Understanding Idols in Art and Society

Title: Understanding Idols inArt and Society

Author: R.L. Taylor

Publication Year/Date: May 2024

Document Version: Fine Art Hons dissertation

License: CC-BY-NC-ND

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ncnd/4.0/

DOI:

Take down policy:

https://doi.org/10.20933/100001303

If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.

Abstract

I aim to understand the advent and persistence of idols in our society. To uncover the importance of idols, I will examine sociomoral groups and the choices they inform, using sociological, symbolic and psychological frameworks as a foundation to compare Caravaggio and Gentileschi’s versions of Judith and Holofernes, then examiningAndres Serrano’s Immersion (Piss Christ) (1987), all containing idolatrous references. In dissecting these works we must understand their narrative and the furore that follows them. Much of this furore was due to perceived vulgarity and weaponisation of shame: two concepts I believe are part of our everyday lives, whether we actively perform and share them or not. From here, I will explore schismatic culture wars present in creative media, referencing the impact of musical performers Taylor Swift and Lizzo, highlighting Christopher Lasch’s work on the subject of narcissism to extract understanding of sociomoral allegiance and evaluating the need for escapism amongst the public, who follow idols with varying levels of devotion. This research area is inextricably tied to my studio practice, both areas cross and drag each other towards resolution. I see religion as an arena to explore in forming narrative in my work and research, likely due to the astounding lack of ritual in my own life. Time is an important aspect of my argument as understanding trend is relevant to the future. When we understand and possibly solve the collective desire for escapism, we reach an exalting conclusion.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to both of my advisors in my graduating year, DrAnna Notaro and Professor Calum Colvin, for your listening and deciphering skills with your invaluable insights, also for keeping me working and thinking realistically in tandem with dissertation and degree show. My previous advisors and lecturers; Iain Sturrock, Mark Wallace,Adam Lockhart and most definitely Rachel McBrinn for your tireless motivation to help me reach this point.Ally and Paul for chances that I hadn’t earned. My parents for your unwavering backing.All of my amazing friends on the course for withstanding my intimidatingly good celebrity impressions. Lovisa, for all your patience and everything else.

Aside from referenced works, I have been hugely aided in writing this dissertation by closely reading Mary Douglas’ Purity and Danger, Olivia Laing’s Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency and Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed

List of figures – Version with figures available upon request

Chapter 1

Figure 1: Gérard De Lairesse, The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple, 1674.

Chapter 2

Figure 2: Caravaggio, Judith Beheading Holofernes, 1599 (approx.).

Figure 3:Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, 1612-13.

Figure 4:Andres Serrano, Immersion (Piss Christ), 1987.

Chapter 3

Figure 5: Survey Center onAmerican Life, Gen Z’s Unique Teen Experiences, 2023.

Figure 6: Gallup Report – page 6, Negative Experience Index, 2017.

Introduction

The aim of this dissertation is to understand the advent and persistence of idols in our society, comparing narrative in classical and contemporary art and media to those present in Christianity and the sociomoral groups it has influenced. In a world where increasingly more people feel disenfranchised and removed from power (Summers, Acovino, Intagliata, 2023; Wike, Silver, Castillo, 2019), I believe it is important to understand why we make the choices we make and how power is gained over groups of people in society. Through examining sociomoral groups, some standing in stark opposition to each other, I argue we can better understand the human condition. I aim to shed light on the mysterious distance between the moral responsibility of an individual and the collective, and how vulgarity has been utilised as a method of promotion of idols, whether transparently or not. Following Stolnitz’s argument (1984), I will not attempt to separate the art from the artist. Instead, I take the standpoint that any major event in our professional or personal lives will undoubtedly affect the other: this is even more likely in the case of the idol; their level of fame will impact every facet of their being in immediate and trajectorial ways. Due to this being my area of investigation, most of those I refer to will be of the more prominent names in their respective fields.

In Chapter 1 I will detail the etymology of the word “idol,” linking this to Christianity in its most micro form: the Ten Commandments. This will lead to explaining Christianity’s subsequent power to form community while shaming those who do not meet the moral expectations imposed by the church using Parsons’functional requirements. I will give room to Parsons’influence by Weber’s theory of adoption of Protestantism to continue a thread throughout the study, where convenience is central in influential decisions of idols. I will compare Parsons’theory to Geertz’s view of religion as unification, linking the latter’s work with experiments conducted by psychologist Tafjel into how followers can be made obedient

with only arbitrary information, introducing the concept of narrative control. By applying these frameworks from the 20th century, I aim to use these separate waves to form a foundation for understanding the weaponisation of shame that permeates our current society.

In several of these examples, I point to the use of artworks as a potential method of influencing the viewer, or follower.

In comparing Caravaggio and Gentileschi’s idolatrous depictions of Judith and Holofernes in

Chapter 2, I discuss the personal lives of both artists, highlighting events that are key to their illustrious standing. The social scientific frameworks explored in the previous chapter are key to understanding the frenzy around these works and the works themselves – we can use these iconic artworks to better understand how contemporary culture has formed. I will go on to discuss idolatry in contemporary art with photographerAndres Serrano’s Immersion (Piss Christ), comparing his andAndy Warhol’s polarising, iconic places in media to segue into exploring factional moral allegiance in Chapter 3.

Here I will apply Lasch’s work to dissect narcissistic qualities in media used in aid of celebrity culture and widespread society. This will be paired with psychological studies to comment on the dizzying effect of increased media demand, isolation amongst young people and hypocritical public statements of morality. I will explore the parasocial relationship in fan and stan cultures, referencing Taylor Swift’s idol status and Lizzo’s nuanced position in progressive circles, contrasting positive and negative impacts for both celebrity and follower, linking this to factional moral battles all over contemporary art currently. Lastly, leaning on previous sections of this chapter on media around celebrity and contemporary art, I will explore cult and conspiracy groups, using Montell’s argument that language is the most pervasive tool, referencing Klein’s pragmatic approach to deciphering reasoning behind group membership.

I will then summarise my findings, pointing to our perceived necessity of escapism by the public, that this is the power of the idol, where they can interject and re-route us to the empty destination of subscription.

Chapter 1 – Formation

We can track the etymology of the word “idol” to the Greek “eídōlon”, most closely translated to the word “image” and derived from “eîdos” meaning “shape and form” (Oxford, 1993). Judeo-Christian understanding of the idol, or idolatry, is the worship of someone or something other than God as if they or it were God. This is taken directly from the first of Ten Commandments; “you shall have no other gods before me” (The Holy Bible: Exodus 20:35). This commandment coming before any others could be understood as a means of gaining absolute control over the followers of Christianity. This is a direct statement from God, instilling a strict sense of prioritisation of his word, and his word only, by believers. Before any of the other expectations of the followers of Christ can be divulged, this must be accepted and adhered to, limiting those followers in questioning other details of their involvement. From this, we notice a clear power structure and consider levels of potential shame in relation to how closely an individual follows, otherwise known as devoutness.

In The Structure of Social Action (1937), sociologist Talcott Parsons sets forth his theory of functional requirements that a religion uses to separate followers from non-believers. I will detail and relate these functions to how a church could use artworks to communicate specific ideals to followers to strengthen the bond between the religion’s idol and follower; I do so on the basis that the link of church and state still permeates contemporary society. I will link to these findings later in Chapter 3, demonstrating how similar methods are used in pop culture in the present day.

Parsons’first function is socialisation of the followers by the church, to instil a sense of decency and faith through following the moral code set forth in the Bible. This acts as an internal set of additional rules which the followers must obey to go beyond what is expected of non-believers under law. This function creates an immediate atmosphere of othering the

rest of the indecent world from the followers.Aclear sense of right and wrong is instilled by this narrative achieved and maintained by those working within the church, emboldening the exclusive morality they teach. Different denominations have various levels of encouragement to followers for spreading the word of God outside church.An effective way agents of the church would achieve this historically was by commissioning paintings, often gigantic works depicting tales of canonical moments in Christianity, often wars and schisms that shaped the religion as followers experience it, with magnified drama and heroism, creating a euphoric sense of gratuitous beauty. Followers are therefore motivated by an insistence in the supernatural (at the end of their lives to receive the ultimate reward or punishment), yet again, separating them from the non-believers. In summary, this function suggests that we are judged based on what we are deemed to publicly believe, performed by our following and promotion of these values.

