Stardust Monuments: The Saving and Selling of Hollywood

5 | Handheld Hollywood

If you type “Hollywood Walk of Fame” into the search field of Apple’s iTunes store, six different iPhone applications dedicated to the site pop up. In 2010, two of the application creators, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and an independent organization called the Hollywood Walk of Fame (hwof), announced their respective versions of competing applications (apps) that allow users to locate and access information about the nearly 2,400 stars on the iconic Walk of Fame. Both free apps (in addition to four others for sale) primarily serve as virtual tour guides with gps navigation directing consumers to specific star locations on the Walk of Fame. The unofficial but self-purported “best” guide created by hwof also promises an account of the star’s history and, where applicable , connects the user to current headlines from more than thirty-five news sources, photos (of the Walk of Fame and the star), a “StarRank” that claims to reflect the star’s current Internet popularity, and links to more information via IMDb and Wikipedia. Paul Nerfer of hwof explained the value of the app to Webwire, claiming that “millions of tourists come to Hollywood each year and when they look down at the sidewalk, they see names they know, names they barely remember, and names that they have never heard of and now they can learn about the person behind the name.”1 The app, in turn, Nerfer suggests, helps give meaning and history to these names. But whose meaning is this? And whose history? More to the point, who is driving the story and symbolic image of Hollywood and its past? While these apps may be gimmicks with little seeming relevance outside of Hollywood • 171 • 5 Handheld Hollywood S T A R D U S T M O N U M E N T S • 172 • tourism, their growing number nonetheless serves as a prime example of Hollywood ’s interminable migration into the digital arena since the Internet boom of the mid-1990s. As real geographic sites, such as the Walk of Fame, the star footprints at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and the Hollywood Forever cemetery transform into Hollywood monuments of a new “virtual” order, we must question whether or not the meaning of Hollywood transforms with them. Do these virtual representations of Hollywood offer a well-worn and familiar, yet exponentially expanded, story? Or in opening up the meaning making to fans and users as well as an information-rich Internet landscape, do we see the development of a modified or alternative Hollywood imagination? Further, how do the motives, whether for commerce or pleasure, for telling Hollywood’s story differ and intermingle? Beyond the spate of third-party mobile applications on the rise since 2008, a plethora of Hollywood Internet sites confirms Hollywood’s cultural relevance and staying power in the digital arena. Such sites reflect a popular interest in Hollywood’s industry politics and business practices as well as an increased fixation with and access to celebrity culture. Broadly paralleling the geographic, institutional, and televisual sites and products discussed throughout this book, many of these sites center on Hollywood and its history, sometimes emulating and other times rearticulating the functions of their “real” world counterparts. In large part, Hollywood-themed Internet sites perpetuate many of the same stories and images that have laid the groundwork for the other sites and products discussed throughout this book. Out of necessity, the nonprofits and corporate entities I’ve discussed in various chapters all maintain Internet correlates or profiles. While many of these sites simply house information, others have used the unique properties of the Internet (storage capacity, connectivity, global reach, immediacy, and a do-ityourself ethos) to explore and write Hollywood’s story from a myriad of perspectives and depths. Many of these sites, particularly in their extensive scope and access, embody and exude a kind of Hollywood excess. They historically imagine, give meaning, and even bolster Hollywood (financially and symbolically )withinadigitallandscapethatuniquelyandimmediatelyoffersaccessibility to all things Hollywood. More than affording access, however, many Hollywood sites (particularly those that originated on the Internet) reflect a note worthy hybridization —one that aggregates divergent content and, in turn, manifests not only a culture-commerce crossover but additionally a more complicated picture of the multiple meanings and uses Hollywood simultaneously generates. H A N D H E L D H O L L Y W O O...