Why do we demonize certain celebrities and let others off the hook? Are we casting them as villains? Do they give us much of a choice in some cases? Critic Chuck Klosterman took an exhaustive inventory of evil in pop culture for his new collection of essays I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined). Tune in for Klosterman's talk with Think host Krys Boyd at 1 p.m.
In one essay, Klosterman compares the public's view of Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with the consensus on O.J. Simpson. Each took a different road - and speed - into bad guy territory. Often, Klosterman posits, how figures respond to vilification by their audiences usually makes them even less believable:
There is a collective expectation that celebrities — and especially black celebrities — will calibrate their relationship to the public within a specific window of acceptable exposure. They will not be too private or too public. The size of the window is different for every person, but it always (somehow) exists. And if a celebrity drifts outside that space — in either direction, and for any purpose — that (somehow) validates whatever people believed about them in the first place.
You can ponder the full excerpt thanks to Grantland.
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