There is a world of distance between the case of filmmaker Carlos Vermut, that of Dani Alves and that of the two tiktokers accused of raping minors by attracting them with their popularity, but in the process of re-victimization that has accompanied the complaints, they have been accused of the same thing, of the same thing as always, of being groupies or climbs.
Cinema, literature, art, journalism, sports, science. Some of the most misunderstood abuses happen in worlds that breathe a strong epic and where talent (creative, intellectual, communicative, physical) is romanticized, I would say even above power and money. I never tire of citing the idea of the essayist Remedios Zafra: the cultures of certain attractive professions serve to ensure an infinite pool of applicants in a position of weakness. This usually translates into precariousness, but the transfer of power also manifests itself in other ways.
Those who are inside are the most interested in perpetuating the halo special of these jobs because in a certain way it benefits them, while the members of the base of the pyramid need the strength that this fantasy gives them to try to gain access, perpetuating an unconscious system of ideas that is difficult to break. Its archetypes—the Hero, the Leader, the Artist, the Rebel, Mercury, Prometheus—are so effective that they have been with us for centuries.
It is possible that I am wrong, and that we know more about these cases because they attract our narrative-consuming brains, and a Weinstein from the cinema interests us more than a Weinstein from the notaries. But an old pattern may also be repeating itself in the new digital environments that fascinate young people today. In Spain, one in three teenagers would like to dedicate themselves to creating content on the internet.
When fame and admiration come into play, protective barriers fall because familiarity creates trust: if I have been listening to you for months and watching your videos, it is as if we knew each other, even more so if we have exchanged a message or payment for your work. The asymmetry of certain digital relationships causes a popular predator to multiply your reach, detecting his targets as if they were bleeding from an open wound in a sea of sharks. In the logic of networks, highly connected nodes can have a perverse effect on isolated individuals. The opaque policies of the platforms do not help either, nor the existence of micro-niches where a person can be extremely popular among certain groups and ages and go under the radar of the rest.
We all admire someone for something. But for a young girl, especially if she is sensitive to creative worlds with a strong mystique, it is vital to kill her idols early, the sooner the better, as a matter of survival. Not to be muses, not to be fans, not to get carried away by the epic of music or writing or YouTube, to be suspicious of narratives that have not been created in its favor, but on the contrary. Being able to build your own myth and get into Hitler's bathtub like Lee Miller. That is why the pending work of rescuing feminine mythologies from the past is so important, something that, for example, the authors of the podcast cultural Weekly Deformed.
Younger Generations Should Thank Feminists millennials the warning—flee from anything that smacks of a hero or an artist or a tormented, misunderstood rebel—but they still run the risk of being seduced by harmful new old archetypes.
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