- The shift toward more conglomerate domination in the US film industry has led to a widening divide between prestige core film workers and an extensive and precarious peripheral workforce (Christopherson, 2008a, 2008b; Hesmondhalgh, 2013, pp. 83–85, 253–258). Susan Christopherson describes the “strengthening of defensive exclusionary networks to dominate access to the least risky and most lucrative and prestigious end of the industry production spectrum. These networks,” she continues, “are composed almost exclusively of white men” (Christopherson, 2008b, p. 89). By and large, then, the white men who always ran the film industry continue to do so, hoarding high-status creative and commercial work as well as the lion’s share of profits.

p. 196

- Los Angeles Times columnist Patrick Goldstein (2011) summarises, Hollywood is “one of the most minority free industries in America,” with “barely any people of colour in any high-level positions at any major studio, talent agency or management firm.”

p. 196

- The two black Americans who have regularly ranked in the Forbes Top 10 lists of Hollywood earners are Will Smith (since the mid-2000s) and Tyler Perry (since the late 2000s). Both have broken significant racial ceilings: Smith became Hollywood’s most bankable star by several measures, including the most consecutive films (eight) to gross over $100 million in which he had top billing, with many grossing many times that amount (Koehler, 2008). In 2008, Perry became the first black American to own a film studio and, in 2011, the first to top the annual chart of highest earner in the film industry (albeit with earnings from several media), when he made an estimated $130 million (Forbes).

p. 197

- Using trade press articles and press interviews, this article offers a comparative study of the different strategies employed by Will Smith (along with his partner James Lassiter) and Tyler Perry as they surmounted racial barriers to become two of the most successful people in film. I organise these strategies into four areas: cross-platform range; commercial imperative; innovative marketing; and self-determination. What emerges is that race has strongly determined the career development of black top-talent as they pursued different institutional, production, and marketing strategies.

p. 197

- Thomas Schatz has influentially mapped the contemporary film industry, which, since the early 1990s, has been dominated by what he terms “Conglomerate Hollywood”: “A new breed of media giants took command of the US film and television industries and became the dominant powers in the rapidly expanding global entertainment industry” (2008, pp. 25–26). With their production company Overbrook Entertainment, Smith and his manager James Lassiter are very much emblems of Conglomerate Hollywood: Smith is a star brand associated with high-production, high-yield films with international reach and Overbrook, founded in 1997, is typical of the star-fronted companies that have sprung up and enjoyed increasing clout as they struck preferential deals with major film companies.

p. 198

- Will Smith stars in films with multiracial casts that tend to portray America as “postracial,” and in his publicity image he is consistently described as having “transcended race” (see Palmer, 2011). A representative Newsweek cover story declared that Smith’s “appeal is so universal that it transcends race” (Smith, 2007). The postracial refrain also pertains to audience: Smith’s is huge, racially diverse, and international.

p. 198

- Will Smith first achieved fame as a rapper with his radio-friendly group Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, releasing five albums starting in 1987. With James Lassiter already on board as the group’s manager, Smith’s first cross-media move was into television, in 1990, when he starred in the sitcom hit Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and then into film, with his first major role in the play adaptation Six Degrees of Separation (Fred Schepisi, 1993). This was followed by a starring role in the action-comedy hit Bad Boys (Michael Bay, 1995) and his blockbuster breakthrough in Independence Day (Roland Emmerich, 1996). The cross-promotional synergy for which Smith is most renowned is the releasing of singles (with heavy video rotation on MTV) and albums to coincide with the theatrical and DVD launch of hit films, aligning release dates to maximise sales (G. King, 2003).

p. 199

- Media scholar David Marshall posits that “whereas the film celebrity plays with aura through the construction of distance, the television celebrity is configured around conceptions of familiarity” (1997, p. 119). Smith, by and large, serves to uphold such an organising division in his cross-platform trajectory: he first became a household name through television (and music) which he then parlayed into a more “distanced” film career, leaving television behind. Indeed, the star describes his own career development explicitly in terms of using the televisual familiarity of Fresh Prince to aid both filmic and racial crossover. In his early screen role in Six Degrees of Separation, he describes how, as the only nonwhite protagonist, his character “Paul claiming he was Poitier’s son made himself feel welcome in a home that he would never otherwise enter, but since TV viewers had already welcomed me into their homes, I could make Paul believable” (quoted in Koehler, 2008). Thus, Overbrook used Smith’s televisual ubiquity, from Fresh Prince as well as music television, as a stepping stone to mainstream filmic prestige.

