The Fall of an Icon

Americans demand the illusion of perfection from their cultural icons. As “cultural saints” who “establish meaningful and practical values for fans” (Laderman) celebrity icons need to maintain the illusion that they are unreachable figures to emulate. Their power comes from the image that these figures present to the world, not the reality of their actual personality. At the same these figures are held up as paragons to aspire to, there is a desire to find out how what sort of likeness the publicly presented icon has to the private image. This helps to explain the prevalence of tabloids focusing on celebrities. They humanize these icons in ways that make them more relatable while emphasizing their nature as secular icons.

Sometimes, learning more about a celebrity icon can actually destroy their image as a “cultural saint.” Lance Armstrong is the perfect example of this. After beating cancer Armstrong won professional cycling’s most prestigious and famous race, the Tour de France
, an unprecedented seven times in a row. Through partnerships with Nike and his own charitable foundation his image was used to help raise hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer research. For his fans Armstrong was an example of that showed adversity could be beaten, incredible things were possible, and charity was the proper reaction to success.

Throughout his professional career Armstrong was followed by persistent allegations that his victories were the result of performance enhancing drug use. Eventually it was determined that Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs, and was stripped of his titles. As a result Nike ended their use of his image, and his charitable foundation changed its name to remove any connection with Armstrong. Fans turned on Armstrong because the revelation of his cheating punctured the icon’s inspirational image. Armstrong went from a positive example of what could be achieved through hard work and dedication to a negative example of what could be lost through dishonesty. The genuine good he did for the as an icon was based on his image, not the object itself.