The second function Parsons highlights is the church’s ability to help followers adapt to change, explaining this ability in relation to difficult periods of a follower’s life. Of the events we attend in a church over our lives, funerals will likely be a recurring one. While the church acts as an agent of rituals, which may be said to ease the pain of losing someone close, we could also see the first function limiting the follower’s ability to grieve in an individual and possibly erratic way. Here the church could balance the emotional tone of the shown artworks, with an artist such as Caravaggio, who opted to paint the lowly. The church commissioned Caravaggio to offer a sense of stoicism amongst followers and socially engineer the masses to Catholicism – I will better detail Caravaggio’s relationship with the church in Chapter 2.

Parsons’third function argues that religion offers a sense of purpose to its followers. This intrinsic feeling promotes the narrative of their belief as an objective truth, in opposition to any other possibility promoted by another religion or agency parading alternative idolatry.

The key characteristic of this function is consistency. Unlike the short-term coaching approach of the previous two functions at the start of a person’s following or during significant hardship, this function may be more challenging to maintain over a long time, therefore the church may attack other beliefs and denominations. This could question the commitment or devoutness of the followers, offering a test: how far will you go to aid our mission? This function could be administered by the presence of idolatrous artworks which convey both a divine aura and a harsh, sordid atmosphere simultaneously, offering depictions of extremes to those hoping to uphold moral behaviour.An example of an artwork that could be deployed to distinguish devoutness is The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple; Gérard de Lairesse’s 1674 version, a dramatic, clear separation of the holy and devoted sternly upholding the material security of their faith, after Heliodorus was sent to rob their treasures (The Holy Bible: 2 Maccabees 3). This long-term function is therefore a chance to create groups distinguished by their devotedness from the hardcore followers who consistently promote their beliefs to a fundamental degree, to those who more casually believe and seek support from the community at a time of their choosing. The latter, subsequently, are prone to being shamed by the former.

Parson’s functions demonstrate the power of Christianity as a tool of moral and logical reasoning by its promoters and followers. The functions can also be compared to “the Protestant work ethic,” derived most closely from the Bible’s 2 Thessalonians 3:10, characterised by humbleness and stoicism (Cloud, 2016). Working in individual silence stands in opposition to the imagery of Catholicism, which promotes action within the church and togetherness. Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930) records the explosive enterprise of Protestantism across Northern Europe, amongst a population that followed different religions or were secular. Weber states that religion has the power to form social change and encourage a sense of stability, herein we see a direct

influence on Parsons (Cohen, Hazelrigg, Pope, 1975). To understand Weber’s theory, we must see the dissonance in the attitude towards work in Protestantism (a calling elected to temporarily secede other responsibilities) and Catholic teachings (repentance for sins by service to others) throughout the region during this period (Bell, 1996). Therefore, followers may pick and choose teachings of the religion they follow, opting to take a more individualistic approach that suits their personal situation in the context of social mobility.

Parsons’contemporary, anthropologist Clifford Geertz, sees the communication of religion differently, as symbols that are made to motivate followers into shared existence. Geertz argues that an air of factuality is imposed by promoters of the religion as a social code, and who in their right mind would act in opposition to factuality? This can be tied to the use of artworks when applying Parsons’third function (1937): colossal paintings in churches, offering maybe the only grandiose environment a follower would experience, including lifesize figures, tales of divine intervention, war, all-consuming events diverting their own history. In The Interpretations of Culture (1973), Geertz applies thick description theory, earlier coined by Gilbert Ryle (1968), arguing that larger aspects of a culture can be understood from small signifiers throughout, often mundane activities.

In his essay Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight (1972), Geertz uses the example of a literal cockfight, an activity outlawed in the new republic, seen as backwards and overly ritualistic. He notes that most living in smaller traditional villages continued to partake in this tradition, despite occasional punishment; during a visit from the authorities Geertz decided to resist and evade arrest, endearing him to the locals who had previously seen him and his colleagues as outsiders. He states that the cockfights he attended were in actuality a dramatic ritual of local social and political happenings – a way for the locals to earn bragging rights and favour of elders in the village – a symbol of management of social order where otherwise inconsequential happenings can go on to create a punishment of shame.

I will now introduce an example of how in-grouping is utilised without explicit connotation to religion. Psychologist Henri Tajfel is best known for developing Social Identity Theory.As described by Leaper (2011), Social Identity Theory is how we perceive ourselves as part of a group, or a shared identity we have with those with the same presets, such as race, nationality, gender, or sexuality, as ourselves. This relates to Geertz’s work (1972), where somewhat arbitrary acts and in-jokes form subtle dialogue amongst communities; gossip also plays part in building narrative of varying honour in a community (Gottfried, 2019).

Tajfel’s experiment (1970), described by Michael Bond in Fans (2023, pp. 13-15), involved firstly showing a number of circles to a group of teenage boys and asking them to guess the number. The group was divided into two subgroups based on whether they over- or underestimated the number – the correct number of dots was not shared with participants, all offered was an offhand comment such as “some people tend to overestimate.” Next, participants were asked if they preferred Kandinsky or Klee paintings. Tafjel’s aim was to take something as inconsequential as guessing the number of dots or subjective preference to show how easy it was for intergroup discrimination to take place, and to show that grouping can occur by arbitrarily labelling participants as members of groups – the experiment also included a financial reward the participants could give out at the end. Tafjel’s study highlights how labelling based on perceived identity and someone who portrays confidence in a position of authority occurs. The result of the dot study was that over-estimators were far more likely to give the available reward to their fellow over-estimators, with the same results in the under-estimator group. The same results persisted with the painting preference test; of those who chose Kandinsky, most chose not to award Klee fans anything, and vice-versa. This flimsy approach can be wider applied to art and media, where sociomoral grouping is a key agent in the formation of trends, decisive of the artist’s success. I will explore this in more detail in Chapters 2 and 3.

Tajfel’s experiments back up Stanley Milgram’s famous obedience tests (1963); although, it should be noted that the experiments have been disputed for not being replicable (McLeod, 2023; Orne & Holland, 1968). Both Tafjel and Milgram experienced personal tragedy due to the Holocaust and wanted to understand how people could carry out such horrors on others.

Both aimed to discover how groups perform under varying forms of pressure, both offering a small financial reward, both with a vague narrative laden throughout – displaying that moderate discomfort, physical or social, can heavily influence and prejudice our allegiances

Judith’s murder of Holofernes, from the Book of Judith, has been depicted by canonical artists – Michaelangelo, Botticelli, Goya, Klimt – I will now compare the versions of this scene by Caravaggio and Gentileschi, linking their work to their personal lives.

Caravaggio’s work and career was marked by the struggle between secular and pious imagery and narrative (Thomas, 2016), consistently depicting events from the Bible and idolatry promoted by Christianity. “One way of looking at Caravaggio’s paintings is to focus negatively on the gulf between humanity and divinity, as seen in his protagonists’ incomprehension… the same pictures reveal astonished humans at the moment when they recognise spiritual truth…” (Thomas, 2016, pp. 110). Caravaggio is arguably one of the most celebrated painters of all time, in the baroque or naturalist genre, deploying methods of chiaroscuro: strong contrast between dark and light with uneven shadows over the rest of the composition - and tenebrism: dramatic illumination of the subject with the rest of the composition much less visible (Heckman, 2021).

His highly dramatic scenery, using lowly subjects like beggars and prostitutes, the othered, stands apart from that of his contemporaries, many of whom depicted what is to be expected of holy imagery. Caravaggio’s work is said to have inspired poor Catholics back into the church after the Protestant reformation (Molcard, 2019). His work can be viewed as attempting to understand the human condition (Predota, 2021), with memento mori symbols laden throughout his canon in an exploratively vulgar form. Here is a suitable place to introduce the concept of vulgarity I will continue to refer to, traced from the Latin ‘vulgus,’ defined as “the common people” (Oxford, 2023), the unsophisticated, anonymous otherinsignificant peasants the church requires for due support. Furthermore, Caravaggio’s colourful life and long police record (Sooke, 2016) are argued to take confessional form in

his work (Burton, 2023); for crimes such as murder and possibly homosexuality (Jones, 2013), with the reason of his banishment by the Catholic authorities and subsequent fleeing to Malta a debatable culmination of the two, with age-related concerns in his depictions of Bacchus and Boy With a Basket of Fruit (1593).

