To be blacklisted from a creative industry is no different from being denied a spot in a human centipede. I noticed this first with regards to comic books, but I’ll be damned if a creative industry exists which the statement does not aptly apply towards. One and all they represent oxymoronic doublespeak, creative industries, without exception pyramid schemes at once both self-perpetuating and self-defeating.
Yet inhabitants of first world nations eagerly ascribe to them and their big name players degrees of honor and respect openly denied to the elders of these same civilizations, the folks who actually have accomplished and/or survived meaningful existences. For example, though widely considered backwards by younger generations the farming families of the generation of my grandparents endured quite a lot of challenges, somehow doing so without online social networking cults of personality and apps out the arse, even to the extent of recycling everything decades before recycling was a societal thing. Smarter minds have before acknowledged how western societies award celebrity status in lieu of royalty, yet an ever-diminishing few complete the one-two punch of questioning the need for a royal class to begin with. As conspiracy theorist Alan Watt has ably expressed, the point of figureheads given to the populace is very much a purposeful thing, physical incarnations of bread and circuses to rally public sentiment to lean towards an us verses them pathos, particularly to maintain the story beats of collectivism and nationalism in times of peace. He was referencing professional athletes in that linked vid, but I will gladly make the argument that such people are merely entertainers alongside filmmakers and musicians and any other conceivable player within creative industries. And Watt’s charge easily applies across the board.
Just as I will argue that while we grant celebrity status to entertainers for lack of royalty to be worshiped as holier than thou, living gods amongst men, all of these persons receive their undue spotlights to fill the noticeable void of there being no real heroes today. When entertainers whether artists or sports stars play ball in maintaining those mentioned story beats of the official narrative, in perpetuating the mythology of their home team being greater than all others and themselves, the home team’s stars, greater than all other people like good company men, then they enjoy the limelight as demigods and examples to follow. But should they stray, such as with Colin Kaepernick using his pedestal to kneel in protest of law enforcement’s ongoing abuse of minorities, then and only then is their fame really put under any level of scrutiny. Too often it would appear that celebrities are treated as heroes until they do something heroic. Or legitimately creative. Because actual heroism is shunned by modern society, just as is actual creativity. Heroism certainly cannot be found among the armed forces, who exist explicitly as literal foot soldiers of nationalism. In the United States, the trades most prone to domestic abuse are military personnel and law enforcement personnel. Which logically should suggest that the uniformed sorts should be the last persons named as heroes, yet there they are, always first in line and anyone saying otherwise is absolutely never well-received by the masses.
So while law enforcement and soldiers alike enjoy the undeserved and unnecessary branding of hero, enforcing the company line, entertainers are outright celebrated as heroes, yet still while doing nothing to warrant such treatment or attentions. None of them are heroes, in spite of the celebratory status as dark horses and leaders of men and idealized citizens to aspire after. Heroism is fundamentally about self-sacrifice, and there is no sacrificing of one’s self in shooting people, or entertaining people. To entertain is to distract, after all, which brings us to the real issue at hand. In broader terms, lefty politics are about putting the needs and desires of others before one’s own, whereas throughout the rest of the political spectrum extending to the right, it becomes more and more the opposite, of putting one’s own needs and desires before those of anybody and everybody else. Our team comes first, our nation matters more, our company is always in the right. And by extending our gaze outward like so, by allowing these non-heroes to be placed on the highest possible soapboxes as the greatest of heroes, we perpetuate a very one-sided love affair creating only a growing void within ourselves, as a society and most assuredly as individuals within society. Instead of soldering the weakest links we obsess over spit-shining the strongest, and then play dumbfounded when the chain eventually snaps when confronted with anything of measurable weight.
We see this everywhere, not just in the entertainment world. In organized religion, civil war is complicating itself even further beyond the brewing point over mistaking worldly riches with spiritual growth. We address tech moguls as saints, forgetful of the international tax evasion schemes at the cost of hundreds of billions for all of their potential customer bases which fully enabled their success. We laugh at the kid in class wearing hand-me-down clothes, ignorant of how they are likely being exposed to more facets of life than comfort can ever provide.
When celebrities break ranks and conduct themselves in a heroic manner, they are lambasted publicly. But when they otherwise fail to maintain the illusion of their status by exhibiting the same primal flaws as anybody and everybody else, then the public is at a loss for words. A really hot story right now is the social outing of numerous celebrities of creative industries as sexual abusers. One does not have to look far to stumble across hundreds, maybe even thousands of comment threads and forum boards for related news articles bursting with hurt and denial, victim-blaming and victim-shaming. Case in point, Eddie Berganza has just been suspended from his long-held position as group editor overseeing the Superman “family” of titles published by DC Comics. Which is long overdue. Instead of either the article’s authors or the bulk of commenters realizing how Berganza is merely a single drop of the acid rain flooding the comic book industry, they rationalize how commonplace such atrocious behavior honestly is in the real world, away from attention-whoring headlines. As though if a single big name commits such grievous wrongs, it must be either a rare exception or a vengeful plot by the jealous few to undermine the success of whichever abuser. The idea of its predominance among the general public is downplayed, but the idea of persons with raised status actually proving even more prone to such misconduct is never breached. Why are celebrities held in higher regard?
Being a rich, powerful asshole isn’t just about giving the public excuses for jealousy. Wealth and power, the prizes of celebrity, proactively enable beneficiaries to do far worse than the common man might manage with his minimal resources. Kings of old, the royalty which previously enjoyed celebrity status, kept harems filled with boys and girls. Forms of government may come and go, but what the celebrated classes do with their means never changes, as evidenced by the pedophilia rings in Hollywood and the District of Columbia. Crossing the royal class was an invitation to not merely be heckled in public but to have one’s life fully destroyed, even ended, and the precious few willing to name names today do so under threats of blacklisting, or of vanishing off the face of the Earth altogether. There have been times where I wished I could afford to be an alcoholic, whereas celebrities are given the finest drugs in existence, if not on a silver platter then on the naked backsides of the priciest escorts to have ever blown 70-year-old dick. When by their every action celebrities scream how unheroic they truly are, perhaps it’s time to close down these creative industries, time to stop entertaining distractions from true problems, and time to start making the necessary societal changes to guarantee that nobody is allowed such influence over others ever again.
Let’s not attribute heroism to the most selfish and controlling people alive today, and let’s recognize that the desire to hero-worship and live vicariously through people who will never be better than strangers is sorely misplaced. Let’s become the heroes we need and want, ourselves. And let’s help each other reach that nexus together.