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Before I get started I would like to thank all of you who responded to my earlier call for blogging advice. I got a lot of interesting ideas about what sort of things I could put on the blog and what sort of things people would be interested to see. I have come to the conclusion that what I lacked on this blog was much of a theme or focus. I can talk about sports a little, education some, and comics and movies a lot (not so much about music, though maybe I will one day use this blog to purge myself of all of my demons concerning music and its place in pop culture). However none of that means anything of value to you the readers and to any potential audience I hope to attract. I think a suggestion from one helpful reader summarized things nicely.
I read your ideas, and... I sought a pattern that could tie all of your notions together -- something narrower than "pop culture" and broader than "imperfect punctuation." So here's what I think: (most) all good internet sites take advantage of the intimate nature of the internet to deal directly with viewers . . . it's all about narrowcasting.
I took this as part of my inspiration. My various rants and reviews may find a home in some people’s lives, but they lack direction and purpose. What will be my lasting impact on my audience if I don’t give you information and insight that you can use to construct or add to your world perspective? (What’s this silliness, everyone knows blogs don’t have a lasting impact) Since blogs tend to be non-fiction writing by nature, I figured I should model myself around some of my favorite non-fiction writers and filmmakers (just recently I have been studying works by Malcolm Gladwell, Steven Levitt, Bill Simmons, Morgan Spurlock, and Errol Morris just as an example). What these authors have that I lack is a definitive style or area of interest. I believe that I can provide a (somewhat) serious service, by taking the fun and enthusiasm creators like Simmons, Spurlock, and Morris bring to their topics with the academic and intellectual inquisitiveness Gladwell and Levitt bring to their topics and apply all of this to the wonky and geeky interest I pursue. In a society increasingly focused on leisure and comfort we find more and more of our lives dictated and described by popular culture, just as our ancestors lives were dominated by pursuits like religion or not starving. The utility of a regular internet column that helps us see the weird and wonderful ways various pop culture elements of our lives collide and cohabitate in our lives.
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With all of that out of the way, let’s get into the first of what I aim to make many columns about cultural convergences and the insights they can provide us. I will try to frame as many of these as possible in terms of a central question. The topic for this post is right up top in the title, but to save you the strain of having to scroll back up there I will reiterate and clarify it here. What can the similar discussion currently surrounding Barry Bonds (the major league baseball player in pursuit of the all time homerun record) and Spider-Man (the comic book superhero who’s always the center of raucous fanboy discussion) tell us about public perception of celebrities?
Let’s start with Barry Bonds, since he’s the focus of the more prominent controversy right now. (I was going to say that Bonds is better known, but I’m not so sure about that Spider-Man does have two blockbuster movies under his belt as well as a number of TV series in addition to the comics, while Bonds has always been more infamous then celebrated, played in two “not quite major” markets of Pittsburgh and San Francisco, and played most of his career while baseball was in a serious popularity trough.)
For any who don’t know the story already it’s pretty simple: Bonds has been a major league baseball player for the last 20+ years, up to this point he has accumulated 713 homeruns in his career, the only players to ever accumulate more home runs are the immortal Babe Ruth and the record holder Hank Aaron, unlike those other two player Bonds has come under suspicion of having used various performance enhancing substances which are against the spirit though apparently not the letter of baseball’s rules for fair play. This has been the cause of much umbrage amongst fans of sports in general and baseball in particular. More to the point the question of Bonds guilt and the consequences of such hypothetical guilt have been amazingly divisive amongst the general public. Many claim that Bonds should be stripped of all his records and awards because he violated the ethics of the game. Others argue that Bonds committed no crime -their reasoning for this varies from a belief that Bonds never used any of the alleged substances to the fact that the alleged acts were not explicitly banned at the time and therefore cannot be punished ex post facto.
At this point I would like to mention that in most discussions on this topic one typically has to take a position on Bond’s guilt or innocence, with most operating under an assumption of guilt. I will not be taking any such position. Partly because it has been the stated position of this blog that I am not interested in drawing anyone’s ire with my personal opinions. Mostly though, I don’t see it as relevant to my interest in the topic. I am fascinated by the story because of the dualities involved.
The first and most obvious duality is the reactions Bonds inspires. To some he has become a villain of near mythical levels. His contempt for the game and the fans is only matched by his sheer arrogance. They see every word and act he performs in public as a cleverly constructed veil. He only ever feigns humility, kindness, sportsmanship, camaraderie, and humanity; he has never actually felt any of these emotions. On the other side his supporters contend that what he is one of the game’s greatest players who is being robbed of his place in history by those who are jealous of his accomplishments or are persecuting him because of his race. It’s an amazingly polarizing discussion, if for no other reason than that Bonds himself often tilts to extremes.
