As far back as we have records, heroes have existed.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not just all about Superman, but about Hercules, Aeschylus, Odysseus.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about Joseph and Jesus and Abraham and Mohammed.\u00c2\u00a0 About Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Neil Armstrong, Martin Luther King, Jr.\u00c2\u00a0 In the 21st century, it’s about Arnold Shwarzenegger, Barack Obama, soldiers in the Middle East, Tiger Woods.\u00c2\u00a0 Etc etc etc.\u00c2\u00a0 Heroes are everywhere.\u00c2\u00a0 With them comes this great image about them that is cast far and wide, projecting a perspective of awe and admiration, fear and respect, intimacy and personality.<\/p>\n
Back up… Tiger Woods?\u00c2\u00a0 He who has had countless mistresses and who apparently has a sham of a marriage that was alleged to have been a mere media ploy?\u00c2\u00a0 Hmm…<\/p>\n
I’m not one who is interested in celebrity news.\u00c2\u00a0 Like anyone else, I will admit that yeah, maybe it can be kind of interesting, but typically I don’t even glance at Perez or read the People magazine cover in the grocery line.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m just not that into it.\u00c2\u00a0 But taking a class on journalism has made me become aware of something: the media is a powerful, powerful tool.\u00c2\u00a0 And Tiger Woods is someone who knows just how to use it.<\/p>\n
The thing with Tiger is that everyone is up in arms about him right now.\u00c2\u00a0 But why?\u00c2\u00a0 Because he was Tiger, the untouchable, the unbreakable, undefeatable.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh la la, and lookie here, now he’s the baddd mannn Mommy always warned us about.\u00c2\u00a0 Mmm… maybe.\u00c2\u00a0 People are always drawn to drama, especially celebrity drama, so the hubbub about\u00c2\u00a0 the straying hubby isn’t all that surprising.\u00c2\u00a0 What is surprising, however, is how long this scandal has been kept wrapped up.\u00c2\u00a0 According to my instructor, a journalist herself, the news of Tiger’s busy hands has mostly likely been long known.\u00c2\u00a0 He has so many journalists on his tail everyday, there were countless rumors about certain bars and rooms he frequented for questionable purposes.\u00c2\u00a0 But no one ever reported it.\u00c2\u00a0 Why?\u00c2\u00a0 Because Tiger had essentially built up an empire controlling the sports media– if anyone ever wanted to be in Tiger’s circle, they would never write anything bad about him.\u00c2\u00a0 Once an enemy, always on the blacklist for life.\u00c2\u00a0 And because Tiger was such a big name and thus drew in tons of revenue, no high-aspiring sports journalist would ever report anything negative about the heroic Tiger Woods.\u00c2\u00a0 He had developed a myth about him that created around him an untouchable aura.\u00c2\u00a0 His PR team was gooood.<\/p>\n
Achilles didn’t have a PR Team, neither did Jesus.\u00c2\u00a0 Jackie Robinson rose to fame on his own and Martin Luther King was a preacher.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet, these people all became heroes and mythical figures (in the sense of their power, not that they never existed) and still retain some power in the media today.\u00c2\u00a0 Achilles is in countless translations and editions of The Iliad, Jesus has the Bible, Babe and Jackie still lived in a time where media was used to broadcast sports and thus spread their names to the national listeners of baseball.\u00c2\u00a0 Martin Luther King, Jr.’s sermons and speeches were reported in newspapers and televised.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps they didn’t all have a PR team that possessed the same kind of imperial hold over media, but the fact is that they live today because of and through the media.\u00c2\u00a0 This is how powerful the concept of media, especially mass media, is.\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t it crazy to think about the fact that people who work in and with the media have such a tremendous power over its audience?\u00c2\u00a0 How every choice they make determines the scope of the knowledge received and understood by the public?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a double-edged sword, the media…<\/p>\n
(To be continued next week…)<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
Gabby Park is a thinker who is fascinated by the concept of communication in society and who aspires to one day be someone who actively pursues the acquisition of hidden knowledge.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As far back as we have records, heroes have existed.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not just all about Superman, but about Hercules, Aeschylus, Odysseus.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about Joseph and Jesus and Abraham and Mohammed.\u00c2\u00a0 About Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Neil Armstrong, Martin Luther King, Jr.\u00c2\u00a0 In the 21st century, it’s about Arnold Shwarzenegger, Barack Obama, soldiers in the Middle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":723,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions\/723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}