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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 time we reach the 1960s it is the TV itself that becomes a purveyor of social decay, supposedly rotting the brains of the nation's youth. And worst of all were the Beatles, whose music was accused of promoting free love and the use of psychedelic drugs. A backlash against what came to be called Beatlemania came to a head with mass bonfires to burn their records, subsequent to an impious remark by John Lennon. By the 70s, it was the raw physicality and sensuousness of disco music which was accused of tearing at the fabric of sexual mores and undermining common decency.
The 1980s brought us left-wing feminists claiming that pornography created rapists and right-wing moralists claiming that heavy metal music caused Satanism. And the 90s saw new panics about rap music promoting criminality, rave fatalities and the recent World Wide Web turning people into computer screen dazed anti-social zombies wasting away in their 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.
Otherwise, we may indeed conjure up a straw man to beat out all that anger, disappointment and fear. No solution to the suffering of us or our loved ones though comes from conquering make-believe dragons. That requires confronting the real problems - and finding 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 time we reach the 1960s it is the TV itself that becomes a purveyor of social decay, supposedly rotting the brains of the nation's youth. And worst of all were the Beatles, whose music was accused of promoting free love and the use of psychedelic drugs. A backlash against what came to be called Beatlemania came to a head with mass bonfires to burn their records, subsequent to an impious remark by John Lennon. By the 70s, it was the raw physicality and sensuousness of disco music which was accused of tearing at the fabric of sexual mores and undermining common decency.
The 1980s brought us left-wing feminists claiming that pornography created rapists and right-wing moralists claiming that heavy metal music caused Satanism. And the 90s saw new panics about rap music promoting criminality, rave fatalities and the recent World Wide Web turning people into computer screen dazed anti-social zombies wasting away in their 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.
Otherwise, we may indeed conjure up a straw man to beat out all that anger, disappointment and fear. No solution to the suffering of us or our loved ones though comes from conquering make-believe dragons. That requires confronting the real problems - and finding real solutions.
About the Author:
Follow us for all the hottest news on all manner of controversies over Celebrities with Eating Disorders . Mickey Jhonny is a reliable source of insightful and provocative writing on popular culture. If you're a fan of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, his piece tearing off the cover of its hidden inspiration is an absolute must read.
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