Let’s consider the dual nature of Barry Bonds for a moment. He is allegedly a great manipulator of public opinion. His main goal in achieving greatness in baseball –at whatever cost you personally believe he’s paying to do this- is his own self-aggrandizement, securing his place among baseball’s immortals so everyone will be forced to honor and respect him. Yet every interaction I have ever seen between the media and Bonds has seemed uncomfortable or antagonistic. There is no great public love of Bonds outside of his own home ballpark (where attendance numbers are reportedly dwindling). This is no new phenomenon by the way. When I first became aware of Bonds as a neophyte sports fan, he was in the midst of breaking the single season homerun record. Even then, before steroid rumors had begun to flourish, you could tell the divisive effect he had on audiences. Every ballpark he visited seemed split between those who were angered that such an unlikable character was about to gain one of sports’ most heralded records, and those who were outraged that opposing pitchers were refusing to pitch to him for petty reasons.
This is the essence of Barry Bonds in the public mind. For some he offends their every baseball sensibility for others he represents every great man who has ever been persecuted or unappreciated in his own time. Consider that some find the very thought of Bonds surpassing Babe Ruth on the all-time home runs list as an insult to the history of the game. Yet Bonds himself is tied more than any other modern player to that very history. He is the son of a former All-Star and the godson of Willie Mays one of the greatest every. He has cemented himself in baseball’s history books one way or another but he has never had the endorsement deals and star treatment of some of his contemporaries. For some this would be a laudable act, eschewing celebrity to focus on his game. For others it is just more proof of his disdain for his fans and the public. Through and through Barry Bonds is defined by dualisms.
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Well, those last few paragraphs were certainly pompous enough, but how on Earth does any of that relate to Our Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man? I first saw a connection between Bonds and Spider-Man when I was thinking about a major event going on in Marvel comics. The story is called Civil War –you can find a NPR news item on it here- and its basic purpose is to restore the adversarial relationship Marvel Comics’ superheroes like the X-Men, Daredevil, Hulk, and Spider-Man with the general population of their fictitious world. The model for this love/hate dynamic between citizens and heroes is Spider-Man. In the comic book world, Spider-Man is frequently suspected of being behind various crimes, is seen as creepy and weird by many, and has his own fictional newspaper The Daily Bugle which constantly harasses him with headlines like “Spider-Man: Threat or Menace?”. I have long thought this recurring theme was a way for one of Spider-Man’s co-creators, the writer Stan Lee, to capitalize on what his editor told him when Lee first proposed the character, “Everyone hates spiders.”
In recent years though, this concept seems to have cooled. While Spider-Man is rarely portrayed as a beloved public figure (notable exceptions include the film Spider-Man 2, but we can ignore that as it seem apparent that the filmmakers were determined to make another terrible Batman movie, and they weren’t about to let the fact that their hero was wearing a Spider-Man costume get in the way), often writers rarely touch on the public’s fear and distrust of Spider-Man, except for the occasional one panel cameo of a guy calling his a jerk for doing something blatantly heroic. I thought “Marvel doesn’t need a giant event to make the public resent superheroes again” –and they definitely don’t that’s just a gimmick to boost sales, but I’m buying them so it must be working- “they just need to write Spider-Man like Barry Bonds.”
It works perfectly when you think abut it. For the comic book world public, Spider-Man is mysterious and there are many unanswered questions about how he got his powers and why he uses them to fight crime. Spider-Man has made plenty of enemies in the press. He’s seen as tarnishing the image of great superheroes like Captain America. The Fantastic Four revealed their secret identities to the public. Spider-Man has worked hard to hide his true identity of Peter Parker. He’s never had the open and friendly relationship with the press, leading many to suspect he has something to hide. It really all fits. The only difference is that most coverage you hear about Barry Bonds come from the perspective of a Bonds detractor, while most of Spider-Man’s coverage comes from the perspective of a Spider-Man defender. The two figures should have an equally polarizing effect on people. People should argue as often about whether Spider-Man should just kill the Green Goblin (as suggested in the recent and excellent The New Avengers: Illuminati special) as they much as they argue about whether Major League Baseball should celebrate Barry Bonds passing Babe Ruth.
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Another similarity between Barry Bonds and Spider-Man jumped out to me when I considered their similar public perceptions. Except in this case it isn’t about how the public in the comic books views Spider-Man. It’s about how Spider-Man is perceived by all of his loyal readers out here in reality. Once again it revolves around a duality but this time it is an internal component of the life stories of the two figures.
This comparison springs from the writings of ESPN.com Page 2’s Sports Guy a.k.a. Bill Simmons. Simmons, almost as much a pundit on popular culture as he is on sports, once proposed the Two Pacinos Theory to describe when a person’s life is divided into two halves so sharply that they almost seem like two different human beings, for example how the Al Pacino who starred in The Godfather seems like some other person than the Al Pacino from Scent of a Woman. Barry Bonds also serves as a great example since the skinny, speedy, rangy mustachioed Bonds of the Pittsburgh Pirates seems like a totally different player than massive, muscled, super slugger bonds of the San Francisco Giants.
