The Icons of 21st Century America

This has been a month of outbursts! I hate to go back to the examples that everyone has already brought up (and that the media went crazy over this past two weeks), but I really need to talk about the three big events that took place (events so controversial, they managed to practically obliterate the news of Patrick Swayze’s death!):

1. Kanye West’s drunken interruption of Taylor Swift’s VMA acceptance speech (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z8gCZ7zpsQ)

2. Serena Williams’ outburst at the US Open  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO_jlXjgxN8)

3. Joe Wilson’s heckling/interruption of President Obama’s healthcare speech (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxHKSHvMRWE)

The most interesting thing about all of these videos is the number of times they have been spoofed/mentioned/made fun of/relived on every conceivable media outlet in the past few weeks. An example (out of hundreds!) for each is provided below for anyone who has some time to kill:

1.       Kanye West and Taylor Swift - http://www.collegehumor.com/article:1791619

2.       Serena Williams - http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s6i59802

3.       Joe Wilson - http://www.hulu.com/watch/96393/saturday-night-live-update-thursday-republican-meeting

I couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that things that can, at best, be classified as “juicy gossip”, seem to have a much bigger impact on our lives and daily conversations than things that actually matter. Joe Wilson’s interruption of President Obama’s speech and the subsequent media coverage of his interruption have allowed the American public to disregard the actual content of a speech that affects the healthcare of American citizens and instead start “hating on the idiot from North Carolina”. It is also amusing that people automatically assumed the interruption to be racially motivated (I’m looking at you, Former President Carter…), and were enraged at the mistreatment of America’s first black president, while others were very angry that a black man (Kanye West) interrupted a white woman (Taylor Swift)!

Racism aside, I think all these are excellent examples of the meaning of images being dependent on the social contexts in which they are viewed (Sturken & Cartwright). As cheesy as it sounds, this is the age of communication. As soon as an incident of the slightest bit of importance occurs in one part of the world, it can instantaneously be sent to millions of people. Unfortunately, profit-driven conglomerates control the initial spread of media, so the information received by secondary viewers like us is often vapid and is what those conglomerates think we want to see (god forbid FOX news ever shuts up about “Muslim” Barack and gives us an update on Darfur!). Therefore, events like the three mentioned above are given much more importance than the fact that the unemployment rate in California is the highest it has been in 70 years (that means that even the gold miners were better off than present-day Californians are!), or that the recent Iranian elections were obviously rigged, or that while Obama’s whole campaign was based on “transparency”, the current democratic government seems to be ever more secretive and evasive about important issues like the Iraq war and overcoming the hurdles facing the healthcare reform initiative.

This leads me to the concept of the icon. In the past, Icons (such as the heavily discussed Che) were infallible pillars that inspired the youth and prompted society to evolve, and to better itself. My musings on the icons of today (Kanye West is very popular in the realm of music- the self-proclaimed “voice of this generation”, and in the realm of blurting “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” on TV; Serena Williams has always been an icon for minority women struggling in the field of sports; Joe Wilson interrupted Obama, who is the most obvious icon of 2008 and 2009, and who will go down in history not only as the first Black president of the United States, but as the man who, and I quote, called Kanye West a “jackass”) center around the fact that present-day icons are fallible.

The current culture of communication leaves nothing private (the image as surveillance, Sturken & Cartwright, Pg. 27), and therefore, displays a whole different side to the iconic image of important public figures. Thus, my question for the week is: In the 21^st century culture of the all-knowing public/audience, can icons remain icons for very long?