Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cultural icon (2nd nomination)

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep (but cleanup). Cbrown1023 talk 19:29, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cultural icon

AfDs for this article:
Articles for deletion/Cultural icon Articles for deletion/Cultural icon (2nd nomination)
Cultural icon (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

The "subject" seems to be little more than a mere collocation: True, an article on it could say that A cultural icon is an icon of culture -- appending to each the parenthesis (whatever this word is used to mean; and these days it's often used to mean very little). For yes, it seems to be more widely used than natural icon, postural icon, plural icon, rural icon, intercrural icon, etc., but so?

While I don't enjoy criticizing my fellow editors, the article is junk, really -- as I've already said on its talk page. (Response so far: Silence.) Now, en:WP has lots of junk articles on non-subjects, and most are harmless enough, but this vapid phrase actually gets trotted out and linked to, e.g. from the dreadful start of Marilyn Monroe: my removal of this twaddle was promptly dubbed "preposterous" and undone.

Observing that that WikiProject Philosophy catered for Deep Thought as well as actual philosophy (the latter being an almost incomparably more rigorous enterprise), I appealed on the talk page of the Project for help in this article. Nobody there has yet shown any interest, and I certainly can't blame them.

An earlier article on this phrase was deleted via AfD, but I'm not sure if I can speedy this as it's not a re-creation; it's merely no better. -- Hoary (talk) 14:16, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

