Sporting games, like entertainment celebrities, arouse great passions and even obsessions, in a complex psychological mix of de-individuation, identity and fixation. JP/J.Adiguna
Back in ancient times, idolatry, rooted in pagan rituals of worshipping images, ideas, or objects that distracted human attention from the monotheistic God, was considered a punishable act.
Today, idolatry is a driving force behind the modern economy, pointing our global attention toward brands, popular cultures and celebrities.
In Indonesia, the well-oiled machine of pop culture is fueling the fan bandwagon, with devoted followers of such stars as Luna Maya and Sandra Dewi carefully following their every moves.
And fans come out in force whenever one of their objects of adoration leave this world for the great upstairs.
“Ruby” was fi xing her favorite lunch — a grilled tomato sandwich topped with melted Swiss cheese — when the small radio on the kitchen counter fi zzed with temporary staticbefore a local newscaster reported Michael Jackson’s death from cardiac arrest.
The day was June 25, 2009, arguably the darkest day in Ruby’s life — according to her, anyway.
“Michael Jackson is dead!” she had wept to a friend over a long-distance call. Ruby was by then seated in her living room in Boston, Massachusetts, staring bleary-eyed at the television screen where images of Jackson’s Holmby Hills home were captured on camera, a cordless phone in one hand. Between sobs, she muttered quietly under her breath: “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”
What Ruby felt — a feeling shared by millions of Jackson fans — was great loss.
The tributes that poured in after Michael Jackson’s death demonstrated how the bond between a celebrity and their fans can be as real as any personal bond. AP/Chris Pizzello
Although such attachment may appear senseless to many people, psychologically, interpersonal bonding between media celebrities and their fanbase is as real as the bond shared between siblings, lovers, and best of friends.
“Fanaticism has to do with the search for identity,” writes Maira Purwan, a psychologist who specializes in abnormal psychology, in an email. “It’s the projection of one’s ideals toward an external factor, be it human beings, works of art, ideas, ideology, et cetera. Young people, especially, are highly susceptible to the whole concept of fanaticism because they are looking to belong to something, somebody.”
Yet Maira adds that fanaticism doesn’t end with rites of passage. After all, teenagers aren’t the only ones drooling over celebrity pinups; and everyone knows it takes more than raging hormones to write elaborate love letters addressed to PO Boxes around the world originally set up with the sole purpose of separating teddy-bear-hugging-fans from the stalkingpandering-hysterical fanatics.
“There are a few stages of fanaticism,” says Maira. “The more fi xated a person is on his or her focal subject [s], the less grounded they will be in reality. It’s a type of degenerative psychosis, really.”
In some cases, it isn’t rare for some people to change their lifestyle just to give credence to an unwavering devotion. Even so, Maira believes that, with a few exceptions, most celebrity fans are generally harmless and able to control themselves enough not to cross the limit.
Sports fans, however, operate on an entirely different level.
Major sporting events around the world are notable in the way that they often end in mayhem. Familiar scenes include shrieking fans committing acts of vandalism and motoring a dangerous mob — charged by a shared passion that somehow allows them to behave outside of their normal behavioral spectrum.
A study led by Christian End, a psychologist who studied the specifi c behavioral pattern of a sports fan at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, concludes that when people are gathered together in a crowd, their individuality diminishes, a process that he recognizes as “de-individuation”.
“Face painting, at the stadium, is socially acceptable,” says End, as quoted by The National Geographic News in 2008. “People yell things that they defi nitely wouldn’t be yelling in the boardroom, or if their name and home phone number were available.”
The larger the crowd, the more disruptive it becomes.
Understanding the modern day idolatry phenomenon means looking beyond the actions and reaching deep into the underlying obsession that often cements this type of non-relationship between individuals and their objects of infatuation.
Maira confi nes fanaticism to the search for identity, but surely not all fanatics are without identity — and who’s to say that the hundreds and thousands of people who mob the Wembley Stadium every year after a heated football game have no sense of individuality?
According to Sigmund Freud — one of the pioneering psychologists to explore the idea of “obsession” or “fi xation” — humans are more than capable of developing psychological attachment to subjects (people), objects (materials) and intangibles (ideas, ideology) due to either lack of gratifi cation during their developmental stages, or the receipt of unforgettable impressions from one of these stages that would later form his or her understanding of self.
So the search for identity is a part of it; but mostly it has to do with individual perceptions — which is something that brand executives have been tapping into since the advent of product advertising.
Human fi xations on material things may be less intriguing than those they project onto people, ideas, and ideology, as these latter ones are those that usually garner the most attention and greatest reactions. But whether or not the world realizes it, human fi xations on material things have been driving the global economy for ages.
Think of a well-known brand, and find the obsession.
“What’s contradictory is that we think of obsession as an illness,” writes Maira. “A psychological fl aw — but if it were the case, then I think we all have it. Because we constantly demonstrate the symptoms.
“However, I’d like to draw a fi ne line between obsession and madness — obsession is when you can never get enough of something, madness is when you act on that feeling.”
On July 4, 2009, nine days after Michael Jackson was declared dead at UCLA Medical Center in California, more than 1.6 million people vied for tickets to the legendary King of Pop’s memorial. No less than 400,000 people crowded into the Staples Center where the memorial was held, chanting some of Jackson’s many hits released over the years, such as “Billie Jean”, “Man In The Mirror”, or the early favorites like “I’ll Be There”.
Ruby had thought of fl ying across the country to attend Jackson’s memorial service and join the 400,000 other fans who paid tribute to the late singer. But then she thought better of it — and decided to stay home.
“I love Michael Jackson, he’s my hero,” says Ruby. “But, you know, we’re not exactly friends.”
