It Was The Best Butter

[poliphilo]

I'm not particularly fond of my younger self- and if people kept coming up to me expecting me to be just like him I'd get cross.

It must be horrid to be middle-aged and still famous for something you did when you were a gobby kid. You'd feel trapped, like you couldn't move on. It would be like carrying a corpse around.

And maybe that's the reason- aside from the money, aside from wanting to prolong his fame- why Johnny Rotten did that stupid butter ad.  He wanted to ditch the cadaver.

He wanted to upset his fans.

And yes, it's always sad when a hero sells out.

Simple remedy: don't have any heroes in the first place.

Comments

[oakmouse]

Or perhaps be aware that heroes are human beings too? As my dad used to say, we all put our pants on one leg at a time.

It's just that nowadays people think heroes who put their pants on one leg at a time have feet of clay and are failing as heroes. Really, we don't want heroes to be human beings. We've lost the awareness our ancestors had that heroes are capable of being asses too. Look at Cuchulainn, for pete's sake, or Heracles. They weren't precisely untarnished silver 24/7/365. And yet we want our heroes to be always shiny and on their pedestals. Of course they're going to fall, being held to standards like that.

It would be nice if heroes could stay heroic all the time, but they can't, and I think deep down underneath we know it. After all, what do critics say about fictional heroes who are heroic all the time? That they're unrealistic.

It's a tough subject.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't think any hero can be safely confirmed in their heroic status until after they're dead. It's a bit like sanctity, really- the claim has to be tested, the evidence sifted, the durability of the reputation ascertained. Most heroes are controversial in their own time- even Hercules and Cuchulain probably were.

[oakmouse]

I don't doubt they were, to the extent that news passed far enough for the controversy to be more than a local fuss.

You're probably right. Only we do have the bad habit of looking for live heroes!