We create “gods” to destroy them at the slightest sign of humanity
For years, I have not called anyone an idol. That word lost its meaning to me when, at the age of 10, I discovered that an artist I used to admire could only perform when really high on cocaine. Later, I find out that an artist I very much admired had dated a friend of mine and involved her in a chain of abuse. There’s the one who hit his girlfriend. The one who was out with an underage girl, the one that was racist, and the one that was homophobic.
I stopped using that word when I understood that being in a position of success, exposure, and prominence doesn’t automatically make someone good or even worthy of being in that position. On the contrary, I have the view that the more prominent you are in the position you occupy, the more likely you are to have morally questionable behaviours. It’s not that this is a rule, but it’s a trend, especially in those patterns of modern “idolatry,” in which worship figures are usually figures of the artistic medium, known to carry an ego that is fed by blind fans by the very expectations built on that figure.
And that’s exactly where I wanted to get to. This text is not to question the success of others, but to reflect on the degradation and demonization of figures that, often, we forget are absolutely ordinary, common, and human — and this is not in order to justify criminal behaviour or a lack of character but to think about: where does this romanticization come from? Who created this?
An idol is the reflection of our own expectation of his image.
There is something fascinating in the etymology of words and in how the origin of words explains in a very practical way how we use them in our daily lives. Take idol as an example, which comes from the Greek EIDOLON, “aspect, mental image, ghost, appearance — which also gives rise to another word that has much to do with the reflection I propose here: idealisation, which also derives from EIDOS, “form”. In other words, an idol is a form created by our own imagination. It is a creation of our expectations about that image. It is an unreal “object of worship.” So much that the term is commonly used to refer to gods and divine entities.
Of course, this idealisation is also the responsibility of the “loved” figure; after all, to become a public figure and to seek this, especially today, implies making public also their opinions, their behaviours, and their flaws and defects. Some “faults” are criminal and more serious than others. But I believe that’s something for the law to solve, even though I recognise that waiting for this is often a long and frustrating process.
The greatest villain of all this history and, in my opinion, the biggest responsible for this idolatry is what makes it possible for me to be here writing to reflect on it: the advent of social networks and this false idea of perfection that we consume daily in the feeds of our social media accounts. What makes us less and less able to reflect on our own flaws is that we are always focused on and attentive to the “perfections” of others. Sometimes you even want others to go wrong so you can feel relieved when you make a mistake, like, “I am not the only one.” This also results in this false idea of perfection that we “transmit” when we communicate, post, and comment on something, as if the truth belonged to us and only to us, at our side. To that differentiated mass that agrees with us. Because our ego does not allow us to accept that good things can come from other groups as well as bad things from ours.
For me, the discussion should not be “Is it possible to separate the author from the work?”
The work, the artist: the discussion should be another
There are good people who do bad things, and there are bad people who do good things. We are not a single, individual group. Both in the professional and moral fields. Michael Jackson is one of the greatest figures in music history, if not the greatest, and yet he may have been a paedophile. And I can’t be hypocritical and say that it makes me consume or like less of his work, because that would be a lie. However, if the content of his work were paedophilia, then my relationship with it would be different. I would not consume it because I don’t feel contemplated by that content.
This in itself has changed the direction of the discussion.
In my opinion, the work is always detached from the artist. When a work is created, it no longer belongs to its author but to everyone who will hear, read, consume, and identify with it. I feel that this obligation of separating the author from the work is especially strong in specific genres that have more political and contesting content.
It’s hard to see humanity in those who are so far from our reality. The difference is that some people are taking the opposite path of reflection. Disregarding their flaws, we could look inside and try to understand why it annoys us so much. Maybe exactly because we can see ourselves there and then the worship has no longer a meaning. We’re all much closer than it seems, and it would be nice to know that the world is walking in a direction where the mistakes are also seen as valuable, knowing that these are the same mistakes and defects that make us absolutely ordinary and human, as well as the people we admire.
