E.L. Doctorow Defines the Star

If I found E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime a less than wholly satisfying work it still had its points of interest, not least in its portrayal of actress and model Evelyn Nesbit, whom Doctorow describes to us as, as a result of the publicity accorded her in the wake of the murder of a lover by her husband, having become "the inspiration for the concept of the movie star system and every sex goddess from Theda Bara to Marilyn Monroe." What was key here was "a process of magnification [that] established" the individual in question "in the public consciousness as larger than life," with this significantly tied to their "represent[ing] one desirable human characteristic to the exclusion of all others."

As the choice of words indicates--"goddess," "larger than life"--mythmaking is involved, inseparable from the one-dimensionality of a figure seeming to "represent one . . . characteristic to the exclusion of all others" (for such simplification is what myth by definition offers).

Considering the decline of the star and the celebrity in our time it seems to me significant that such mythmaking was easier in a more controlled media world--like that of the old studio system with its contract players--and a culture which was more accommodating of certain forms of one-dimensionality. Many a current in today's cultural politics runs against that. (Certainly the prevailing politics of identity cannot abide any such concept as "the sex goddess," while the idea of an actor embodying such a characteristic as "machismo" or "sophistication" is scarcely less problematic for respecters of that conventional wisdom.) Meanwhile the exaltation of "relatability," at times taken to ridiculous extremes, does so as well, as we see when born-rich actors say nothing about the silver spoons they grew up, just that minimum wage job they worked for a week before they landed the gig that meant they never needed a "real job" again.