In Caravaggio’s version of Judith Beheading Holofernes (approx. 1599), Judith is noticeably young and timid, her facial expression conveying a feeling of instant regret; the motion of her dress and shape of her wrist on the hand holding the sword suggest she is about to recoil away from the incident. The older maid, Abra, appears very different from Judith. On the scene’s far right she has just arrived to clean up the mess, suggesting she did not take active part in the beheading – her facial expression initially seems vengeful towards Holofernes; when considering her placement in the composition she comes across more startled than vindicated by the incident. Holofernes appears surprisingly majestic and calm, barely moving from his, assumedly, sleeping position, with highly defined muscles - all elements of his depiction point to stereotypical elements of masculinity: regal, collected, strong. Further, we might see each figure individually, and perceive possible relationships between them: noble man - demure, regretful, young, beautiful woman quite tenderly holding the hair of the man she is killing – distant, small, old, haggard, scared woman, othered as a servant. This work can definitely be attributed to the male gaze: even at his ultimate demise, the man holds power over the women in sight and after his virtuous martyrdom, his powerful legacy proceeds, he always wins. From biographical understanding of Caravaggio and his misdeeds, we can link his personal guilt to the expressive guilt in figures throughout his works, most notably in The Beheading of St John the Baptist (1608) and David with the Head of Goliath (1607) (Haskelson, 2020; Mikanowski, 2017).

Overshadowed by Caravaggio at the time,Artemesia Gentileschi is now seen as a pioneering female artist and a feminist icon.Abaroque style painter and the daughter of a highly

respected artist, Gentileschi’s life trajectory was decidedly altered at just 17, when she was raped byAgostino Tassi. Tassi, like Caravaggio, was a friend of Gentileschi’s father, Orazio.

The most successful woman of the Caravaggisti - those inspired by and following Caravaggio

- Gentileschi suffered extreme suppression of success and outright misogyny (Jones, 2016).

She moved to Florence the day after the trial against Tassi ended, a proceeding which found her rapist guilty yet saw him avoid punishment (Cascone, 2020) and saw her tortured in the hope she would change her record of the incident (Williams, 2018). Gentileschi’s first version of the painting was wrongly attributed to Caravaggio (White, 2020), a common occurrence, with her work also being misattributed to her father (Katz, 2020).

In Gentileschi’s version, Judith Slaying Holofernes (1620-21), there is a pronounced difference in the level of intensity communicated from the translated name: the word ‘slaying’conveys more aggression and culmination. Examining each work’s name can strengthen foundations for comparing tonal effect: Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading

Holofernes, from the Italian Giuditta e Oloferne, ‘e’translating to ‘and,’against Gentileschi’s

Judith Slaying Holfernes, as it is known in English, from the Italian Giuditta che decapita

Oloferne. There is much more specificity with Gentileschi’s name, Caravaggio’s just states the two are together. Where on Caravaggio’s version, there is a small, neat, almost respectable amount of blood from the attack, on Gentileschi’s there is an explosion of it

Where there was in Caravaggio’s painting, a petite, young, Judith who is deeply saddened and borderline docile in her actions, there is now an overwhelmingly strong, aggressive, clearly vengeful woman on a mission to kill this man. Where there was a majestic man accepting a noble fate, we now see a quite pathetic and futile attempt to defend himself. Where there was a distance in physical placement and perceived class difference between Judith andAbra, there is now two women helping each other reach a goal of shared vindication and justice.Although this is a clearly emotional composition, there was clever

consideration of almost mathematical placement to reiterate what we see initially. In the centre of the canvas, the sword is in a virtually perfect line with each woman’s arm, compare this to Caravaggio’s placement of the women, compare the physical strength of the combined arms to the dainty previous version of Judith’s. On closer inspection of Gentileschi’s painting, there is a distinct connection between her rape and the original narrative of the story; the bracelet contains the word “Artemis,” (Apostolos-Cappadona, 2010) a definite link to her name, further solidifying herself in the position of Judith.

We can view these two painters as idols, using religious iconography, while separating appreciation for each into different moral reasonings, understanding that the painters likely created these works as attempts at cathartic escape: Caravaggio from guilt, Gentileschi from arguably the worst experience a person can go through. We may also speculate that their highly interesting personal lives might separate them from other artists of the era, a concept replicated in contemporary art, which I will now progress onto.

Similar to Caravaggio,Andres Serrano has suffered a tumultuous relationship with the Catholic church, finding himself and his most famous work Immersion (Piss Christ) embroiled in a culture war between the progressive, hedonistic and capitalistic, versus the traditional, religious, and morally decent since the 1980s (Lippard, 1990). Alife-long Catholic, Serrano’s work deconstructs the fabrication and convenience of his faith, telling the New York Times, “my job as an artist is to pursue the manipulation of that symbolism and explore its possibilities” (Honan, 1989).

Created in 1987 as part of a series exploring symbols and iconography (Campbell, 2020), Immersion (Piss Christ) shows a plastic crucifix in a tank filled with a yellowish/brown liquid – from the title and later confirmed by the artist (Honan, 1989), the liquid is understood to be Serrano’s urine. Serrano wanted to question the consumerist agenda of those using religious

iconography, believing the horror of Jesus’crucifixion was being disrespected, referencing the fast-paced, devil-may-care attitude of hyper-consumerism in 1980s’America. Serrano suggests that the crucifixion is nothing compared to what contemporary culture has done using Jesus’image, where those who use his image do so to escape accusations of immorality.

Serrano’s message was diverted by the polarizing reception, which started with theAmerican FamilyAssociation exposing the piece in religious circles, with the furore surrounding it reaching an initial height with Republican Senator D’Amato ripping up a picture of the work on the floor of the Senate. The controversy surrounding the work has continued to pervade Serrano’s career – in 2011, a print of the work was vandalised in an exhibition in France by Catholic fundamentalists and protests were held outside a 25-year retrospective exhibition in New York (Holpuch, 2012).

The knee jerk reaction to the narrative of Piss Christ seemed to stem from Serrano taking a cheap, mass produced, astoundingly obvious symbolic reference to Christ and defiling it Bubbles in the urine suggest the liquid has just landed or is continuing to land as the photograph is taken, adding to a possibly already offensive narrative, with the light suggesting an inferno-like environment – speculatively Hell. While the work was celebrated by those who opposed the traditional values of the Catholicism (Jones, 2011), Brenson (1989) argues that this was just another work in which Serrano used bodily matter, inspired by the Catholic “fascination” with the body. Serrano’s questioning of the consumerist agenda in 1980sAmerica can be argued as parallel with the acceleration of media during the same period (Daly, 2013). The rise in demand of information, likely contributed to the personal lives of creatives being disseminated to the public via the press, MTV being a glaring example (Sherwin, 2015).

Piss Christ’s intermittent resurrection and flexibility of story can be related to understanding Christianity and historical religious events through different eras, with the context behind the

work slightly altering over time. Therefore, even if Serrano made an intentional, wellorchestrated decision to garner controversy, this makes it a seminal work.

In each work described above we can appreciate how different understandings of vulgarity and fanship of each work and artist could suggest other sociomoral choices: Caravaggio’s brash, hedonistic, devil-may-care Caravaggisti who admire the juxtaposition of glamour of his contemporary stardom and the brutality he lived and portrayed; Gentileschi’s bravery in continuing to produce work that endures being uncovered as pioneering genius, with Judith Slaying Holfernes serving as an icon of both literalist and abstract revenge; Serrano’s tonguein-cheek, minimal toying of cultural shift. Their work and lives represent justice to differing sociomoral factions, regardless of the era they lived in. The impact that classical works of art, and how the stories around them have inspired the entertainment and media industries, has been well documented (Kiilerich, 2021; Brennan, Gregory, 2023).

Serrano’s on-the-nose symbolism can be compared to the pop art and celebrity ofAndy Warhol, where we see a clear confusion of the lines separating the artist from their private life and reality from belief, where objective and simple truth can take a backseat to the story of the art, inexplicably linked to the story of the artist that created it.

Warhol could be seen as the first influencer (Burke, 2022), leaving a legacy of documenting the in-crowd of New York, using pop art to symbolise and solidify celebrities into a newly understood form of idolatry.As with Serrano’s, Warhol’s work comments on the transition into a new consumerist era and therefore automatically comments on the previous period. Much confusion around Warhol’s work lay in the subject matter, seemingly leaning into an empty abyss of meaning, merely photographing celebrities with very little context, which, in hindsight, benefitted his in-crowd of artists (Lesser, 2019). One of the main criticisms of Warhol’s was the exclusion of the viewer, highlighting disparate social standing, similar to

the results of Parsons’functions (1937). This exclusive approach can be seen as a reinvention of elitism: Warhol disdained the high society he succeeded, meanwhile creating a new variation of it (Halle, 2022). Dubbed a “counterculture sorcerer” (Metcalf, 2019), it seems Warhol was able to predict common desire for large amounts of attention (Bailey, 2023), a concept synonymous with narcissism, something that can be attributed to Warhol personally (Stevens, 2007; Forrest, 2018).

