The terms “star” or “star image” are used in any professional career a person may have, like in film or sport. But in film, these terms used rather loosely, because nowadays people associate whoever they know well as a star but not so much if he or she deserves to have that privileged status of being called a star. This can be backed up by the fact that Christine Geraghty (2000) mentions that movie stars today don’t really epitomize a fixed conception of stardom as in the past. But instead they strive with an array of personalities from an ever-increasing collection of media texts (Willis 2004, p. 1). Andrew Willis (2004, p. 1) stated that the altering concept of the term ‘star’ has invigorated every supplier to use a wide collection of diverse methods to popular movies each demonstrating that their approaches could assist people’s understanding of those themes, the movie industry that formed them and their spotlight of stardom. This essay will talk about a major star in the film industry, “Eddie Murphy”, the construction of his star image, the understanding and value of his some of his film texts considering his star image, and generally how the film industries that form these types of works attract people to pay money to watch these stars on the big screens in movie theaters and in Eddie Murphy’s case how his star status lead to fame and fortune.

 

Eddie Regan Murphy is an American actor and comedian and is 56 years old. He started doing stand-up comedy when he was around 16-17 years old and then united with the NBC’s Saturday Night Live cast. He is known for his big sense of humor, his slang, the way he talks and his constant hilarious jokes in movies. Because he has proven his talent and skills at the highest level of film production, Eddie Murphy can be called as a star. Stars are a crucial component in the complete movie collection in the modern-day movie era. The conversion of image from one context to a different context has gradually become like a power in the defense of the film financiers. Without a doubt people’s desires when watching movies is centered around seeing their stars or “star idols”, their image and their status. Movie audiences today, specifically in the environment of the modern multiplex progressively choose what to watch constructed on desires verbalized by their responsiveness of star personalities and the vehicles that they’re connected with. Questions revolving around how distant stars are created by marketing departments and how distant by fans continue to be vital. This is backed up by Justin Wyatt’s book “High Concept” (1994) where he argues that the status of a star-driven film is majorly reliant on the marketing that is linked with its technique of being influential (Willis 2004, p. 2).

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Eddie Murphy is a black actor, and most of his movies can be related to race and ethnicity. And these elements are used to construct his star image. Richard Dyer claims that movie-watching by the American public is principally an enunciation of white experience and that whiteness fortifies its supremacy by appearing to be nonentity specifically. In Dyer’s views however, when people watch a movie they don’t take into consideration about white experience, but only if the screen belongs to a racial “other” do people think that race is a major concern. American society is multi-cultural and like to self-image themselves as diverse country of ethnic and racial backgrounds but it is claimed by certain theorists that modern popular American movies don’t give much importance to the non-white experience, and in those cases where they do, depictions lead to problems (Gates 2004, p. 20). This is just some theorists’ perspectives. However, like Eddie Murphy there are many African-American characters starring in movies since the 1990s, and many of them have received awards as well, like, of course, Eddie Murphy, Halle Berry and Denzel Washington. And all people regardless of their races, enjoy watching movies whether the actors are black or white (Gates 2004, p. 21). 

 

Eddie Murphy has starred in many hit movies. “Beverly Hills Cop” was a major hit in America earing around $64.5M just in its initial 23 days of release ranking 9th amongst the top 50 money-making movies of all time. In this movie, Eddie Murphy could use his star power earned from his previous sensations to cool the regulations of the buddy formula and put himself in the best situation in the story using his supportive White, buddy cops as foils or straight men for his impertinent, quick-witted comedy. The consistently repeated central joke or comic theme which is played to an everlasting disparity in all of Eddie Murphy’s sensations, buddy vehicles are based on the Black infiltration of evidently delineated White cultural, social or physical space. Furthermore, the countenance of this infiltration is highlighted with class anxieties and pressures (Guerrero 1993, p. 243).  

