Role model to rogue
Fame and shame are two sides of the
same coin in a society where you either rise high or fall flat.
During the London Olympics, while the world was celebrating gold, a series of hoardings across London, portrayed a distinctly different message.
So, you had a pole vaulter who, mid-air, found himself facing a demon - but the demon was himself. And a steeple chaser who, not able to beat his competitors, was convinced of a conspiracy that the hurdles have been raised. A sportsman has learned judo through a correspondence course. Victory is suddenly overpowered by human frailty. Success and failure find themselves face to face.
The message in artist Sarnath Banerjee's London project 'Gallery of Losers' could not be more resonant at a time when two of the world's most popular icons - Rajat Gupta and Lance Armstrong - have come crashing down in a manner that could scarcely be imagined. Their rise and fall has raised complex questions about morality, fame, failure and, indeed, the interminably complex human condition.
"People are raised to be like trapeze artistes, trapped in a vicious cycle of winning, and suddenly when they fall, they have to free-fall, " says Banerjee. "We have to teach our children how to fail. "
However, a society raised to applaud achievement, with little room for the grey corners of life, is clearly finding it hard to grapple with the moral dilemmas that accompany these two epic stories. Western ideals of good and bad in a civil society, and Biblical notions of judgment, naturally come to the fore. The media falls back on pithy phrases like 'fame to shame'. And the 'failees' themselves are turned into the bad children who must stand in the corner of the classroom to set an example to the rest.
The question is, will it really stop the rest? Can the human condition be straitjacketed or preempted beyond a point? As long as we live in a society where we valorise victory to such a degree, sometimes even over love and compassion, this is a question that every one must ask. High-achieving sportspersons are treated like demi-gods and companies are quick to swarm around them and get them to endorse colas, cars, candy floss - until they fall. Material success has created its own caste system whose upper echelons are conveniently forgiven all trespasses, whether it is conspicuous consumption or conspicuous misbehaviour.
Therefore, isn't society equally complicit, if not overtly then covertly, in being part of a system which applauds a kind of impossible perfection, asks social commentator Santosh Desai, refering to both Armstrong and Gupta. Today's heroes are really spectacles, meant for the entertainment and consumption of the world. "There is an almost consumptive demand for the heroes to stretch themselves in a way that may not be humanly possible. The very same people that consume your rise, also consume your fall. So, you could argue that the hero in this case had no choice but to try and be more and more heroic. "
Schools are programmed to create toppers. Media is designed to applaud winners. Every thing is hypercompetitive. Getting a child into a good primary school can be as stressful as ensuring that he makes the engineering list or an Ivy League college. As a child psychologist bemoans, suddenly, being average has become a bad word, even though average is good - it's what makes you balanced.
Banerjee, the creator of the Gallery of Losers, says he has spent many years chewing on these ideas of success and failure that are programmed into us from the time we are born. "You spend an entire childhood preparing for an engineering college, then after that a management institute, then the corporate world. Then you get your trophy wife, you eat at the best restaurants. You buy art from other trophy wives. And suddenly, you realise that you don't have an inner universe. So where is love? What about that person who goes off to the US to just study piano tuning? Where does he or she fit into this scheme? You get into a vicious cycle of winning, or what you think is winning, but you are actually losing, losing, losing. "
Indeed, no one can possibly get into the head of Gupta to find out why a man who has spent a lifetime committed to integrity, hard work and philanthropy, needed to add that one more zero to his personal net worth. Or, figure out why a sports hero who survived the emperor of all maladies, and equally committed to charity, would need to lie to achieve the last mile.
It has been interesting to read the reactions to the two stories which range from rational to emotional, positive to negative and sometimes - and appropriately - mixed. When pronouncing Gupta' sentence, New York's Judge Rakoff said, "The history of this country and of this world is full of examples of good men who did bad things... Meaningful punishment is necessary to reaffirm society's need to see justice triumphant. "
Closer home, you have the perhaps more bewildered response of Adhip Bhandary, a Lance Armstrong fan and one of Bangalore's leading soccer coaches, who cycles nearly 40 km each day to get to his various sports camp sites. "Lance Armstrong was the reason I took up cycling. I'm shocked...disappointed is the word. His story was not just about the bike. He was an inspiration, a legend. He gave back to sport and society. I can't believe that a guy who suffered as much as he did and went through all that he did, would do that to his body and to his sport. "
Armstrong, who raised in excess of $500 million for cancer awareness and research, is hardly the first sporting superstar to fall off the pedestal. Athletics lost Ben Johnson in 1988 and the sweet-smiling Marion Jones in 2000. Three years ago Tiger Woods fell off the leader board, following sex and sleaze disclosures from pole dancers to society hostesses. Cricket is interminably rocked by scandal. The 90s saw the much-loved artist-athlete Mohammed Azharuddin slapped with a life ban which was later revoked.
