Dyer's Star Theory

Richard Dyer is an English academic in cinema, queer theory, and the relationships between entertainment and representations of race, gender, and sexuality. Dyer invented the star theory which falls into three subcategories -

• The star as a construction
• The star as a commodity
• The star as an ideology

Then there's a paradox to the star theory, which is that:

• The star must be both extraordinary and ordinary
• The star must be both absent and present

The star as a construction refers to the creation of the star who has a very distinct personality from the person, and this states that the star is constructed through videos, magazines and advertisement. Essentially this means that a star acts differently towards the public than as they act as an individual in order to create a facade, personality, or to gain popularity.

An example of this is The Weeknd who is currently one the most popular R&B singers among younger generations. In combination with a bunch of EP's and mix-tapes, The Weeknd has 2 albums, with the main focus of tragic and sad love. In both albums he has sung about girls loving him and him not loving them, or using girls for sex. The presentation derived from his songs like "reminder" and "often" is that he is a playboy, and he creates the impression that he has never loved nor seeks love, with lyrics like "She gon' give it up cause she know I might like it. Baby girl, you know what I like ... All my hoes are trained, I make all of them swallow". However, in the past year he has privately engaged in a strong and cute love with actress Selena Gomez by moving in together, adopting a pet dog together, and more, proving not to be as sceptical about love as he is depicted in his songs.
The star as a commodity covers how the star creates a profit from merchandise and also how record labels will sell artists with a similar personality or style of music because they know what sort of artists are most popular.

An example of a star making a profit from merchandise is The Weeknd again, who has his own online clothing brand called XO, which is also sold at selected retailers such as Selfridges. The Weeknd's personal style could be described as manly with baggy shapes and dark colours, and the clothes he wear don't look overly expensive or cheap as they're generally quite plain, yet still fashionable and cool. His (XO) clothes are also cool and whilst they're priced higher than high-street clothes, they're cheaper than designer brands making them popular among young people who want to dress like him.

I think the star as a commodity appears a lot in the Korean music industry, as most artists generally produce the exact same genre of music and portray a similar personality. If we look at girl groups for example, they follow one of two concepts, cute or sexy bad-ass. Cute girl groups such as GFriend and Red Velvet involve happy songs and sweet dances, as well as simple, light-coloured and childish outfits. Bad-ass sexy girl groups like 4Minute and Black Pink involve quite a lot of rapping, complicated dances and skimpy, dark clothing. Girl groups which are neither or both of these two categories are not so popular, and major record labels tend to not promote girl groups like these.
The star as an ideology is based on how stars usually represent their specific social group and have certain opinions and a certain upbringing, and so fans of the star will often act like them and share their opinions.
Kendrick Lamar is an American rapper who makes songs based on his struggles growing up in the ghetto as a black person. And so, when a Kendrick Lamar song comes out you don't even have to wonder what the concept will probably be; probably 100% of his songs are based around #BlackLivesMatter and black love. Therefore, a massive portion of his audience follow the same beliefs and values and trust in all the dominant ideologies which Lamar mentions in his songs and music videos such as all police want to murder black people, black children have to grow up quicker than white children.

The paradox starts with the star must be both extraordinary and ordinary. I think this is why talent shows like X Factor and The Voice are so popular. If you look at artists like Harry Styles, he's a normal lad for Cheshire who attended an ordinary school and was raised with an average lifestyle. The extraordinary thing about him is his charisma and style, making him exceptional but also normal.
The star must be both absent and present also applies to Harry Styles. This paradox explains how a star can be present in our daily lives through conversation, social media and merchandise, yet they're still absent as they're not really there. Harry Styles is an example of this because he is a common topic in teenage girl conversation as well as for young-people-orientated TV channels and radio stations like MTV and 4Music, and he is very active on most media forums like twitter and Instagram, and he has a lot of merch like posters and t-shirts, however most people have never met nor will meet him.

Analysing Music Videos

Beyoncé - "All Night"

Lemonade is the name of Beyoncé's visual album which was released in 2016. The album covers Beyoncé's love life as well as common hardships affecting African-Americans. Of all the music videos released on the DVD (that comes with the CD), 'all night' is the longest with above 6 minutes. The video starts with a monologue where Beyoncé first tells her grandmother's lemonade recipe, and then she begins to ramble about how hard-working and devoted her grandmother is. The non-diagetic speech overplays a cello harmony. Visually we see various black women all coming together and creating a feast. Combined with the absence of men (in this part of the video) and what she says, I think Beyoncé is trying to reference womanhood and teamwork and companionship among girls. She also explains how wonderful her grandma is, saying "you spun gold out of this hard life, conjured beauty from the things left behind, found healing where it did not live, discovered the antidote in your own kitchen...". Essentially I think Beyoncé is discussing how her grandma worked hard, how she creates a beautiful and lovely atmosphere as well as cooking lovely food. This statement depicts the traditional warm and loving grandma, which conventionally is the fate of every girl. So I think Beyoncé's dialogue draws beauty and aims to romanticise the role of being a grandma.

The opening screen of the video is a door with a black and white filter, and an overlaying text which says "redemption". This fits in with the later half of the video which is about how Beyoncé forgives her unfaithful husband. The scenes that follow include mid shots, master shots, tracking shots, low angle shots, pans and tilts as they follow various women. The video switches between a black and white filter in addition to a natural un-filtered version. Transitions are slow and sometimes movement is also slowed down. Costumes include white, edwardian summer frocks which look angelic and innocent, and every character in the video has natural afro textured hair because as I said, the album is aimed at the audience of African-Americans.

The video then switches clip to an extract taken at her grandmother's 90th birthday party where she says "I always had my ups and downs, but I always found the inner strength to pull myself up". Appose to the previous clips, this clip has really low definition as if it was simply shot on a camcorder, making it seem more raw.

