Jocelyn Yi-Hsuan LaiThe above negative responses from China and Japan to the movement of Korean actors are
not hard to find in the public spaces concerning the recent East Asia media culture. The dis-
cussions, be they of rational analysis or emotional response, indicate the necessity of continual
discourse and theorization on star/society relations in East Asia. Stars are meant to occupy the
center of public attention because the nature of the profession is to face the public by addressing
the psychological demands or ideological desires of the latter. Nevertheless, globalization has
led to many East Asian stars appearing on stage in various different countries—performing for
audiences with vastly different nationalistic viewpoints. Often, transnational stars must handle
sudden crises after unintentionally stirring up sensitive geopolitical issues, which may have a
negative effect on their careers.
The star/geopolitics relationship has acted as a catalyst for inter-Asian star studies. It has intro-
duced a sub-theme of inter-Asian pop culture studies that critically examines the inter-Asian
flow of media culture and its impact on the formation of cultural identities in East Asia. Over
the last decade, inter-Asian star studies have developed useful theoretical tools to understand the
emotional and geopolitical minefield surrounding transnational East Asian stars. This chapter
presents the inter-Asian approach to East Asian star studies. I will examine the complexities of
East Asian stardom in the age of globalization, where East Asian media centers are competing in
the global/regional market with transnational employment and joint production projects.
Theory of stardom: Star as image, labor, and capital
To introduce the inter-Asian approach to stardom, I shall begin with star studies. Following
Richard Dyer’s Stars, first published in 1979 and regarded as the pioneering landmark of star
studies, English-speaking critical scholarship has markedly developed. During the last three
decades, its focus has been systematically diverse (Dyer 1979; deCordova 1990; Gledhill 1991;
Marshall 1997; McDonald 2000; Shingler 2012).
Revolving around the Hollywood star system in the United States, the scholarship sees the
American film star in capitalist media industries as an artifact with three interrelated dimensions:
star as labor, as image, and as capital (McDonald 2000, 5). The first dimension refers to the fact
that stars should be trained workers, their labor constituting an important component of media
industries. Without the performers, meaning and messages cannot be conveyed in film and TV.
The stars also have their unions, such as the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation
of Television and Radio Artists (SAG, AFTRA), which represent performing workers’ interests
in capital/labor negotiation. In the second dimension, stars are a source of meaning and objects
of identification as images produced by film and television. The carefully framed images address
social demands by presenting popular identities with which the public can identify. The public
makes true a performer’s rise to stardom by embracing the created ideology. Following the two
dimensions, stardom as an artifact subsequently becomes a form of capital/asset in capitalist
media business, its economic value functioning either as a promotional or a production tool. For
instance, the audience might be invited to participate as film extras in exchange for meeting and
hanging out with the stars.
The influence media stars have on society links them to gaining influence in a political
domain. In a democratic society, veteran media stars making the switch to become politicians,
such as Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger, are prime American examples. East Asia
has also witnessed many media stars who became politicians, such as Yoshiko Yamaguchi, also
known as Li Xianglan, in Japan. P. David Marshall (1997) analyzes the relationship between
media and power and argues that the power of the public figures cannot be so easily discerned.
Marshall (1997, 54–75) argues that celebrities or stars in society can be likened to “charismatic