Revisiting Star Studies ed. by Sabrina Qiong Yu and Guy Austin (review)

Revisiting Star Studies makes a welcome and timely intervention into the field of star studies. Although star studies is a well-established branch of film studies, it is currently undergoing renewed interest.¹ This is evidenced by the launch of the BFI Film Stars series in 2012, which I coedit with my University of Sunderland colleague Susan Smith, as well as a series of major conferences, such as Exploring British Stardom at Queen Mary’s, University of London, and Revisiting Star Studies at Newcastle University, both of which took place in 2013. Indeed, the latter gave rise to this new publication, enabling editors Sabrina Qiong Yu and Guy Austin, of Newcastle University, to compile a wide-ranging collection of essays on stars in classic and contemporary cinema. And a very coherent collection it is, with many overlapping themes despite the diversity of case studies being examined here. The fourteen essays selected for publication are organized into seven discrete parts on performance, voices, ethnicity, aging, audiences, the aberrant, and marginal stardom. Across these, a number of themes recur, including masquerade, undesirability (e.g., ugliness), gender, sexuality, race, acting, fandom, social media, globalization, and transnationalism or “translocal stardom,” as Qiong Yu redefines it in her incisive introduction. This diverse range of topics ensures that media scholars, students and researchers of all kinds are well catered to, with studies of Hollywood, European, Chinese, and Indian film stars, but also studies of porn and animal performers.² Such thematic diversity stems from an intention on the part of the editors not only to reflect and respond to current trends in star studies but also to push the envelope, further expanding the parameters of this vibrant subdisciplinary field. This fascinating collection of chapters confirms that, as I argued in Star Studies: A Critical Guide, this important branch of film studies has consistently revealed a capacity to “reinvent itself and embrace new areas of investigation and methodology.”³

The intention to push the boundaries of star studies is signaled early in the book, in Sabrina Qiong Yu’s thought-provoking introduction. Qiong Yu, who has previously published a masterful study of Chinese martial arts movie star Jet Li and his fandom, is well placed to set the agenda here and indicate the direction in which star studies might profitably advance.⁴ At the start of Revisiting Star Studies, Qiong Yu boldly states that the book’s goals are to test the boundaries, offer alternatives, and challenge the clichés of star studies, thus promising something different, innovative, and fresh. To achieve this aim, the editors have included studies that go beyond not only Hollywood (as others have done) but also the human and the desirable. One of the ways this ambition is realized is through the inclusion of essays that apply detailed performance analysis both to dramatic acting and to dancing, fighting, and sex, as well as to star performances on chat shows and live public appearances.

Qiong Yu makes a strong and compelling case in her introduction when advocating for the cross-pollination of star studies with related fields, such as “crip studies” (i.e., radical and affirmative studies of disability, inspired in part by queer studies) and animal studies. The book as a whole is indeed a worthy testament to that ambition. Yet curiously, at the same time Qiong Yu expresses some unease when it comes to the cross-pollination of ideas and methods between star studies and celebrity studies, even revealing a degree of suspicion when it comes to the latter.⁵ This particular branch of media and cultural studies, which has grown rapidly since the launch of the Celebrity Studies journal in 2010 and the inauguration of the biennial Celebrity Studies conference in 2012, has undoubtedly helped reignite interest and enthusiasm in stardom and stars among film scholars. However, the rise of celebrity studies might well be perceived as a threat by some...