Why Do We Have Idols?

Francois-Xavier Fabre, The Judgement of Paris, 1808, oil on canvas, 119.5cm x 167.5cm.

This dissertation research report will aim to display provisional progress of my research into why we have idols in our society. I believe this is an important topic in understanding power dynamics and why we make the social choices we make. I will first cover the etymology of and surrounding the word "idol" and go on to display how idolatry has been communicated from the Bible up to the present day, leaning on research from 20th century sociologist Talcott Parsons. I will then aim to compare the story and symbols of the Fall of Troy, firstly to stories in the Bible and then to the reproductive symbolism found in contemporary art, by analysing Fabre's Judgement of Paris, review the downturn of celebrity in 2020 and evaluate the celebrity qualities of Andy Warhol. I will then go on to illustrate Christopher Lasch's understanding of narcissism as a way of understanding power dynamics in societal settings. I will outline the atmosphere of fan and stan culture, looking at parasocial relationships between idols and followers. I will then go on to discuss cults, using findings of Amanda Montell, how language is the true divisive tactic of hierarchical and fringe groups, and then conclude with the idea that anonymity is a form of power in these situations. Throughout this report I will reference relevant arguments that will later be more thoroughly detailed in my final dissertation.

The word "idol" originates from the Greek "eídōlon", which is most closely translated to the word "image", and derived from "eîdos" meaning "shape and form". In Christianity and Judaism, the concept of idolatry is understood to be the worship of someone or something other than God as if it were God. Early understanding of idolisation is derived from depiction of what we perceive to be religious history. The Old Testament of the Bible (Exodus 20:2-17 and Deut. 5:6-21) contains the 10 Commandments; the very first commandment prohibits the idea of idolatry, stating "you shall have no other gods before me." This can be easily understood as immediate and stern control (to some, coercion) by idols, or leaders, of followers of the Bible. It informs them that nothing could ever be as important or all-consuming as God; you must agree that God will always come first before other specifications or requirements are broached.

American sociologist Talcott Parsons believed that religion was formed by functional requirements to set followers apart from heathens (1937). Firstly, he stated that religion's role was to socialise individuals into the moral guidelines of society. This means that if we can draw a line between right and wrong, we can begin the process of othering on the basis of what the group who consent to the religion's rules deem to be acceptable. Parsons stated this was achieved by religious institutions acting as agents and ministers as personal coaches of followers, which was also assisted by family and educational institutions. He believed that religion communicated by agents through symbols during ceremony would inform the followers on how to act, which would pervade all other aspects of the follower's life; we can see these aspects would also involve the church in the reinforcing institutions of family and education, for example marriage and religious studies. These findings provide us with an understanding that religion informed an overarching moral duty of loyalty and humbleness (to some subordination) to pay respect to a supernatural deity; what we follow can say much about who we are. Parson's second function of religion was the church's ability to help the followers and wider society's abilities to adapt to change, bringing people together to form community and psychological stability in times of hardship or uncertainty. This sounds overwhelmingly positive, but could be understood to be potentially manipulative, forming an aura of strained permissiveness; grief is an example where the church would insert itself in a part of life that varies greatly in its form and understanding amongst humans. Thirdly, Parsons argued that religion offered a sense of purpose to its followers, by consistently promoting faith as real truth, and to question other possibilities is to work against the ideal and destabilise society. This can be compared to our understanding of cult-like attitudes, which will be covered in more detail later. This function is one of the starkest opportunities to other non-believers on fundamental grounds - not just promoting the chosen identity of faith, but attacking or refusing to consider possible objectivity of alternative ideas causes polarity between groups.

Much of Parsons' work (1973) was based on research of Emile Durkheim, another functionalist sociologist who believed that four key functions of discipline, cohesion, vitalisation, and euphoria would set apart the sacred and the forbidden to a moral community. Sociologist and economist Max Weber stood in opposition to his contemporary (Mazman, 2008), Durkheim, in that he did not believe in the supernatural, possessing powers for stability; he instead believed religion formed grounds for social change (1930). Other than a sociological approach, there are another two main approaches as to why religion is formed – psychological and symbolic. I will cover my findings relating to Durkheim and Weber on a sociological level as well as detailing Spiro's psychological approach and Geertz's symbolic approach in my final dissertation.

