When considering the
career of the ‘child star’ in Hollywood, one cannot consider those brightest
lights without the associative concept of the ‘fallen idol’ such as Brittany
Murphy, Corey Haim or Judy Garland. The career of the child star is one that
often cannot escape the inevitable troubles of adult life itself. This is natural when one
might consider that the image of the child is one that is bound up in the idea
of “potential and yet does not want them to grow up” (O’Connor page 147).
The image of the child has become the most dangerous and yet most readily
accepted image in today’s Hollywood cinema. “Stars are made for profit”
(Dyer page 5) and we cannot escape that the star image, even for the child is "part of the way films are sold" (Dyer page 5). As a result, this marketisation of the child image can
be nothing other than an exploitation in the truest terms, since children,
under law, cannot see either the fruits of their labour, and exercise little
freedom of choice.
If the employment of the star image for profit is clear, what is more difficult to define is how this marketability works, and the appeal to the audience. It is the idea of
spectatorship that provides the most discomfort when considering child stars.
If, as has been discussed by Metz, and Lacan, we essentially see stars
as objects of desire, an ‘ideal self’ (McDonald page 87) related to the mirror image
stage of childhood development, then we would do well to consider exactly what
desire a child star represents to us in film. Since Mulvey’s seminal work on
the sexual politics of cinema, we have been urged to consider the audience as
the subject of the male look, and the female to be the object of the look. In
relation to the stars, one might consider the ego ideal of the male star to be
acting out the desire of the spectator, and the woman as a “passive sexual
spectacle” (McDonald page 88), with the audience in a state of tension between
voyeurism and fetishism. It is necessary - though uncomfortable - to consider how
this applies to the image of the child star. Although it is certainly a leap of
logic to say that the audience views the child star as a passive sexual object
(although the promotion of stars such as Britney Spears in her breakout single Hit me baby one more time may provide a
different aspect), one might consider how certain desirable qualities of the
child are promoted as part of the image.
A classic example of the rise and fall
of the child ‘star image’ is that of Drew Barrymore: aged six when she shot to
fame as Gertie in E.T. the
Extraterrestrial; put into rehab by the age of 13, having attempted suicide
and addicted to cocaine. Although Drew Barrymore’s image did become
subsequently sexualised, through her nude appearances in Playboy, later teenage
film work such as Poison Ivy was not
critically well received during this same period. Clearly then, the image of the
rebellious, sexualised teenager was not one that audiences were comfortable
with, and coincided with a ‘fall’ in her stardom. In this sense perhaps then it
is unacceptable to view the child star as an extension of the male gaze, but
perhaps of the ‘adult gaze’, a child, a child star, represents hope and
potential. One might witness this marketing ploy in the text of the child as
the ‘next big thing’ - an endless production line of hopes and dreams for the
adult audience to believe in. For every Drew Barrymore we may see a Chloe
Moretz or Kiernan Shipka in today’s society, the child stars for the new
generation. For the audience in
the case of Drew Barrymore, perhaps the unravelling of the ego ideal off screen
contrasted with the pure, innocent ideal of the Hollywood child star, and was
too close to an uncomfortable truth, that the innocence of the child in
Hollywood is an illusion, and in fact, the industry often sexualises young
actors and actresses, such as Natalie Portman in Leon, or in the very tragic
case of Corey Haim.
It would appear that the pleasure of the
adult’s spectatorship of the child star cannot stray too far from the formulaic
idea of innocence and potential. It is as though an unspoken bond is made
between the adult viewer and the child star, the pleasure of reliving a lost
innocence, to ‘grow up’ together, in an idealized way. It is this that I think
is the guiding principle for the selling of the image of the child star to the
audience, which in essence, enjoys the reliving of hope, of growing up,
encompassing as it does the discovering of their own bodies, love, happiness,
sadness and sexuality. The audience, lacking as it does its own idealised
version of childhood, fills it up with their own desires, living each moment.
Or as O’Connor puts it “it is this very emptiness to represent whatever is
required by their audience that most comprehensively determines and defines the
child star” (O'Connor page 37).
Perhaps, it is for this reason that the child star is tainted with sadness,
washed up by later teens, unable to appeal in the same way, and usurped by new
hope. Hollywood knows that this symbol of the child as potential and hope is
marketable and bankable, and is exploits it, and the child, to its fullest
extent.
McDonald, Paul. “Star Studies.” In Approaches to Popular Film. Joanne Hollows and Mark Jancovich, eds. Manchester: Manchester U. P., 1995, 79-97.
Dyer, R,. Heavenly Bodies, Film Stars and Society, (1986), St Martin's Press, New York
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