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Edited on Sat Dec-06-03 08:26 PM by Crisco
byline, Crisco :)
In the arts and entertainment world, the famous are those who allow us - the fans - the most room to project our feelings upon them, at the same time they project towards us.
For the average fan, what matters most is not so much what an artist might truly represent, but what they represent to us, personally. This pertains to an artist’s work, as well, but in a culture where art is treated as a commodity by its distributors rather than a culture-enhancer, one has the option of becoming famous “for being famous” in addition to one’s output. Successful manipulation of the media is itself an art, wherein the media is both a reporter of and a conduit to fame.
Elvis allowed a whole lotta projection. So much so that at least one sector of his fans didn't care whether he was the fat Elvis of "In the Ghetto" or the skinny Elvis of "Jailhouse Rock," they could project their feeling at him either way, on a massive scale.
Marilyn Monroe was a similar case. As a brunette, she attracted little notice. But once the tresses were dyed blonde, suddenly she became The Marilyn. It’s interesting to note the tale told by her friend, Susan Strassberg, who related of times that she’d been out with Monroe, shopping perhaps, and the superstar could be out in the street attracting virtually no notice whatsoever. At the drop of a hat, Monroe would internally re-adjust herself and project that certain undefinable ‘star quality’ people speak of, and be surrounded by fans within moments.
That the amount of people in those groups who were so strongly affected by the projections of Elvis & Monroe, and were subsequently able to successfully project their own feelings and meanings upon their images of them grew so huge is what made both bust out of sheer fame and become cultural icons, as the act of being an Elvis fan or a Monroe fan became, itself, part of the game.
It’s interesting to note that the other great media icon of the late 20th century, Madonna - whose art was considered more of a commodity than a cultural enhancer by most critics - needed to constantly reinvent herself to retain media interest.
Recently, when country music legend Johnny Cash died, there was a musical tribute-cum-memorial service held at the Ryman Auditorium. About 600 people showed up, some driving hundreds of miles, just to stand outside and watch ticket-holders enter. It was not advertised to them, they were in no way encouraged to come by the media. And yet, they came.
The act of being a fan becomes culture. And when you get a bunch of them together, you have a cultural, community affair - and who can resist one of those? Those who dropped everything to come to the Ryman were led there by there own feet, unlike other events where the crowd is driven by advertising.
In politics, we have the case of the Kennedy family. The images they presented to the country — a tightly knit family soldiering on, brilliantly, in the wake of multiple tragedies — (high drama, that, a presentation of a real-life soap opera of epic proportions) allowed for massive back-and-forth projection. Jackie fought tooth and nail to restrain her projection, even going as far as getting court injunctions, but the media carried on with or without her consent. Of the JFK children, John Jr, often seen in public and photographed as an adult, had become an icon himself, albeit a minor one. In his (failed) drive to become a successful magazine publisher, he allowed this two-way projection.
On the other side of the coin, Caroline is an intensely private person who only ventures into the public eye when she has a specific purpose to, and in those times, she takes pains to disallow herself to be projected upon. When she does this, she does so with pre-clarified boundaries, places the focus of her public conversations on her work, not her personhood, and rarely allows the focus to stray. As a result, there is precious little of a Caroline Kennedy cult, and of what there is, their image is that of the forever-young little girl in the 1960s photographs, the smiling bride on the cover of Life magazine. The maturely lovely woman sans make-up is not part of the public domain.
I want bring up again the Madonna example, because I believe the projection of image-as-substance, rather than image-in-addition-to-substance, has bearing on our current politics, as well as her image reinvention.
When you ask the average admirer of the current President, George Bush, what it is they admire about him, the usual response is that they believe he’s a good, moral man restoring dignity to the White House. That one of his top 2000 fundraisers is now at the very center of the largest corporate scandal in US history, along with several of its former employees and directors who now work for his administration, does not register with them. One cannot say, however, that George Bush’s work has been without substance. It has, but the interesting part is that it’s the images he projects, not the substance, that drives the major media coverage and culture surrounding him. Of those who wanted to believe a successor to Bill Clinton, from the opposing political party, would be uncorrupt many remain believing. Mr. Bush played a large part in allowing this belief — this projection — to institute enough of a culture to propel him into the White House.
Throughout the first two years of his presidency, the media — the conduit of projection — was content to not disrupt the image. It’s when the substance gets reported on that his approval numbers go down.
When Madonna ran into the problem of the media growing restless with the substance of her work, that was her cue for another image reinvention.
The curious thing about George Bush is that in the past year, everytime he’s attempted a major image enhancement, such as the unnecessary landing on an aircraft carrier, the media — or a portion of the media, whether mainstream or underground with the means of reaching a wider audience, large enough to have influence — treated the image cynically and sarcastically, refusing the populace the opportunity to successfully project their feelings back onto the image. “This is not a true projection of George Bush, this is a photo opportunity,” they tell us. That they're correct doesn’t matter, all such images are purposeful projections and always have been. In the meantime, when confronted with the possibility of widespread knowledge of one such false image (the beautifully browned, fake turkey he held up for the troops in Iraq), Bush strategist Mary Matalin exhorts,"This was effective, because it captured something about the president that people know is true, that he really cares about the soldiers and gets emotional when he sees them."
The media is bored of George W. Bush.
I suspect that in the coming year, the battle for the White House will be determined not by substance as much as whichever candidate allows the widest possibility of two-way projection — and this will necessitate the cooperation of the media — to bring about enough of a culture motivated to move their feet to the voting booth as much as those Man in Black diehards followed their own drum to stand outside of Nashville’s Ryman on a warm November evening. This election is going to take more than issues to win. It’s going to take fans.
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