We can understand celebrity culture as the sharing of media by those existing in a revered upper echelon of our society with the rest, or the other. This narrows a gap in the social hierarchy by attempting to demonstrate that the personal lives of celebrities (idols) and followers are relatable, sometimes extremely closely (Notaro, 2021). This forms what can be felt by followers as an emotional bond, comparable to a narcissistic relationship, transactional in its nature. In Culture of Narcissism (1979), Christopher Lasch argues that narcissism’s rising rates - diagnosable as narcissistic personality disorder and first popularised by Freud (1914) – result from continuous progress into modernity. From his Marxist learnings, Lasch saw the concession of formerly left-leaning, now liberal individuals, to socially mobilise upwards as disingenuous, and that when challenged these individuals would highlight another facet of their identity as a means of absolving responsibility. He felt that modern work, offering more individual gains, took away from meaningful work that benefits the community and institutions like family and religion, a comparable view to Weber (1930). Lasch goes on to argue that the heightened access to media (1979, pp. 93) informs a vapid and overly convenient attitude in the public, imposing an unrealistic understanding of the world around them, leading to disappointment, confusion, delusion and fragility.

Critics of Lasch argue his work is typical of post-World War II social commentary, released at a time where women and racial minorities gained access to academia more broadly (Averbeck, 2021). Lasch’s view of gender and sexuality brought much criticism. His link of pansexuality as a common narcissistic trait (1979, pp. 53), is a wayward swing and likely stated in poor faith, to bring fanfare from conservatives. Better documented was critique from a feminist standpoint of his posthumous Women and the Common Life (1997), lazily tying mainstream feminism to liberalism, grabbing for whatever he could to include in his boogieman label, offering that most progress tied to feminism was merely promoting

corporate presence of women (Willis, 1997).Arguably, Lasch fails to understand that a huge portion of feminist activism came from the anti-capitalist left, like himself, and that the simple explanation for the retreat of many women to domestic settings was due plainly to the return of men fighting overseas during war (Falconi et al, 2020).

Lasch’s writings have also been said to predate their release, seemingly predicting a notion that would only swell as time passed, where the 21st century unleashed a wide acceptance of narcissism amongst what is perceived as the elites (West, 2020), while finding a nuanced place amongst theAmerican right during the election and presidency of Trump (Smith, 2022).

Traits of narcissism (Kacel, Ennis, Pereira, 2017) can be easily aligned with the inception of celebrity in an individual (Sansone & Sansone, 2014). Warhol’s rise and maintenance of an in-crowd type of celebrity, or elites, can be compared to sociomoral grouping through shame in Christianity (as established in Chapter 1).

For the modern idol, a celebrity with a level of fame greater than that of their contemporaries, there is greater demand for information about their personal lives. Much like how historians and biographers have unearthed details of the lives of Caravaggio and Gentileschi, enriching the lore around them, increasingly convenient access to media like Wikipedia and YouTube offer followers opportunities to research and share content about the lives of idols they follow; these are examples of websites where the information contained is not routinely checked as being factually true.

There are numerous and numerical ways to segment devotion in following a celebrity; level of fame suggests the number of fans an idol has and the most famous idol across any creative media currently might be Taylor Swift, who I will use as an example of in-grouping amongst followers of an idol. To appreciate Swift’s level of fame, I will first refer to the Richter scale, after her fans caused the equivalent to a 2.3 level magnitude earthquake in their frenzy during

a stadium performance (Sykes & Rosenbloom, 2023). Swift can also help us segue into understanding the difference between healthy and unhealthy fan behaviour (Levine, 2021): she has many normal, functional fans, and stans – dubbed Swifties - who can cross over into the obsessive.

Psychologist Gayle Stever’s Fan Intensity Scale (2011) captures how strongly a fan feels about a celebrity, with Level One being an anti-fan (a negative interest in the celebrity) and

Level Eight (the interest is pathological and harmful, worrisome to those around the fan, affecting the social group) – which is easily compared to Parsons third function (1937)

Stever has stated (Bond, 2023, p. 61), that the vast majority of dedicated followers of Michael Jackson she met were completely functional, pleasant people. We can also look to the CelebrityAttitude Scale (Maltby et al, 2006) which uses thirty-four questions to range followers in three groups; entertainment-social (talking about the idol positively amongst social group, e.g. fan clubs), to intense-personal (stans, those who are fairly emotionally involved with the idol and would defend them morally to their social group), to borderlinepathological (the relationship between idol and follower is dysfunctional for the follower and may lead to erratic behaviour). Here we see fandom at its most extreme - dictating the personality of a follower, where the two scales’upper bounds can be linked to stalking, for example. Both must also be understood with Horton and Wohl’s coining of the term ‘parasocial relationship’(1956), where one person produces and controls context, and the other merely exists, which is easily tied to a transactional relationship with a narcissist: a leader and a follower, one benefitting, one emotionally locked in to feel like a part of proceedings. The rise of attacks on performers by fans at concerts, driven by social media challenges, can be seen as a deeply unsociable and debatably narcissistic upending of the transaction between idol and follower, possibly a result of Covid-19 lockdowns (Fenwick, 2022).

The link of obsessive fans who lack emotional fulfilment in their lives and celebrities sharing more about their personal lives can widen the scope of the parasocial relationship. Until 2018, Swift, who started her career in country music, where a socially traditional sentiment is present, stayed apolitical; beginning to use her platform for social change, she commented on gun control and feminism from a liberal viewpoint. Her fame has since exploded, with branding very much orientated towards women; in a business-sense, she is enormously successful (Moore & Snapes, 2023, 26:40). However, throughout her career she has suffered backlash that could be linked to her gender; speculation around her dating life has clearly affected how she can pursue romantic interests, due in part to her own stans’expectations, particularly during the rumours she was linked to The 1975’s Matty Healy, who has a history of making comments that mismatch Swift’s liberal image (Di Placido, 2023). Petter (2023) argues interest in her romantic life is a misogynistic double-standard. Swift has also been routinely miscredited for her songwriting and production royalties (comparable to Gentileschi), in Nashville as a teenage girl, but most egregiously with super-producer Scooter Braun, who was victorious in a court battle with Swift. This led her to re-record all of her Braun-produced work – endearing the artist, who was split across cultural and seemingly gender lines simultaneously, to her fans, from the casual to the most pathological Swiftie, some of whom sent death threats to Braun (Savage, 2019). The media reporting of the trial between Braun and Swift inadvertently exposed valuable information about the system in which the idol and the follower operate The highest-grossing touring artist (Dellatto, 2023), Swift also re-re-releases albums (Taylor’s Versions) in different designs, but identical musical content, with liner notes giving coveted clues to lyric meanings or personal events; a deft but perhaps immoral use of her position and clear emotional connection with millions of young people. Swift has been accused of allowing Swifties to run wild online and offline (Ahlgrim,

2023), where they have developed a reputation for organised targeting of those not meeting their moral standards.

Lizzo is another musical idol who has received sexist (and racist) backlash for what she symbolically represents in media. Initially a reinvention of the wheel of celebrity, the start of August 2023 saw the overwhelmingly positive narrative built around Lizzo by the creative industries change dramatically.Allegations of sexual misconduct, body-shaming and bullying fuelled by Christian morals (Rawlings, 2023) were levelled against the star, her dance captain and production company by two back-up dancers. This news was disappointing to many due to her very vocal support of causes around inclusion of various marginalized identities, promoting what could be seen as vulgar by conservatives, similar to Serrano. The news also came during a period of heavy media coverage of self-proclaimed misogynist influencer

Andrew Tate. The types of people publicly criticizing and defending Lizzo seemed to stand as a polar opposite to those defending Tate; one, a plus-size Black woman eschewing inclusive ideation - the other, a combat-trained man with extremely right-wing views and a relaxed view on sexual violence against women (Cousineau, 2022) – both are symbolic to the point of almost caricaturising what they represent to potential followers.

Lizzo’s factional sociomoral struggle relates to both Weber’s (1930) and Lasch’s (1979) views of flimsy values under the guise of social mobility, whereas with Swift and the activity of intense stan groups, comparisons can be made with Parsons’third function where religious-like shaming can take hold. The heightened media and the information, or perceived and accepted narrative (Kim, Song, 2016), can add new dramatic meaning to the work of artists like Lizzo and Swift; like Caravaggio and Gentileschi they are prototypical of their genre, and their moral narrative undoubtedly plays a part in their trajectories and legacy.

