How do film, television, star culture, and consumer society synergize to create this being?
DH: Beware any simple answer! What is unique from the point of view of aesthetics is this. The aesthetics of film and of television are largely antagonistic. Except in the case of the star icon where they alchemize. Let me explain. Film luxuriates in distance between audience and character, creating desire and identification while separating viewer from star as the moon is separated from earth. Television is by contrast about up close and personal. It allows characters to live parallel lives to our own, which means we expect to know everything about them, like our friends and neighbors. This works against the distance demanded by aura. There is little place in television for star quality, which is why television is the perfect instrument for celebrity construction. You can take any nobody and make them a somebody by having them recite the weather on nightly news, which was the subject of Woody Allen’s desultory film Celebrity. Television’s best characters (Tony and Carmela, Don Draper
