By Caroline Langston
After four days of wall-to-wall Michael Jackson coverage, with no letup in sight, if there is one thing I’m thoroughly sick of hearing, it’s the obligatory reference to Jackson as a “pop icon.” If my unscientific survey is any indication, the term “icon” is now used far more often than “idol” to describe celebrity figures.
It’s probably a sore point with other Orthodox Christians, as well, for whom the term “icon” has a special and restricted meaning, and refers to the religious art works—depictions of Biblical figures, saints, and most of all, Jesus Christ and his mother Mary, whom we term the Theotokos or God-bearer—that line the walls of our churches. Expansive, often wildly colored, possessing their own vocabulary of design conventions that strictly guide the presentation of such elements as Christ’s eyes and the color of Mary’s robes, icons had their origins, in part, in the need to instruct the illiterate in the tenets of the faith.
But they are no mere illustrations: they are the “existential link between the worshipper and God,” to use Anthony Coniaris’ phrase from his “Orthodoxy 101” guide Introducing the Orthodox Church. In the Orthodox understanding, icons do not merely depict transcendent realities, but actually make them truly, physically present. They are “windows into Heaven,” to use a common, if overly saccharine phrase. They serve to remind us that the boundaries of space and time are porous.
What, then, by contrast, does the term “icon” mean in contemporary usage, and how does it relate, or not, to the ancient understanding? (Which, I might add, is not only a Christian understanding, as I discovered when visiting the Buddhist temples at Sarnath in India.)
The most basic, K-car definition of “icon” in the dictionary is “[a]n image; a representation,” or alternately, a symbol.
Back when I lived in Houston, there was a popular stationery store called “Iconography,” which sold high-end cards and paper, most of them decorated with architectural detailing, images of Virginia Woolf, ironic phrases, and so forth. Perhaps I’m reaching too far back into my superficial graduate school reading of Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” but the current understanding of “icon” seems to rest upon the very reproducibility and ubiquity of the image in question (and to what end those reproduced images are used), rather than the image or reality—or Image and Reality, as we Orthodox would put it—that lies behind it.
In Benjamin’s view—and I will confess to consulting Wikipedia here to refresh my memory, so correct me if I’m wrong—art in the age of mechanical reproduction had the capacity to become unmoored from its religious or ecstatic origins, and thus more purely function as an expression of politics. Think of Soviet constructivist posters, or, more positively, that famous “Hope” image of Barack Obama from the 2008 campaign.
Now how does all this relate to Michael Jackson? As we’ve heard incessantly over the past few days, the talent and achievements of Michael Jackson are evident, whatever one thinks of his music (and I have never been a fan, overmuch). With his musicianship and skill in dance, and the way that his talents touched masses of people (you should have seen the manic fan crowds of 1983), Jackson can be viewed, if not an icon, exactly, then at least as a kind of magical figure or shaman.
Furthermore, as a white Mississippian, I did find something amazing and miraculous in the way that songs from Thriller were equally likely to be played on 94.7 WTYX, the Jackson Top 40 station, as they were on the funk station, 99.7 WJMI.
Perhaps the problem of Michael Jackson began at that point when the real person of Michael Jackson, the one made in the image of God, became subsumed into the mass-produced consumer (consumption, you remember, is also political) reproduction, the Michael Jackson Industry. The one, incidentally, from whom the spark of inspiration, post-Thriller, seemed to have departed.
I look at Jackson’s bizarre attempts to change everything about himself—his race, his appearance—and I think of the ways that each of us tries to flee who we really are, and the ways we hide from the Divine Image, the icon, in ourselves. There is so much that is so bizarre about Jackson’s end, but it is challenging and sobering for me to remember this essential kinship. Memory eternal.
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People ask what are my intentions with my films — my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question, and I usually give an evasive answer: I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it. This answer seems to satisfy everyone, but it is not quite correct. I prefer to describe what I would like my aim to be. There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and together they began to rebuild the cathedral on its old site. They worked until the building was completed — master builders, artists, labourers, clowns, noblemen, priests, burghers. But they all remained anonymous, and no one knows to this day who built the cathedral of Chartres.
Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are unimportant in this connection, it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God. He lived and died without being more or less important than other artisans; 'eternal values,' 'immortality' and 'masterpiece' were terms not applicable in his case. The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished invulnerable assurance and natural humility. Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation.
The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny the existence of each other.
We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal. Thus if I am asked what I would like the general purpose of my films to be, I would reply that I want to be one of the artists in the cathedral on the great plain. I want to make a dragon's head, an angel, a devil — or perhaps a saint — out of stone. It does not matter which; it is the sense of satisfaction that counts.
Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.
Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman (1960)
Art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God.
Considering the arc of Bergman's work, I find his words at once astonishing and compelling.
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