p. 199

- In a repeated anecdote, Smith says that in 1990 (the year Fresh Prince of Bel Air launched) he already “[wanted] to be the biggest movie star in the world.” He and Lassiter found a list of the ten top-grossing films of all time and “said, OK, what are the patterns? We realised that 10 out of 10 had special effects. Nine out of 10 had special effects with creatures. Eight out of 10 had special effects with creatures and a love story” (quoted in Keegan, 2007). Resulting from this bottom-line market analysis, they sought to develop “science fiction films [that] also had other angles going for them” (quoted in Koehler, 2008). Smith’s frank commercial imperative is also evident when his rap persona Fresh Prince traveled into the title of his sitcom to maximize exposure and, when Overbrook developed Will Smith singles to market his films, the movie titles—Men in Black (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1997) and Wild Wild West (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1999)—were used as track titles and also became the insistent chorus hooks. Geoff King (2003, p. 64) describes this as a “particularly blatant form of cross-media promotion,” encapsulating broader “exercises in cross-platform marketing” that Paul Gilroy has identified, in which music is “relegated to the role of ... mnemonic trigger” (2010, p. 126).

p. 200

- With their move into mainstream filmmaking, Smith and Lassiter encountered Hollywood’s set wisdom about the foreign market for black film, which is tersely described by producer Stephanie Allain as “black doesn’t travel” (quoted in Galloway, 2006). According to Lassiter, “people don’t understand what a struggle it was,” facing the line that “African-Americans don’t sell around the world” (quoted in Smith, 2007). Overbrook first encountered this industry precept on Bad Boys, which had two black leads (Smith and Martin Lawrence). Frustrated in preproduction that the attitudes of producers, Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, and of overseas buyers had constrained the raising of production finance, Overbrook embarked on an aggressive international publicity campaign. As Lassiter remarks, “it is a lot of work, but to Will’s credit, he is willing to start at zero for each territory” (quoted in Siegel, 2008).

p. 201

- Many of Smith’s more recent vehicles have focused on particular countries, notably China, the fastest growing theatrical market, and Overbrook has also been aggressive in its pursuit of foreign investment—another key trend of the conglomerates. The release of blockbuster smash Hancock (Peter Berg, 2008) coincided with the Beijing Olympics, and Overbrook’s Karate Kid (Harald Zwart, 2010), starring Will Smith’s son Jaden, was filmed in China and co-funded by China Film Group, the government-run film company. As Amy Pascal chair of Columbia Pictures remarks, Overbrook “caught on” to the commercial need for global stories “before a lot of other people did” (quoted in Smith, 2007). It seems clear that Overbrook’s early crossover cultivation of the suburbs, with Smith being welcomed into people’s homes because of Fresh Prince, provided the model for developing a transnational fanbase.

p. 202

- The increased clout of top-talent in the contemporary industry not only gives rise to vast earnings but also to more creative control. Lassiter, Smith, and their agent Ken Stovitz, who has worked with them for more than 20 years and became an Overbrook co-partner in 2008, have been able to build the Smith and Overbrook brands, finding their own scripts and directors and coming up with packages. As a result, in his monograph on contemporary Hollywood stardom, McDonald states that “what is maybe most interesting about Smith is how he illustrates star agency in the system” (2013, p. 176).

p. 203

- Many black musicians, notably Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson), Queen Latifah (Dana Owens), and Master P (Percy Miller), have used their music careers as entrée into film, establishing successful movie production companies. Perry and Smith/Lassiter are among a number of celebrated black self-made entertainment entities or “moguls,” such as Oprah Winfrey, Sean (P-Diddy) Combs, and Curtis (50 Cent) Jackson, who produce and perform and are masters of synergy.

p. 204

- While both Smith and Perry have key white executives in their core networks, such as Overbrook’s in-house agent Ovitz and Tyler Perry’s studio production head Ozzie Areu, their companies remain much more diverse than is standard. Given that there are hardly any minorities at Hollywood’s key management firms, Lassiter himself, as Smith’s longtime production company chief, represents diversification. When journalist Patrick Goldstein (2011) “asked a couple of reporter pals to name the most powerful black executive in town, a lot of head-scratching ensued before we decided that the person with the most clout was probably James Lassiter.” Smith’s black wife Jada Pinkett Smith is also an Overbrook producer and director. Perry’s attorney, Matthew Johnson, is an African-American partner in the leading firm Ziffren Brittenham—one of the few prominent black lawyers in Hollywood.

