The word icon is used so cheaply today. The fact that it has the word, con in it may have something to do with it. Perception is more important than substance. Image more important than truth. Marketing more important than creating. Fame and shame sometimes are not indistinguishable. And somehow it doesn’t matter. So strong is the lure of fame that we call a 50- something man of the world, ‘Baba’ and believe poor orphans like him should be spared the cold gaze of the law just because they now have families of their own.
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So what if they chatted up an anti- national, cold- blooded gangster on the phone like eager fans
(http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?216640) , complained about fellow stars and gossiped about women and co-actors. Can you imagine someone like Tom Cruise calling up Osama or any anti-American master-mind, chatting up affably with him and buying fire arms from gangsters and then expecting to remain in Hollywood not just as a top ranking star but also be celebrated as an icon who can do no wrong? In India, we forgive celebrities anything. Girl friend beating, bashing up a guest in a five star restaurant, bullying female stars, killing black bucks, going over a pavement where people sleep. Recently, I heard a fan say,” Why do the poor sleep on pavements? Don’t they know accidents can happen?”
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Right, accidents can happen, especially when stars get drunk and lose control of their Land Cruisers. All just part of being human. We should pray for him too, poor little misunderstood boy child with a golden heart. Maybe he was not at the wheel at all. Maybe, his driver is to be blamed. Hota hai.
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The question is why when ‘heroes’ fall from grace, do we make excuses for them? And is our definition of heroes correct at all? And why do those who seemingly have everything, need more? Be it fire arms, drugs, under world connections or a sense of dangerous entitlement? And sometimes the flirtation with danger goes too far as in the case of OJ Simpson. As a famous and then notorious football star, Simpson polarised America in 1994 when he was put on trial for the murder of his estranged wife and her friend. Why did he do it? Because, he thought he could and get away with it? And he almost did, remember? And what does one make of the story of South-African track star Oscar Pistorius who is facing a trial after he shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp at his home. Did he mistake her for an intruder or was the violence intentional, we will never know. But chances are he may get away with it. His is the story of hope against all odds. He was a hero in his country and his heroism should not be tainted by one accidentally dead woman. Even Tiger Woods is making a comeback now. Though he only cheated his wife. Many times over.
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Remember Ben Johnson, the sensational Canadian sprinter who beat Carl Lewis in the 100 m sprint at the 1988 Olympics but later tested positive for Stanozolol? And we still remember with a twinge, South African skipper Hansie Cronje, proven guilty of fixing cricket matches, banned and disgraced, only to die tragically a few years later in a plane crash. Lance Armstrong ofcourse has been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles after having confessed to doping. Some of us still remember Tonya Harding, the melodramatic American figure-skating champion who conspired to have her rival Nancy Kerrigan attacked and saw her own career go down in flames. From substance abuse to cheque counterfeiting, former world champion and track and field athlete Marion Jones checked all boxes of notoriety. Why did these people lie and cheat and gamble with their integrity? For success?
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Success often, if not always, comes with immense self-discipline and yet so many supposedly successful people crumble under the spotlight as if they were made up of nothing more than our imagination. Does success or the baggage that comes with it push them over the brink? In his autobiography Open, Andre Agassi confessed to having taken drugs and lying to keep his insecurities at bay. Hounded by the press and persistent defeats, he finally turned his story around by cleaning up his act and starting at rock bottom and working his way up to the top once again. But not, every superstar can do the same. Many push their luck and themselves too far, start believing that they are entitled to success more than anyone else, develop massive egos and end up as wrecks.
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Fame is a fizzy drug. So is power and the illusion of being infallible. Add to that fan frenzy that stalks you in glory and infamy. On April 30, 1993, a manic fan of rival Steffi Graf, stabbed tennis legend in the making Monica Seles with a 9-inch-long knife. In India, fans may not go that far but they cannot bear their idols to be treated like ordinary human beings or watch them pay for their mistakes because seeing them without their halos somehow makes them feel a little inadequate, a little disempowered,a little less. Almost as if a favourite God had been stripped off divinity. We will not take up knives to defend our heroes, but we will find excuses for, to put it mildly, their misbehaviour. And we will pray for them no matter what they are guilty of.
**We don’t expect our heroes to be accountable to law, to us, to their own conscience even. Our investment in their narrative makes us forget that they too owe us something. Not their swagger, their protestations of innocence but the truth. And as we know, that is something rare and precious. A thing lost in the dust of equivocation and denial. A thing that we know exists on the fringes of fame. But rarely at its core.
so true Reema, “image more important than truth” or rather truth has no existence of its own. Truth depends upon reasoning skills of the lawyer who being forth his client’s case. Otherwise these Baba, salman khan and others won’t have been so lucky to get away with their crimes.
Just imagine a guy possessing grenades, AK-47, taking delivery of arms consignment at home, in touch of india’s most wanted terrorist anees ibhrahim (involved 1993 bomb blasts), just got convicted in ‘possession of illegal arms act’ and not under TADA n other terrorist acts and walked free for almosr 20 years. It’s question of affordability and if u can afford, go n commit crimes.