For the love of Jodie Foster: star demystification and national configuration

Abstract

This essay examines Jodie Foster's public response to John W. Hinckley Jr's attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan as a moment when the discourses of stardom and nationalism collided with noteworthy friction. It argues that when Foster responded to Hinckley's attempted hit by signifying and referring to her own star production, she challenged the veneer of heterosexuality that had been cast around her and exposed the hitherto unseen connections between heteronormative love and the president, the ultimate embodiment of the nation-father. This, in turn, it shall also be argued, destabilized the national sexual imaginary that Reagan and Hinckley had established between the American public and the Hollywood film industry.

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