Chapter 7 - Comedy roles and 1980s–1990s work in cinema

Summary

As discussed in previous chapters, television and film stardom have been defined in opposition, generally undervaluing the former for the sense of familiarity it generates with the star instead of the distance produced by film (Leppert 2018; Bennett 2011; Ellis 1991; Langer 1981). But the ordinary/extraordinary binary that has thus far defined these forms of stardom (Dyer 2001: 89) is slowly becoming obsolete. Both the changing nature of television and film regimes in the new on-demand virtual culture and the expansion of social media platforms have undermined the notion of stars as unreachable figures, altering the mediated identities that are promoted, consumed and commodified (see Chapter 11 for further discussion of this issue). Back in the 1980s and 1990s, before the impact of the internet and social media, the interplay between star text and star character depended to a great extent on mediated discourses that were less volatile and more impersonal than those allowed by today's media. Star comedians were generally typecast, and mainstream media rarely constructed a star text that moved them away from the specific significance of their comedy roles.

Generally speaking, comedy stardom can be fairly idiosyncratic (Patterson 2012: 232). It blurs the boundaries of the above-mentioned ordinary/extraordinary opposition that tended to dissociate television and film stardom. The case of Argentine comedians Alberto Olmedo and Jorge Porcel, for instance, demonstrate how the extraordinary can be ordinary. In spite of having thirty-six films to their credit – between 1973 and 1988 (Fidanza 2019) – and their undeniable popularity, they were never really defined as film stars by scholars and critics. This is due to several factors: their films were generally regarded as low-brow; their constant participation in other media, including variety shows, radio and television, created a sense of familiarity with the performers that was removed from the unattainable aura generated by traditional film stardom; and they tended to play variations on the same characters that were constructed with a television performance criteria in mind (López 2005: 610–619). Darín's comedy stardom, however, as will be discussed in the following sections, demonstrates how the perceived ordinariness of comedy and television performance can coexist with and inform the alleged extraordinariness of film stardom, if performers are willing to take risks and move beyond the characters that define them when they are at the peak of their celebrity status.