{ 2 bars + 3 stars }

Associated Press photo (undated)

Images of scandalized celebrities: such are what we’ve apparently reduced ourselves to, at least in terms of our lowest-common-denominator cultural obsessions. So be it; a snug fit with the rest of our national decay (government, health care, education, economy, etc.). And we shouldn’t care less, at least not at this stage of the game. But the pseudo-academic analysis of what these images allegedly mean, on the other hand, should make us bristle. According to culture-critic Philip Kennicott, writing today in WaPo regarding images of Tiger Woods appearing in current media, “the Tiger Woods of Vanity Fair is showing the demons that the Tiger Woods of National Enquirer will have to exorcise. Or so it seems when isolated images are placed near each other, and then fused into new meanings by the white-hot glare of a scandalous story.” (Emphasis added.) What utter claptrap.

First, understand that Woods posed for Leibovitz in 2006, from atop his then ample, if not seemingly limitless plateau of perfect corporate symbolism. Absent the sex scandal, her images would be ironic (i.e., the viewer would never expect that a publicly embraced athlete exercises, in private, wearing the menacing garb and expressions of gansta/thug culture). The Enquirer photo, meanwhile, was snapped by paparazzi camped outside the gate of a sex-addiction clinic where Woods is rumored to be an inpatient. The former is a cameo appearance in the vast work of a contemporary portrait photographer. The latter, if indeed it’s of Woods, would be an invasion of privacy on the order of first-degree assault, were it not for freedom of press under the First Amendment. How can a critic like Kennicott find meaning in their juxtaposition? By pretending that these “isolated images” are somehow connected (“fused”) by our obsession with the subject, when in fact their only common trait is the appearance of Woods (involuntarily, of course, in the Enquirer photo). Everything else that he writes that’s dependant on this demonstrably false assumption is fallacious.  It’s like assuming the moon is made of cheese and then going on to explain to geophysics students how its composition affects the tides.

Second, Kennicott, it seems based on his writing about Wood’s pre-scandal image, was never an elite athlete:

[Woods,] seen at the end of his stroke, staring over his shoulder, eyes focused in the distance on the ball. It was the perfect image for a man who made a huge living off corporate endorsements. It suggested two things with which any corporation would love to be associated: vision and effortlessness. When other athletes might grimace or show facial strain, Tiger was impassive, confident, with his eyes on the prize.

The image of Woods, as described by Kennicott, was not a pose struck for the sake of photographers. It’s what any golfer (or athlete) looks like when s/he drives a golfball (or performs his/her athletic feat) masterfully. When Woods drives the ball, the thought furthest from his mind is “the image of this drive will please my corporate endorsers.” Muscle memory (i.e., what produces athletic perfection) is about losing consciousness at the crucial moment of performance, as if the body were a machine, or at the very least, a biological vessel whose soul is momentarily evacuated. The idea that Wood’s pre-scandal iconicity (i.e., the image of the best golfer the world has ever seen doing naturally what he does best) was somehow a commodity of his own conscious design, to be sold to the highest bidder, is absurd.

I nonetheless understand where Kennicott is coming from — if not sympathize with him. The world chokes on an unending portfolio of celebrity image. Someone has to at least try to makes sense of it all. But we should stop when we have to ignore reality in order to do it.