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“But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence,...truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred.” - Feuerbach, Preface to the Second Edition of “The Essence of Christianity”

Who gives a shit what you buy? What I’m interested in is when you realize you’re being sold to.

Because at the end of the day, we really don’t know what it takes to become a celebrity, or how the process of celebredom works. This ignorance applies to the prevalence of certain lifestyles, products, and diets (to name a few) over others. But I’m gonna focus on celebredom, mostly due to its intense hold over our cultural psyche. People are used to convince other people into things, whether that’s into buying a product, or buying into an ideological movement. People become heroes: a heightened intensity of objectification, where the individual’s narrative moves beyond them personally to represent some larger-than-life concept.

Hero-worship is baked into our culture. It fits quite nicely with our simulation-as-reality consumerism, and cultural authoritarianism that allows the occasional bouts of neo-fascist insanity.

It’s one of those ideological toxins disguised as some au naturale fact. Whether an inherent trait exists within us that encourages raising up individuals as effectors of mass change is not within the scope of this essay. Nor do I really care to talk about it. What base biological foundations might exist are minuscule in the face of the heaping mound of subjective cultural constructs we blindly adhere to.

Hero-worship not only distorts our perception of the subject. It engages in malicious historical revisionism. The Great Men of History theory is one off-shoot of this. That history is changed by larger-than-life men (and they’re conveniently always white straight men) who come from “unique” positions (another myth) to lead the masses to victory, etc. The Philosopher King is another sub category of hero-worship. The premise that society is best led by a king who is basically the best ruler ever to live, which is, inherently, a pipe-dream. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. But I digress.

Combined with consumerism, hero-worship is a powerful force for the elite to raise up reformist or feel-good characters to national and international prominence, to pacify revolt. Most people - without a systemic critique of society - want to believe that the people in power are not only on their side, but effectively making things better for everyone. If this is ever shattered, cognitive dissonance kicks into high gear.

Noticing this cognitive dissonance in others isn’t hard. It comes down to this: how do you accept the news that someone you appreciated is or has engaged in exploitative/abusive behavior?

But there’s a previous step to this. Noticing which figures have been blown up exponentially. No one just randomly - and without their explicit consent - gets action figures made of them that are then mass sold everywhere (I’m looking at you RBG!). Millionaires don’t become spokespeople for the working class, nor do they usually treat the working class well (looking at you, Dolly Parton!). That someone like Beto O’Rourke could run for president after losing a senate race, and generally just be the most basic (to the point of tears) settler power manager says a lot about what was propping him up. Or, (again speaking of headline-making boring people) Pete Buttigieg, who was basically crafted in a lab to be attractive to the elite settler class, but had a unsavory mayoral history destroying Black people’s homes, could get so much positive attention again speaks a lot to the interests behind him.

In each case, a mythology was crafted to smooth over the rough patches and prevent dissent. It’s really hard to have a conversation with their fans because their admiration has reached spiritual levels of denial. None of these people are perfect. But that’s not really the issue. The issue is that a narrative has been sold to squash criticism that they all rightly deserve. And people bought into it hook, line, and sinker!

It literally takes five minutes of searching to find out why these people are not the representatives they claim to be. It’s crazy that we live in a world where mythologies can be broken down so easily, but are so intense and segregating in their effects that people never get a glimpse of reality. Dolly Parton runs a fuckin’ theme park! No one who’s ever started a theme park is a good person. Walt Disney is in the seventh layer of hell, at least! All those weird Bible theme park creators are...somewhere in hell.

The point isn’t that you might “like” something that isn’t pure as snow, but that the mythology you’ve accepted prevents necessary and critical discussion. Real issues are sidestepped for a fleeting feel-good dopamine hit. These celebrity representations whitewash the real instigators of change. Few people know who Kimberly Crenshaw is, much less the pivotal work she did. She doesn’t have an action figure of her image on bookstore shelves, but at least she’s not complicit in the judicial/prison industrial complex, or stripped Native Americans of their land.

The people you should be listening to and learning from are hidden from the popular view. Their work is dismissed, perverted, stolen, and whitewashed to make room for acceptable figures to make a buck off of your attention. Your heroes are cheap fakes.
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* All typos are worth ignoring unless it severely confuses the intent of the sentence. Obsessing about typos says more about you than it does me... Get help.
Copyright © 2021 Volatile Cacophony, All rights reserved.


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