SUBSIDIARY CIRCULATION in Star Images

"SUBSIDIARY CIRCULATION"

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A student asked about the phrase "subsidiary circulation," which occurs at the beginning of John Ellis's essay, "Stars as a Cinematic Phenomenon."
    The phrase contrasts the "circulation" of the movies themselves (primary circulation, since it is only in the movies that we see the "embodied" star) with all other circulated images of the star, all of which are "incomplete": radio interviews (audio), magazine pictures (visual), newspapers (reported actions, activities, etc.).
    Only in the movie is the star image "completed," and that never fully, since no single movie can embody or capture the star image completely (Ellis disagrees with a theory of a stable star image). A movie, however, can capture the star, and either reproduce the star image, contradict the star image, or develop a new side of it. Otherwise the star is always incomplete in subsidiary circulation.
    We see Angelina Jolie walking out of a hospital; we hear reports of her marriage, her childbirth, her humanitarian crusades; we hear her actual voice and perhaps see her briefly in a television interview or talking with reporters.
    All of these are incomplete. And keep in mind that, until recently, no star would be "available" as a "complete" person except in the cinema; since television was not a mass medium until the 1950s and then only rarely would a star appear, usually in black-and-white, on a tiny screen, in a medium shot, and typically in a cameo (walk-on) role: William Holden briefly stared-at by comedienne Lucille Ball while he's eating in a restaurant, etc.
    As for the completion of star images, take Arnold Schwarzenegger. Knowledge of his bodybuilding background would be unavoidable in his first films, where he played mostly a villainous hulk. Those movies would simply "complete" that simple image.
    Later Schwarzenegger was groomed for leading roles, now as the hero: the good guy. Subsidiary circulation would abet or help that new star image: we would hear more than simply the fact that he's a weightlifter. We would hear of his marriage into the Kennedy clan, for example.
    Roles would stretch that star image:  not really contradicting it but adding a new dimension: Kindergarten Cop, for example, or Twins, would develop a softer side of the star image (the star image is never stable but is never entirely undefined either), while the predictable strong-guy image was not entirely left behind.
    By the time of Junior a further development of the star image occurred, where the muscleman became a maternal man, actually bearing a child. No strongman tactics occur in the film at all, nor are even suggested; he is merely a scientist, with the mandatory steel-rim eyeglasses, vacant stare, whining voice, etc.
    Yet the whole point of the film would be lost without the star image of the muscleman parts (otherwise, Tom Hanks could have been cast in the film just as well, with slightly different connotations: the script itself would have been changed to fully exploit the elements of Hanks' star image).

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