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, blaming celebrities 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.
The jaundiced eye of some social commentators regarded the swing music of the 1940s as a morally corrosive force, which ultimately would undermine the character of the soldiers necessary to carry out the war effort. (The same crazy swing dancing youth who, decades after the end of the war, would be celebrated as The Great Generation?) In the 40s and 50s comic books were accused of breeding an alleged epidemic of youth violence and juvenile delinquency. Television shows refused to show Elvis Presley's swiveling hips, for fear of feeding the frenzied libidinal blackness of his music: it suggested things dark and immoral. Meanwhile teenage girls continued to swoon.
By the 60s, TV was itself a form of social decay, rotting the brains of youth everywhere. And the Beatles were supposedly causing an explosion of free love and psychedelic drug use. There was a Beatle-mania-backlash that led to angry mobs burning Beatles' records in huge bonfires, with some disc-jockeys and politicians calling it devil's music, subsequent to an impious remark by John Lennon. And in the 70s, it was the raw sensuality and physicality of disco music that was alleged to be destroying the fabric of decently modest sexual mores.
Throughout the 1980s and 90s we heard from the anguished voices of left-wing feminists lamenting that pornography created rapists and right-wing moralists warning that heavy metal music caused Satanism. Rap music supposedly caused criminality, raves were hotbeds of social decay and drug induced fatalities, while the recent World Wide Web was accused of turning young people into trance like computer zombies wasting away in their parents' basements.
It's the same old story, over and over again. Mass media and pop culture get blamed for it all: apathy and violence, conformism and deviancy. Who could be surprised than that it is now widely blamed for both anorexia and obesity? Nothing new under the sun and all that!
One doesn't have to peer too closely behind the curtain of all this to see what's going on: a resolute refusal to accept responsibility for our own choices and actions. Whether those choices and actions are part of an eating disorder or our own response to the eating disorder of a loved one, it's easier, more comforting, to blame something else. After all, the alternative would be to have to face that our own choices and actions, or those of our loved ones, can be disturbing, despairing and even destructive. It is so much more comforting to conjure up dragons. At the end of the day, though, no amount of self denial removes the challenges which remain before 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.
Failing to take responsibility for their own choices and actions, including our interaction with and care for our loved ones, and instead blaming the media or pop culture, is conjuring dragons of the mind. It places us in a fairy tale world in need of magical feats. Such resorts to magical thinking though do nothing to address the suffering of real life.
It creates a straw man upon which to take out our anger, disappointment and fears. But it solves nothing and only momentarily distracts us from real problems - and real solutions.
As we've argued elsewhere, blaming celebrities 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.
The jaundiced eye of some social commentators regarded the swing music of the 1940s as a morally corrosive force, which ultimately would undermine the character of the soldiers necessary to carry out the war effort. (The same crazy swing dancing youth who, decades after the end of the war, would be celebrated as The Great Generation?) In the 40s and 50s comic books were accused of breeding an alleged epidemic of youth violence and juvenile delinquency. Television shows refused to show Elvis Presley's swiveling hips, for fear of feeding the frenzied libidinal blackness of his music: it suggested things dark and immoral. Meanwhile teenage girls continued to swoon.
By the 60s, TV was itself a form of social decay, rotting the brains of youth everywhere. And the Beatles were supposedly causing an explosion of free love and psychedelic drug use. There was a Beatle-mania-backlash that led to angry mobs burning Beatles' records in huge bonfires, with some disc-jockeys and politicians calling it devil's music, subsequent to an impious remark by John Lennon. And in the 70s, it was the raw sensuality and physicality of disco music that was alleged to be destroying the fabric of decently modest sexual mores.
Throughout the 1980s and 90s we heard from the anguished voices of left-wing feminists lamenting that pornography created rapists and right-wing moralists warning that heavy metal music caused Satanism. Rap music supposedly caused criminality, raves were hotbeds of social decay and drug induced fatalities, while the recent World Wide Web was accused of turning young people into trance like computer zombies wasting away in their parents' basements.
It's the same old story, over and over again. Mass media and pop culture get blamed for it all: apathy and violence, conformism and deviancy. Who could be surprised than that it is now widely blamed for both anorexia and obesity? Nothing new under the sun and all that!
One doesn't have to peer too closely behind the curtain of all this to see what's going on: a resolute refusal to accept responsibility for our own choices and actions. Whether those choices and actions are part of an eating disorder or our own response to the eating disorder of a loved one, it's easier, more comforting, to blame something else. After all, the alternative would be to have to face that our own choices and actions, or those of our loved ones, can be disturbing, despairing and even destructive. It is so much more comforting to conjure up dragons. At the end of the day, though, no amount of self denial removes the challenges which remain before 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.
Failing to take responsibility for their own choices and actions, including our interaction with and care for our loved ones, and instead blaming the media or pop culture, is conjuring dragons of the mind. It places us in a fairy tale world in need of magical feats. Such resorts to magical thinking though do nothing to address the suffering of real life.
It creates a straw man upon which to take out our anger, disappointment and fears. But it solves nothing and only momentarily distracts us from real problems - and real solutions.
About the Author:
Keep tabs on us for all the hottest news on all manner of controversies over Celebrities with Eating Disorders . Mickey Jhonny is a reliable source of thought provoking and stimulating articles on popular culture. If you're a fan of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, his post ripping off the cover of its hidden inspiration is required reading.
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