Movie Stars, Stardom & Modern Fame – Details and Registration

An online Class from Ty Burr that will begin on February 24th, 2026 and will continue for 10 weeks with periodic breaks. Classes take place on Tuesday evenings at 7pm EST. Full class schedule coming soon.

The cost of the entire 10-week class is $300 with membership coupons for CineJourneys and Ty Burr’s Watch List members. Individual classes will be $75 each and available for registration on a first-come first-serve basis.

Ever since Florence Lawrence became the first film actor to be billed by name in 1910, the movie star has been the common coin of American and global entertainment culture. We go to movies to see the people in them, a complex, century-long love affair made up of equal parts affection, emulation, obsession, consumption, and envy. This class will consider movie stars, film stardom, and pop culture fame from the silent era to the 21st century, establishing key personality and social types, tracing the rise and fall of the cinematic celebrity, and discussing the move from movie screen to TV screen to computer screen as stardom – or the social construct we call by that name – comes within the grasp of the audience.

Through lectures, discussions, readings, and film clips, students will attain a critical understanding of celebrity discourse deeper than the standard pop culture hierarchy laid out by magazines, social media and the gossip blogosphere. The course will take the form of a historical survey, starting at the dawn of cinema and working its way forward into the silent era, when many of the archetypes were first coined; through the studio star-factory of the 1930s and 1940s; the arrival of Marlon Brando, TV, rock and roll, and youth culture in the 1950s and 1960s; the New Hollywood era of the 1970s; the glamour revival of the 1980s and 1990s; and the 21st-century breakdown of the star machine under the pressures of new platforms and technologies.

Questions we’ll address will include: How have stars, both great and small, affected who we want to be and how we want to be seen? What are the “stories” each star tells, about social status and mobility, pitfalls and potentialities? How do they answer complex notions of desire? Do we want to be them, own them, consume then, or destroy them? Is scandal necessary? How have the rise of new mediums, technologies, and cultural movements changed what we ask of stars and the power we have to celebrate ourselves? And – perhaps most fundamentally – what pressures does star culture bring to bear on individuals and society, and are such pressures beneficial, detrimental, or neutral?

Readings: Ty Burr’s book Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame covers much of the material in the class and can be ordered from your local bookstore, bought online or borrowed from a library. Reading it is not required but is recommended, as many of the ideas and personalities discussed in class are treated at greater length in the book. Recommended readings will hopefully add to your understanding of the material. Additional readings are available for each session if there is time and interest on your part.

Registration is closed because the series cap has been reached. Individual session registration will go up periodically.