The New Pop Culture Scapegoats: Celebrities With Eating Disorders
by Mickey Jhonny
A recent piece by Ilona Burton at The Independent caught my attention. She gives a good finger wagging to those who decry the pro-ana sites as the cause of the eating disorder problem. And in general she criticizes the critics of celebrity culture as the source of all evil.
As we've argued elsewhere, <a href="http://tinyurl.com/mbkdekx">blaming celebrities</a> is a total cop-out. Those with eating disorders make their own decisions. Sites that are pro-ana are not some simple cause of the problem. Indeed, they are as much a symptom as a cause. Pop culture history is full of foolishness about how music or movies or comic books were the purveyors of evil and social decay.
Indeed, we can trace such attitudes all the way back to ancient Athens, were no less that Plato fretted over the corrupting influence of theater and poetry upon the city's youth. All through the ages examples of such attitudes pop up. In the 20th century, though, with the explosion of mass media and pop culture, opportunities to engage in such blame-game denial became unprecedented.
In the 1940s social critics condemned swing music as a morally eroding influence that would hinder the war effort. In the 40s and 50s comic books were supposedly the cause of an alleged youth violence epidemic and juvenile delinquency. Elvis Presley couldn't be shown on television form the hips down and there was deep anxiety about the libidinal blackness of the music with which he was making nice young girls swoon.
By the time we reach the 1960s it is the TV itself that becomes a purveyor of social decay, supposedly rotting the brains of the nation's youth. And worst of all were the Beatles, whose music was accused of promoting free love and the use of psychedelic drugs. A backlash against what came to be called Beatlemania came to a head with mass bonfires to burn their records, subsequent to an impious remark by John Lennon. By the 70s, it was the raw physicality and sensuousness of disco music which was accused of tearing at the fabric of sexual mores and undermining common decency.
The 1980s-90s brought still more of the same: left-wing feminists decried pornography as creating rapists while right-wing moralists decried heavy metal music as creating Satanists. Rap music was accused of promoting criminality, raves were drug infested death traps and the recent World Wide Web was turning young people into anti-social, entranced computer-heads wasting away in their parents' basements.
This is all old stuff. Mass media have been blamed for apathy and violence, teenage pregnancy, social conformism and deviancy. No surprise that today it's blamed for both anorexia and obesity.
At the core of all this is a resolute refusal to either take responsibility for one's own actions or to accept that other's (including those we love) can choose actions that we find disturbing, despairing and destructive. Invariably, of course, such passing of the blame leads to all sorts of exaggeration and distortion. Even if that were not the case, though, the core issue would still confront us.
We each have our own responsibility to ourselves and our loved ones. Conjuring mythical dragons, even if in the apparently easy form of insulated and inured rich and famous celebrities of stage, screen and runway, only serves to deflect attention and efforts from what really needs to be done; what really can make a difference in our lives and those of our loved ones.
If people do not take responsibility for their own actions, their own families and their own communities, every problem will be a chimera, in need of some magical solution. Blaming mass media or popular culture celebrities with eating disorders for our own choices and those of our children is magical thinking.
Otherwise, we may indeed conjure up a straw man to beat out all that anger, disappointment and fear. No solution to the suffering of us or our loved ones though comes from conquering make-believe dragons. That requires confronting the real problems - and finding real solutions.
Keep tabs on us for all the hottest news on all manner of controversies over <a href="http://tinyurl.com/lscmhn9">Celebrities with Eating Disorders</a> . Mickey Jhonny is a super source of insightful and provocative articles on popular culture. If you're a fan of <a href="http://tinyurl.com/pf567tt">the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo</a> series, his piece ripping off the cover of its dirty little secret is an absolute must read.
---------------------------------------------------
You are receiving this because you signed up for it on 2013-08-16 from IP
To fine-tune your selection of which articles to receive, just login here:
http://www.uniquearticlewizard.com/bloggers/
using your username:
To unsubscribe please use the following link:
http://www.uniquearticlewizard.com/unsubscribe.php?mail=abazerty547.familia@blogger.com&code=2faf05ba2f1df2420252b45098ef0da7
---------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------
New Unique Article!
Title: The New Pop Culture Scapegoats: Celebrities With Eating Disorders
Author: Mickey Jhonny
Email: honestoffers4u@gmail.com
Keywords: celebrities with eating disorders,mass media,popular culture,health,music,social issues,self improvement and motivation,entertainment,family
Word Count: 677
Category: Music
---------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment