|
The
Cons of the Icons
I’ve
got hero trouble. This is no statement of spiritual independence.
Honestly, I’d take a mentor if I could find one; I know I’ve
still got a lot to learn. But I’m so consumed right now with
a fixation on a couple of antiheroes that I can’t calm down
enough to be receptive.
I’m not a rebel. I got over that a while back. When I say
antihero, I don’t mean “cool guy.” I’ve been watching a lot
of nouvelle vague movies recently, it’s true, and reading
the usual crop of thinly veiled bildungsromans by articulate
white guys, who more-or-less always pen themselves in opposition
to the rest of the less-articulate world. So, yes, I’m filling
myself with a steady diet of existential crisis as per usual.
But I’m old enough to no longer indulge myself in the “they’ll
miss me when I’m gone” revenge fantasy that gets one through
so many adolescent evenings. It still works vicariously in
some fiction and film, but it’s a guilty pleasure, these days,
to admire those uncompromising characters whom the world crushes
in its indifference—in real life, I want my payment up front
in currency not limited to dignity in defeat.
They’re not those kinds of antiheroes. They’re more like inverse
heroes.
In folk tales, the hero is often an ordinary sort who, by
meeting extraordinary challenges, himself becomes extraordinary.
The couple I’m focusing on have done the opposite: They were
born into extraordinary circumstances and by their every public
act and utterance prove themselves to be hopelessly, infuriatingly
banal.
Ladies and gentlemen, the first couple of the new American
Century: George W. Bush and Paris Hilton.
This is the current face of America. They’re freaking everywhere,
and—God, help me—I can’t look away.
Now, let me say, that I have nothing against these two personally.
I don’t pretend to have insight onto their secret heartbreaks
or struggles. So, I wish them no harm. In fact, in the spirit
of the season, I say, happy holidays to you, George and Paris.
My problem with them is as icons: I know the type, we all
know the type, and I am absolutely consumed with irritation
over their high-profile and inexcusable blandness in the face
of seemingly singular circumstances.
See, I don’t know the president of the United States nor the
22-year-old chippy heir to a billion-plus hospitality fortune,
but I’m pretty sure I went to high school with them. You did,
too, if you went to an even moderately affluent suburban or
small urban school: Odds are, they were the king and queen
of your prom. He, a charming, affable underachiever from a
well-to-do family; she, the girl with the reputation for being
pretty so widespread that it was impossible to evaluate her
actual prettiness. He had a nickname for you, which flattered
you as an underclassman, but irked you when it later dawned
that his geniality was motivated by a lack of interest in
the world around him and was a byproduct of the generalized
haze, the inspecificity of dimness, in which he coasted past.
She spoke to you twice: Once, behind her hand to an acolyte
in a way that made you feel a sharp pang of undefined shame;
and once, slurringly, at the only party you threw in your
parents house. You later realized she had stolen a bottle
of rum and puked in your mom’s washing machine.
In high school, you disliked these people for the ease of
their unquestioned ascendance, the effortlessness of their
perceived superiority, and the unfairness of it given their
total lack of ability beyond the cultivation of image. Later,
you comforted yourself with rumors that he had lost his hair,
or was middle- management in the insurance industry, and with
the realization that she had really been flashy and confident,
without ever being truly attractive. Their bought-and-paid-for
lives ceased to seem glamorous past graduation, and they had
no tools to utilize independent of what was provided for them.
But these were, comparatively speaking, suburban nobodies.
The Bush and Hilton families were capable of providing their
own twerps positions of greater impact.
What bothers me about them is not their wealth or power or
celebrity, per se, but the terrifying lack of imagination
with which they employ the same. Shortly after the arrest
of Saddam Hussein, Bush made clear his belief that the former
dictator should be put to death for his crimes (surprise,
surprise), adding the transparent caveat that the penalty
should be consistent with the desires of the Iraqi people.
That inspires confidence, doesn’t it? A word to the Iraqi
people: Do not follow the captain of the football team out
to the spot in the woods. There is no keg, and this will end
badly.
I wonder when he’s going to start referring to the Iraqi people
collectively as Big Guy?
As boring and obvious as Bush is with power, his co-star is
worse with money. Come on, coke in the bathrooms of New York
City restaurants? Public and/or videocammed sex with C-listers
on the fringes of the entertainment industry? Off-the-shoulder
styles in revivified Manhattan discos? Jay McInerney should
demand royalties on Hilton’s life.
It’s not that it’s bad, it’s that it’s boring.
I want the American president to be Jeffersonian: elite in
intellect, populist in practise. Not vice versa. I also want
him to be imaginative enough to be sensitive to ambiguity
and relativism, and thus empathetic and merciful. Bigger than
life, not just big as the locker room. Macho is so . . . embarrassing.
And I want 20-something American heiresses to be hedonists
of Sadean proportions. Surprise us, let us sin through you,
Paris. You’ve got the resources.
I want the public face of America to be heroic, and I want
our heroes to have style.
Why should the French have all the fun?
—John
Rodat
|
Columns
& Opinions
