#STARMANIA

[fannyrosie]

🎤Quand on a plus rien à perdre

Earlier this month, I went to see Starmania with my mom and sister. Obviously, I cannot resist a good theme, so I went for an Étoile noire (black star - the main gang in Starmania) inspired look. When I was in secondary school, I was in a musical troop, and one year, we did Starmania (I was an Étoile noire then, too), so it is a significant musical for me.

Outfit rundown

Top: Second-hand Stigmata - Jacket: thrifted - Pants: JJXX clearance bin - Shoes: Yösuke - Brooches and earrings: thrifted, presents and handmade

[boogflake]

me after liking posts from 10 years ago because the fandom dead af

[jmarcenciell]

My musicals color wheel challenge!

[vanyaliful]

this is very niche out there but this is for you Starmania (1979) lovers

[fiireicee]

NEW SHITPOST AGAINNNN 🗣️🗣️🗣️

[kimodraw]

⭐ plein d'enfants de la pollution⭐

[tartan-frog]

Hellooo je suis à la recherche de mutus mais je n'ose pas trop aller vers les gens du coup n'hésitez pas à interagir/follow si vous aimez :

- Starmania (ou toute la clique de 79)

- Kaamelott (pitié)

- Les musicals

- Good omens

- Le visiteur du futur (Frenchnerd)

- Tout trucs bien franco-français style Astérix (j'ai pas d'autres exemples mais Astérix voilà quoi)

(je poste un peu plus sur ig)

[melancholic-cinnamon-roll]

Les Étoiles Noires ont un message à faire passer 💥💥

[chocolateluma]

- What a week, huh?

- Marie-Jeanne, it's Wednesday.

[faydeus]

Triangle of Jealousy but without the jealousy

[docwormie]

Stella and Sadia or le Tango de l’Amour et de la Mort

In today's episode of "Parallels in Starmania that drive me insane", let's talk about Sadia and Stella ! I've always found their connection very intriguing since they never interact in canon, except during the Tango de l'Amour et de la Mort. I really love this song and I get why the 2022 production didn't want to bring it back, but it is a missed opportunity, as the 2022 ending makes it even more relevant by making both their deaths explicit.

(long rant ahead !)

In their introduction songs, Stella and Sadia are both defined by how they are perceived.

"Travesti" isn't about who Sadia is, but it is about what she appears as. The entire song is addressed to a general "vous", an imaginary audience composed of "les hommes qui murmurent". She describes herself as both an object of desire and of fear: she is only defined by other people's reactions and perception of her. 

The song basically tells us that Sadia is everything and nothing, all at once, and that we might try but we'll never truly understand what she wants and who she is... (it's been 45 years and I don't think anybody has fully figured it out yet)

The only sentences that are about who she is – not who she isn't or who she is in relation to someone else –  are "Je suis un travesti", "Je suis le sexe démystifié" and "Je suis la violence personnifiée". 

The first one is key to understanding her character through its several possible interpretations, but it is indefinite and doesn’t tell you who she is as much as it tells you she’s pretending to be something or someone. And the last two actually elevate her to the status of allegory: it's almost like she is worshiped as a symbol of transgression and a projection of people’s “secret desires” and “suppressed hatreds”... you know who that reminds me of ?

You guessed it, it's Stella, whom Zéro calls "déesse de l'amour, déesse de la guerre" ! Beyond the recurring religious lexical field and motifs that permeate Stella's storyline, she is also introduced through an external perception, since the first time we hear her name is in a magazine article. She quite literally first appears to us as "une image de magazine" !

Much like Sadia, Stella's first song is addressed to an audience of "vous" – arguably made up of the same men Sadia mentions in hers – and it's about the dichotomy between appearances and "l'envers du décor" (the main theme of Travesti is basically the relationship between "voir" and "savoir"). The only difference is that Sadia controls her image, using it to her advantage, whereas Stella's image controls her. This image keeps eluding her, no matter how hard she tries to keep up, because it is all just smoke and mirrors, and something she was never in control of: her very first line "On m'appelait Baby Doll" is in the passive form, as if the name "Baby Doll" wasn't objectifying enough <3

The reason I'm drawing a parallel between these two (and not with Cristal or Zéro who are also obsessed with their image) is not only the Tango and their reunion in the good old eros/thanatos motif, but also because I feel like their main obstacle in the show is that at some point, people stop looking at them and they can't bear it. 

They are both personas within their world: Stella Spotlight and Sadia are names they chose for themselves and they're both trying their best to hide the truth about who they are behind carefully constructed characters. That’s why when these characters can’t sustain them anymore, they annihilate themselves, in a way.

Stella can't exist without being looked at, she was born when she rose to fame and she dies alone in the dark. There is no Stella without Spotlight ! In the Adieux she wanted to make a grand show of her death and to be an object of consumption and entertainment until the very end. In Le Rêve, her death becomes the only thing that's truly hers and for no one else to see. (Also, I can't stop thinking about the fact that, since the tower exploded, no one ever knew how Stella really died :D)

Sadia is a character created for Johnny and the Etoiles Noires. So it’s fitting that she literally ceases to exist the moment Johnny sees Cristal, and Sadia (as in, whoever she was pretending to be) disappears when she loses her hold on him. The Etoiles Noires can't exist without Sadia but she can't exist without them either. 

Stella and Sadia cross paths at Naziland, just when keeping up pretences has become useless. The Tango is a mysterious song, but it is thematically relevant to the 2022 ending as it is a memento mori sung by the only two characters who know they’re going to die. 

