Don’t be Mark Messier.
It’s not heroic to break the hearts of twelve year old kids because you had a bad first period on the ice. Granted, the man was balding and played for the Rangers. But still. The bar is low. Don’t crush the spirit of youth in passing.
Being a someone who spent time in my formative years being a surrogate for complete strangers’ personal journeys is strange indeed and I would love to share a little on the subject for this week’s dispatch from Northern New Mexico where we hide out like Billy in the shadow of the mesa.
The relationship between a public figure and a fan are steeped in a very real, yet false sense of familiarity. My life unfolded in a way that I was afforded the unique perspective of being on both sides of this exchange (as fan and figure).
Obviously, I encountered this phenomenon enough to know, for example, that me as a Mighty Duck meant something very real and personal to many individuals. I am no sociologist, but the best I have come up with as a possible cause for this cultural projection is simply the fact that most of us identify as underdogs in our everyday lives.
It is no mystery that we identify with characters and stories of underdogs who bravely worked together to overcome obstacles - either social-economic, cultural, ablest, racist, or any combination there of - to defeat the ruling class, whether that is comprised of storm troopers for the empire or evil hockey players for Iceland with greasy hair. We pin our hopes on these victories. And Hollywood pumps out these stories because they know we need them. And the legacy of this symbiotic dealio is enshrined in box office smash success tales of against-all-odds victory. It is a fundamental human need to believe that we can achieve victory, too.
Even in our later day capitalist epoch.
Public figures engage in a social contract through this exchange and are unwittingly conscripted into becoming a proxy for many people who need a hero. Many who are thrust into that position often are not informed of how to respond to this role. It requires a sensitivity.
And sensitivity to nuance might not be grouped into the natural skill sets required to make a NHL warrior. Hence why Mark Messier is a prick.
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