Richard Dyer has written extensively about stars and their roles in film, television and music. He wrote that in every aspect of these industries, the star is an image, not a real person and something that is created and constructed carefully for the audience out of many materials such as magazines, films, interviews and advertising. He also wrote that stars are merely commodities and that they are produced and consumed by the audience only on the strength of their meaning.
Dyer suggested that:
- stars depend on subsidiary media - magazines, television, radio and the internet
- this is so the image of themselves can constructed which can then be given to the target audience
- the star image is also made up of several meanings which are attractive to the audience
- the star must be simultaniously ordinary and extraordinary for the consumer meaning that the star must have attributes and talent that the audience admires about them, but they must also be down to earth and appear normal.
- the star must be simultaniously present and absent for the consumer
meaning that the star must be present in the subsidiary media such as televisions, magazines and the internet, but also absent, as getting to know the star personally is nearly impossible.
The incoherance and the incompleted image of the star continually makes the audience want more information to piece it all together, and drives the audiences thirst to complete the image of the star in their heads. This is only achieved by continuous consumption and the desire for more of the star's products. This works well in the music industry as performances serve and promise to complete that image, but it ultimately fails, leaving the fans wanting more and will consume more to achieve that.
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