Pop ubiquity: Cameo Performance as Star Management

ABSTRACT

Since the early 1990s, proto-punk rock musician Iggy Pop has regularly appeared onscreen in supporting and cameo roles. While a rock star’s presence across media is hardly novel, the brevity of Pop’s screen performances rests its meaning and value upon a rejection of conventional stardom, persisting through the peripheries of moving image media rather than building a marquee status. This article explains the economic and cultural logic of such appearances via the work of Pop’s manager, Art Collins, who focused on maintaining Pop’s status through a combination of decisively brief screen appearances and song licencing that augmented his existing persona. Using archival and textual analysis of Pop’s and Collins’s endeavours, I argue that Pop’s case lends insight into a managerial approach to stardom prevalent across entertainment media industries wherein stars are expected to maintain market presence across media contexts rather than pursue fame within a delimited cultural field. A growing managerial logic in entertainment media culture shifted the status of stars from workers contracted to autonomous industries to flexible labourers whose efforts are rendered in the service of self-branding. These developments made the cameo performance into an ideal labour strategy that maximises a star’s flexibility .

KEYWORDS:

• Cameo
• management
• stardom
• star labour
• licencing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). The research for this article was supported by a Research Fellowship at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Archives provided by The Center for Popular Music Studies at Case Western Reserve University.

Notes

1. This approach to cameo performance echoes the ‘sonic cameos’ of his recording career (Sherburne 2018).

2. In Gimme Danger (Jim Jarmusch 2016), Pop describes his sense of musicality coming from a childhood visit to a Ford assembly plant.

3. Vicki Mayer conceives of contemporary media work as predicated on ‘worker flexibility, networking, emotion work, and brand management’ (Mayer 2015, p. 23).

4. The band Casino terminated their contract with Collins after approximately nine months due to the manager’s unresponsiveness (Siskovic 2000).

5. Trainspotting’s production was most interested in acquiring a licence for ‘The Passenger’ (Channon 1995).

6. The relatively limited resources of smaller productions would often provide a convincing rationale for granting fitting projects more modest licencing fees, as occurred with Trainspotting.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Landon Palmer

Landon Palmer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media at the University of Alabama. A media historian, he researches relationships between the motion picture and popular music industries. He is the author of Rock Star/Movie Star: Power and Performance in Cinematic Rock Stardom.