Are you a trend-setter or a camp-follower? The former
requires the faith to walk a road less travelled, hoping your brilliant idea
will meet its moment. The latter hitches their wagon to others’success, hoping
to capitalise on a theme already in vogue. Popular culture is awash with both.
On television drama, serial killers and forensic scientists were all the thing,
then paedophiles, then abducted children. In fiction, aga-sagas were in, then
psychological thrillers became the must-have for agents and publishers; and
magical/mythological epics. Yet in all cases there had to be a first which
broke the mould and crafted a new one, whether in drama, pop music or fashion.
What catches the
public imagination at any given moment has always fascinated me. Are those who
set the new scene really catalysts or just humble toilers, whose oddball idea
caught the right wave to surf them to prominence. George Lucas, whose sci-fi
Star Wars 40 years ago, was a game-changer for movie-making and fiction-writing
up to today, was so convinced it would flop he sat on a beach rather than
attend the premiere. Self-belief doesn’t seem to be involved given the
fickleness of popular taste.
And the phenomenon
extends into other areas. Ronan Farrow detonated the #metoo campaign into being
last year with his expose of Harvey Weinstein. However courageous his
reporting, this was hardly new news. Ditto Bill Cosby. The allegations and
accusations had been around for decades. Is it critical mass building and
building until the dam wall breaks? Or something more mysterious in play which
on occasion demands a unique personality to force the pace? 
In medicine,
practices which we now accept as self-evident, often had a mountain to climb
before they became common currency. In the 19th Century pioneering doctors
suggested that childbed fever was spread by their colleagues neglecting to wash
their hands between each patient. They were met with virulent resistance which
in one case drove one of the truth-tellers mad. John Bowlby, the psychologist,
now recognised as a leader in child development and attachment theory, had to
fight for years to get his ideas accepted.
Not all notions
that get imbedded in public consciousness are laudable. Kinsey whose
taboo-breaking research into human sexuality influenced social and cultural
attitudes through the second half of the 20th Century, was only recently outed
for his dubious use of paedophile sex offenders in
forming his conclusions
about child sexuality.
Sigmund Freud, who became one of the most significant
influencers on 20th Century thinking and culture, has been deconstructed in
recent years. But whatever his demerits, his ideas not only caught the zeitgeist,
they arguably set it on a new trajectory.
What is the
decisive factor that propels an obscure notion into everyday usage? The
internet started as a modest academic and defence communication system. It
morphed like an infectious epidemic into a how-did-we-ever-cope-without-it
underpinning to modern life.
I have a notion of
the collective unconscious – Carl Jung’s idea of the unconscious mind shared by
all members of the same species - as a gigantic ocean which ebbs and flows.
Sometimes surging its treasures and debris onto land, sometimes retreating out
to the impenetrable depths. What lands on shore to take root can seem random,
maybe it is. The true believer would say
we are given what we need at any given moment. And yes, certain widespread
beliefs do arise from a known cause. Spiritualism had a resurgence of interest
after World War 1 as grief-stricken families sought to connect with their dead.
Then faded back into obscurity again.
But in general I’m not so sure.
For some questions
there is no answer which doesn’t mean they aren’t worth exploring, especially
in these days of viral nonsense spreading like wildfire. Once ideas, delusional
and otherwise, get embedded they are difficult to nigh-impossible to shift.
Twenty, thirty years later some get blown out of the water and are exposed as
fraudulent. But what a waste of a third of a life, having a head full of
garbage.
Influencers can be
fakes or geniuses or they can be accidental heroes, bewildered as any at
becoming the flag-bearer for the spirit of the age. In popular culture, like
the Beatles or Princess Diana, they carry the hopes of their era. And riding
that whirlwind exacts its price.
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