The allure of icons

Turning the ordinary into the legendary

When I think of the great musical icons, I find myself turning to the ’80s. Perhaps it’s the mythical shroud of distance, the status accrued over time, that elevates them so. I think of Prince, Madonna, Freddie Mercury, David Bowie (even if the Ziggy fans – looking at you, Dad – will diligently point out that he really belongs to the ’70s). Everything is big, from the hair to the personalities. Drama is the order of the day. I love the corniness of the age. The artificiality of the music: synth, sax and drum machine; those pounding, catchy rhythms; that inherently poppy, almost sugar-coated quality. It is an era of guilty pleasures. 

If I should ever have children, I wonder if they’ll look back at today’s era with the same glamourising lens through which I look at the ’80s. I don’t know why I find it so intriguing. Perhaps because it’s a decade within touching distance of the one in which I was born, yet it’s just across the divide. It’s the beforetimes. The world looks familiar, but it’s also profoundly different – socially and politically. Unless I find a way to build a time machine, I will never be able to truly grasp it. Admittedly, my memories of the ’90s are hazy, blurred at the edges, and I can’t fully grasp them either. But I know I was there (for the most part, at least). The lights were on, I was making myself at home.

2016, on the other hand, is a year I remember in clear detail. As time has passed, what I recall most strikingly about that annus horribilis is not so much the catastrophic social shifts brought about by Brexit and Trump. Instead, I find myself thinking of the eerie deaths of all those celebrities – a fair few of them icons from the ’80s, including Bowie, Prince and George Michael. I am not a celebrity sort of person, but there’s something to be said about the power of icons. Many of us will remember that strange wave of collective shock and grief, as if we had lost something personal and dearly held. That sense of ownership is, of course, a falsehood. Sociologist Benedict Anderson coined the phrase “imagined communities” to describe the perception of kinship formed by national identities. You could equally apply this to the illusory communities shaped by celebrity culture.

It’s been said that celebrities perform a role previously occupied by religious ritual. They create worlds that spark our imaginations, giving meaning to the ordinary things in life. In doing so, they “shape emotion into drama”. Their songs, deeply embedded within the collective imagination, express some aspect of the universal experience, offering a blueprint of sorts. Is it a coincidence we refer to them as “stars”? We elevate these icons in the way that we might have previously reserved for gods.

When it comes to wine, there are certain bottles that occupy this mythical space too. I’m thinking of the likes of Château d’Yquem, Château Mouton Rothschild, Sassicaia, Petrus. The sort of legendary, long-lived wines that serious collectors dream of acquiring. If you think about it logically, it might seem strange that wine should be fetishised and elevated in this way. It is, on paper, an agricultural product, destined for consumption. Wines are ephemeral in nature. Once a bottle is opened, your window for enjoying it is limited, and the whole experience of savouring it is over so quickly. Unlike the music of the ’80s, an extraordinary vintage of Yquem can’t be enjoyed on repeat. So why do we hold these icons so high?

They are more than just alcohol; they are symbols, representing something more complex – perhaps imaginary – about who we are or who we’d like to be. We want to be part of the stories they tell. Like celebrities, they turn emotion into drama, giving meaning to the ordinary things in life. After all, what could be more ordinary than sitting down to eat and drink with friends? 

In the absence of shared gods, many of us look to icons for assurance. We want to know that we’re part of a bigger story, that we belong to a community of people who share our values and desires – even if it’s an imagined one.