The Transformation of Value toward Film Stars:

The Cultural Transition of the Mode of Desire on Screen in the 1950s

Abstract

Cinema was the most popular form of mass entertainment from the end of the Pacific War through the 1950s and it produced many national film stars. In this era, around the mid 1950s, there occurred a transition in the manner of desire for actresses that encompassed the transformation of stardom and the discourses evaluating film stars. The purpose of this paper is to explore the cultural transition of value toward movie stars by studying personas of film actresses of the 1950s. In particular, we study the shift from Hara Setsuko and Takamine Mieko, the most desired actresses in “the era of idealization,” to Wakao Ayako in “the era of everydayness” after 1955.

According to popularity polls, Wakao Ayako embodied the mass collective desire at this turning point. Different from the stars with supermundane beauty during the U.S. occupation period, the discourse toward Wakao Ayako was “ordinary,” “sense of intimacy,” or “average.” Her representation of “everydayness” enabled her instant rise to the top of stardom. By analyzing how leading actresses are spoken about in entertainment magazines, this paper captures the transition of discourse space that is hard to explain by the economic development around the mid 1950s. What we found is that the discourse evaluating the ordinary actress, and the embodiment of “everyday life” as the materialization of mass culture was a reaction to film stars symbolizing the “idealized” society of democracy. In the mid 1950s when society's reflected image created mediatized stars, an ordinary actress, Wakao Ayako, epitomized public “everydayness” and embodied its “reality.”