An economical analysis of the exploitation and the production of popularity (the case of Hollywood)[Une analyse économique de l'exploitation et de la production de la notoriété médiatique (le cas du cinéma hollywoodien)]

In the motion pictures industry, the producers are faced to face with a great uncertainty relating to the financial success of films. In order to maximize probabilities of returns, one of the strategies at their's disposal consists in exploiting the great box office power that stars are supposed to possess. We call star system traditionally this exploitation of stars' box office power. In our opinion, a more accurate definition of star system can be stated : insofar as the stars' box office power originates from artistic notoriety and/or popularity, the star system can also be defined as the exploitation of stars' artistic notoriety and/or stars'popularity. Our aim consists in providing here an economic analysis of the exploitation and also of the production of popularity. And insofar as the star system is at first the apanage of hollywood, our reflexion turns principally on the american motion pictures industry in the first half of the 20th century 1910s-1940s. So, after a brief evocation of the factors that induce consumers to adopt popularity as consommation choice criterion, we present a succinct historic examination of the star system's advent in Hollywood. We bring then to light the events that induce films producers to understand the extent of popularity in the actors' box office power. We demonstrate afterwards that producers not only exploited but also produced the actors' popularity. The profitability of the popularity production activity is closely tied to long term contracts imposition and to vertally-integrated nature of the industry. Finally, the reflexion would be incomplete without a study of the economic and artistic validity of star system : the conclusions derived are on the one hand the empiric studies don't provide clear-cut results relating to the real box office power of stars and on the other hand the star system can affect negatively the artistic process.