The ambition of this issue is thus to try and unravel some of the aesthetic, cultural and ideological values attached to the ubiquitous and yet elusive concept of ‘blondness’. This in fact is just one of its many contradictions as blondness also raises other binaries: purity vs. So blondness achieves the paradoxical result of being both banal, bordering on ‘vulgar’, and a sign of distinction. Blondness is everywhere, as reflected in the number of films with ‘blonde’ in the title, such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Loves of a Blonde, Legally Blonde and Blonde Ambition, while popular culture is replete with ‘blond jokes’ and ‘blond moments’ (asking a stupid question, not understanding an obvious point). Indeed, as discussed in this issue, some of the world’s most famous stars are blondes: Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, Nicole Kidman, Veronica Lake, Brigitte Bardot – presenting an array of (stereo)types from angelic Madonna (Štěpničková) to ‘cool blonde’ (Kelly) to blond sex goddess (Monroe, Bardot).
#TVTROPES STELLA GLOW SKIN#
387) and not just in the West: Dennison discusses how in Brazil, ‘in the world of glamour and fashion modelling, pale skin and smooth, blond hair still dominate and are understood as markers of a superior beauty over the more predominant darker skin and dark, curlier hair’. Surveys reveal that blond women are over-represented in show business (Synnott 1987, p. The world of film and celebrities is evidently not short of dark-haired men and women, and yet it is blondness that has somehow come to define ‘the western cultural definition of beauty’ as Kourelou puts it. While they do not claim to offer an exhaustive view, the eight articles assembled here provide a wide-ranging set of approaches to the topic they explore in various ways the aesthetic, cultural and ideological implications of blondness in the audio-visual construction of the sexual and national identity of stars and celebrities. New pieces were commissioned that encompass other national contexts (Stephanie Dennison on blondness in Brazil) and masculinity (Julie Lobalzo Wright on Robert Redford), and that brought the debates up to date by connecting the blond stardom of classical stars to today’s celebrities: Pam Cook writing on the comparison between Grace Kelly and Nicole Kidman, and Aurore Fossard De Almeida on the role of the paparazzi in the construction of the image of the blonde. In consultation with the editors of Celebrity Studies, it was decided to extend the scope of the investigation. Our research for the presentations – now much expanded in the articles in this issue – and the feedback we received convinced us that what might at first sight seem like a trivial detail of personal experience, blond hair, in fact opened up to a more pervasive and controversial cultural phenomenon, that of the ‘blonde’. There, four papers examined blond stardom in film within different national contexts: American (Kulraj Phullar on Veronica Lake), Greek (Olga Kourelou on Melina Mercouri), Czech (Šárka Gmiterková on Jiřina Štěpničková) and French (Ginette Vincendeau on Brigitte Bardot). The starting point for the focus on blondness in this issue of Celebrity Studies was a panel that I chaired at the eighth NECS conference in Prague in 2013.
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