Issue 30: Don't Bother Me, I'm Thinking
By Medulla Vesuvius

The New Archetypes-Part The First: Rock Stars. Including Several Diversions of Various Import and Relevance

I was doing a little cursory reading on the Jungian archetypes-those basic images that we all supposedly carry around in the back of our brains-pictures like “the shadow,” “the child,” and “the old man,” as well as various others. And it occurred to me that I’ve got a couple of them rattling around in my own noggin that I didn’t see mentioned. Granted, just because the following images seem fundamental and primordial to me, it doesn’t mean that they are. Which probably means that they aren’t even archetypal. But I’m going to talk about them anyway. Just try and stop me.

First up—the rock star. In my head at least, this is a basic image that we all share. When someone says the phrase “rock star,” I imagine that everyone creates a picture with some similar traits- a wild, ego-serving, attention-pursuing, hard-living person who gets paid insane amounts of money to perform music. While taking this online quiz I realized that those of my generation grew up with some of the best, most extreme examples. The debauchery and excess of the 80’s “hair bands” like Motley Crue and Poison and groups of their ilk were so legendary and are revisited so frequently today on VH1 that it has ceased to even be interesting any more. You can only hear about Ozzy Osbourne’s snorting ants and Nikki Sixx’s “dying,” and C.C. Deville’s “house of whores/house of horrors,” so many times. After which, these stories no longer even trigger any brain activity.

But I digress.

The point I was making was that everybody knows, I would say even subconsciously knows, what a “rock star” is. So much so, that it is even used in association with its near opposite. Many are the times when I have read about some corporate exec or portfolio manager, a suit and tie-type guy, who is described as “living the life of a rock star,” meaning, supposedly, that they throw large amounts of cash around on big houses, exotic cars, etc. I would posit that this linguistic flexibility is an indicator of just how pervasive the image is.

For a similar phenomenon, look at the usage of the phrase “punk rock.” As a noun, “punk rock” is easy to define- a style of music arising in the late 70’s which emphasized simplicity of musical form, shunned displays of musical technique, and featured loud, distorted guitars usually playing power chords in simple rhythms and utilitarian vocals delivering nonconformist, often antiestablishment lyrics.

But “punk rock” has also been employed as an adjective, which muddies the waters. For example-“the way that guy went streaking across campus to propose to his girlfriend is sooo punk rock.” The argument over whether or not “punk rock is dead” became possible only after the phrase became adjectival.

But I digress again.

I wonder if such a thing as “rock stars” actually exist as they did back in the day or if they are on the decline. Aerosmith. Like “the poor,” it seems we will always have the Aerosmith with us. Same goes for the Rolling Stones. But these are both long-established acts. I wonder if our current pop culture climate is the type of environment in which “rock stars”- sickeningly overpaid, attention-starved personalities can be created. What is the primordial ooze that just needs a little lightning to create rock-star-type life? Myspace? American Idol? iTunes? Does discovering a new musical interest on Myspace or iTunes make you want to pay $35 to go see them live in an arena full of people and enable them to buy that house in Beverly Hills, you know the one? Or is our culture privatizing music to the point where the creator is of little importance? “Just give me a song with a bouncy beat to accompany my slideshow of pics on my blog.”

On one hand, I don’t think we’re quite to the point where outlandishly egocentric, super-sized personalities are of little consequence. I have found that rock stars still exist, they just don’t look like they used to. For one thing, they no longer need the pretense of a music career. The aforementioned “hair bands” were largely products of a wonderful new invention called MTV, which obviously still exists, but has recently been making “rock stars” out of unlikely folks- take for instance your Bam Margeras, your Kristin Cavallaris from Laguna Beach, your Xzibits.

But on the other hand, I am tempted to think that rock stars are a dying breed. I wonder if it is even “cool” to live the excessive, debauched life of Vince Neil anymore? I’m thinking of Bono. Is Bono a “rock star?” The man writes essays for Time magazine, for crying out loud. He’s concerned. There was never a time when the editorship of Time would have courted the opinion of Sebastian Bach, Axl Rose, or Bret Michaels. And rightly so.

And it’s a sad, sad day when the closest thing I can think of to a rock star is Paris Hilton. Where are the new David Lee Roths? Ironically, in the few moments I’ve accidentally landed on one of those Cribs shows on MTV, I have invariably seen people who made their fortunes in the rap industry showing off their mansions and collections of rare angular cars and Hummers and Cadillac Escalades. Maybe we should change the phrase to “rap star.”

However, conspicuous consumption alone does not a rock star make. There is also the “larger than life personality.” The type of person who can step in front of a stadium full of people and effectively, fearlessly perform–not just perform, but make a crowd of people numbering tens of thousands feel connected to each other and to said performer as focal point, to direct a transcendent moment—that type of person is a rock star. That type of buzz is what live rock n’ roll is all about and I daresay that your Paris Hiltons and your average mumbling rap artist on Cribs doesn’t have the goods to deliver.

Regardless of the changing face of “rock stars,” and their less-literal embodiment over the years, it is still an all-pervasive concept, perhaps burned into our psyches. My last question is a chicken-egg type proposition: do we create rock stars to give flesh to the ghost in our heads or is the image only there because of our experience of them on TV and the radio over the years?

Please stay tuned to the next issue in which I will discuss the other new archetype.