Stardom and the Construction of Value in the Post-Studio Era: The Branded Adversity of Sylvester Stallone

Abstract: Hollywood histories have historically presented a binary between the classical studio system and the post-studio era, suggesting that the latter ushered in a period of creative autonomy for its stars, who gained greater control over their career and image. While there is much work that complicates the narrative of control exerted in the classical period, work that offers a similarly complex view of the post-studio era is scant. Using Sylvester Stallone as a case study, this article explores the issues of agency and studio control in the post-studio period. It considers how the narrative of disadvantage and determination that was fabricated by United Artists would go on to become a central part of the star’s biography, contributing to a brand whose foregrounding of ideas of self-reliance and dedication retains cultural and economic value for the studio, who developed the biography, and for Stallone, who has lived and performed it for almost fifty years.