Open House Lecture, AAU March 3, 2004:
Icon-work: Elvis, Jesus, Barbarella, and Little Girl Jane
When people become icons, the images we see of them work like this:
They present both a stylised (simpler, reduced) and a sacralised (holy, religiously inspired) image of the person.
These images are double because the connotations of the word icon come from two different spheres:


The commercial icon or pictogram
(known from computer screens, toilet doors and many other types of public signs)
which works through simplified representation
(that is: it is stylised),
 and the religious (Orthodox, Catholic) icon,
which works through elaborate representation and through symbolic detail
(that is: it is sacralised)


From the religious associations of the word icon we as a public inherit the position
of worshipper (fan). The need for icons is an expression of our longing for
something beyond our own self, 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 associations of the word icon
we inherit the position of consumer (buyer of cultural products).



As a public we work with our icons in many ways:
We look at them, buy pictures, texts and other objects associated with them,
and sometimes we manipulate these images, texts and objects.
This process I call icon-work, and there are two types:
Adversarial (negative) and collaborative (postive) icon-work.


Elvis Presley
(whom for the purposes of this lecture we shall presume dead) offers a
great example of posthumous collaborative and adversarial icon-work.
There are hundreds of sacralised images of Elvis’ body,
many of them coupling Elvis and Jesus together.
I shall give brief analyses of Elvis as saviour and as object of
consumption in (un)holy communion.
 




In opposition to dead Elvis,
a still living iconic figure such as Jane Fonda can be read
as a chameleon who constanly reinvents herself and plays new roles:
Barbarella, Hanoi Jane, Work-out Jane etc.
All these past personalities stay in the public
conscious and can be used in people's icon-work,
from voyeuristic posters and web-sites devoted to Barbarella, via
urinal-art depicting Jane Fonda in several of her political and personal roles, to tribute
sites celebrating Fonda as an icon of eternal (sag- and wrinkle-free)
female youth.





 I shall talk about these two images and many others in my lecture today. 
I'll also give examples of icon-work in novels and films, and show two sexy clips from Jane Fonda's 1968 sci-fi comedy Barbarella.

Paper
Slides