https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4922-0138
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Notes
1 She declined to participate in the sequel to Snow White and the Huntsman. The resulting film, The Huntsman: Winter’s War (Citation2016), received negative reviews and performed poorly at the box office. See Reyes (Citation2016).
2 Another analysis of Stewart’s performance style can be found in Logan (Citation2019).
3 The film’s gender politics are analysed in Tuzcu (Citation2019).
4 The affair—and the public’s response to it—is briefly discussed in Finsterwalder et al. (Citation2017).
5 Gunn Enli’s concept of the “authenticity contract” (Citation2014) seems also relevant here. As Jerslev and Mortensen (Citation2018, 172) claim, what matters is to construct “an image of self which is coherent and seems authentic, […] to manage the impression that one is sincere, genuine. […] To the extent that authenticity is not a being but a doing—to convincingly perform sincerity—authenticity is always up for negotiation.”
6 Some commentators trace a similar motive in the 2014 film Clouds of Sils Maria, see for instance Keating (Citation2016).
7 For more on the queer aspects of the film, see the essay by Barbara Braid (Citation2020).
8 The film was adapted from Savannah Knoop’s own account of the six years she spent impersonating JT. See Knoop (Citation2008).
9 For more on Stewart’s queer characters, see Bendix (Citation2018).
10 For more on that, see Staples (Citation2021).
11 For more on the representation of gays and lesbians on television, see Tropiano (Citation2002).
12 Of the trio, only Happiest Season grossed more than $2 million at the box office. On the other hand, all films have been released on streaming platforms and digital discs which further extended their viewership. However, exact numbers are impossible to obtain.
13 She, however, confessed to having a private Instagram account in order to stay in touch with her friends. See for example Mahajan (Citation2017).
14 Lee Barron (Citation2015, loc 1062) defines para-social relationships as bonds of intimacy stemming “from representations of a celebrity rather than actual physical contact.”
15 William J. Brown (Citation2018) distinguishes between para-social interaction and identification, with the latter being a stronger and more enduring process (260). The circumstances of my research of YouTube comments, however, do not allow me to effectively distinguish between these two levels.
16 Due to space, I do not focus here on fans’ interactions with each other, a practice that Matt Hills (Citation2016, 472) calls multisocial. However, it is clear from the many responses that this interaction is also important and contributes to cementing Stewart’s status as an influential and inspiring public figure.
17 There is even a thread on the website for social anxiety support where users debate whether Stewart indeed suffers from SA (Kristen Stewart Forum Citation2021).
18 Stewart’s ambivalence about her celebrity status and frequently manifested discomfort with her social visibility in the earlier part of her career can be reminiscent of the concept of the reluctant celebrity introduced by Lorraine York (Citation2018).
19 One of Stewart’s recent profiles (Stevens Citation2021) claims that “her tendency to stammer through interviews and slouch her way down the red carpet struck some observers as evidence of arrogance and entitlement, when in retrospect it looks more like a shy teenage girl’s instinctive self-protection.”
20 Even though the comments are public, I have decided to hide the users’ names to protect their privacy.
21 For more on this phenomenon, see Bernard (Citation2017).
22 For an analysis of the star image of another star who does not use social networks at all or only sparingly, see Moya Luckett’s study (Citation2019) of Dakota Fanning. Fanning starred with Stewart in three instalments of The Twilight Saga as well as in the music biopic The Runaways and the short Cutlass (2007).
23 For more about her filmmaking ambitions, see Mumford (Citation2017).
24 At the time of writing, the film is being cast. See for example Davis (Citation2021).
25 Looking back further into history, the case of Kristen Stewart can be reminiscent of the way the gay community embraced the star image of Judy Garland, with the crucial distinction that Garland did not identify as gay. For more details, see Richard Dyer’s classic account in Heavenly Bodies (Citation2004, 137–191).
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Milan Hain
Milan Hain, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor and Area Head of Film Studies at Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech Republic. He is the author or coauthor of five books on cinema, including, most recently, Starmaker: David O. Selznick and the Production of Stars in the Hollywood Studio System (forthcoming from the University Press of Mississippi). His articles have appeared in Jewish Film and New Media, the Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance and The Slovak Theater. In 2011 and 2012, he was a Fulbright Visiting Researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Recently, he has become the recipient of the Visiting Research Fellowship at the University of Łódź, where he researches the representation of Czech and Polish identities in studio-era Hollywood.