Who's Icon?

I was watching a very well-made show last night called Homeland. It is another American story of their continued "war with Terrorism", it is told very well and it is very gripping. But yet again it only continued to remind me of how irritating American values can be. It is a show that also prescribes to the idea of America being a faultless entity when it comes to world-politics, the horror of the 9/11 attacks is held over your head continually as an Icon of 'American Freedoms' & 'American Values', that to be honest puts a bit of a sour taste in y mouth. I do not mean to trivialise that which is obviously a blight on the record of all humane people, but I realised that the Icon of Ground Zero & 9/11 had a very little impact on my world views. As I delved more into this thought pattern I started to think about things closer to home. Nelson Mandela is a universal Icon of triumph over oppressors, he is the face of the South African Liberation Movement, a man who faced a lifetime of hate and yet was still able to find the love needed to help guide a young nation to its feet. He is a great man, however as I interrogated all that is Madiba vs Apartheid I realised I have very little room to start preaching anything about this man. He is an Icon whose impact mostly washed on the personalities of my predecessors. I cannot claim to have watched a mans fight against the system finally come to the fore and he succeeds, I cannot claim to know completely what it means to become free as I was never not free. I realised that as much as me & my peers idolise an incredible human being, we should rather idolise the idea that he represents.

Thus I descended into more thought of how different Icons (Good or Bad) have shaped the history of our world forever. Mahatma Gandhi was the man who led India to a non-violent Independence from Britain. He represents absolute serenity with ones being in order to provide serenity to the world. Another great man.
Or when I think of Adolf Hitler, the Austrian born German politician who became Dictator of Nazi Germany. He was the center of WWII and of the Holocaust. He was considered unstoppable as a leader & is still known to be one of the best propaganda artists to have ever spoken. A great man, an EVIL man, but still great.

And as I sift through more and more of these type of people, from Malcolm X, Winston Churchill, Walter Sisulu, Anne Frank and the list goes on and on, I find myself saying the same things as above, these are not my Icons. Their ideals and what they represented, most definitely, but them as Icons in my life, no.

I realised that for me I idolised very, very different Icons. I refuse to see people like Julius Malema as the defining character of modern South African Politics. I cannot accept that our president says & does things as if the rest of us are a bunch of monkeys trying to mock him. These cannot be the people that define our period, MY period in history. They have neither the supreme stature of Martin Luther King nor the nefarious nature of Moussolini. However I also realise that my imagination runs away with me and the people I seek in reality are now manifested in fiction. Some of the icons of my mind range from clowns out of movies to paupers from books. Ram Mohammad Thomas is a character from a book called Q & A by Vikas Swarup, he starts off as a homeless child in India and soon becomes one of India's richest people, after he wins a reality show. Th book was very quickly turned into the blockbuster Slumdog Millionaire, a story of a simple man with more than simple ideas and aspirations. He is driven by his love for a young girl, which he uses to change his world forever.
I am a die-hard fan of Christopher Nolan's Batman movies, and so the characters are some of my favourite people ever. The Joker has a passion for Chaos, Bane a yearning for Evil to rise and Ra's al Ghul the ambition to rule the world. Above them hovers the Dark Knight, Batman, whose sole purpose in life is to thwart their progress and re-instill the fighting spirit within the people of Gotham city. It is this singular fact that one man believes he can change the world that makes it so enticing. Nelson Mandela believed it, Gandhi too, so why is it beyond belief that I can find my Utopian driven ideals within the frames of cinema or the pages of a book. What Govan Mbeki represented to the comrades of the ANC, they represent for me. These are my Icons, they are no better and no worse than other peoples icons, but I think its time we re-assess how much faith we place in Icons that we can never truly relate to as their time and their struggle were before me, but their image and their message is timeless.

So do not judge me when I say I may not really care what happens to Nelson Mandela. Judge me when I say I care about how his & Batman's ideals are the same and must live forever within our hearts.

And yes I know I did not spell the title correctly.