We Wanna Fuck the Star System
Davide Arpaia, Mary Cinque, Chiara Corvino, Corrado LaMattina, Leskin, Elpidio Ziello
from 26 June to 20 July 2009
(opening on 26 June at 07.00 p.m.)
In Largo Baracche Spanish Quarters in Naplesdal 26 Giugno al 20 Luglio
Cared by Giuseppe Russo e Pietro Tatafiore
Sabu cultural association presents "WE WANNA FUCK THE STAR SYSTEM". Star system is conceived in cinema and show business world, as an advertising system that can launch, support or destroy a star. Hero worship is the basis of this phenomenon, born in the XX century, and that essentially consists in an "exaltation" process of an individual, whose image becomes an highly symbolic icon that is omnipresent in life of ordinary people. A star is different from an actor: an actor transforms himself in the roles he incarnates, while a star essentially stays connected to his/her image, he/she always repeats the same model, he/she personifies the stereotype of self in all the films he/she acts. The film stars of twenties and early thirties are fascinating and transgressive, they often have exotic traits such as the Italian Rodolfo Valentino, the Swedish Greta Garbo, or the German Marlene Dietrich. Other great film stars, for example Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, have an affected image, too, and this image is fossilized in time.
New film stars, among which are Marlon Brando, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Marilyn Monroe and, from the second generation, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, destroy the Hollywood myth of beauty and put on the clothes of suffering, nervous and sometimes vanishing anti-heroes.
Cinema in the Seventies is characterized by the anti-star model: emarginated, vagabond, penniless, loser, the protagonist of cinematographic masterpieces of that time doesn't give importance to success as it is usually intended. The emblematic film-star of that period is Brigitte Bardot, who imposes a new model of feminine seduction. Her character anticipated the sexual revolution of Seventies and produced a tremendous media outcry. In the Eighties and Nineties returned the well-disciplined and reassuring stars, well inserted in a definite role that reflected also in private life. It is the case of "muscular" heroes like Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Physical strength is one of the most important characteristics of image, that puts in a secondary level of importance even acting, on which the New Hollywood actors have based their myth.