Sports psychologist Dr Chaithanya Sridhar, whose doctoral research paper included a study on emotional labour in team sport, says that Armstrong's case was a classic example of na�ve idolizing - we forget that athletes, although blessed with a spectacular skill set, are also human beings.
"Besides, there's an enormous amount of pressure on the modern-day sportsman. We expect superhuman performances and then blame them for doing whatever it takes to get there. The moment a sportsman raises the bar in performance, you have corporates dancing around him, holding up an illusion, weaving an image, wanting to sell it and with it their products. The media isn't calling it as it is either, rather they're happy to convey the image to fans who, in turn, are quick to lap it up. In the Armstrong case, I can tell from social networking sites that the bulk of the fans aren't really shocked by the revelations. There is a great sense of sadness though among a smaller section of hardcore fans, whose sentiments revolve around association and identity, and are a totally different breed from the social observer, who is beginning to understand that a role model can also be a rogue. "
Mythologist and author Devdutt Pattanaik says that if you really want to be a tolerant society, there can be no room for self-righteousness. "This rise and fall business is a very Western idea. Both these stories are based on rules, and on the transgression of rules, rather than an acceptance of human frailty and of life's many complex and unpredictable variables.
"When Sita broke the rule and crossed the Laxman Rekha, she was not seen as a fallen angel or an evil person. That thought doesn't even cross our mind. The Pandavas gambled away not just their kingdom but their wife, yet they are not considered bad. We even look at Ravana as someone good - and have a desire to treat even villains as part of a larger ecosystem, " he says, refering to media queen Ekta Kapoor's tweet on Dussehra, where she said that this is not the day of Ravana's death, but the day to celebrate his life.
On the other hand, he says, the moral selfrighteousness of the West does not lend itself to contextualising. If you read the Bible, you learn that because David has an affair with a married woman, he is not allowed to build the temple. "Indians tend to take a 360 degree view of people. If India had rules, we wouldn't be such a tolerant nation. Of course, we may take this idea to another extreme which is why no one gets caught for any thing, " he adds.
These days, even schools are realising that making children stand in the corner doesn't really stop them from doing what they will do. The human imperative goes far beyond a school master's cane. There must be a growing understanding that every one has a dark side. That's what they won't teach you at Harvard Business School, but a lesson that the Rajat Guptas and Lance Armstrongs can teach you
During the London Olympics, while the world was celebrating gold, a series of hoardings across London, portrayed a distinctly different message.
So, you had a pole vaulter who, mid-air, found himself facing a demon - but the demon was himself. And a steeple chaser who, not able to beat his competitors, was convinced of a conspiracy that the hurdles have been raised. A sportsman has learned judo through a correspondence course. Victory is suddenly overpowered by human frailty. Success and failure find themselves face to face.
The message in artist Sarnath Banerjee's London project 'Gallery of Losers' could not be more resonant at a time when two of the world's most popular icons - Rajat Gupta and Lance Armstrong - have come crashing down in a manner that could scarcely be imagined. Their rise and fall has raised complex questions about morality, fame, failure and, indeed, the interminably complex human condition.
"People are raised to be like trapeze artistes, trapped in a vicious cycle of winning, and suddenly when they fall, they have to free-fall, " says Banerjee. "We have to teach our children how to fail. "
However, a society raised to applaud achievement, with little room for the grey corners of life, is clearly finding it hard to grapple with the moral dilemmas that accompany these two epic stories. Western ideals of good and bad in a civil society, and Biblical notions of judgment, naturally come to the fore. The media falls back on pithy phrases like 'fame to shame'. And the 'failees' themselves are turned into the bad children who must stand in the corner of the classroom to set an example to the rest.
The question is, will it really stop the rest? Can the human condition be straitjacketed or preempted beyond a point? As long as we live in a society where we valorise victory to such a degree, sometimes even over love and compassion, this is a question that every one must ask. High-achieving sportspersons are treated like demi-gods and companies are quick to swarm around them and get them to endorse colas, cars, candy floss - until they fall. Material success has created its own caste system whose upper echelons are conveniently forgiven all trespasses, whether it is conspicuous consumption or conspicuous misbehaviour.
Therefore, isn't society equally complicit, if not overtly then covertly, in being part of a system which applauds a kind of impossible perfection, asks social commentator Santosh Desai, refering to both Armstrong and Gupta. Today's heroes are really spectacles, meant for the entertainment and consumption of the world. "There is an almost consumptive demand for the heroes to stretch themselves in a way that may not be humanly possible. The very same people that consume your rise, also consume your fall. So, you could argue that the hero in this case had no choice but to try and be more and more heroic. "
Schools are programmed to create toppers. Media is designed to applaud winners. Every thing is hypercompetitive. Getting a child into a good primary school can be as stressful as ensuring that he makes the engineering list or an Ivy League college. As a child psychologist bemoans, suddenly, being average has become a bad word, even though average is good - it's what makes you balanced.