The most notable instance of contemporary understanding of idolatry could be argued as being depicted in historical artworks. Many of the depictions of the Trojan War in classical art tell a visual story of Homer's poetry, they could also be said to directly symbolise stories of the Bible - François-Xavier Fabre's The Judgement of Paris (1808) is a great example of this. On the left of the painting, we see Paris, Eros and Aphrodite sitting on the edge of a small untouched forest, to the right we see Athena and Hera signalling towards the area of civilisation below in an urgent manner. Paris, Aphrodite and Eros are mostly naked, closely huddled together and look quite similar in their facial structure, this could be said to symbolise Adam, Eve and Jesus. The apple Aphrodite is handing Paris could be an obvious reference to the forbidden fruit in the bible, the fruit that represents sexuality (deemed normally to be forbidden) and ownership of a female partner – in this mythology the apple is Paris accepting the option of carrying Helen to Troy. If they go with Athena and Hera the peace from their serene and stable setting could be greatly disrupted, which is again symbolised by the fallen torch on the ground in between the two groups, which could be a close metaphor to the subsequent Fall of Troy.

There have been arguments against the objectivity of the events in The Iliad, written 400 years after the Fall of Troy, particularly of the certainty that Achilles or Helen even existed (Lovgren, 2004) – also that the war lasted 10 years is unlikely (Dunn, 2020) due to the size of the citadel.

In a video essay titled The Cult Mentality Within Stan Culture (2020), Liam McEvoy compares the Fall of Troy to the current climate of celebrity culture, where many celebrities are experiencing responses of disgust and a sense of irrelevance from the public (Sigee, 2020). Mainstream celebrity activity over Covid-19 drew heavy criticism online, particularly the Imagine video organised by actress Gal Gadot. The public's response of requiring tangible action like financial donations from celebrities instead of continued unrequested cultural spectacle can be compared to the difference between functional and symbolic influences from religion, that followers of an idol look for deeper meaning in hard times; 'I watched Gal sing with her celeb pals and wondered, "Who the f*ck asked for this?"' (Pierre, 2020). McEvoy goes on to state that like in the story of Helen of Troy, the narrative is what matters to the followers, they need a reality that they can believe and cling to; on few occasions will there actually be inspection of the details to clarify what truthfully happened.

As with subject matters other than idols, there has been a translation and regurgitation of symbols of idolatry throughout art history up to the present day. Andy Warhol could be said to be the first influencer (Anteblian, 2021), 50 years before the term became used to describe socialites and brand ambassadors using social media to share their everyday lives. Best known for the Campbell's soup and Marilyn Monroe portraits, with both examples reframed and regurgitated to the point of frustration in the art world due to perceived lack of meaning, they were metacommentary works focusing on consumerism as the new ideal, or the new idolatry. Quoted from 1979 with "my idea of a good picture is one that's in focus, and of a famous person doing something unfamous," Warhol is also best known for his intimate portraits of celebrities with whom he was in what we can understand as the 'in-crowd' of New York's creative and celebrity scene in the mid-to-late 20th century. A former manager of Warhol's Factory studio, Vincent Fremont, is quoted (Bailey, 2023) saying "back in the '60s people would be embarrassed to think about it, but Andy knew that deep down everybody wanted to be a TV star." Warhol was able to predict the desire for a large amount of attention, otherwise understood as narcissism, an ailment Warhol is posited to have suffered from himself (Stevens, 2007, Forrest, 2018). In my final dissertation I will reference works of photographer Andres Serrano, such as Piss Christ, and compare them to works directly inspired by religious iconography from the classical and renaissance eras.

Christopher Lasch was a 20th century critic of capitalism and class politics in the US, particularly the accompanying insistence on constant progress and abandonment of values by the professional classes, or elites, who previously identified as leftists (Kimball, 1995). In The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979), Lasch amped up the urgency from his earlier works, viewing all corners of America as politically flimsy and not socially responsible. From his considerably grim view, we can believe Lasch would discourage those engaging in what we could refer to as grifting or sympathy olympics - where those with prescriptive identities but comfortable financial means allow themselves and those from their particular background to make certain concessions using the guise of opportune mobility, which can have a volatile effect on community (Mishan, 2019). This is something we can see similarities to in the modern day with concepts like pinkwashing (Karnik, 2022). Using Freudian analysis to understand the motivations of the bourgeoisie (Siegel, 2010), Lasch's work seeks to promote sturdy character firmed through family attachment as a deterrent to increasingly factional elevation and relegation of social groups, standing in opposition to Warhol's elitism displayed to the voyeuristic but ultimately excluded follower.

