Movie stars. They are celebrated. They are perfect. They are larger than life. The ideas we have formed in our minds centered around the stars we idolize make these people seem inhuman. We know everything about them and we know nothing about them; It's this contrasting concept that leaves audiences thirsty for information about the lifestyles of the icons who dominate movie screens across the nation. This fascination and desire to connect with celebrities we have never met comes from a concept developed by Richard Dyer. Speculate on celebrity in terms of appearances; those that are representations of reality and those that are manufactured constructs. Celebrity is the result of these appearances: we really know nothing about it beyond what we see and hear from the information presented to us. The media's construction of stars encourages us to question these appearances in terms of "really": what is that actor really like (Dyer, 2)? This constant question is what keeps audiences coming back for more, in an attempt to decipher which construction of a star is “real.” Is this the character you played in your most recent film? Is this the version of him that graced the latest tabloid cover? Is it a hidden self that we are unaware of? Each of these varied and fluctuating presentations of the stars that we are forced to analyze creates different meanings and effects that frame the public's opinions of a star and spark cultural conversations. The nature of comedy has always made it somewhat resistant to critical analysis, and to some extent, the same can be said for comedic actors. Hollywood class clowns like Will Ferrell are often constructed as nothing more than funny, so they seem like… middle of paper… masculine “norms.” He played an overly masculine bigot in a completely ridiculous way that mocks those characteristics. It's about his comedic portrayal of issues that would be a much bigger deal in any other setting coming from any other actor, and it's extremely refreshing. Ferrell's films and his comedic fame certainly raise thought-provoking thoughts within a larger discussion about contemporary masculinity, sexuality, and social politics. Most of his films feature idiotically archaic varieties of “normative” male conduct, and in almost all cases, Ferrell's humor is built entirely on the devaluation and growth of these gender norms. It instills both previous and existing representations of masculinity with both a youthful approach and a comedic tendency to go beyond the lines, thus discrediting these stereotypes and opening them up to ridicule..