Our choice in factional allegiance could be psychologically linked to cognitive dissonance achieved by emotional investment (Lee, Kwak, Braunstein‐Minkove, 2016); a sense of loyalty could subconsciously protrude logical and moral reasoning in an increasingly fastpaced media. By now I have established that the logic we apply to idols in art or media, we may also apply to those around us, being more forgiving of our friends than distant acquaintances or strangers (Forbes, Stellar, 2022), and ourselves (Dong et al, 2022), as could be derived from Lizzo’s media presence after the allegations This theory of moral hypocrisy on the micro-level with a trickle-down feudalistic thread can be tied to Tafjel’s Social Identity Theory (1970).

Cultural effects on idolatry and the parasocial relationship that followers experience through idolisation of people like Swift, Lizzo and somehow Tate, we can speculate stem from a sense of emptiness, or flimsiness of values amongst the public, where what can feel like a majority of the world’s most famous people, idols, seem to have such flawed moral viewpoints but are able to promote a narrative that offers an escape from feelings of doom. Perhaps this space between their talent and shortcomings is a way into understanding the dissonance between the social responsibility of an individual versus the collective, that sometimes the individual, as the leader, imparts on the followers. Perhaps this deeper delve by the followers, taking part in the rituals the idol sets out, can further the feeling of emptiness or isolation, leading to ostracization by how others perceive them via Stever’s (2011) or Maltby’s (2006) theories. Notably, feelings of loneliness have been recorded as higher amongst Millennials and Gen-Z than previous generations (Twenge et al, 2021).

As in mainstream celebrity culture, contemporary art is another part of the creative industries where sensationalised factions exist through orchestrated narrative, using subjective modes of morality and vulgarity, where gossip has the power to run wild and solidify these groups. This occurs over the pyramid of the current contemporary art world, from art schools (Miller,

2022), to artists breaking through the ranks of hegemony (Shaw, 2023), to the most premier collectors (Armstrong, 2023) – emboldening how the industry gatekeeps the market through narrative control.

Writer Naomi Klein argues (Chambers, 2023, 34:55) that the most influential people who have recently disseminated disinformation online, like Trump and Tate, have been trained in this arena partly through their background in reality television. We can link the somewhat unsurprising success of their targeted campaigns, using populist methods, to orchestration around counterculture by Serrano and Warhol, and to Tafjel’s demonstration (1970) of confident leaders’ability to communicate arbitrary or unverifiable information at their convenience. It becomes more understandable that conspiracy theories offer a relieving sense of secure narrative when we realise that many who follow conspiracies have suffered traumatic events in their life that may have impacted cognitive functions (Bilewicz, 2022; Bilewicz et al. 2019). We can also compare cognitive development of people who grow up in religious fundamentalism (Zhong et al, 2017) to recent studies arguing close followers of celebrities may present similar issues (McCutcheon, Zsila, Demetrovics, 2021). This escapist mindset can sometimes take form in narcissistic ideation, with groups like Targeted Individuals sharing stories online and at well-attended events, circling around the idea that they have devices implanted into their bodies with the aim of sabotaging their lives as they know too much incriminating information about political and military operations (Guerrero, 2018).

Bowes, Costello and Tasimi (2023) argue there is a link between conspiracy theories and social relationships, although Klein’s findings (2023) report a long history of malleability of conspiracies, down the rabbit hole to extreme beliefs like antisemitism, somewhat comparable to Lasch’s writing on the elites (1979)

Much of this dissertation has circled around behaviour recognised as morally acceptable by the hegemonic population, to varying degrees. Cults could be seen as groups where morality is skewed from the norm and where leaders of fringe ideological groups are idols to their followers. In Cultish (2021)Amanda Montell argues that the defining cause of cult formation and membership is language, and that risk of indoctrination is highest during tumultuous periods socio-politically. People are likely to feel more personally insecure during polemic political debate; Montell’s findings are backed up by clinical psychologist (specialising in narcissism) Ramani Durvasula (2019), who quotes the Gallup 2017 report, which found that emotions such as stress and anger were at the highest rate in ten years, arguing that this was due to incivility caused by accepted narcissistic behaviour. Language offers more variation and power than image in terms of promoting vulgarity: when an idol implements strong use of language their bounds for influence grow exponentially. This resonates with Parsons’ second function (fostering openness) (1937), with Weber’s references to timely conversion to Protestantism (1930), Geertz’s symbolic code of behaviour (1972) and is even comparable to Lasch’s analysis of post-war populations (1979). This wide scale insecurity occurs when the distance between the individual and the collective is confusing and angering, where shared difficulty can seem like the only thing that bonds us, where we resort to clinging to anyone we can relate to in any fraught way.

Conclusion

My argument points to the idea that idols are seen as a necessity to and by the public in current culture, when the idea of simple speed is seen as a convenience and not a frightening waste, we struggle to make sense of the media available. This media may come from those we consider our moral enemy, avoidance of this media weakens understanding of the enemy we perceive ourselves as opposing wholly. I believe contemporary artists can use their place in trend formulas to inform a more nuanced tone amongst society. Those on the level of an idol, especially with younger followers, have a responsibility to acknowledge the dissonance in their realities in culture wars, following speculation Swift could even be decisive in upcoming US elections (Murray, 2023). Perhaps idols have a responsibility to downplay the power of vulgarity from themselves and their followers, breaking cyclical othering which hinders or benefits the vulgar individual. With this cycle broken we can untether ourselves from hypocritical and clandestine structures of shame where idols inform morality, where shame is re-simplified and social groups are beyond the part of the currency of guilt we trade, where moral fatigue does not impede us

In Chapter 1, I aimed to start a vaguely chronological thread of understanding that sociomoral choice is influenced by Christianity. Herein lies a bias: it has focused on Western definitions of religion, due to this being the most immediate here in Scotland. Using a balance of social scientific research from throughout the 20th century, we can see the similarities with morality and shaming in our current culture, still reeling from Christianity as a hegemonic presence in all institutions, still present in governments across the West. In the future, I will research South-EastAsia, where fan culture can take a similarly extreme form, particularly in the making of idols in K-Pop (Williams, 2021) Chapter 2 first saw comparison of work from two idolised artists in very close quarters who suffered very different fates and legacies in an era where the Church was instrumental in everyday life. We see similarities in the jump up to the

contemporary era with Serrano, synonymity with Catholicism could not be escaped in the scope of the inception of his work or how it affected his fellow Catholics. In this section I was able to focus on fine art as a standalone part of media, before expanding to apply a similar argument to wider society. Chapter 3 covered idolatry in the modern era, heavily leaning on Lasch, who formed much of his cultural opinion on material understandings, where class is the only mode to operate an understanding of division and intersection; class envy will get you before a Marxist end-state will. I attempted to uncover profound effects of idols, finding that the public’s contribution and reward is essentially a subscription to coverage, rarely of ourselves; this dissertation adds to that thread in its small way. The duty of an idol is as someone who takes care of a problem for us, who we share the redemption of that problem with, like Parsons’second function. To seek escape is the automatic response to discomfort, as the interview in the appendix below illustrates. I have demonstrated throughout that the matching narrative can take on the flimsiest of forms, and by highlighting groups like Targeted Individuals, we see a frightening and lonely destination to which priority in escapism can transport us.

Atremendous limitation of the study is the small word count; I would have liked to refer to Francis Bacon’s Four Idols of the Mind from his Novum Organum (1620) in Chapter 1, applying his argument detailing attempts at stalling progression, although it was unviable, as inclusion would require shortening and weakening related sections. However, this means I have an extensive list of what to continue in the future; more psycho-social aspects of culture, specifically erotomania in media, around an idea of the currency of guilt. Indie Sleaze acts as a milestone here, a trend shift in perceived morality thus perceived marginalisation, and how nostalgic yearning affects sociomoral values, again better understanding the gap between personal moral responsibility and the one the influential instil in the other.

Bibliography

Ahlgrim, C. (2023). ‘Taylor Swift should take a cue from Phoebe Bridgers and criticize her own fans.’ Insider. 23rd May.Available at https://www.insider.com/taylor-swift-shouldcriticize-fans-like-phoebe-bridgers-opinion-2023-5.Accessed 20th November 2023.

Apostolos-Cappadona, D. (2010). ‘Costuming Judith in ItalianArt of the Sixteenth Century’ in Brine, K.R., Ciletti, E., Lähnemann, H. (eds). Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. The Sword of Judith: Judith Studies Across the Disciplines. (pp. 325–343).Available at https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0009/chapters/10.11647/obp.0009 .18.Accessed 6th October 2023

Armstrong,A. (2023). ‘‘WhatAre You Going to DoAbout It, Fat Boy?’: How a Hamptons

Feud Between Two Uber-PrivilegedArt Dealers Exploded into anAll-Out Turf War.’11th August. Artnet Available at https://news.artnet.com/art-world/hamptons-art-dealer-turf-war2345875.Accessed 26th October 2023.

