Are all the Hollywood "STARS" gone?
PUSSSYKATT
Scientists say that up to 137 plant and animal species become extinct each day.
Most of the time, most of us don't even notice. We did, however, record the
death of the last passenger pigeon, the last heath hen and the last dusky
seaside sparrow. This week, many say, we witnessed the death of the last Movie
Star, Katharine Hepburn.
We still have actors and actresses, this argument goes, but they don't have the
glamour, magnetism or sheer larger-than-life presence of Hepburn - or
contemporaries like Cary Grant, Bette Davis, John Wayne, Clark Gable, James
Stewart and Paul Robeson.
It's a compelling argument.
First, and most basic, we've shrunk our stars. We watch them in postage-stamp
multiplexes or on TV sets.
Second, today's gossip machine deglamorizes through the illusion of
familiarity. The more we know about the mundane details of someone's life, the
less exotic he or she seems.
Third, many big movies today don't star people. They star special effects or
cars. Steven Spielberg isn't creating movie stars. Neither is the "Star Wars"
series or "Spider-Man."
Yet it's dangerous to declare the end of eras. It's true that Meryl Streep and
Tom Hanks have positioned themselves differently than Audrey Hepburn or
Humphrey Bogart. It's true that Tom Cruise and Meg Ryan aren't Henry Fonda and
Marilyn Monroe.
But what of Julia Roberts? Denzel Washington? Will Robert De Niro's work, in 20
years, have a classic glow around it?
If Clint Eastwood isn't John Wayne, he has grown even on those who didn't
appreciate his early work. And what of artists whose films we have not really
considered yet as a body, like Paul Newman or Sidney Poitier?
I'm still inclined to argue that, at the very least, the star game has
different, tougher rules now.
But it's also that we have always had a miserably hard time putting our own
popular culture into perspective.
Many young folks figure that everything before a certain time - when they
started paying attention - doesn't matter. Many older folks feel everything
after a certain time - when they stopped paying attention - is junk.
When it comes to matters like the last Movie Star, it argues for caution in
declarations of cultural extinction.
After all, it has been 40 years since anyone saw an ivory-billed woodpecker in
the remote swamps of Louisiana. But many scientists say it could still exist.
If the ivory-billed woodpecker, why not the Movie Star?
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