Comments (0)Celebrigods
December 25, 2009Abe Novick
Special to the Jewish Times
In January of 2009, with the aid of in vitro fertilization, Octomom gained international attention when she bore octuplets. Aided by science, she became an overnight worldwide celebrity. Like a global traffic accident, we all slowed down to view this quasi-virgin birth.
Now, as 2009 closes, Tiger Woods, a superstar and truly amazing sports celebrity, literally and figuratively crashed, dragging with him his own brand and doing insurmountable damage to a number of orbital ones (Nike, Gillette, Accenture) that revolved around his persona.
It was also the year politicians who claimed the moral high ground — John Edwards and Mark Sanford — fell from their perch.
Meanwhile, on another strata, ordinary people who desired celebrity crashed through the gates of the White House and others unhinged themselves from grounded reality (see: Balloon Boy’s dad) as they sought and entered the eternal world of fame.
Between these two planes of manufactured earth and heaven exists another dimension, a mythical creation generated by a mediasphere, where they’ll live on in cyberspace for eternity, locked by their 15 minutes, to wander in a modern day Gehenna.
Today’s celebrity gods, who live on a Media Mount Olympus, have a lineage that extends as far back as Zeus, who would spy a fair mortal, swoop down and have his way with her.
Like the Greek gods that represented sea, war, harvest, what have you, Tiger is heroically aligned as the embodiment of the particular product he sponsors.
Seen through the Wayback Machine, the ancient struggle between hucksters of myth and those who want to be left in peace on Earth is the story of the just celebrated Chanukah.
It is the story of a collision between Hellenism(a statue of Zeus was erected by the Greek Assyrians in the Temple) and its many gods, and the one singular Judaic God. And for a shining moment, the Jews were victorious in their resistance.
In the centuries to come, as gods and idols continued to be worshipped, Judaism and its offshoot Christianity dispersed throughout the world, ultimately redefining the notion of God. But as those two paths diverged, you do not find in Judaism an individual who possesses the attribute of being both a mortal and a god. Yet, Chanu-kah’s calendrical cousin does have God and a mortal co-mingling.
When John Lennon, murdered 29 years ago this month, claimed The Beatles were “bigger than Jesus,” the leader of the greatest celebrity band of the 1960s was knockin’ a little too hard on heaven’s door.
The very concept of Jesus is that he was a man and a god, born from a virgin mother, his father’s God. No other man, god or celebrity has had the lasting influence, the durable brand recognition, symbolically represented by the cross, than that of Jesus.
Jews who don’t buy into this idea are consistent with their forebears who rejected the notion of god taking human form as described by the Greeks and later the Romans (the guys who ultimately crucified Jesus).
So as we sit here on Dec. 25, 2009, surrounded with unavoidable Christmas kitsch looking back on the past year, now an unwrapped present with its content strewn out, we can take pride in our culture’s long battle with advertised idols, its own consistent core brand belief and its adherence to something higher.
At the same time, we need a sober reality check, because in 2010, the stories, the legends, the myths, like the show, will go on.
Abe Novick, whose work is at http://www.abenovick.com, writes regularly for the BALTIMORE JEWISH TIMES on the intersection of American and Jewish culture.