Averbeck, R.M. (2021). ‘Christoper Lasch and the Culture of Concern Trolling.’ Society for U.S. Intellectual History. 23rd August.Available at https://s-usih.org/2021/08/christoperlasch-and-the-culture-of-concern-trolling/.Accessed 13th October 2023.

Bacon, S. (1620). Novum Organum New York: P. F. Collier.

Bailey, M. (2023). ‘Andy Warhol was the original social media influencer. Here’s why’. Australian Financial Review 21st February.Available at https://www.afr.com/life-andluxury/arts-and-culture/andy-warhol-was-the-original-social-media-influencer-here-s-why20230213-p5ck30.Accessed 29th March 2023.

Bell, D. ‘The Protestant Ethic.’(1996). World Policy Journal, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 35–39.

JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40209487.Accessed 3rd October 2023.

Bilewicz, M. (2022) 'Conspiracy beliefs as an adaptation to historical trauma ' Current Opinion in Psychology, 47, p. 101359. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101359

Accessed 21st November 2023.

Bilewicz, M. et al. (2019) 'Traumatic rift: How conspiracy beliefs undermine cohesion after societal trauma?' Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 15(1), pp. 82–93.

https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v15i1.1699.Accessed 21st November 2023.

Bond, M. (2023). Fans: A Journey into the Psychology of Belonging. London: Pan Macmillan.

Bowes, S. M., Costello, T. H., & Tasimi,A. (2023). ‘The conspiratorial mind:Ameta-analytic review of motivational and personological correlates.’ Psychological Bulletin, 149(5-6), 259–293. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000392.Accessed 22nd November 2023.

Brennan, A., Gregory, E. (2023). ‘The 12 artworks that changed the world, from Las Meninas to The Death of Marat to Guernica.’ The Standard. 20th January.Available at https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/paintings-artworks-that-changed-worlda3817526.html#r3z-addoor.Accessed 9th November 2023.

Brenson, M. (1989). ’Andres Serrano: Provocation and Spirituality.’ The New York Times. 8th December. Section C, Page 1.Available at https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/08/arts/reviewart-andres-serrano-provocation-and-spirituality.html.Accessed 17th November 2023.

Burke, K. (2022). ‘Andy Warhol’s star-studded photographs: ‘You find out much more about him as a person ’ The Guardian 29th September Available at https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/sep/30/andy-warhols-star-studded-photographsyou-find-out-much-more-about-him-as-a-person.Accessed 15th November 2023.

Burton, P. (2023). ‘Did Caravaggio paint his own murder confession?’ Far Out. 7th September.Available at https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/caravaggio-paint-his-own-murderconfession/.Accessed 6th October 2023.

Campbell, T. (2020). ‘Piss Christ byAndres Serrano.’ Artland Magazine. 28th February.

Available at https://magazine.artland.com/immersion-piss-christ-stories-of-iconic-artworks/

Accessed 12th October 2023.

Cascone, S. (2020). ‘Newly Beloved Old MasterArtemisia Gentileschi’s Life Story Is Dramatic Enough for a TV Series and Soon, It Will Be the Subject of One.’ Artnet. 15th October.Available at https://news.artnet.com/art-world/artemisa-television-show-1915713.

Accessed 9th November 2023.

Chambers, D. (2023). ‘Conspiracy Theories with Naomi Klein.’ The Blindboy Podcast. (Podcast). 24th October.Available at https://open.spotify.com/episode/6cnJUUaQ9lg7gW5KArm0b3?si=b96a732317bf4194

Accessed 25th October 2023.

Cloud, D. (2016). ‘America’s Founders and the Yankee Work Ethic.’ Way of Life Literature

3rd March Available at

https://www.wayoflife.org/reports/americas_founders_and_yankee_work_ethic.html.

Accessed 9th November 2023.

Cohen, J., Hazelrigg, L. E., & Pope, W. (1975). ‘De-Parsonizing Weber:A Critique of Parsons’Interpretation of Weber’s Sociology.’ American Sociological Review, 40(2), pp. 229–241. https://doi.org/10.2307/2094347.Accessed 30th November 2023.

Cousineau, L. (2022). ‘Social media misogyny: The new wayAndrew Tate brought us the same old hate. ’ The Conversation. 23rd October.Available at

https://theconversation.com/social-media-misogyny-the-new-way-andrew-tate-brought-usthe-same-old-hate-191928 Accessed 19th December 2023.

Daly, C. (2013). ‘The decline of Big Media, 1980s-2000s: Key lessons and trends.’ The Journalist's Resource. 28th August.Available at https://journalistsresource.org/media/covering-america-journalism-professor-christopherdaly/.Accessed 16th November 2023.

Dellatto, M. (2023). ‘The Top-Earning Summer Concert Tours Of 2023.’ Forbes. 15th October.Available at https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2023/10/13/the-topearning-summer-concert-tours-2023-taylor-swift-beyonce/?sh=5507d5aa707c.Accessed 17th November 2023.

Di Placido, D. (2023). ‘Taylor Swift’s Matty Healy Controversy, Explained.’ Forbes. 24th May.Available at https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2023/05/24/taylor-swiftsmatty-healy-controversy-explained/?sh=1280ad1f26bc.Accessed 17th November 2023.

Dong, M. et al. (2022). 'Being good to look good: Self‐reported moral character predicts moral double standards among reputation‐seeking individuals,' British Journal of Psychology, 114(1), pp. 244–261.

https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12608 Accessed 7th October 2023

Durvasula, R. (2019). ‘Narcissism and Its Discontents - Ramani Durvasula - TEDxSedona ’

Ted 3rd November.Available at

https://www.ted.com/talks/ramani_durvasula_narcissism_and_its_discontents?language=en.

Accessed 5th October 2023.

Falconi,A. et al. (2020) 'Shifts in women’s paid employment participation during the World War II era and later life health.' Journal of Adolescent Health, 66(1), pp. S42–S50.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2019.10.005. Accessed 16th November 2023.

Fenwick, J. (2022). ‘The Rules of FandomAre Changing. Celebrities Don’t Know How to Handle It.’ Vice 5th April.Available at https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgm9p7/the-rules-offandom-are-changing-celebrities-dont-know-how-to-handle-it.Accessed 30th March 2023.

Forbes, R. C., & Stellar, J. E. (2022). ‘When the ones we love misbehave: Exploring moral processes within intimate bonds.’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 122(1), pp. 16–33. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000272.Accessed 7th October 2023.

Forrest, R. (2018). ‘CategoryArchives:Andy Warhol’s Medical & Psychological History.’ Recordart. February 1st. Available at https://recordart.net/category/andy-warhols-medicalpsychological-history/.Accessed 29th March 2023.

Freud, S. (1914). ‘On Narcissism.’ The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV (1914-1916): On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works, pp. 67-102.Available at https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Freud_SE_On_Narcissism_complete.pdf

Accessed 13th October 2023.

Gallup. (2017) 2017 Global Emotions Report Available at https://news.gallup.com/reports/212678/2017-global-emotions-report.aspx.Accessed 5th October 2023.

Geertz, Clifford. (1972). ‘Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.’ Daedalus, vol. 101, no. 1, pp. 1–37. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20024056.Accessed 3rd October 2023.

Geertz, Clifford. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books

Gottfried, S. (2019) 'The Science Behind Why People Gossip And When It Can Be a Good Thing' Time, 25th September.Available at https://time.com/5680457/why-do-people-gossip/

Accessed 9th November 2023.

Guerrero, J. (2018). ‘My Father Says He’s a ‘Targeted Individual.’Maybe WeAll Are.’

Wired. 25th October.Available at https://www.wired.com/story/my-father-says-hes-a-targetedindividual-maybe-we-all-are/.Accessed 23rd November 2023.

Halle, H. (2022). ‘Who WasAndy Warhol, and Why Was He So Important?’ArtNews. 16th November.Available at https://www.artnews.com/list/art-news/artists/who-was-andy-warhol1234642951/.Accessed 16th November 2023.

Haskelson, N. (2020). ‘Caravaggio’s Use of Catharsis.’ Where Creativity Lives. 14th February.

