Bob Dylan, the Ordinary Star

This paper provides a study of Bob Dylan's public image as a star performer and what he represented for his audiences within the framework of 1960s counterculture. I will begin with an interpretation of his public image at the rise of his career in an effort to better understand how Dylan came to be considered a social symbol and a representative of a historically specific counterculture as the voice of a young frustrated generation. This study will focus primarily on D. A. Pennebaker's documentary Don't Look Back, which portrays a 23-year old Dylan on his 1965 English tour. Ultimately, we will see how this film brilliantly captures the paradox of Dylan's star popularity in light of his refusal to portray the star his audience wanted and expected. This was not only a personal struggle but a cultural contradiction.

In addition to featuring a counterculture celebrity, Pennebaker's film itself falls into the genre of counterculture films. Such films are indeed quite different from what had been done before. Not only did American cultural symbols shift in the 1960s (Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan, for example, became as famous as Marilyn Monroe had been in the '50s, becoming not only stars, but social icons) but the aspirations and principles of countercultural films moved to the opposite end of Hollywood's artifices. In effect, counterculture films are based on the idea of realism and experimentation: a formal freedom inspired by the French Nouvelle Vague.¹

Filmmakers of this period grew fascinated with popular musicians and often pursued them as subjects for their films. The portrayal of Bob Dylan was one of the most successful of the '60s concert films, despite the fact that after this period of his career, Dylan steered clear of media coverage.

One of the most interesting features of Don't Look Back is the way in which Dylan is more often shown offstage—in the wings of the stage or in his hotel room—than in front of his audiences. Moreover, many sequences unfold in which he is confronted with the obscurities and contradictions of his public image. We often see him speaking with audience members and journalists, for example. These public confrontations clearly intrigued Pennebaker, who chose to place them in the forefront of his film. This point of view reveals a paradox, as such confrontations lead the viewer to question how Dylan's public image is to be defined. This analysis will show that Dylan's rejection of media categorization and his refusal to participate in the logic of popular demand represents a blatant rejection of the star system itself. As he portrays himself in Don't Look Back, Dylan has made himself truly indefinable.

Nonetheless, Bob Dylan was (and is) a star. Despite his resistance, he has become a popular icon and his objective identity cannot be detached from such a system. In his refusal to portray the star in the film, he was attempting to simply be the individual he was—a young, somewhat naïve and vulnerable artist on the rise to success. This "ordinary star" persona comes through forcefully in Don't Look Back.

Bob Dylan's career represents an intermediating symbol between the concept of public image (as defined by the star system), and the concept of art itself (with a message and an identity). It is clear that many of Dylan's song lyrics challenge oppressive systems. In a similar manner, Dylan also opposes the stifling of human dignity by challenging the flow of the star system; he refuses to allow his personal (and artistic) identity to be reduced to a matter of definition as determined for, and by, public opinion.

In order to further advance this study, I will now take a closer look at the historical evolution of the star system. The concept of "star," as put forth in this paper, relates to an ideological point of view of an individual's public image as it satisfies expectations created within a given socio-cultural context. Richard Dyer provides an example of this phenomenon in his study of the Hollywood star system, entitled...