Forewarning: I touch on politics in this post, so if that isn’t your thing, go ahead and skip this.
Author John Scalzi, whose work I’ve read a lot of this year, recently wrote a blog post called “Please Don’t Idolize Me (or Anyone, Really)” in response to people searching for a new creative person to look up to after several allegations of sexual assault surfaced against author Neil Gaiman. If you have a tendency to idolize people, I suggest reading it multiple times.
Scalzi is adamant in telling people not to idolize him:
“Absolutely 100% do not idolize me. I don’t deserve to be idolized because no one deserves to be idolized, but also, holy fuck, I do know me and I’m a mess.” (Bold and italics from the original.)
He also says, tempting though it may be, not to idolize creative people. While their work may speak deeply to you, the work is not the artist. I know this from firsthand experience. While I’m in the midst of making a piece of art or writing something, it feels like me, but once I’m done, it becomes its own entity outside of me.
I have two ways of telling when this has happened.
- When people interpret the work in a way I never thought of.
- When I come back to the work after not seeing it for some time and say, “Did I make this?” or “I don’t remember making this,” even though I obviously did.
A quick illustration of this can be seen with this weaving I made long ago.
When I was creating it, I was attempting to illustrate a soul rising from earth to a celestial plain. When it was displayed at an art exhibit, a viewer exclaimed upon seeing the work, “It’s Jesus!”
Well, no, I never intended for it to be interpreted as Jesus, but if that’s what the viewer saw, who was I to dissuade that interpretation? Once a work is released to the public, the work itself is open to whatever each person brings to it. While I may legally own it through copyright (with all the rights that conveys), it’s no longer just mine.
Fans of the Harry Potter series who are conflicted about loving the books after J.K. Rowling’s anti-trans comments may take some comfort in the work being separate from the creator. They don’t have to idolize or even like Rowling in order to own their interpretations of the series.
While it’s easy to say, “Don’t idolize people,” it’s harder in practice to avoid. I’m sure there’s some psychological characteristic that makes us put people on pedestals, but I’ll leave that to the mental health experts to figure out. Instead, I want to point out a media landscape that blatantly induces us to idolize others.
I blame the show “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” and similar programs, articles, and publications.
“Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” was a television show hosted primarily by Robin Leach that aired between 1984 and 1995. At the time it started, I was an impressionable high school student. As its title indicates, the show featured the lavish lifestyles of rich and famous people, holding wealth and fame out as twin golden calves for viewers to idolize.
In addition to TV shows glorifying wealth and fame, magazine stands carried publications featuring the popular rock stars of the era. (Do you remember Tiger Beat?) I was constantly on the lookout for magazines and books about my favorite band, Duran Duran. (Oh, yes, I was not immune from having idols.)
I still have some of the Duran Duran books I purchased at the time.
We are continually surrounded by media that push us into idolizing those who are creators and/or have extreme wealth and fame. More recently, we’ve seen this same push to put athletes on pedestals, with polished features on individual athletes airing during the Olympics and other sporting events.
Why? Well, it’s simple, really. If we become psychologically attached to the wealthy and famous, we’ll spend more money on whatever they are selling. We’ll keep whole industries afloat through idolization.
Though there have been many avenues to encourage the erecting of idols, “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” is emblematic of the phenomenon.
It seems to be no accident that it started during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. While we were being entertained by “Lifestyles,” Reagan and the neoliberals were busy putting policies in place that would lead to the gutting of the middle class, ensuring that most of us would have difficulty affording housing, healthcare, and education, while moving most of the country’s wealth up to the already wealthy.
Further, the show gave those striving for riches and fame explicit permission to do so, with the cost to society at large never mentioned.
Here are a couple of resources that show the redistribution of wealth since the Reagan and “Lifestyles” era. Note that with The Federal Reserve’s graph, the bottom 50% make so little wealth that their portion of the graph looks like the bottom line of the graph rather than an actual data point.
[The Federal Reserve] Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989 – https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/#range:1989.3,2004.2
[Time] The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%—And That’s Made the U.S. Less Secure – https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/
Shows like “Lifestyles” keep us distracted from what’s going on behind the scenes politically. They are our “bread and circuses.” Politicians with an authoritarian bent love keeping us distracted with bread and circuses, but they also want us primed to idolize them.
It should come as no surprise that Donald Trump appeared on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” In a 1994 appearance on the show, he showed his moral bankruptcy by making lewd comments about his daughter Tiffany, who was one year old at the time. Why this clip alone didn’t disqualify him from the presidency, I don’t know.
But that’s the sort of thing that happens when we’re surrounded by messages to idolize people. Some of those pedestals get erected so high that when they tumble and crash to the ground, as they so often do, those underneath them get hurt, too.
Let’s take John Scalzi’s advice and stop idolizing creators. And, while we’re at it, let’s reject the message of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” and stop idolizing wealth and fame.