Our Need to Idolize :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers

Our Need to Idolize In a small way, I think we're all monarchists at heart--as long as we pick the monarchy and can change it at whim. It's when we lose control that we start to panic.The recent death of John F. Kennedy, Jr. started me thinking about who the Associated Press and A&E have called "an American prince." Why does this need to have someone to idolize exist? Where does it come from? Most of us, if we trace back far enough in our family trees, came from countries ruled by a king and queen. For centuries, those dreams of the glamorous royalty lingered in our collective unconscious. Little girls often grew up dreaming about being a princess. Prince William, especially after Princess Diana's death, has become a common pin-up in middle school lockers everywhere, right alongside the Backstreet Boys and 'N-Sync. Surely capitalism and dreams of wealth and status are only a part of the equation. Perhaps instead it's slightly masochistic: we all want to be ruled in some way. We want to be told what to do: it makes life easier. This desire to remain passive conflicts with what we also crave--freedom. At least for us Americans, we cannot simply yield the power our ancestors fought for. Without kings and queens, we have instead found other people to idolize and, without being explicit, they tell us what to do. Instead of the threat of incarceration or death, if we refuse to follow these mandates, we’re simply unpopular--a fate, according to some teens, worse than or equal to death. Millions of women adopted the "Rachel" haircut because Jennifer Aniston had it. A desire to "be like Mike" led to a sports marketing craze: for a while, I could not find a single neighborhood pickup game without someone in a Jordan jersey. Is this that radically different than Peter the Great coming back from France and commanding the men to shave their beards? Well, our adherence to celebrity suggestions is, as we Americans like it, largely voluntary. But the fact that we volunteer to follow someone else is significant. If there's one thing Americans can relate to, it's personal stories of their celebrities. National Enquirer is not an invention of today's society, but a continuation of Walter Winchell and Hollywood Confidential. John F. Kennedy’s assassination was one of the first to be broadcast on television--remember Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on live television--and combined the immediacy of life with visual cues.