Banerjee, the creator of the Gallery of Losers, says he has spent many years chewing on these ideas of success and failure that are programmed into us from the time we are born. "You spend an entire childhood preparing for an engineering college, then after that a management institute, then the corporate world. Then you get your trophy wife, you eat at the best restaurants. You buy art from other trophy wives. And suddenly, you realise that you don't have an inner universe. So where is love? What about that person who goes off to the US to just study piano tuning? Where does he or she fit into this scheme? You get into a vicious cycle of winning, or what you think is winning, but you are actually losing, losing, losing. "
Indeed, no one can possibly get into the head of Gupta to find out why a man who has spent a lifetime committed to integrity, hard work and philanthropy, needed to add that one more zero to his personal net worth. Or, figure out why a sports hero who survived the emperor of all maladies, and equally committed to charity, would need to lie to achieve the last mile.
It has been interesting to read the reactions to the two stories which range from rational to emotional, positive to negative and sometimes - and appropriately - mixed. When pronouncing Gupta' sentence, New York's Judge Rakoff said, "The history of this country and of this world is full of examples of good men who did bad things... Meaningful punishment is necessary to reaffirm society's need to see justice triumphant. "
Closer home, you have the perhaps more bewildered response of Adhip Bhandary, a Lance Armstrong fan and one of Bangalore's leading soccer coaches, who cycles nearly 40 km each day to get to his various sports camp sites. "Lance Armstrong was the reason I took up cycling. I'm shocked...disappointed is the word. His story was not just about the bike. He was an inspiration, a legend. He gave back to sport and society. I can't believe that a guy who suffered as much as he did and went through all that he did, would do that to his body and to his sport. "
Armstrong, who raised in excess of $500 million for cancer awareness and research, is hardly the first sporting superstar to fall off the pedestal. Athletics lost Ben Johnson in 1988 and the sweet-smiling Marion Jones in 2000. Three years ago Tiger Woods fell off the leader board, following sex and sleaze disclosures from pole dancers to society hostesses. Cricket is interminably rocked by scandal. The 90s saw the much-loved artist-athlete Mohammed Azharuddin slapped with a life ban which was later revoked.
Sports psychologist Dr Chaithanya Sridhar, whose doctoral research paper included a study on emotional labour in team sport, says that Armstrong's case was a classic example of na�ve idolizing - we forget that athletes, although blessed with a spectacular skill set, are also human beings.
"Besides, there's an enormous amount of pressure on the modern-day sportsman. We expect superhuman performances and then blame them for doing whatever it takes to get there. The moment a sportsman raises the bar in performance, you have corporates dancing around him, holding up an illusion, weaving an image, wanting to sell it and with it their products. The media isn't calling it as it is either, rather they're happy to convey the image to fans who, in turn, are quick to lap it up. In the Armstrong case, I can tell from social networking sites that the bulk of the fans aren't really shocked by the revelations. There is a great sense of sadness though among a smaller section of hardcore fans, whose sentiments revolve around association and identity, and are a totally different breed from the social observer, who is beginning to understand that a role model can also be a rogue. "
Mythologist and author Devdutt Pattanaik says that if you really want to be a tolerant society, there can be no room for self-righteousness. "This rise and fall business is a very Western idea. Both these stories are based on rules, and on the transgression of rules, rather than an acceptance of human frailty and of life's many complex and unpredictable variables.
"When Sita broke the rule and crossed the Laxman Rekha, she was not seen as a fallen angel or an evil person. That thought doesn't even cross our mind. The Pandavas gambled away not just their kingdom but their wife, yet they are not considered bad. We even look at Ravana as someone good - and have a desire to treat even villains as part of a larger ecosystem, " he says, refering to media queen Ekta Kapoor's tweet on Dussehra, where she said that this is not the day of Ravana's death, but the day to celebrate his life.
On the other hand, he says, the moral selfrighteousness of the West does not lend itself to contextualising. If you read the Bible, you learn that because David has an affair with a married woman, he is not allowed to build the temple. "Indians tend to take a 360 degree view of people. If India had rules, we wouldn't be such a tolerant nation. Of course, we may take this idea to another extreme which is why no one gets caught for any thing, " he adds.
These days, even schools are realising that making children stand in the corner doesn't really stop them from doing what they will do. The human imperative goes far beyond a school master's cane. There must be a growing understanding that every one has a dark side. That's what they won't teach you at Harvard Business School, but a lesson that the Rajat Guptas and Lance Armstrongs can teach you
Namita Devidayal With Prajwal Hegde | TCR 121027
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