Please Don't Idolize Me (Or Anyone, Really)

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2024/08/15/please-dont-idolize-me-or-anyone-really/

by Tomte • 2 years ago

31 5 2 years ago

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atoav2• 2 years ago

As someone with a MA in fine Arts and who has worked with many creative people, I can assure you there is no correlation between the greatness of someone's work and how they are as a person.

I like the idea of "the work being more intelligent than it's creator", especially with arts that demand you to put in a lot of your own imagination.

wruza• 2 years ago

One interesting observation/parallel about that is if you question an author, they may not respond to the deepness and meaning everyone sees.

My personal opinion on it is a little cynical, but still I find art not a deep or intelligent thing but a thing that highly surpasses language and at the same time is not defined clearly (neither naturally) for everyone, resulting in a feeling that you watch something deep, but the actual (or more like, initial) meaning usually doesn’t match your own ideas about it. It’s akin to listening to someone speaking a beautiful language but being unable to understand or speak it. Not a bad thing on itself, e.g. I listen to kpop specifically for the reason I can’t understand a single word in Korean. They could sing gibberish and I’d still like it and had my ideas what a song is about. Which would be of course different from others, until we all met and chose a proper critic who’d teach us to interpret them.

Iow, from this pov the greatness of art can be defined as packing uncertainty into a familiar image in a way that is easy to continuously interpret. The less abrupt the border is between certain and uncertain, the greater the potential. An author may not even be fully aware of it, simply projecting their inner language which naturally bases on a common one.

atoav2• 2 years ago

Art is meant to interrupt. If what you see blended in with your daily grind without leaving any seam it wouldn't even start to tingle the filter that tells art from everything else.

Art is specifically about that filter.

netsharc• 2 years ago

Obama wrote in his book "Promised Land", talking about campaign appearances:

Once my speech was over and I walked off the stage to shake hands along the rope line, I often found people screaming, pushing, and grabbing. Some would cry or touch my face, and despite my best efforts to discourage it, young parents would pass howling babies across rows of strangers for me to hold. The excitement was fun and at times deeply touching, but it was also a little unnerving. At some basic level people were no longer seeing me, I realized, with all my quirks and shortcomings. Instead, they had taken possession of my likeness and made it a vessel for a million different dreams. I knew a time would come when I would disappoint them, falling short of the image that my campaign and I had helped to construct.
I realized, too, that if supporters could mold bits and pieces of me into an outsized symbol of hope, then the vague fears of detractors could just as readily congeal into hate.

I guess as a politician, if you can con them good enough, they won't even be disappointed, they'll just start blaming other things when their idol doesn't live up to their expectations. Things like the "Deep State".

dangle1• 2 years ago

Interesting and thought provoking to hear him honestly criticize himself in order to resist being idolized.

It reminded me of the 1993 Nike commercial with Charles Barkley after he was criticized for his off-court behavior, culminating in his quote:

“I am not a role model. I’m not paid to be a role model. I’m paid to wreak havoc on the basketball court. Parents should be role models. Just because I dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.”

Please Don't Idolize Me (Or Anyone, Really)

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