Star Quality Theory - Richard Dyer

Richard Dyer specializes in cinema (particularly Italian cinema), queer theory, and the relationship between entertainment and representations of race, sexuality, and gender.

A Star is an image constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) from a range of materials - EG. Advertising and Magazines, as well as films and music." - Richard Dyer

His idea fulfils the idea that pop stars are manufactured and constructed in order to generate a financial gain. Furthermore, he also believes that stars are constructed to represent ‘real’ people that are experiencing real emotions. 

Stars as Constructions

Dyer proposes that: A star is an image not a real person that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials (eg advertising, magazines etc as well as films [music])

Industry and Audience

Dyer states that Stars are commodities produced and consumed on the strength of their meanings

Ideology & Culture

Stardom, and star worship in general is a cultural value in itself. Ideologies drawn upon include materialism and sexuality. Whole sites of institutional support (eg radio & TV shows, magazines, websites) are devoted to star scrutiny, and it seems we can never get enough information. Stars represent shared cultural values and attitudes, and promote a certain ideology. Audience interest in these values enhances their 'star quality', and it is through conveying beliefs ideas and opinions outside music that performers help create their star persona.Stars also provide us with a focal point for our own cultural thinking — particularly to do with Youth & Sexuality.

Character & Personality

Dyer says - In these terms it can be argued that stars are representations of persons which reinforce, legitimate or occasionally alter the prevalent preconceptions of what it is to be a human being in this society.There is a good deal at stake in such conceptions. On the one hand, our society stresses what makes them like others in the social group/class/gender to which they belong. This individualising stress involves a separation of the person's "self" from his/her social "roles", and hence poses the individual against society. On the other hand society suggests that certain norms of behaviour are appropriate to given groups of people, which many people in such groups would now wish to contest (eg the struggles over representation of blacks, women and gays in recent years).Stars are one of the ways in which conceptions of such persons are promulgated.