The recent legal setbacks of a well-known singer, idol of the 90s, raise the question of how public figures conceive and manage their own image with the public.
The person and the artist, white bonnet and white bonnet?
To be precise, more than the affair itself, which I will not return to, these are the reactions of anonymous citizens, in the media or on the social networkswhich caught my attention. A large part of them, attached to the singer’s songs, refuse in the face of accusations to deny the part of themselves that they have put into it over time (emotions, feelings, probable identification, moments of listening considered privileged, etc.).
Their reaction is therefore that of a voluntary retreat, which could be translated as follows: “I do not know this man, what he did or did not do does not concern me, I appreciate his songs, his films and his ability to put words or images to emotions that I feel in my own life. They are two different things.”
This debate has occupied thinkers, but also jurists and politicians, several times over the last century, particularly at the end of the Second World War. We all remember the debates, revived during the Sarkozy era, on the fate that should be reserved for the writings of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, an author considered to be of age by many, and also an open anti-Semite.
The immortal work: the example of Jules Renard
This sometimes schizophrenic complementarity between a human artist, all too human, and his work with a universal, if not immortal, vocation, detached from any biological reality, I had the pleasure of treating it from the artist’s point of view during my thesis work, based on the author Jules Renard.
Indeed, Jules Renard (1864-1910), child of an eminently literary century, had an acute, even disproportionate, awareness of the importance of each word left to posterity: each of them was a stone in the building that he would bequeath to his readers, a living facet of his figure as an author. The biological man, Jules Renard, therefore attempted, particularly within his Journal, to discipline his life to live up to what would survive him, a malleable figure depending on readers and ages.
The different profiles of public figures
Among most of those we call “public figures”, much more numerous today than at the turn of the 20th century, the need for daily image management is assimilated: “I have created a direct channel of communication with a part of public opinion; my fellow citizens (re)know me for a talent or positions that I wanted, on my initiative, to present to them; the information that they will receive about me in the future must therefore remain consistent with what defines me in their eyes.”
If there are almost as many variations of image management as there are public figures, which also evolve over time and ambitions, it remains possible to distinguish several profiles:
- The needy one: his notoriety doesn’t really interest him. He experiences his work or his work as a mission, and the only recognition that counts is that which he gives to himself, based on the achievement of the objectives he has set for himself. The gaze of others sometimes amuses him, flatters him less often, but does not influence him. It’s a necessary step and he accepts it.
- The rebel: he cannot stand being reduced to a label. Conditioned by the conviction of having to remain a misunderstood genius, he blurs the lines, and does exactly the opposite of what is expected of him, hoping that one day, perhaps after his death, we will finally embrace in a single glance the coherence of his converging talents.
- The jaded one: he experiences his notoriety as a burden and dreams of going for a drink on the terrace without being disturbed. He sees it as inevitable that he can no longer go back. He experiences his image management without enthusiasm, and he faces it like others take the metro: because he has to.
- The bulimic: each time we recognize him, his body lavishes him with endorphins and adrenaline. For him, there is no question of it stopping. He is ready to make any compromises (artistic, political, media) to stay in the spotlight. Its activity has no goal in itself, other than to make the front page, buzzor to be the main topic around the coffee machine.
- The disconnected: after years, sometimes decades, of only being around simple mortals ready to faint at his approach, he thinks he is definitely out of reach. Like Trump, he believes that even if he committed a crime, people would still worship him. In this narcissistic vertigo, the sensation of absolute freedom is a mirage that only fades at the expense of those who feed on it.
Create a brand to overcome human constraints
Beyond the specific destiny of the personalities who populate our media, traditional or social, it is interesting to think from this angle about the brands which further structure our societies. By creating a brandwe immediately free ourselves from biological constraints: we are transparent about the consistency of objectives, to sell and convince; we directly aim for timelessness, in the absence of immortality; we talk about values without being dependent on individual behavior.
And yet, different brand management strategies are just as subject to the varieties of approaches discussed above for public figures. Proof, if needed, that man will always create the brand in his image.
