Fame is no longer what it used to be: no one succeeds like Marilyn or Elvis in a world of 'influencers' and superheroes

It happens more and more, even to people well steeped in pop culture.

One fine day, you discover that you don't know half of the performers who appear in the famous special issue dedicated to Hollywood published by

to coincide with the Oscars.

Who is that actress next to Nicole Kidman?

No idea.

And he is not familiar with those who occupy the first positions in the Los40 list (Bebe Rexha, Ava Max, Polo Nandez), or in the list of musical successes in the United States, the

(Morgan Wallen, Steve Lacy).

The house of an

called Emma Chamberlain and we are not very clear who she is and how that 21-year-old person has done it to buy a mansion of 4.3 million dollars (almost 4.4 million euros) —answer: be a phenomenon in networks and sign contracts with Levi's, Cartier, and Louis Vuitton.

It's not just a matter of getting old, it's that intergenerational and

conversation has never been so difficult.

Will someone as famous as Elvis or Marilyn ever be again?

asked this recently

, on account of the premieres of

, by Andrew Dominik, and

, by Baz Luhrmann.

Or what is the same: will someone make a movie in 50 years called

and everyone will understand that the film is about Kim Kardashian, a ubiquitous person in the media in the first two decades of the 21st century?

It doesn't seem likely.

Even with her 152 million followers on Instagram and her multitasking, global reach (she has an empire to her name that reaches into the fashion, beauty, and entertainment industries), Kim K. is no Marilyn M., much as she may think. wear her dress to the last Met gala.

02:26

Elvis Presley, in five songs

Elvis Presley, at Madison Square Garden in 1972. Photo: AP

“Elvis and Marilyn Monroe are like the monoliths of

fame, as conceived by an American culture that aspired to universal iconographic dominance in the 20th century.

They both embodied the same thing: the highest ideal of desire, in its masculine and feminine modulations”, reflects Jordi Costa, head of exhibitions at the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) and someone who has thought a great deal about all the stages of culture popular in this very newspaper and in books (

Taurus).

He confesses that it took him longer than was advisable to find out who Ibai Llanos is, the

who brings together audiences of more than three million people on the Twitch platform.

"The ways in which fame is built, distributed and lived have radically changed," continues Costa.

“Today we are clear that there are not even universal desires and that, therefore, no demand for a hegemonic desire should be raised.

The new models of fame respond to a much more fragmented reality, which are in correspondence not only with the new ways in which we desire, but also with the new ways in which we consume and generate culture”.

Fragmentation is the keyword.

It's getting harder and harder for there to be enough people who like the same thing at the same time.

Even the products with the greatest impregnation capacity (series such as

, Ibai Llanos himself) come from segmented platforms, such as Netflix, HBO Max and Twitch.

The first two are paid.

And in the third, almost 50% of users are between 25 and 34 years old and only 1.3% are over 65, so that what comes out of there is necessarily condemned to be filtered by age and gender.

Less than 20% of users are women.

More information

The year Ibai Llanos jumped from internet fame to world fame

Much of this transition from absolute fame to many microfames also has to do with the loss of power of cinema as a unifying art in popular culture and with the turn that the blockbuster film has taken in the 21st century.

Although, as happens with the chicken and the egg, it is not easy to figure out what happened before: that the

died , the movie made to show off a star and that it only existed because that star supported it (like the very successful Elvis movies Presley in the fifties and sixties), or that the stars that could support those

would go out .

The truth is that the

is not what it was.

Among the 10 films that have grossed the most in Spain so far this year, there are two cartoon films (the highest grossing of all is

and

is number 8), four that have to do with superheroes (

and

) and another that is an adaptation of a video game (

).

Just one, the sequel to

, at number nine, stars a global star, Tom Cruise, whom all analyzes place as "the last great Hollywood star" in the classic sense.

In the age of entertainment based on intellectual property and franchises, performers are interchangeable.

Almost all the great stars, from Benedict Cumberbatch to Jennifer Lawrence, are attached to Marvel or DC, but all are disposable, none essential.

Even the performers know it.

Actor Anthony Mackie, who plays the Falcon in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, said in a

that went viral in 2019: “There are no movie stars anymore.

Anthony Mackie is not a star.

Falcon is a star.

You used to go see Will Smith's movie, or Stallone's, or Schwarzenegger's.

Now you're going to see the X-Men.

The evolution of the superhero movie has spelled the death of the movie star."

Anthony Mackie, who plays the Falcon, in the first episode of 'Falcon and the Winter Soldier'. Chuck Zlotnick

As film historian Ben Fritz points out in his book

, the situation contrasts with that of just two decades ago, when actors like Tom Hanks or Julia Roberts were the heart of the industry and could command salaries of $20 million and final approval on each element of their films, even if they did not produce them (the cast, the script, the direction), which were chosen to be in synergy with the star.

That became clear in the historically short-lived DVD era, Fritz notes, when sleeve design was all about making the protagonist's face or body as visible as possible.

In the absence of new generation stars, the only thing left is to wallow in the nostalgia of the old ones.

The huge and somewhat unexpected success of

, the Freddie Mercury

, in 2018 opened the door to

, about Elton John, and

Luhrmann's

Netflix has offered producer Ryan Murphy a $300 million contract to continue his revisiting of the past in the form of series.

"Murphy's work constantly revolves around the

rereading of classic Hollywood, and films like

or

they reveal the construction behind the icon and also the underlying tragedy of this state of things that today should be stopped being seen as a lost paradise”, points out Jordi Costa.

In an essay that has just been published in Spain, entitled

(Alpha Decay), the cultural critic Grafton Tanner abounds in the idea that looking back is never innocent: “The nostalgia industry is not only dedicated to to sell us the past.

It also circulates versions of history that consolidate the dominant ideologies of the present.

But that past, increasingly groped and distorted, is the only thing we have in common.

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