In 2000, Eminem released the single Stan, about an overzealous fan called Stan who idolised the rapper, and who met his demise when he failed to receive a response to fan letters he sent. This is believed to be the origin of the word "stan" (Madden et al, 2016), although later many argued the word could be a combination of "fan" and "stalker". Over the 2010s "stan" entered popular usage, entering the Oxford dictionary in 2018 (Eloise, 2020) and we have seen a differentiation in the use of language in who we would call a fan compared to a stan. As most of the activity in question happens on social media, we must recognise that the activity is language based - we can understand that a stan was at one time a regular fan. In Cultish (2021), Amanda Montell argues that language is the only solid signifier that experts can agree on in terms of what makes a cult, that it is the weapon that gives cult groups power. An example of this is with Taylor Swift and Ginny and Georgina, a Netflix show about a single mother raising her daughter. During an argument between mother and daughter, the daughter tells the mother that she has "gone through men faster than Taylor Swift". A few days later Swift tweeted "hey Ginny & Georgia, 2010 called and it wants its lazy, deeply sexist joke back," which was followed by a torrent of online racist abuse levelled at the actors from the show by Swift's followers (Morin, 2021). Here we can see that the language in the show is not being received in a context of nuanced understanding by Swifties (the group of Swift's followers who cross over into stan territory). While the joke is sexist, the show is about a single mother, someone we can safely assume has at some point suffered from patriarchal structures. While the relationship between celebrity and fan is everchanging (Fenwick, 2022), it is still an example of a clearly uneven transactional relationship.

Anthropologist Donald Horton and sociologist R. Richard Wohl coined (1956) the term 'parasocial relationship' to describe the feeling experienced by an audience during an organised communication with a performer, which took on new meaning with the invention and commodification of television (Gilmore and Fleming, 2018) and who was presented to the public as admirable changed. Parasocial relationships can be understood to be an orchestrated and controlled transaction, like a television interview, fan meet and greet or online livestream – these are examples from a celebrity context to negate power, which of course can be used to acquire and maintain power imbalance in any parasocial relationship.

"A toxic relationship is just a cult of one," says Amanda Montell in an interview (Puc, 2021) on her research for Cultish. She goes on to discuss herd mentality, stating "you don't even need a unifying leader to tell the group what to do. They're going to do it on their own and they're going to radicalize on their own. People are looking for direction, answers, and an identity." We can tie this to earlier conversation about Warhol and Lasch, where people can look to toe the line of a void of meaning, looking to escape the life their circumstances have created for them, whether it be seceding from religion or family in pursuit of what they believe to be a better view or life or even perfection - our previous responsibilities cannot be adhered to. Anonymity is one method of the pursuit - social media stans tend to not share pictures of themselves, opting only to display the celebrity they follow and promote – right-wing conspiracy website QAnon is another example of this. Montell (2021) explains that cult-like behaviour tends to spike during times of socio-political turmoil, where levels of mistrust and anxiety are at a height amongst the public, which we can closely tie to one of Parsons' functions of the church (1937). QAnon is ran by someone only dubbed 'Q', and promotes conspiracies peddled during and after the Trump administration to lay blanket blame at the feet of democratic and leftist elites who, unlike the website distributor, lead public lives. We can understand that a narrative without a face becomes a cause, something that grows exponentially and is hard to pinpoint a counterargument to. In my final dissertation I will further research the psychological causes and effects of being a leader and a follower, investigate the Rainbow Gathering, a commune that is said to have no elected or self-appointed leaders, and delve deeper into the linguistic concept of performativity using examples from works by philosopher Judith Butler.

In this dissertation research report I have laid forth my progressing research into why we have idols in our society and have arrived at the idea that idolatry appears to succeed as a pervasive force during times of hardship. With changing eras, the nature of hardship changes, but the idea of power imbalance stays the same and increases in range of possibility. Narrative is the thing to control above all else; the narrative may be pre-determined and set up what could be a purely transactional relationship between idol and follower. I have learned that symbolism is the most important factor in moral value - material value often takes a backseat as per Lasch's writing. Idols we follow seem to negate the groups we are part of; the ideals they promote are likely something we already individually accept, they have the opportunity to play with our feelings first about our area of interest then possibly anything in our lives.

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