Available https://wherecreativityworks.com/caravaggios-use-ofcatharsis/#:~:text=David%20is%20the%20representation%20of,portraying%20their%20trues t%2C%20inner%20emotions.Accessed 19th December 2023

Heckman, C. (2021). ‘What is Tenebrism The Art of Light and Shadow Explained.’

Studiobinder. 19th December.Available at https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-istenebrism-art-definition/ Accessed 5th October 2023.

Holpuch,A. (2012). ‘Andres Serrano's controversial Piss Christ goes on view in New York.’ The Guardian 28th September.Available at https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/sep/28/andres-serrano-piss-christ-new-york.

Accessed 12th October 2023.

The Holy Bible. ‘Exodus 20:3-5 ’ New International Version (1979). London: Hodder & Stoughton.

The Holy Bible. ‘2 Maccabees 3.’ Revised Standard Version (1952). Nashville: Thomas

Nelson & Sons

Honan, W.H. (1989). ‘Artist Who Outraged Congress LivesAmid Christian Symbols.’ The New York Times 16th August. Section C, Page 13.Available at https://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/16/arts/artist-who-outraged-congress-lives-amid-christiansymbols.html.Accessed 10th October 2023.

Horton, D., & Wohl, R. R. (1956). ‘Mass communication and para-social interaction.’ Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes, 19, pp. 215–229.

https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1956.11023049.Accessed 30th March 2023.

Jones, J. (2011). ‘Andres Serrano's Piss Christ is the original shock art.’ The Guardian. 18th April.Available at https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/apr/18/andres-serranopiss-christ-shock.Accessed 12th October 2023.

Jones, J. (2013). ‘On Caravaggio's lust, talent and power.’ The Guardian. 27th May.Available at https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/may/27/caravaggio-lust-talent-powerjonathan-jones.Accessed 9th October 2023

Jones, J. (2016). ‘More savage than Caravaggio: the woman who took revenge in oil.’ The Guardian. 5th October.Available at https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/oct/05/artemisia-gentileshi-painter-beyondcaravaggio.Accessed 9th November 2023.

Kacel, E.L., Ennis, N. and Pereira, D. (2017) 'Narcissistic Personality Disorder in Clinical Health Psychology Practice: Case studies of Comorbid Psychological Distress and LifeLimiting Illness.' Behavioural Medicine, 43(3), pp. 156–164.

https://doi.org/10.1080/08964289.2017.1301875.Accessed 16th November 2023.

Katz, B. (2020). ‘OnceAttributed to a MaleArtist, ‘David and Goliath’Painting Identified as the Work ofArtemisia Gentileschi.’ Smithsonian Magazine. 2nd March.Available at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/painting-david-and-goliath-once-attributedmale-artist-revealed-work-artemisia-gentileschi-180974312/.Accessed 9th November 2023.

Kiilerich, B. (2021) 'The Classical in ContemporaryArt and Visual Culture –An introduction,' CLARA, 8.Available at https://doi.org/10.5617/clara.9176.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355836669_The_ Classical_in_Contemporary_Art_and_Visual_Culture_-_an_Introduction.Accessed 13th October 2023.

Kim, J., Song, H. (2016) 'Celebrity’s self-disclosure on Twitter and parasocial relationships: Amediating role of social presence ' Computers in Human Behaviour, 62, pp. 570–577.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.03.083.Accessed 16th November 2023.

Lasch, C. (1979). The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: Warner Books.

Lasch, C. (1997) Women and the Common Life: Love, Marriage, and Feminism. LaschQuinn, E. (ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Leaper, C. (2011). ‘More Similarities than Differences in contemporary Theories of social development?:Aplea for theory bridging.’Benson, J.B. (ed) Advances in Child Development and Behaviour, JAI, Volume 40, pp. 337-378. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-3864918.00009-8.Accessed 4th October 2023.

Lee, J.S., Kwak, D.H. and Braunstein‐Minkove, J.R. (2016) 'Coping with athlete endorsers’ immoral behavior: Roles of athlete identification and moral emotions on moral reasoning strategies,' Journal of Sport Management. 30(2), pp. 176–191.

https://doi.org/10.1123/jsm.2015-0341 Accessed 23rd October 2023.

Lesser, C. (2019). ‘Study FindsArtists Become Famous through Their Friends, Not the Originality of Their Work.’ Artsy. 27th February. Available at https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-artists-famous-friends-originality-work.Accessed 16th November 2023.

Levine, D.S. (2021). ‘Taylor Swift's Terrifying History withAlleged Stalkers.’ Popculture 20th April.Available at https://popculture.com/country-music/news/taylor-swift-12-allegedstalkers/#6.Accessed 17th November 2023.

Lippard, L. (1990). ‘From theArchives:Andres Serrano, The Spirit and The Letter.’ Art in America. April (no day provided).Available at https://www.artnews.com/art-inamerica/features/andres-serrano-provocative-work-lucy-lippard-1234652353/.Accessed 10th

October 2023

Maltby, J. et al. (2006). 'Extreme celebrity worship, fantasy proneness and dissociation: Developing the measurement and understanding of celebrity worship within a clinical personality context ' Personality and Individual Differences, 40(2), pp. 273–283.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2005.07.004.Accessed 20th November 2023.

McCutcheon, L.E., Zsila, Á. and Demetrovics, Z. (2021) 'Celebrity worship and cognitive skills revisited: applying Cattell’s two-factor theory of intelligence in a cross-sectional study,' BMC Psychology, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-021-00679-3.Accessed 22nd November 2023.

Metcalfe, S. (2019). ‘Warhol’s Bleak Prophecy.’ The Atlantic. 15th February.Available at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/andy-warhol-pop-artwhitney/576412/.Accessed 16th November 2023.

Mcleod, S. (2023) 'Stanley Milgram Shock Experiment: Summary, Results, & Ethics,' Simply Psychology (Preprint).Available at https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html

Accessed 4th October 2023.

Mikanowski, J. (2017). ‘Caravaggio's Boy.’ The Awl. 24th January.Available at

https://www.theawl.com/2017/01/caravaggios-boy/.Accessed 6th October 2023.

Milgram, S. (1963) Behavioural study of obedience. The Journal of abnormal and social psychology, 67(4), p.371. Available at

https://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/345/345%20Articles/Milgram.pdf.Accessed 4th October 2023.

Miller, M.H. (2022). ‘With a Culture War Raging Around Education, Where Does Art School

Fit In?’ The New York Times. 6th July.Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/06/tmagazine/art-school-worth-it.html.Accessed 2nd November 2023.

Molcard, E. (2019). ‘21 FactsAbout Caravaggio.’ Sotheby’s. 25th July.Available at

https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/21-facts-about-caravaggio.Accessed 6th October 2023.

Montell,A. (2021). Cultish. New York: Harper Collins (Harper Wave).

Moore, H., Snapes, L. (2023). ‘How Taylor Swift built her musical empire.’ Today In Focus –Guardian (Podcast) 20th October.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0UKJxlxmjrDVJZo1dtx7At?si=e4385907686a4c88. Accessed 20th October 2023.

Murray, T. (2023). ‘California Governor says Taylor Swift’s influence on US election will be ‘profoundly powerful’.’ The Independent. 29th September.Available at

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/taylor-swift-gavin-newsonrepublican-debate-b2420660.html.Accessed 13th December 2023.

Notaro,A. (2021). ‘The Selfie – Part 1.’(Video). DJ21005 - Introduction to Critical & Contextual Studies. Duncan of Jordanstone College ofArt and Design - University of Dundee.Available at

https://my.dundee.ac.uk/ultra/courses/_73161_1/outline/lti/launchFrame?toolHref=https:~2F~ 2Fmy.dundee.ac.uk~2Fwebapps~2Fblackboard~2Fexecute~2Fblti~2FlaunchPlacement%3Fbl ti_placement_id%3D_166_1%26content_id%3D_6385172_1%26course_id%3D_73161_1% 26wrapped%3Dtrue%26from_ultra%3Dtrue.Accessed 10th November 2021

Orne, M. T., & Holland, C. H. On the ecological validity of laboratory deceptions. International Journal of Psychiatry, 1968, (6), pp. 282-293.Available at https://www.sas.upenn.edu/psych/history/orne/orneholland1968ijp282293.html.Accessed 4th October 2023.

Oxford. (1993). Eidos.Available at https://www.oed.com/dictionary/eidos_n?tab=meaning_and_use&tl=true.Accessed 9th November 2023.

Oxford. (2023). Vulgus.Available at https://www.oed.com/dictionary/vulgus_n1?tl=true. Accessed 7th December 2023.

Parsons, T. (1937). The Structure of Social Action. New York: McGraw Hill.