Both Stella and Sadia are walking lies and they die when they exit the stage, leaving their respective images behind to reveal what was underneath. At their core, they’re theatre characters, which means they can not exist without an audience. 

Oh how I hate this musical <3

[unknown171204]

Starmania 1979

The French singer, author and composer Michel Berger one day heard about a surprising news item . Patricia Campbell Hearst, the daughter of a billionaire, kidnapped by terrorists ended up joining their movement out of love for one of her kidnappers !

This true story will fascinate him, to the point of starting an album inspired by this story :

This will be the “Angelina Dumas” project .

Ultimately the album never saw the light of day and only one song that remained of Berger's work remained that he recorded as a duet with his wife France Gall :

Frustrated by what he considers to be a failure, Michel will not let go of what he thinks (rightly) is a good artistic vein

thanks to his wife who will make him meet the Canadian singer Diane Dufresne, Michel will work with his lyricist Luc Plamondon with whom he created the most famous rock opera in France :

The story takes place in an undated future (despite a now outdated reference to the year 2000 and the 80s) Humans now live in underground galleries redeveloped into a huge city called Monopolis. The only mirage of happiness for ordinary citizens is the number 1 television show "Starmania" where everyone can become a star for one night .

We simultaneously follow the lives and actions of several characters :

Johnny Rockfort : A young anarchist leader of the terrorist group " les étoiles noires " ( the black stars )

Sadia : A transvestite student co-creator of " les étoiles noires "

Marie Jeanne : The depressed waitress who works at the " Underground café "

Ziggy : A mythomaniac and ambitious homosexual record store owner

Cristal : The host of Starmania

Stella Spotlight : A sex symbol on the decline

Zéro Janvier : An extremist politician running for became president

Gourou Marabout : An extremist politician also competing in the presidential election

Roger-Roger : the TV presenter

Brilliantly the duo Berger / Plamondon went out of their way to organize the broadcast of a special television program in 1978 in order to present the songs to as many people as possible :

The show was performed for a short month for 33 performances at the Palais des Congrès , but it is considered one of the greatest French musicals

DISTRIBUTION :

Daniel Balavoine : Johnny Rockfort

France Gall : Cristal

Fabienne Thibeault : Marie-Jeanne

Étienne Chicot : Zéro Janvier

Diane Dufresne : Stella Spotlight

Grégory Ken : Ziggy

Nanette Workman : Sadia

Roddy Julienne : le Gourou

René Joly : Roger-Roger

Due to his short presence on stage, the show unfortunately did not have the right to a complete recording but fortunately the audio of the show has available in its entirety !

To get an idea of ​​the visual identity of the show I had to dig into the TV archives :

The repetitions :

Full live audio of the show :

Single :

Monopolis / Quand on arrive en ville / Le blues du business man / La complainte de la serveuse automate / Ziggy / Le monde est stone

But the most memorable song is " SOS d'un terrien en détresse "

A song renowned for its difficulty and which launched the career of Daniel Balavoine then, years later, that of Star Academy 2004 winner Grégory Lemarchal :

ANECDOTES :

The original album contains two songs missing from the final show :

Petite Musique terrienne Part 2

L'air de l'extraterrestre

This extraterrestrial is a deleted character who only appeared physically in two production ( Francis Martin in 1980 and Marc Gabriel in 1986 , in this last version we discovered that Roger-Roger was in reality an alien ) the song, or rather its theme, will be recycled in several subsequent versions .

The show also contains several unreleased and missing songs from the album that will never be reused !!

La serveuse et les clients

Jingle de Stella

Sex shops , cinéma porno

Les parents de Cristal

Le tango de l'amour et de la mort

...

Claude Dubois (the original voice of Zéro Janvier) is the only one of the singers present on the album who did not reprise the role on stage, unfortunately it was because of his drug addiction, he took his revenge in 1989 when he replaced Richard Groulx on stage ( thanks to miss-starmania for the archive picture and additional information )

...

Michel Berger abandons his role of Grand Gourou to Roddy Julienne without any explanation ?!

...

In this version, in addition to randomly attacking wealthy people in the street, scratching their cars and raping girls in parking lots, les étoiles noires of 79 are a bit more extreme than in the other versions … Roger Roger specifies that the terrorists deliberately disconnected the oxygen ventilation of an entire neighborhood, killing all the residents ! This free murder will be deleted from other versions

...

The name Johnnie Rockfort (a complicated pun to translate which can mean "strong rock'n'roll " or just the cheese of the same name ? ) is perhaps not a coincidence , the producer of the show Roland Hubert, not being convinced by Balavoine, completely unknown at the time, he fought (in vain) with Berger so that the role was offered to the rocker Johnny Halliday

...

According to the memories of France Gall, during one of the performances a disgruntled spectator had fun whistling throughout the show exhausting Daniel Balavoine who patiently waited for the curtain call to jump into the audience to beat him up while he was still wearing his bulky costume ( the one below )

...

France Gall speaks with emotion about the show (not subtitled) :

For more Starmania or to discover other French musicals I invite you to follow the path of my main masterlist to learn more about French musicals and their stories :

[braimee]

[hello-there-bees]

kinda thought that starmania was just some fever dream of mine but turns out it has an entire fandom and is in fact still a running existing show?? anyway johnny rockfort is trans and he is in my head

[fiireicee]

Small portrait I did 🤸‍♂️