p. 205

- Smith and Lassiter have spoken out about racial barriers in Hollywood that affect them individually, as in the budget and casting of particular films. This happened pointedly during the development of the romantic comedy Hitch (Andy Tennant, 2005). Columbia executives did not want to cast a black actress to play alongside Smith in case it was seen as a “black film,” leading Lassiter to criticise Hollywood’s assumption that “African Americans can’t have successful romantic comedies” (quoted in Smith, 2007; see Onwuachi-Willig, 2007). However, Smith and Lassiter have had very little to say about the endemic racial exclusions that affect less elite minority workers. In fact, perhaps fuelled by his own overwhelming sense of liberal-individualist achievement, Smith tends to stress opportunities rather than barriers: “For black actors, when you hit that tipping point and you’ve made it, your position is locked forever. You know Sam Jackson, Eddie Murphy, Denzel Washington, Martin Lawrence, Halle Berry—we can go on making movies as long as we want. It’s the white actors that come and go” (quoted in Stein, 2006). By adding the quip about white disadvantage, Smith risks trivialising the continuing poor prospects of many minority workers in the industry.

p. 205

- The different racial outlooks of Overbrook and Perry in industry terms travel into the textual meanings of their film products. As scholars have argued, hugely successful Will Smith vehicles such as Pursuit of Happyness (Gabriele Muccino, 2006), I am Legend (Francis Lawrence, 2007), and Hancock depict worlds that are largely postracial in which there is little sense of racial hierarchy. While some scholars persuasively suggest that veiled racial critiques circulate in particular Smith films (see Brayton, 2011; Palmer, 2011), there is a general, and generally convincing, view that Smith’s star image of professionalism under duress, transcendence and sacrifice, and acculturated black charisma, by and large, serve to disavow continuing, entrenched racial injustice in America (Aldridge, 2011; Vera & Gordon, 2003, pp. 181–184).

 p. 206

- Will Smith and James Lassiter greatly enriched Columbia and the other majors in financial and symbolic terms. In their business practice and on screen, they have showcased the potential for racial advances within neoliberalism. In doing so, they, perhaps unavoidably, help to legitimate that system which is built on profound inequalities. Nonetheless, Smith and Lassiter did become very active black agents, confronting some of the industry’s racist precepts, and, at their best, Will Smith vehicles subtly engage these racial politics. By skillfully developing their conglomerate- and audience-facing brands, they showed themselves to be highly adept and focused brokers of symbolic and commercial capital. They hustled the corporations with a deep hip-hop-inflected awareness of the conglomerates’ great dependency on top creatives to reduce financial risk. This enabled Overbrook, despite racial barriers, to negotiate as much self-determination as any star-fronted company in Conglomerate Hollywood—this feat should not be underestimated.

p. 207

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Reading 2:McDonald, Paul (1998) "Reconceptualising Stardom", supplementary chapter in Richard Dyer, Stars London: BFI 

- The picture personality was named as someone who worked in film and was only known for that work. A 'star' discourse emerged as commentary extended to the off-screen life of film performers. If the discourse on acting and the picture personality constructed knowledge about the professional life of screen actors, from 1913 the star discourse made known the private lives of film actors. As a general point about star studies, overuse of the term 'star' to describe any well-known film actor obscures how with most popular film performers, knowledge is limited to the on-screen 'personality'.

p. 178

- Contextualising the meaning of stars is always open to the charge of presenting a simple 'reflectionist' history of stardom: societies change historically and stars reflect those changes. A balance needs to be struck between the signs and discourses which are particular to film stardom at any moment and a sense of the context of social beliefs and conditions in which the star circulates. This raises questions of what defines and delimits a 'context', and what forms of context are to be judged as of most relevance to the study of stardom.

p. 179

Star Bodies and Performance

- Beliefs or concepts of identity are intangible things. Stars are significant for how they make such elusive and metaphysical notions into a visible show. It is this visualising of identity which makes the bodies of stars and the actions performed by those bodies into such a key element of a star's meaning.

