Talking about . . . Role Models

 
Buy This Is England from Amazon.co.uk or from Amazon.com
Buy Alpha Dog from Amazon.co.uk or from Amazon.com

The world is a bewildering place. It always has been, but in our media-dominated society it is immeasurably more so. Television has transformed how we engage with the world. No longer are we limited to what we experience, but encounter an ever-broadening range of perspectives on the world in our own homes. ‘Television,’ says Kenneth Myers, ‘is the single most significant shared reality of our entire society.’[1]

How does someone growing up in this context learn to make sense of the world? In the relatively settled cultures of the pre-media age, people’s beliefs and values were largely shaped by role models within close-knit communities. These people had been through the same process of making sense of the same culture; their wisdom made sense.

But when cultures experience rapid change, the communities in which people grow up resemble less and less those of the previous generation. The example of elders no longer seems relevant or attractive; instead young people gravitate towards other role models – figures who have more connection with their world.

Shane Meadows’ shocking film, This Is England, is pointedly set in 1983. In the story, twelve-year-old Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) desperately needs someone to look up to. His father has been killed in the Falklands and Shaun is being bullied. But a gang of skinheads befriends him, and the leader, Woody (Joe Gilgun), becomes his hero. Unexpectedly, Woody is kind, fair and accepting of ethnic diversity. But when racist Combo (Stephen Graham) turns up, having just been released from prison, the gang is divided. Woody refuses to associate with someone so narrow-minded, but Shaun is swept along by Combo’s apparent ability to make sense of the world, and soon he finds himself involved in racist vandalism and vicious assaults.

The western world has changed enormously even since 1983. In our culture, the role models to which people respond are frequently found within the media. The central characters of Alpha Dog are easily seduced by the glamour of gangsta rap because they have such abysmal role models around them. They ape the stars’ obsession with macho images, but the violence of the lyrics spills over into real life with horrific consequences. It is based on a true story. The pastor of one of the young men’s families, Cinema in Focus www.cinemainfocus.com/AlphaDog.htm critic Denny Wayman, laments the influence of a music culture that glorifies drugs, alcohol and violence and leaves young people ‘vulnerable to an evil that can destroy them.’ Ironically, the central characters deride gangsta rap as ‘not being real’, yet don’t realise that this makes their role models woefully inadequate.

Truth or fiction?

The same is true of any media role models. Postmodern philosopher Jean Baudrillard, who died recently, was largely right to say that the media so dominates us that we can no longer distinguish reality from representation, truth from fiction. We forget that we don’t see the real people behind the celebrities we idolise. What we see is a creation of the media: an impressive public persona assembled by stylists and publicists. And once a celebrity slips up, the media are quick to repaint them as failures or villains, as Britney Spears so well.

Baudrillard’s Christian counterpart Jacques Ellul wrote prophetically almost twenty years ago in The Technological Bluff that people are 'being plunged into an artificial world which will cause them to lose their sense of reality and to abandon their search for truth.’[2] This is the world in which we now find ourselves: a world in which media personalities set the agenda for our lifestyles, shape our values and manipulate our beliefs.

We eagerly seek out programming which gives us the illusion of being less artificial. Big Brother, Castaway, The Apprentice and countless other examples of reality TV pretend to be a window into ordinary people’s lives. We connect with the participants because they’re just like us – and we turn them into celebrities who are famous simply for being famous. So alongside positive role models like David Beckham we also have Jade Goody, who has become a millionaire celebrity for being reviled in Big Brother 3 and again in the last series of Celebrity Big Brother.

Confucius believed that rulers should be the ultimate role models. Helen Mirren’s Oscar-winning performance in The Queen made clear that even monarchs are vulnerable to media manipulation, whether of themselves or their subjects. But Confucius was on the right lines, because the ultimate role model is the King of kings, Jesus Christ. We can do no better than to imitate his humility, integrity, love, grace and more besides. And that connects us with the ultimate reality.

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