Worshipped as heroes, treated as gods, movie stars are more than objects of admiration. A star's influence touches on every aspect of ordinary life, dictating taste in fashion, lifestyle, and desire. Edgar Morin's remarkable investigation into the cultural and social significance of the star system traces its evolution from the earliest days of the cinema - when stars like Chaplin, Garbo, and Valentino lived at a distance from their fans, far beyond all mortals, to the postwar era in which stars like Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe became familiar and familial, less unapproachable but more moving, and concludes with an analysis of the furious religious adulation surrounding the life and death of James Dean. Ultimately, Morin finds, stars are more than just creations of the movie studios; they serve as intermediaries between the real and the imaginary. Today, with the cult of fame more pervasive and influential than ever, The Stars remains a vibrant, vital, and surprising work.
Edgar Morin (born Edgar Nahoum) is a French philosopher and sociologist who has been internationally recognized for his work on complexity and "complex thought," and for his scholarly contributions to such diverse fields as media studies, politics, sociology, visual anthropology, ecology, education, and systems biology. He holds degrees in history, economics, and law. Though less well known in the United States due to the limited availability of English translations of his over 60 books, Morin is renowned in the French-speaking world, Europe, and Latin America.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Morin's family migrated from the Greek town of Salonica to Marseille and later to Paris, where Edgar was born. He first became tied to socialism in connection with the Popular Front and the Spanish Republican Government during the Spanish Civil War.
When the Germans invaded France in 1940, Edgar fled to Toulouse, where he assisted refugees and committed himself to Marxist socialism. As a member of the French Resistance he adopted the pseudonym Morin, which he would use for the rest of his life. He joined the French Communist Party in 1941. In 1945, Morin married Violette Chapellaubeau and they lived in Landau, where he served as a Lieutenant in the French Occupation army in Germany.
In 1946, he returned to Paris and gave up his military career to pursue his activities with the Communist party. Due to his critical posture, his relationship with the party gradually deteriorated until he was expelled in 1951 after he published an article in Le Nouvel Observateur. In the same year, he was admitted to the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS).
Morin founded and directed the magazine Arguments (1954鈥�1962). In 1959 his book Autocritique was published.
In 1960, Morin travelled extensively in Latin America, visiting Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Mexico.He returned to France where he published L'Esprit du Temps.
That same year, French sociologist Georges Friedmann brought him and Roland Barthes together to create a Centre for the Study of Mass Communication that, after several name-changes, became the Edgar Morin Centre of the EHESS, Paris.
Beginning in 1965, Morin became involved in a large multidisciplinary project, financed by the D茅l茅gation G茅n茅rale 脿 la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique in Ploz茅vet.
In 1968, Morin replaced Henri Lefebvre at the University of Nanterre. He became involved in the student revolts that began to emerge in France. In May 1968, he wrote a series of articles for Le Monde that tried to understand what he called "The Student Commune." He followed the student revolt closely and wrote a second series of articles in Le Monde called "The Revolution without a Face," as well as co-authoring Mai 68: La br猫che with Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort.
In 1969, Morin spent a year at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California.
In 1983, he published De la nature de l鈥橴RSS, which deepened his analysis of Soviet communism and anticipated the Perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev.
Morin was married to Johanne Harrelle, with whom he lived for 15 years.
In 2002, Morin participated in the creation of the International Ethical, Scientific and Political Collegium.
In addition to being the UNESCO Chair of Complex Thought, Morin is known as a founder of transdisciplinarity and holds honorary doctorates in a variety of social science fields from 21 universities (Messina, Geneva, Milan, Bergamo, Thessaloniki, La Paz, Odense, Perugia, Cosenza, Palermo, Nuevo Le贸n, Universit茅 de Laval 脿 Qu茅bec, Brussels, Barcelona, Guadalajara, Valencia, Vera Cruz, Santiago, the Catholic University of Porto Alegre, the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, and Candido Mendes University Rio de Janeiro.
The University of Messina in Sicily, Ricardo Palma University in Lima, and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the French National Research Center in
Written in I believe the 1950s or 1960s, this was really a fascinating glimpse into how the rise of cinema and film as a new medium affected people. A really interesting glimpse into how parasocial relationships and the blurring of fantasy and fiction have always existed with celebrities.
Produit d鈥檜n syst猫me et d鈥檜ne 茅poque, la star, en incarnant le mythe de l鈥檃mour, de la beaut茅, de la jeunesse, de la vie, nous offre un reflet id茅alis茅 脿 notre angoisse de la mort. Elle na卯t, atteint son apog茅e, meurt, et rena卯t
This book is from Morin鈥檚 first period, it鈥檚 old work. You can tell the sociologist: accurate descriptions of all kinds of phenomena concerning movie stars: the way they behave and why, the pressure of the public, the self-pressure 鈥榳ithin鈥� the movie stars themselves in order to accommodate to it, resulting in party-behavior and fake personalities, that is, personalities that coincide with the roles they play on the screen, or, more transcendentally, the role they play as gods and goddesses for their 鈥榓dorants鈥�, i.e. their fans; the fans and the typical ways of expressing themselves and the reasons why.
There is a chapter about how movie-stars do their acting very differently in comparison to actors in theatre, because film does essentially different things and therefore requires different things from the actor; another chapter is about how we as society imitate the movie star in all kinds of manners. And there is a chapter about how the movie-star guides fashion and materialism and thus represents the capitalist society. 鈥楲a star exprime les ideaux de l鈥櫭﹖hique de loisir. Elle rev猫le un voie d鈥檜n salut personnel dans le monde du r锚ve [on screen], soit dans le monde de veille.鈥� The last chapters are about when stardom reached its top with Roger Dean and Marilyn Monroe, essentially containing the elements of its downfall.
Brilliantly, Morin describes the new [pagan] religiosity of our age in the Western World.