It’s important to note that as far as I can tell Simmons’s theory hinges not on a person actually undergoing a dramatic change (like young, cute, black boy Michael Jackson and old, freakish, white woman Michael Jackson) but on the perception of a dramatic change. After all as Bill James and many other knowledgeable baseball historians will tell you, it is common for baseball players to display the kinds of skills Bonds displayed at a young age early in their careers, and the skill set Bonds now uses later in their careers. Yes, Bonds does seem to have gotten a lot bigger overtime, but so did Rodger Clemens. The key difference between Bonds and Clemens as far as I can tell is that Bonds has a perception of wrong doing hovering over his head. Bonds didn’t suddenly become a great hitter over the last six or seven years, he always was. Our collective awareness of his hitting shot through the roof though and that brought greater attention and in turn greater scrutiny. I rarely hear any one suggest that “speed” Bonds used performance enhancers, even though we know Olympic level track athletes have used them in speed based competitions, and without turning into over-inflated muscle bound balloon heads. Yet so many seem to work under an assumption that “power” Bonds owes his recent accomplishments to performance enhancing drugs. I can find no true intrinsic difference between these two versions of Bonds other than the public perception. Skinny equals naturally fit in the public’s mind, and bulky equals steroids.
Spider-Man crossed a similar point in his history almost twenty years ago, in 1987, when he married long time love interest Mary Jane Watson. This became a very controversial moment in Spidey’s life. Some say that having an older more mature Peter Parker marry better suits the character. It makes him seem more grounded and realistic. Others seem to believe that Peter is at heart an eternal teenager, someone who should appear perpetually young. They don’t seem to mind if that harms whatever thin shreds of verisimilitude a comic book superhero has managed to cling on to.
Peter Parker’s girl troubles and his vacillating relationships to his various love interests used to provide a great deal of material for the comic books. Now that he’s married what was once a major theme now seems inaccessible. The fact that Marvel Comics current editor in chief Joe Quesada has made it public knowledge that he utterly abhors the concept of Spider-Man being married, has only served to further the controversy –to see a nice summary of Quesada’s position check out the article here. Once again we have Spider-Man caught in a duality and tension is created because the public cannot agree whether Peter is a single person or a married person. However I would contend that once again this is not based on any actual change but rather the perception of change.
Consider this simple test, imagine surveying a dozen people on any random street. If you were to ask them to list five words or phrases that they would use to describe Spider-Man, do you really believe the words single or married come up ever? Spider-Man’s core character is independent of marital status. The essential characteristics I would use to describe Spider-Man/Peter Parker are young, guilt-ridden, inexperienced, funny, and responsible. Do any of those change because Spidey’s married? No, he can be tragic and endearing even with a permanent love interest. Quesada is found of pointing out that keeping Peter Parker single allows for a number of stories while having Peter married only prevents certain kinds of stories. Given that Spider-Man has successfully carried multiple monthly comic books in the many years since the marriage and has been generally well received, I would argue that there all substantial evidence shows than an abundance of stories exist and continues to grow, despite perceptions to the contrary.
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These comparisons are all well and good as a sort of intellectual exercise. However I set out in this column to use them to describe something powerful and meaningful about public perception. I think we have established a few things so far. First that Barry Bonds demonstrates that a figure’s public perception operates nearly independent of their actual nature. I recommend that those creators working on Spider-Man make more use of this fact. Second, the Two Pacinos Theory demonstrates that perception can create the appearance of evidence for a given theory even if none really exists. I demonstrated how this has shaped ongoing debates surrounding both Bonds and Spidey. Now I wish to investigate why anyone is even discussing these figures at all. For there to be a public perception formed, there must be some motivation for the public to perceive it.
Maintaining the structure I’ve already established I’ll discuss Bonds first. What has Barry Bonds done lately to merit so much attention? In truth, not that much. Yes, he stands on the break of making history, but since he hit his 713th career homerun, he’s had precious little to offer. In something like twenty-three straight plate appearances since he became one off of Babe Ruth’s career mark, Bonds has had only one hit. Still ESPN and other major sports networks insist on keeping their audience frequently updated to each and every Barry Bonds at bat. Now I realize he only needs one to tie the most famous baseball player of all time, but the coverage he’s received has been completely out of proportion from his activities. When explaining why so many news stories seem to be about sad or upsetting subjects, Walter Cronkite reportedly said “we are not in the business of reporting all the cats that didn’t get stuck in trees.” Yet somehow the sports media has actually fallen into the business of reporting all of the homeruns Barry Bonds didn’t hit. The reason for the blanket of coverage is simple: controversy. The heads in charge of programming at all the major sports TV and radio stations know very well that Bonds is a controversial figure without peer. They also know that few things boost the ratings of news based programming quite like controversy. So, they exploit the public perception of Bonds to further their interests.