Petter, O. (2023). ‘Let’s call the abuse of Taylor Swift what it really is – a hate crime against women.’ The Independent. 8th October.Available at https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/taylor-swift-travis-kelce-barstool-sportsb2425452.html.Accessed 17th November 2023.

Predota, G. (2021). ‘Caravaggio (1571-1610) - “All Works…Are Made and Painted from Life”.’ Interlude. 17th August.Available at https://interlude.hk/caravaggio-1571-1610-allworks-are-made-and-painted-from-life/.Accessed 6th October 2023.

Rawlings,A.S. (2023). ‘Truth Hurts, Here’s a Full Timeline of all the Lizzo Drama.’ The New

Feminist 4th September.Available at https://www.thenewfeminist.co.uk/2023/09/truth-hurtsheres-a-full-timeline-of-all-the-lizzo-drama/.Accessed 22nd November 2023.

Ryle, G. (1968) ‘The Thinking of Thoughts. What is Le Penseur Doing?’reprinted in Ryle (2009) Collected Papers, Vol. 2, J. Tanney (ed.) London: Routledge.

Sansone RA , Sansone LA. (2014). ‘"I'm Your Number One Fan" -AClinical Look at Celebrity Worship.’ Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience, Jan-Feb; 11(1-2), pp. 39-43. PMID: 24653942; PMCID: PMC3960781.Available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3960781/.Accessed 15th November 2023.

Savage, M. (2019). ‘Scooter Braun's family 'received death threats' following Taylor Swift feud.’ BBC.Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-50503713.Accessed 20th December 2023.

Shaw,A. (2023). ‘Venice Biennale artistAlberta Whittle accused of using parts of another artist’s sculpture in her work.’ The Art Newspaper. 29th August.Available at https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/08/29/mary-redmond-copyright-claim-nationalgalleries-scotland-alberta-whittle.Accessed 2nd November 2023.

Sherwin,A. (2015). ‘The Media Column: MTV rebrand aims to put the channel back in the driving seat of the cultural revolution.’ The Independent. 28th June.Available at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/the-media-column-mtv-rebrand-aims-to-put-thechannel-back-in-the-driving-seat-of-the-cultural-revolution-10351288.html.Accessed 16th November 2023.

Smith, B. (2022). ‘What Christopher Lasch got wrong.’ UnHerd. 2nd November.Available at https://unherd.com/2022/11/what-christopher-lasch-got-wrong/.Accessed 16th November 2023.

Sooke,A. (2016). ‘Why Caravaggio was as shocking as his paintings.’ BBC. 11th October

Available at https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161010-why-caravaggio-was-a-shockingas-his-paintings.Accessed 6th October 2023.

Stevens, M. (2007). ‘Twenty YearsAfter His Death,Andy Warhol Refuses to FadeAway.’ New York Magazine 1st February.Available at https://nymag.com/arts/art/features/27330/

Accessed 29th March 2023.

Stever, G. (2011). ‘Celebrity Worship: Critiquing a Construct.’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 41(6), pp. 1356–1370. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1559-1816.2011.00765.X.

Accessed 17th November 2023.

Stolnitz, J. (1984). ‘You Can't Separate the Work ofArt from theArtist.’ Philosophy and Literature 8 (2), pp. 209-221.Available at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/418564.Accessed 4th October 2023.

Summers, J.,Acovino, V. and Intagliata, C. (2023). ‘America has a loneliness epidemic. Here are 6 steps to address it.’ NPR, 2nd May.Available at https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1173418268/loneliness-connection-mental-health-dementiasurgeon-general Accessed 16th November 2023.

Sykes, J., Rosenbloom,A. (2023). ‘Taylor Swift fans ‘Shake It Off,’causing record-breaking seismic activity during Seattle shows.’ CNN. 28th July.Available at https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/27/entertainment/taylor-swift-seismic-activity/index.html.

Accessed 20th October 2023.

Tafjel, H. (1970). ‘Experiments in intergroup discrimination.’ Scientific American 223(5), pp. 96-103. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24927662.Accessed 5th October 2023.

Thomas, T. (2016) Caravaggio and the Creation of Modernity. Reaktion: London.

Twenge, J.M. et al. (2021) 'Worldwide increases in adolescent loneliness ' Journal of Adolescence, 93(1), pp. 257–269. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2021.06.006

Accessed 16th November 2023.

Weber, M. (1930). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London:Allen & Unwin.

West, E. (2020). ‘How a 1990s book predicted 2020.’ UnHerd 3rd July.Available at https://unherd.com/2020/07/the-book-that-predicted-2020/.Accessed 27th October 2023.

White, K. (2020). ‘Artemisia Gentileschi’s ‘Judith Beheading Holofernes’Is a Touchstone of FeministArt History. HereAre 3 Things You Might Not KnowAbout the Gory Masterpiece’. Artnet. 30th July.Available at https://news.artnet.com/art-world/artemisia-gentileschi-judithbeheading-holofernes-1897872.Accessed 6th October 2023.

Wike, R., Silver, L. and Castillo,A. (2019). ‘ManyAcross the GlobeAre Dissatisfied with How Democracy Is Working.’ Pew Research Center. 29th April.Available at https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/04/29/many-across-the-globe-are-dissatisfied-withhow-democracy-is-working/.Accessed 16th November 2023.

Williams, H. (2018). ‘The artist who triumphed over her shocking rape and torture.’ BBC. 27th August.Available at https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180824-the-artist-whotriumphed-over-her-shocking-rape-and-torture.Accessed 9th November 2023.

Williams, S. (2021). ‘K-wave: How fans are supporting their favourite idols.’ BBC. 20th June. Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-57489720.Accessed 29th November 2023.

Willis, E. (1997). ‘Backlash: Women and The Common Life. By Christopher Lasch.’ Los Angeles Times. 12th January.Available at https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-0112-bk-17738-story.html.Accessed 12th October 2023.

Zhong, W. et al. (2017) 'Biological and cognitive underpinnings of religious fundamentalism,' Neuropsychologia, 100, pp. 18–25.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.04.009.Accessed 22nd November 2023.

Interview with Ren Sutherland on their experience in the Harry Potter fandom group conducted on Instagram messages:

27 Sep 2023, 18:22 - Ren Sutherland: “Robbie I was unhealthily obsessed with Harry Potter from the age of 10 till JK Rowling outed herself as a TERF. I was so deep in that fandom I can probably still answer any question about the books, like I was so deep into re-reading and consuming Harry Potter content there are still things my parents got me for birthdays that I’ve been told I’m not allowed to get rid of cause they were so expensive I also went to the Warner Brothers tour and cried when I saw the Hogwarts model, what would you like to know about fandom obsession?”

27 Sep 2023, 21:15 - RLTaylor: “What was the feeling like? When you were in that - was there a sense of togetherness with other people in the fandom? How much of it was to do with escapism?Also how was the process of detaching yourself from it when she came out with her TERF stuff? Was it a clean break?”

27 Sep 2023, 21:22 - Ren Sutherland: “I was never really deep into chatting to others in the fandom, I kinda kept on the outskirts but read every fan theory and discussion I could, there definitely was a lot of people in my real life that I could speak to about Harry Potter It was such a huge thing that most people knew at least the films, but speaking to those people made me realise it wasn’t just enjoyment for me it was obsession with reading anything I could. It was absolutely about escapism, they were the first book series I read on my kindle and re read for years, no matter how many other books people suggested I always knew that those books were there for me when I wasn’t up for being a human for a while. I didn’t only read the books, but I got the audiobooks and started to listen to them every night to fall asleep, and when I was ill or depressed, they would be the first thing I put on, I see them as my ‘safe

series ’I know everything that happens in them like the back of my hand, no matter how long it’s been they never change, they’re consistent I am sometimes wary of starting new series because I do get easily obsessed with them and I know that I can’t get much more obsessed with Harry Potter so it’s easy to go back to. The whole JK shit has been really tough, like I want her to choke, but I find it so hard to detach myself from the fandom, cause a lot of the things I enjoy she never had a hand in I’ve recently listened to a podcast of a grown man reading the series for the first time and it made me realise that through my rose coloured glasses the series was always quite problematic, and recently I’ve needed that comforting surroundings of the books so I’ve been listening to the audiobooks again while I work. Coming back to the books for the first time in a while has made me realise that Rowling isn’t important, as long as I don’t give her any support or money I don’t see an issue with revisiting the products I already own and have owned for years especially in times that I just need that comfort of fandom. I apologise if this is all rambling and makes no sense, and if you need any more to this just let me know, glad to be of assistance with my insane obsession ”