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Ilona Burton, at The Independent, published a post of interest recently. Though it wasn't perfect, in a sense she almost winds up contradicting herself, she does provide a refreshingly good finger wagging to the blame-game crowd for vilifying pro-ana websites. Indeed, she has the wisdom to provide a general criticism of those who find the source of all social ills in popular culture. It is a good point.
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.
This silliness can be traced at least back to that old totalitarian himself, Plato, who was suspicious of the corrupting impact of theater and poetry upon the youth of Athens. Of course, the explosion of mass media in the 20th century created unprecedented opportunities to blame every manner of real problem or general anxiety upon some mass medium or another.
The 1940s witnessed social condemnation of swing music as a source of moral corruption, which, it was feared, would harm the character of young men, making them poor soldiers and thus hurt the war effort. (This, remember, was the same bunch of swing dancing youth who decades after WWII would be memorialized as The Great Generation!) In the later 40s and 50s it was comic books that were the scourge; they were alleged to be responsible for an epidemic of youth violence and juvenile delinquency. (And that damn James Dean wasn't helping, either.) Meanwhile, Elvis Presley couldn't be shown on television below his hips and there was much anguish about how his primal, libidinal (dangerously black-sounding) music was causing proper young girls 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.
The 1980s-90s brought still more of the same: left-wing feminists decried pornography as creating rapists while right-wing moralists decried heavy metal music as creating Satanists. Rap music was accused of promoting criminality, raves were drug infested death traps and the recent World Wide Web was turning young people into anti-social, entranced computer-heads 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!
At the core of all this is a resolute refusal to either take responsibility for one's own actions or to accept that other's (including those we love) can choose actions that we find disturbing, despairing and destructive. Invariably, of course, such passing of the blame leads to all sorts of exaggeration and distortion. Even if that were not the case, though, the core issue would still confront us.
We are all responsible for our own actions and for doing what we can to help the ones we love. The relentless seeking of scapegoats, even if they are the apparently insulated and inured rich and famous celebrities of stage, screen and runway, only serves to deflect attention from the only real solution to such problems.
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.
A mythical dragon though is merely a straw man. Yes, it is a comforting means for unleashing our rage and deflecting our anger, disappointment and fear. It does nothing though to help us come to grips with 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.
This silliness can be traced at least back to that old totalitarian himself, Plato, who was suspicious of the corrupting impact of theater and poetry upon the youth of Athens. Of course, the explosion of mass media in the 20th century created unprecedented opportunities to blame every manner of real problem or general anxiety upon some mass medium or another.
The 1940s witnessed social condemnation of swing music as a source of moral corruption, which, it was feared, would harm the character of young men, making them poor soldiers and thus hurt the war effort. (This, remember, was the same bunch of swing dancing youth who decades after WWII would be memorialized as The Great Generation!) In the later 40s and 50s it was comic books that were the scourge; they were alleged to be responsible for an epidemic of youth violence and juvenile delinquency. (And that damn James Dean wasn't helping, either.) Meanwhile, Elvis Presley couldn't be shown on television below his hips and there was much anguish about how his primal, libidinal (dangerously black-sounding) music was causing proper young girls 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.
The 1980s-90s brought still more of the same: left-wing feminists decried pornography as creating rapists while right-wing moralists decried heavy metal music as creating Satanists. Rap music was accused of promoting criminality, raves were drug infested death traps and the recent World Wide Web was turning young people into anti-social, entranced computer-heads 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!
At the core of all this is a resolute refusal to either take responsibility for one's own actions or to accept that other's (including those we love) can choose actions that we find disturbing, despairing and destructive. Invariably, of course, such passing of the blame leads to all sorts of exaggeration and distortion. Even if that were not the case, though, the core issue would still confront us.
We are all responsible for our own actions and for doing what we can to help the ones we love. The relentless seeking of scapegoats, even if they are the apparently insulated and inured rich and famous celebrities of stage, screen and runway, only serves to deflect attention from the only real solution to such problems.
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.
A mythical dragon though is merely a straw man. Yes, it is a comforting means for unleashing our rage and deflecting our anger, disappointment and fear. It does nothing though to help us come to grips with real problems - and real solutions.
About the Author:
Keep tabs on us for all the scoop 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 piece ripping off the cover of its dirty little secret is required reading.
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