Marvel Comics may very well be doing the same thing with Spider-Man. Joe Quesada readily admits that there is nothing to be done about Peter’s marriage to Mary Jane. He feels that divorce, death, or any other means of separation will only serve to further damage the character’s everyman status. For many (myself included) the very fact that he mentions the topic carries a certain degree of implied threat. Yet, it seems quite likely that the sole reason he chose to address the topic publicly was to stir up controversy, and perhaps to sell a few more copies of the Spider-Man comic books.
This pattern can be seen again and again in popular culture. A controversial public perception does not damage the visibility or marketability of a figure, rather it increases it. It should be noted that controversy is different than a consensus negative reaction. O.J. Simpson got the most press coverage of his life while he stood trial for a grisly double murder, because the nation was divided about this and the controversy fueled the coverage. When he was acquitted of criminal charges the controversy continued and the coverage kept on going. Then when he was held legally responsible for the death in a separate civil suit of wrongful death and his search for the real killers appeared to be non-existent the cameras went away. A more recent example is Kobe Bryant, who after facing rape allegations was judged by the public to be guilty of adultery and wrongdoing if not of an actual crime. It has taken Bryant, by all accounts one of the most talent basketball stars out there, nearly two years regain any degree of respectability. Conversely, actor Tom Cruise, who had received little media attention since his falling out with ex-wife Nicole Kidman became one of the most covered faces in Hollywood after beginning a controversial relationship with the much younger Katie Holmes. The power of controversy is undeniable. Though many may have a negative opinion of a figure, the possibility that the figure is actually a likeable person gives the media the cover to keep pushing her and it gives the public the moral deniability to keep buying her.
If a figure is defined by dualism controversy will easily follow, a fact which we have seen many exploit. Here we tend to approach a deep down question that I hoped to answer with this column. If the intensity of debate and the degree of public focus on Bonds and Spider-Man and so many others are defined by controversy, how does controversy attract such a large audience?
Controversy appeals to us like so many other aspects of the entertainment industry. We consume dramatic works –such as Harlequin romance novel, TV series like 24 and Desperate Housewives-to find a release for our unused emotional energies. We follow mysteries -be the real ones like ongoing investigations into missing teens in Aruba, or fictional ones like those posed in the novel and film The Da Vinci Code- to release our unused intellectual. We consume controversies –be they about real or imagined figures- to release our unused moral energies.
Take a moment and try to remember the last time you faced an actual ethical crisis in your life. Try to recall the last time when you truly had to search your soul for the right thing to do given the situation you faced. When was it? I would expect for most of you it has been a long while. We may face emotional crisis once every so often, and intellectual crisis, but when was the last time we really had our morality challenged. Most of our lives are lived in some degree of routine. Once we establish from our basic guiding principles our moral parameters for that routine (i.e. not speeding to work, sneaking the extra sugar packets from the break room, ignoring the paper jam until someone else fixes it), we tend to have few big questions left to answer. I imagine most Americans could count the number of true ethical challenges they will face in their life on one hand. Yet we spend so much of our childhood learning right from wrong. We invest such a great deal of personal worth into our moral decisions along, that I feel we also tend to develop a great store of moral energy seeking release when we don’t use our moral muscles. This is why public controversies intrigue us. We need an opportunity to indirectly confront moments of great ethical conflict. If we were in a situation where we could advance our careers by acting in a manner that was dishonest though not explicitly illegal would we do it? If we were in a marriage that seemed to be stifling our lives could we end it? These are hard questions, some of the hardest in our culture. If given the choice most of us would prefer to go through our lives without ever being forced to make a decision like the one’s mentioned above. However if they are not are choices, but those of Barry Bonds or Spider-Man, and we didn’t have to make them, merely judge them, then perhaps we could engage with them as a sort of moral exercise. I believe this is we spend time reading the Page 6’s of the world. It’s for reasons very comparable to why we do our morning crossword or sodoku. This is what Barry Bonds and Spider-Man can teach us about public perception. Public perception tends to focus on figures not based on the nature of the figure, but based on the needs of the public. I believe this is why The X-Files achieved such great ratings, despite being a science-fiction serial of only moderate quality, because it allowed us to deal with our fears of the coming millennium. I believe this is why the New York Yankees our so often vilified yet so often discussed, because they allow us to express our resentment of our society’s wealthy elite. Popular culture is of course art on some deep down level, holding up a mirror to reflect the nature of our lives. No one looks at a mirror to see a plate of special reflective glass. We look in a mirror to see ourselves.