 

Another Eddie Murphy hit film, “The Nutty Professor”, the themes of this film of physical and ethnic conversion had a few substantial out-of-universe reverberations, predominantly connecting to the dissertation of its major star— and its fundamental body of change. The movie is itself an ethnically distorted body—and it reshapes its fundamental apprehensions through a means of a replaced class alteration visited upon an additional movie (Kong). These textual-racial transformations (occasionally referencing specific movies, occasionally larger types) have actually been a substantial part of Eddie Murphy’s cinematic productivity, and the act of textual change has in many scenarios not been just one of expedience, but instead a fundamental chunk of the movie’s ostensive portentous developments (Knee 2002, p. 91).  Considering other opinions, Mark Griep (2015) stated that despite Eddie Murphy’s endearing character in the movie was clearly the immense attraction for the audience, the significant memorandum for researchers was that Grody was in a team that eventually reached millions of viewers.

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The third film “Coming to America” is a very interesting one. It shows what Eddie Murphy’s overall personality is like and basically how he has earned his star image. The main connotation of Murphy's "testimonial," which had reflective insinuations for black modes and emphases of struggle to subjugation, revolves around his view that class position has barely any outcome on ethnic subjectification. If this understanding clarified clearly the nearly exclusivist racial focus of the trope of "race uplift," the leading African-American reply to racial subjugation since the American "age of reaction" it is speechless on why such an approach, "race uplift," was favored in the first place. This quietness called for more detailed inspection. The most dynamic terrain of this approach was the cultural, where it was established principally as a movement against "negative" figurative depictions. In his interview with Spike Lee, Eddie Murphy showed his incredulity and anger at the bad evaluations of Coming to America (1988) when it was released. He anyway said that it was his best film so far. Coming to America showed constituting images in stable antagonism to the imageries of poverty, decay, death, and devastation that have, in the American media and creations, stood for "Motherland" Africa. The Africans of Coming to America can been rich and lived in excessive luxury. "I am very black and I have a very black consciousness", thus, Murphy affirms his obligation to "uplifting the race" through ennobling depiction (Olaniyan 1996, p. 92). This movie basically shows how proud Eddie Murphy is that he is black, regardless of what people think. And he is trying to teach other people that race doesn’t matter.

 

The next film, Bill Condon’s “Dreamgirls”, which holds similar comparisons to the reality show “American Idol” where co-star Jennifer Hudson was grasped, comprises both depictions of black masculine and feminine ‘types’ accustomed to people watching Hollywood movies, and gives its own tale about the connections amid performing productions, racism, and equal prospects. Where a ‘black cultural production’ isn’t by any means in the logic envisioned by Gray- where the entire industry all comprise of white people, Americans- related questions about the applicability of social practicality could be modelled: To what degree is accurate precision a significant characteristic of the movie’s semiotic body or common reaction (Laurie 2012, p. 539)?

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Hannah Hamad (2010, p. 160) stated that Eddie Murphy’s image and bankability was broken by a parenthood disgrace in where he had been believed as dwelling a couple of the most harmful typecasts of African-American masculinity – the “deadbeat dad” – when he openly repudiated parenthood of a kid which a DNA test would’ve proven otherwise on Dutch television in December 2006 and consequently shattered the career resurgence he was living in. Eddie Murphy had effectively paternalised and transformed his star-image from about the late-1990s to around the mid-2000s to substantial achievements, with numerous parenthood themed box-office hit movies, specifically “Daddy Day Care” (2003). This happened in combination with a conversion in his extra-cinematic identity from “bad boy king of comedy” to “a new image” – and “a new life” – “as a family man” (Miller et al. 2001, p. 101). Although a couple of efforts afterwards at acting the role of post-feminist fatherhood in Hollywood films in “Meet Dave” (2008) and “Imagine That” (2009) – where 2 of these movies had been released succeeding to the paternity disgrace that humiliated his “family-man” identity– botched at the box-office (Barnes 2009), as the rationality of his open image as a post-feminist father was devastated.