p. 180

- Studying stars as moving bodies involves analysis of acting and performance. In acting, stars represent characters by the uses of the body and voice, and the significance of these minute actions may be described in terms of what Valentin Nikolaevic Volosinov saw in the potential of the body to produce what he called 'ideological scraps' (Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, p. 92). For example, in the opening scene of Silence of the Lambs (Jona than Dem me, 1991, US), Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling is seen jogging. Her breathlessness, sweat-matted hair, regular running rhythm and gritted teeth immediately establish the perseverance and resilience of the character, qualities which the rest of the investigative narrative will only further confirm. Ideologically, these small actions of the body already serve to indicate the 'temperament' which federal law must necessarily take if it is to contain the visceral, psychological and sexual threats posed by the narrative. 

p. 182/3

- Star autonomy can also be achieved by masking or de-emphasising the actor. In Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979, US), the narrative builds towards the final meeting between Martin Sheen as Willard and Marlon Brando as Kurtz. As the scene is so heavily predetermined, Brando/Kurtz can be almost entirely obscured in darkness during the meeting but still retain his star significance. Where with Roberts, star autonomy was produced by foregrounding her as glamorous spectacle, Brando's autonomy is signified by the 'anti-spectacle' he occupies. However, it is not only visual elements which produce Brande's autonomy. His ponderous delivery of the speech about inoculating the Vietnamese villagers shows the star's voice controlling the overall tempo of the film. When combined with stories of indulgent improvisations (Peter Manso, Brande; p. 843), the scene becomes an example of how the power of star autonomy is partly achieved through control of the voice or body.

p. 185

Stars and Audiences

- Fundamental to spectatorship theory wasLauraMulvey's 1975essay'VisualPleasure and Narrative Film: in which she argues, using a psychoanalytic framework, that classic narrative cinema continually organises looks which centre on the woman as spectacle. For Mulvey, the effect of this way of looking is that the moviegoer is positioned according to the pleasures of male heterosexual desire. Difficulties with the empirical evidence, theo retical foundations and universalising claims of Mulvey's argument have produced various critiques. Narrative film continually includes looks directed at the male bod y and also looks between male characters. Steve Neale argues that looks between male characters on film are made obviously threatening and aggressive in order to divert their erotic potential ('Masculinity and Spectacle', p. 14).
p. 187/188

- Laura Mulvey's use of Freudian/Lacanian thinking leads her to conclude that the male gaze produces a sadistically voyeuristic pleasure.
p. 189

- Stars perform representational work, and any examination of the place of stars in film production cannot be disconnected from the issues of representation raised by the image and the audience. Whatever the status of stars in film production, their value is bargained through their representational power. As the analysis of star images has considered issues of power in the struggles and negotiations of the moviegoer's making of meanings, so explorations of performers in film production will be concerned with how stars negotiate power relationships in their work of making meaning
p. 194

- Thomas Schatz has argued that since the mid-70s, American cinema has seen significant changes in its corporate structure, methods of marketing and stylistic conventions. In this 'New Hollywood', Schatz argues that three categories of film are mainly produced ('The New Hollywood', p. 35). Each of these categories can be associated with particular groups ofstars. From the expensive spectacle of the single-film deal has emerged the big-budget 'blockbuster'. Justin Wyatt refers to this same sector of production by the more contemporary industry vernacular of 'high-concept'. High concept film-making does not necessarily mean big budget or large box-office returns but is defined by Wyatt as 'a form of narrative which is highly marketable' (High Concept, p. 12). In high-concept, marketing possibilities are already influential in pre-production planning. Effective marketing requires a film proj ect to have an image which can be simply and directly communicated to the public. Wyatt sees the images of stars as instrumental in this strategy, with marketing seeking to fit a star's image to the premise ofthe film narrative. In other words, the star personifies the concept of the film. With high -concept, style overrides narrative content, foregrounding and possibly exaggerating of the qualities that stars are best known for. Wyatt's example of this is Jack Nicholson's performance as the Joker in Batman (Tim Burton, 1989, US), where Nicholson's demonic, maniacal quality witnessed in The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980, US) and The Witches of Eastwick (George Miller, 1987, US) is turned into comic hysteria to perform an excessive display of Jack Nicholson-ness.
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