This week has been rough. 2016 in general has been rough. It's been a year when friends have crashed their cars, been diagnosed with cancer, lost jobs, and ended relationships. It's been a year when many of those who share my view points on politics were dealt a tough blow, and it's a year when we have lost a lot of public icons.
Icons. It's a tough word for some people. If you grew up in a Catholic church, or in a Catholic school - as I did, upon occasion - the word icon brings to mind the wooden plaques and hand-held images that give accessibility to the saints. Pocket saints, I always thought of them. But an icon is just a representation of an idea. It is not, as so many of those I grew up with believed, a physical image of someone to worship. If you take literally those words said to Moses, then icons could be considered golden calves and false gods. Even the icons of the saints are reminders, not something to be worshipped on their own. I saw plenty of these a few weeks ago, when I was staying in Santa Fe. Everywhere I looked, there were icons for sale. Beautiful tin and wooden pieces to be held in hand, or hung on the wall, or dangled off a Christmas tree. Honestly, I never knew there were quite so many saints. Someone to aid you in prayer for a lost pet, a lost job, and anything else you might think of praying about. There is a saint for everything. An icon for every occasion.
But those icons, they're not the saints themselves, and they're not someone to whom you should pray. The icons represent an idea. That's all. And pop cultural icons are no different. (And I'm sitting here, having typed those words, waiting for Sister Regina to whap me over the head with a ruler).
Our pop icon represent ideas, not even always the same ideas for all of us. And 2016 took away its share of icons.
David Bowie.
Alan Rickman.
Glen Frey
Harper Lee
Patty Duke
Prince
Muhammed Ali
Kenny Baker
Gene Wilder
Bobby Lee
Leonard Cohen
Florence Henderson
John Glenn
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Nancy Reagan
Fidel Castro
Alan Thicke
Garry Shandling
Garry Marshall
Elie Weisel
Kimbo Slice
Janet Reno
George Michael
Carrie Fisher
Debbie Reynolds
So, go ahead, make the argument that these are just actors, writers, scientists, singers. Debate with me that I don't really know any of these people and that I should be equally disturbed by any natural death, enraged all the more by any senseless demise. On some levels, I don't disagree. I mean, certainly, society mourns for the loss of genius. We mourn because Alan Rickman's voice will never stop us in our tracks again as he cuts down another actor with biting wit. We will never hear again the genius of Bowie's tenor. There will never be another middle finger to inequality from Carrie Fisher. Sure, we mourn those things.
But these are icons. Our connection to these people is subjective. I'll give you an example - Prince. I was an impressionable child when he released his Purple Rain soundtrack But a few years down the road, it was the album my first boyfriend and I listened to when we would make out in his basement rec room. To me, forever and ever, Prince is the sound of innocence fracturing, both because I was discovering a more adult world, and because the boyfriend in question died tragically young in a car accident. Whenever I hear "When Doves Cry" I feel both excited and devastated. Prince himself became an icon for that period of time in my life.
Debbie Reynolds passed away yesterday. At just 19 years of age, she co-starred in Singing in the Rain. It became an iconic film of its generation. The movie of the late 30's and early 40's were often starting to be edgy for their time, and there was a glamour and a sexiness about them. After World War II, with the dawning of the Cold War, there was an idea of wholesomeness and traditional family values that crept back into American culture. Debbie Reynolds was an icon of that girl next door ideal. Don't believe me? Check out Tammy and the Bachelor, or any other from that series. Watch a young Ms. Reynolds throw out her heart for Leslie Neilson. She was a symbol of what every American should be or want, if we wanted to stay one step above the Russian heathens. She was an icon. Stayed that way all of her public life.
John Glenn. The first man to walk on the moon. A few hundred years before, we had scientists debating exactly what the moon was, and there was John Glenn, taking that first step for mankind. Like Debbie Reynolds, he was beating the Russian communists, but this time in the space race. He was a hero of a generation and the world mourned his passing, no matter his having lived a long and full life. It wasn't that he died too young, or too tragically. It's that his death was like closing the pages of an era in history. Another icon for a time of innocence and less than innocent competition. I find it ironic that another book about the first manned space mission will be released at the end of this year, Hidden Figures, about the role of women at NASA in getting that first manned flight off the ground, so to speak. No one in the general public knew the story of those African American women, but after this movie, they might be icons of their own, and stand for a dream for young girls growing up in our country now.
Harper Lee changed the thought pattern of several generations of school children with her novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Through the eyes of Scout, countless school children have been forced to confront their own feelings about race and what is right. Her writing is an icon for generations of students whose own thinking was awakened - usually by force - through reading her powerful story. That book has made many a young person confront what they really think about race and what is fair - outside what their family or community has taught them to think. Words have the power to do that, when spoken through a powerful voice. Harper Lee was that iconic voice.
Muhammed Ali who was an iconic figure in the world of sports. A man who seemed invincible, who led the way to many a young boy's dreams, both because of his race and because of his dedication. His voice, often mocked for its well known rhymes and cadences in public speech, was the voice of someone who didn't know how to quit. To this day, he is quoted as a voice of grit and determination. Don't start counting the repetitions until it's started to hurt. You think you have a plan until you get punched in the face. The icon for someone overcoming the odds. Everyone loves that story, no matter the time or the setting. It's an age old ideal, wrapped up in a man who didn't know how to lose.
And so it goes on, the sports figures, musicians, actors, writers, politicians. They are not, as individual human beings, any more important than anyone else. All of us make contributions. Each of us counts as the same specks of dust in the universe. But it's the icons they became that count as so much more, and the icons that are mourned.
Carrie Fisher passed away a few days ago. All my life, I've admired her - first wanting to be Princess Leia, then admiring her powerful voice as an advocate for women and for those with mental illnesses. She walked a hard road, and she gave hope to countless others who walked that road. She understood a little the power of an icon and the gift they could be.
So, we mourn, because it's been a suck ass year for icons. It's been a year of loss and heartbreak, as we quietly memorialize moments of our youth, memories of those associated with those losses, the moments in our personal histories, and the giant holes left in our cultural histories at large. We aren't worshipping them as idols, but we hold them as icons in our hearts and occasionally on pedestals, reminders of what the human spirit can manifest, and reminders of how we all often touch one another, though we sometimes forget that in our daily lives.
To a young child, the worn stuffed bunny they might carry counts as an icon. It's a symbol for everything that is right in their world - mom, dad, home, family, love and security, all in a portable object that they can identify. Those other emotions, those are hard for an adult to wrap their mind around, much less a child. But a stuffed bunny is manageable as an idea and its tangible. Our pop icons are no less powerful, images for things that are important to us. Allow us to mourn those pieces of ourselves, our pasts, our futures, and our identities. Allow us to recognize genius and how it touched our lives in all manner of ways. And let those stars continue to shine in our eyes, as their iconic presence helped shape who we are as well
No comments:
Post a Comment