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Other examples of Eddie Murphy’s movies include “Doctor Dolittle” (Dir. Betty Thomas, 1998), where it ethnically re-creates a famous musical movie and children’s book; “Vampire in Brooklyn” (Dir. Wes Craven, 1995), as its name starts to show, moves the topographical and ethnic coordinates of the vampire movie; and “Harlem Nights” (Dir. Eddie Murphy, 1989), Murphy’s lone movie as a director, deliberately redrafts the crime-family rule genre to emphasize (like The Nutty Professor) on egotism in African-American ancestry. Boomerang (Dir. Reginald Hudlin, 1992) similarly African-Americanizes the quixotic amusement (and, in its specific conspiracy, the corporate milieu), whereas Coming to America’s (Dir. John Landis, 1988) whimsical story of a New York prince looking for a wife-to-be seems to show a wide range of (white) texts which deal with the royal family going undercover and royals based in another place (for example, “Roman Holiday” (Dir. William Wyler, 1953), “A King in New York” (Dir. Charles Chaplin, 1957), and many other forms of The “Prince and the Pauper”). These films had the marketing advantage of being a “Pre-Sold Property”. The promotion and release of these films developed their marketability and provided a competitive edge and enhancement in the film industry. One of the main reasons why these films are so popular even today. This helped build and rebuild Eddie Murphy’s star-image. ‘Rebuild’ in the sense, even going through tough times, it helped him come back even stronger in the film industry (Knee 2002, p. 91).

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In conclusion, this is how Eddie Murphy’s star-image has been constructed through his various films, and how his image organized as a pre-sold property in the marketing and promotion of his films and how they were understood and valued. As critically analyzed in this essay, his films have morals. Going in depth in that analysis, it has been shown that his films revolve around race, class, gender and his African-American background. Adam Knee (2002, p. 91) stated that such reliable actions of racial-generic alterations in Murphy’s composition could be understood and valued as a function of and metaphor for his special, individual history in Hollywood: His drive into white monarchies (through working in a white business and, more precisely, acts as a huge box-office attraction—a “role” which was restricted to white people) is smoothed by and in turn more fosters his work with formerly white texts. Eddie Murphy’s films however obviously have a lot of humour which make them very enjoyable to watch with friends and family, but there is so much more as seen in this essay. In general, Eddie Murphy has shown why he is loved and adored by people all over the world. Along with his talent and skill in acting, his passion, desire and love of acting and making people constantly laugh through his comedy movies is second to none.

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                                                                             References

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• Adam Knee, “The Weight of Race: Stardom and Transformations of Racialized Masculinity in Recent American Film”, 1st ed., Abingdon: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 91, (2002, Lasalle College of the Arts).

 

• Andrew Willis, “Film Stars: Hollywood and Beyond”, 1st ed., Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 1-2, (2004, University of Salford).

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• Biography.com, “Eddie Murphy”, (2017).

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• Brooks Barnes, “Despite Flops, Studios Want Eddie Murphy”, 1st ed., New York Times, (2009, New York Times Fokus).

 

• Ed Guerrero, “Black American Cinema: The Black Image in Protective Custody: Hollywood’s Biracial Buddy Films of the Eighties”, 1st ed., London: Routledge, p. 243, (1993, New York University).

 

• Hannah Hamad, “Hollywood’s Hot Dads: Tabloid, Reality and Scandal Discourses of Celebrity Post-Feminist Fatherhood”, 1st ed., Abingdon: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, Vol. 1, No. 2, p. 160, (2010, Massey University).

 

• Mark Griep, “Big Screen, Big Influence”, 1st ed., London: Macmillan Publishers Limited, Vol. 3, No. 2, (2011, University of Nebraska).

 

• Miller, S., Caruso, M. Jordan, J. et al., 2001. Dad to the bone. People, 56 (2), 101.

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• Philippa Gates, “Always a Partner in Crime: Black Masculinity in the Hollywood Detective Film”, 1st ed., Abingdon: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 20-21, (2004, Wilfrid Laurier University).

 

• Tejumola Olaniyan, ““Uplift the Race!”: Coming to America, Do the Right Thing, and the Politics of “Othering””, 1st ed., St Paul: University of Minnesota Press, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 92, (1996, University of Minnesota).

 

• Timothy Laurie, “Come Get These Memories: Gender, History and Racial Uplift in Bill Condon’s Dreamgirls, 1st ed., Abingdon: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, Vol. 18, No. 5, p. 539, (2012, University of Sydney). 

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