"I think there's a danger in overexposure. Just think what happened to Lady Godiva - she became a chocolate."
- Kenneth Jay Lane,
New York Times, Dec. 13, 1993
In one of today's talk shows, an interviewer was talking to David Rush, the Australian actor who stars in the movie "Shine," which is creating a stir among moviegoers these days.
It was not the film itself I noticed so much as a comment made by the interviewer while talking with the actor, who is well-known in Australia but a virtual unknown in the United States.
"With all the attention you are getting with the film," she said, "aren't you afraid of being tagged as a one-time performer?"
The actor, understandably frustrated by the question, struggled for a moment before responding.
"Well," he said, with a helpless gesture of his hands and a grin, "I have been well-received on the stage for over 25 years in Australia, and I feel very glad for that. This current film is just one thing in my life."
Then he continued, "When I read the script for `Shine,' I knew immediately it was an opportunity that might come along only once in a decade - maybe once in a lifetime. I can't base the success of my life on whether something even better comes along after it. I am just grateful to have been given this chance and to have completed it in a way that I can feel good about."
We have this mentality sometimes - I think of it as an American thing - that involves an ob-session with being on top. We get this notion that nothing else matters but winning. In fact, even being on top doesn't count once you have slipped back down a notch.
It reminds me of an ad that ran during the Summer Olympics, one of those flashy Nike commercials designed to impress young viewers with quick, unconventional camera angles of athletes in tense poses, and ending with a simply worded statement that, in this case, struck me as so offensive that I wrote it down so I would be able to remember it for just such an occasion as this.
It read: YOU DON'T WIN SILVER. YOU LOSE GOLD.
What a sad commentary on contemporary sports. What a putdown for all those second-place Olympians who were better in their disciplines than all but one other person in the entire world!
I have seen the same basic sentiment printed on the back of the popular "No Fear" T-shirts that many young people wear, stamped in letters so large they read like mottos: IF YOU CAN'T WIN, DON'T PLAY.
What an inane and demoralizing statement - a burden of words as destructive as the drugs and stimulants for which we have so little tolerance. Destructive ideas wear at the soul as devastatingly as drugs that destroy mind and body.
We wonder why so many young people consider opting out of life these days. Is it any wonder, really? For what is there to look forward to if you believe life's only fulfillment comes from being at the top of the heap, the head of the class, the life of the party, the captain of the team, the star of the show?
I love competitive sports, but I wonder if our focus doesn't get thrown way out of kilter. The value of competition comes not just from the winning but from the competition itself, from the power engendered through meeting personal challenge in the competitive arena. So many games are won by a single point. So many races lost by a hundredth of a second. Is that slight margin the end-all of a player's worth?
We would do well to rekindle respect for the struggles of second-placers - and third-placers - even last-placers, recognizing accomplishment wherever it occurs and valuing the respectful anonymity that is the mantle we all bear more typically than we ever mount the winner's podium.
Andy Warhol's statement that someday everyone would get their 15 minutes of fame has been repeated so often that it is becoming trite. Who would have dreamed we would become so obsessed with those 15 minutes that we would sell our souls to obtain them.
And who says Warhol was right anyway? After all, there can only be so many movie stars. That doesn't leave room for everybody to have a seat at the top - in anything.
Titles or celebrity status are not necessary for the savoring of a sunset, or for garnering the respect of those few people whom we each will have the time and energy to know in our lives, those who mourn with us in our sorrow and rejoice with us in our small success.
Those are the people who really matter in our lives, the "fans" who really know us.
Dennis Smith is an artist and writer living in Highland, Utah County. "Meanderings: A Place to Grow," a compilation of his Deseret News columns, is is available in local bookstores.