After the initial two minutes, Beyoncé starts discussing redemption, saying "so we're gonna start again, we're gonna heal". Here she shows more black women who are dressed in minimal and loose clothing like dungarees and fleeces along a rustic colour palette. These women are gardening and portray a really simple and blissful agricultural lifestyle. I think Beyoncé's overall aim is to draw attention to the nice aspects of the traditional woman, like cooking, looking after children, gardening. I also think she aims to show womanhood and the platonic bonds between women (because the video shows women working together), as well as how beautiful black women can be, in spite of their features which don't fit in conventional beauty guidelines.

Then, the main song starts. The basis of the video is Beyoncé strolling around an untamed field with long grass and lavender, as she wearing a tudor-styled puffy dress made with African fabric, and her hair tied up. Due to the beautiful and unauthentic choice of video setting and her styling, all these clips come off as ethereal and she is presented as classy and beautiful with a rich sense of heritage.

Scenes of Beyoncé in the field are regularly interrupted by clips of couples. Again, these clips give a more raw vibe as the quality is fuzzy, as if they're old camcorder un-staged videos. The couples in the clip are a mixture of your quintessential iconic nuclear parents, queer couples, biracial couples and so on. Earlier in the video, Beyoncé said "nothing real can be threatened", and I think this links to these clips because in the eyes of love, race and gender orientation don't have a proper impact if it's real.

Alessia Cara - "Here"

The basis of this song is that Cara is an introvert and doesn't enjoy classic teenage things like going to parties, doing drugs and drinking, hence why the music video is set at a party. The video debuts with Cara walking into the house, we set see a tilting mid shot down the house which slowly transitions closer to the door. The exterior of the house is lit with purple led lights which make it look weird and a bit spooky, a bit like a house decorated for halloween. I think this is a metaphor to convey how freaky parties are to Cara and other introverts. The camera shots aren't straight along a horizontal axis but slightly diagonal, which looks messy and suggests chaos within the scene.

Inside the house, flow motion is used as Alessia Cara sings whilst her surroundings are frozen. Her discomfort is expressed via her disappointed facial expression and unhappy lyrics, and chaos is shown in her surroundings by drinks and snacks mid-falling, people mid-dancing and mid-jumping. Also inside the house, transitions are quick and we quickly zoom to the next scene. This might be to suit the party theme and the speedy affect that some people get with alcohol and stimulant drugs, or this may be to counteract the slow melody.

Cara is dressed in all black in this video. I think the reason why she's dressed morbidly is to mock the assumption that introverts or more so people w ho don't enjoy parties are always sad and are therefore kill joys. I think this because lyrically the point that I think she's getting at is parties have a lot of downsides and they shouldn't be fixated as the pinnacle thing to do (for young people). 

The point that I mentioned before is the dominant ideology I think. The video uses camera movement and editing to show this. I think the audience for this video are likeminded adolescents w ho don't prioritise parties.

Banks - "Train wreck"

The dominant ideologies presented in this video are all about the cons of stardom.

The video starts with Banks fiercely strutting in high-fashion clothes with a black and white filter. This shot zooms out to uncover that it was a TV screen, and there are 3 men watching it. She is dressed in avant-garde fashion because she represents celebrities who have the freedom and money which allow them to dress quirky and different to normal people. The three men are dressed in business suits and I think they're meant to represent office CO's and the leaders of the music industry. The zooming out is slow and the three men are stood uncomfortably peering down at her, this may refer to the way that artists are under constant surveillance from their labels. The three mens face's are identical which could suggest that to Banks that they're all the same people or at least they seem the same because they have the same ideals.

The video switches to a clip of Banks at a finely decorated dining table, again in over-the-top high vogue fashion. She is wearing a pvc nude rain mac and red plastic gloves, as well as a black feather head piece and red lipstick. Her table has lots of glassware and a bouquet of white flowers and the decor combined with the clothing reminds me of reality TV stars like the Kardashian family, where every part of their houses and lives seem so perfect and unnatural. The camera pans to the other side of the room where the three men are found. One shoots a gun at a glass on her table, one films her, and the other watches her on TV. I think they're supposed to represent how the music industry normally treat their artists, they're either angry (gun man), satisfied (TV man), and they mainly use their artists for money (camera man). 

Banks continues to peel an egg and the men squint with curiosity, then she absurdly puts the entire egg in her mouth and they all pull a shocked and annoyed expression. I think this relates to stardom and how celebrities can't behave weird and odd like normal people without being shamed for it.

The chorus then plays and a dance breaks out between Banks and the three men, but the dance makes many references to the music industry again. One key move is when she squats hiding her face and the three men back away from her shaking. They seem inhumane because they're moving as if they're glitching, and she seems emotional and sad. I think she is making a statement about how to her, they seem emotionless like sociopaths or robots, and are more interested in the amount of money she's making and her success rather than her welfare (which she indicates via her dance move is in a bad state).

The scene flickers to a new scene of Banks in a room with a TV and a bed, looking at herself in the mirror. She is also dressed in a suit and then she notices one of the three men also in the room. She makes six attempts to leave and the man keeps bring her back to the bed. Perhaps how helpless she is, is a reference to the lack of power women have in the music industry (because she's dressed in office attire appose to a celebrity), or perhaps because he's pulling her back to the bed, Banks is referencing rape culture in the music industry.

The next scene shows her with a sheer satin white dress, minimal makeup, crystal tears on her face, and a soft focus filter. She looks angel ic as she struts, but the tears on her face indicate that she's sad. Once the bridge ends, she starts jumping and shaking, to act mad. The three men walk up to her in a robotic way and try to hold her down. I think this is another hint to the way celebrities have to always act perfect and never ever weird. The three men are trying to make her look sane instead of helping her.