Tiger Woods and the Branding of Public Discourse
Tuesday 15 December 2009
by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
Tiger Woods' golden image is peeling. (Image:Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Keith Allison, Editor B)
On the surface, the Tiger Woods media saga appears to be about the loss of a pristine public image that accompanied the public notoriety and disbelief over the sexual improprieties revealed about one of the globe's most famous athletes. These revelations suggest not only an individual moral failing but also a public betrayal, since Woods has always symbolized the perfect role model for both the American dream and the legions of young people who aspire to greatness. Couched in the theocratic language of shame, sin and betrayal, Woods's sexual transgressions and serial infidelities were initially viewed by the dominant media as a fall from grace, a moral transgression that violated the sacred character of both his media-idealized marriage and the public trust. Within a short time, the mainstream media moved away from simply concentrating on the discourse of sexual infidelity and the celebrity spectacle it fueled, and focused on what appeared to be a much more serious concern - the undermining of Woods's persona as one of the most successful corporate brands in history. For instance, NBC Nightly News with Lester Holmes opened its December 12 prime time newscast with what appeared to be the real issue in the Woods fiasco. According to Holmes, the blue chip companies that invested in the Woods brand were now weighing the risks and rewards of using him as a corporate sponsor. As one marketing executive put it, "Each one has to weigh out the hit they are taking to their brand's long-term benefits."
What is revealed in this shift in emphasis is that Woods's alleged innocence and clean-cut Disneyfied image was nothing more than a manufactured public image that enabled a few powerful corporations to represent him as the perfect brand for a market-crazed culture whose ultimate commodities are celebrities posing as larger-than-life figures. It seems that beneath Tiger Woods's all-American image of the dutiful son, the perfect family man and the star athlete with the squeaky-clean image was a fabricated discourse, persona and identity entirely crafted to deliver audiences into the mindless world of celebrity culture, the rapacious cycle of consumption and the production of waste that propels an all-consuming market-driven society. Woods's moral transgressions did not begin when he violated his wife's and family's trust with his serial philandering: they began when he allowed himself to become "just another pitchman selling himself on television and in backlit displays in airport terminals."[1] Sam Tanenhaus in The New York Times insists that Woods's scandal is largely about the rise of celebrity culture, but this is too easy.[2] The issue is not that celebrity culture inevitably destroys the people it creates, but that it is simply another face of the corruption, greed and commodification that takes place when a society is governed by an economic system that liberates itself from all financial, political and moral constraints. In a society in which impulses rule, morality collapses and self-absorption and greed become the order of the day. What is worse is that people who exemplify these distorted values, especially celebrity athletes, are held up as role models for young people, unscrupulously directing them to the path of a consumer-based identity.
Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/1215092
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