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.
