What the public knew about OJ was a media-produced myth based on his sports career and off field public appearances. OJ’s well known public image as revered football player and celebrity caused his fans to believe they personally knew the “Juice.” Fans invested their faith in OJ’s innocence because they could not confront the conflicting realities between OJ as accused murder and OJ as sports hero. Watching OJ’s run, newscasters repeatedly stuttered in disbelief; as one reporter telling stated, “I can’t believe this reality is real.” This comment is revealing in how the media constructs a certain reality around a sports figure that many fans believe in without questioning the limitations of that representation.
The public myths, the stories we believe about public figures, are based on media representations, and not on these individuals’ private lives. We must admit that what we know about sports players and celebrities is very limited and always mediated by commercial media representations and our individual perspectives. In Eating the Dinosaur, Chuck Klosterman looks at how his relationship to football is based on his individual perspective. He writes,
“I had played football and written about football and watched it exhaustively for twenty years, so I thought I knew certain inalienable assumed truths, which are not the same thing. I had brainwashed myself. I was unwilling to admit that my traditional, conservative football values were imaginary and symbolic. They belonged to a game I wasn’t actually watching, but was trying to see. Over time, I realized this had happened with almost every aspect of my life” (141).Here, Klosterman recognizes that the football he watches is different than the football that others see. Based on his experience, Klosterman imagines football as a traditional, conservative game, but as he examines the NFL’s program and rules, he discovers it upholds more liberal and even socialist values. Klosterman’s view on football is an imagined and symbolic projection, a view on the world that Klosterman has chosen to see. Coming from different vantage points, we construct our reality based on our individual perspectives. Since we can never know and see all, part of our reality is what we imagine the world to be like. We can only imagine what life is like in the Middle East, or what OJ Simpson did or did not do. We project an imagined view of the world that helps us understand the things we do not know or have access to. This imagined projection creates symbolic meaning for us; it helps us understand our infinitely complex world. It allows us to consider the lives of others; by imagining their lives, we feel as if we can become connected to even strangers. But, what we must remember is that this imagined idea of others is only symbolic; it is necessarily true or real.
With that in mind, let’s consider the popularity of tabloid celebrity news. The American public seems to revel in the salacious stories of other’s mistakes. We discuss, interrogate, and ultimately judge these celebrities lives as if we have adequate knowledge to make a judgment on their lives. But we only have an imagined projection of what their lives are like. Yet, we feel personally outraged by the actions of John and Kate Gosselin, disgusted by Lindsey Lohan, let down by Tiger Wood. As I rewatched OJ flee from the police and media (on a side note, it is shocking how many people flocked to the highway during the chase in order to wave at OJ passing by), I could not help but feel sympathy for his flight. To have a nation watch and judge your downfall on TV would be absolute trauma. Yet, reality TV has made this spectacle of celebrity trauma into entertainment.
Why do we revel in witnessing and judging the public downfall of others? Why do we feel personally affected by the actions of celebrities and sports figures? Do celebrities and sports figures make a social contract with fans to uphold and conform to set behaviors? I’m concerned with our too comfortable ability to judge celebrities. It is a dangerous practice because we feel justified in assigning judgment without adequate knowledge of the situation or the people involved, and without a conscious sense of ethics or justice. What if our legal courts operated like our public judgment? We must remember that our relationship to these public figures is imaginary and symbolic, influenced by our individual perspectives and the media’s limited representations. We must learn to differentiate between what/who we actually know and what/who we only imagine to know.
No comments:
Post a Comment