Based
on some general
theses - outlined briefly below - this paper aims to analyse
collaborative and adversarial icon-work in two cases: Elvis Presley and
Jane Fonda.
I propose that
iconic representation of persons combines two modes of representation:
It presents a stylised and sacralised image of the person. This duality
originates in connotations of iconicity from two spheres of use of the
term: The commercial icon or pictogram which works through simplified
representation (i.e. is stylised), and the religious icon, which works
through embellished representation and through symbolic detail (i.e. is
sacralised)
Iconicity places
us, as viewers and readers, in communi(cati)on with the person behind
the icon, but, since we are not ourselves icons, a passive role is
enforced on us as viewers or voyeurs - a role which we may resist, but
are doomed to re-enact whenever we communicate with an icon. The
relation between icon and viewer is basically unequal. Iconicity means
a reduction of the person behind the icon (the iconic subject) to
image, to object. Iconicity thus becomes a form of martyrdom as a
reduction or translation from individuality to symbol. This causes
problems for persons who become icons while still alive, since they
experience an isolation from other people whom they only know as
generic representatives of the voyeuristic gaze (the public, an
audience – all un-individuated mass terms) and they must develop
strategies for dealing with the public’s icon-work.
From the
religious connotations of iconicity we as public inherit the position
of worshipper. The need for icons is an expression of our longing for
something beyond our own subject-hood, a desire to idolise. This need
is no longer fulfilled in traditional religious ways, but has become
transferred onto other manifestations of the extraordinary. From the
industrial, service and information oriented connotations of iconicity
we inherit the position of consumer. Both these positions are well
served by dead icons, which offer no active resistance to
commodification.
Icons,
especially over-commercialised and over-familiarized ones, tempt people
into actively resisting icons, e.g. by defacing them or tampering with
them (slander, rumour-mongering, gossip, satire and co-optation are all
possible strategies): The formerly passive worshippers become
iconoclasts. All of these activities, however, ultimately serve chiefly
to perpetuate the iconic person’s status and longevity.
Elvis Presley
(whom for the purposes of this paper we shall presume dead) offers a
sterling example of posthumous collaborative and adversarial icon-work.
Sacralised images as well as other fetishised representations of Elvis’
body proliferate. Brief analyses of Elvis as saviour and as object of
consumption in (un)holy communion will be supplied.
In opposition to
dead Elvis a still living iconic figure such as Jane Fonda can be read
as a chameleonic re-inventor of self, strategically shedding layer
after layer of her public personae: Barbarella, Hanoi Jane, Work-out
Jane etc. All these past personae will be shown to remain in the public
conscious as objects of fetishistic and adversarial icon-work, ranging
from voyeuristic posters and web-sites devoted to Barbarella, via
urinal-art depicting Jane Fonda in several of her personae, to tribute
sites celebrating Fonda as an icon of eternal (sag- and wrinkle-free)
female youth.