  • Comment First of all, eponysterical. Second, half the life work of Camille Paglia is on this topic, and if Monroe is not a cultural icon, then I don't know who is (or ever was). Needs sources and a revamp, obviously, but I think it's also obviously a topic that both deserves a serious encyclopedic treatment and has the scholarly footing to back it up, even if it doesn't fit into systemic biases of Wikipedia contributors. --Dhartung | Talk 17:46, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment. I think I can see why WikiProject Philosophy wouldn't be interested in this--it's sociological in nature. As a sociological concept, it's probably extremely notable, but I'll leave that to the more sociologically-minded to discuss. Anturiaethwr 18:42, 21 April 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Anturiaethwr (talk • contribs)
    • Comment on Dhartung and Anturiaethwr: Perhaps my reading of Paglia was within the other half of her oeuvre: amusing stuff from an agony aunt for the dying twentieth century. Until I know what the "cultural" and the "icon" in "cultural icon" mean, it's hard for me to say what ("who"?) was or is a cultural icon and thus to deal with an assertion such as Dhartung's if Monroe is not a cultural icon, then I don't know who is (or ever was); still, in its present state the article seems to be a collection of salient examples of Youess-Americana; if I take "icon" to mean a visual representation and "culture" to have its wider sense (what might be called "civilization" if only it were civilized), then I'd discount Monroe as being three-dimensional, dated and dead, and would instead propose Image:AbuGhraibAbuse-standing-on-box.jpg. However, before pronouncing in an encyclopedia article that this or that image (let alone person) was a preeminent "cultural icon", yes, I'd like to see some of Dhartung's "scholarly footing". To me, this term is incompatible with a huge percentage of "Cultural Studies"; but there's hope when Anturiaethwr asserts that "cultural icon" is a sociological term: sociology is (or can be) a social science, and not mere name-dropping and obscurantism. While empiricism can of course be naive, it needn't be; so let's see the genuine (research-based) scholarship on this stuff. Or would a regenerated article be merely an earnest distillation of the windy works of "Cultural Studies"? -- Hoary (talk) 23:28, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
      • Comment I'm not sure we can have a conversation if all you're interested in doing is trolling. Cheers. --Dhartung | Talk 00:10, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
        • Oh, right, trolling. (Should I be offended by this charge?) Conversation can wait a little ("PDFTT"); I await the promised scholarly footwork. -- Hoary (talk) 00:29, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Redirect to the much better article pop icon, which is well-sourced and essentially covers the same subject. The only difference is that this article would add things like "baseball", "Hollywood" and "Coca cola" to what author considers to be "icons"; and that's only because this particular article is all original research, with a gratuitously added footnote, so no merge. Mandsford (talk) 18:54, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Pop icons and cultural icons are not the same thing, however. One could argue that pop icons are a subset of cultural icons, but not the other way around. Regardless, "cultural icon" is a key concept in much cultural and film theory, it is a theoretical term with a different and more profound significance in academic scholarship than "pop icon", which doesn't have the same academic grounding. Pinkville (talk) 19:09, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep. This is a foul article, unsupported and insupportable in its present state. But "cultural icon" is a significant (i.e. notable) theoretical term in Cultural Studies and related disciplines. There is a large body of work devoted to the theory and analysis of cultural icons, so a Wikipedia article on the subject is appropriate and even needed. Such an article doesn't happen to be the one we are discussing, but it could be. I propose we keep this article and I (or preferably someone more interested in the subject) will rewrite and try to improve this article. Pinkville (talk) 19:03, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Comment: "Cultural Studies" is a discipline? Hmm, its practitioners must kowtow to various philosophasters (Foucault, Deleuze and the rest); anything else? -- Hoary (talk) 23:28, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
        • At least two of those are certainly worth reading. But McLuhan, oh dear, all that baloney about the hot and the cool, etc. His stuff's high on rhetoric, low on rigor. -- Hoary (talk) 04:47, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep It has an OR issue, but not a bad start IMO, and definitely a subject worth having an article on. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 19:27, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete but recreate. I agree with JeremyMcCracken and Pinkville that the subject is likely notable, however this version of the article is useless as a starting point. Delete it and start over. --Kevlar (talk • contribs) 22:34, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
  • It doesn't need to be deleted to be re-written from the bottom; just open it up to edit and delete what's there (if it is bad enough that nothing can be saved). JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 00:47, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep a more general subject than "pop icon". If it can be improved, there is no reason for deletion. None has actually been presented, besides that the Philosophy Project doesnt think it within its scope. DGG (talk) 01:06, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Rejoinder: Right then: a terrible article, which so far as it's understandable is often plain wrong, what with its assertion that a particular brand of cola is incomparable, etc. Added to that, the suspicion that "cultural icon" merely means an icon (whatever that may mean) of culture (whatever that may mean), and that this is thus a mere collocation -- and that if WP is not a dictionary, it's certainly not a collocation dictionary. I see that the last dinosaur is a cultural icon (or dinosaurs are cultural icons), that cinematic smoke is one, that H C Andersen is one (and an oeuvre), that the Sacred Heart is one, and that so is the hooked rug. Or claimed to be, anyway. -- Hoary (talk) 05:47, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
      • Returned: Well it's no surprise that you've uncovered examples of the term used in an unscholarly or simply incorrect fashion... I could easily come up with similarly misguided examples of relativity, inferiority complex, et al, but such misuses do not invalidate the scholarly terms themselves. Pinkville (talk) 15:42, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep It may be a horrible article, but that is no reason to delete it. There is a lot of potential for an article such as this. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 07:27, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Oh my god this is a notable and well-defined subject (Keep) Google Books lists over 800 books that deal with the subject, some of which are exclusively about the subject. Yes, the current article is far poorer than it no doubt shall be in the future. That's what you call a stub. You improve stubs. You don't delete stubs. Has everybody forgotten how to do a little research and a little editing? "Hmm, this article's not very good. We'd better delete it!"--Father Goose (talk) 08:02, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
    • With Divine help (and also research), you may wish to improve this article. Incidentally, when I nominated it I didn't say it was "not very good", I said it was "junk". (Am I euphemism-challenged?) -- Hoary (talk) 08:32, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
      • I think I'll avoid a choice euphemism right now. I don't need divine help to work on this article, but it would help if you agreed to stop wasting more of our time with this AfD. Repeat after me: AfD is not cleanup.--Father Goose (talk) 09:56, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
        • Well, Father, it wasn't, and isn't, a matter of cleanup. The article was tripe the last time I looked. Even Pinkville, so vehement above that an article is needed, agreed with me on this (see the article's talk page). The article struck me as just as bad as its predecessor, whose nomination for deletion was such an outrage that, um, it was overwhelmingly supported, leading to deletion. ¶ So go ahead, peoples, rewrite the article already. Or at least make a start at doing so. Convince me. Before I hurl my copy of One Market Under God at the damn thing. -- Hoary (talk) 13:15, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
          • What does that book have to do with this article? What does it have to do with anything?--Father Goose (talk) 08:54, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
            • For one thing, it has to do with the glorification by the US mass media of the market in general and a smallish number of brand names in particular. In the state where I found it, the article seemed fully compatible with this trend. (I now notice that Johnbod has already improved this aspect of it; see his comment below.) Moreover, chapter 8 ("New Consensus for Old") has much to say about Cultural Studies. -- Hoary (talk) 10:17, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep Sorry, I just did my regular hedge-trim before noticing this addition to the many tags at the top. Obviously we should have an article on this subject, and obviously this one is crap (apart from the tentative lead para), and gets regularly crapper in between my visits with the power tools. But it would not take much to get the article to a more useful state. In my experience, the better an article is, the fewer unwelcome additions it collects. Johnbod (talk) 16:19, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • [Drums fingers on desk] So, wozzup? The article isn't as egregiously garbage-filled as it was when I nominated it, now that Johnbod has gone over it with his strimmer, but I still await anything worthwhile. For example, we read: John Wayne, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and Britney Spears are examples of broadly national American cultural icons; does this mean that they represent almost the whole nation (to whom?) or that they represent the US to almost its whole, or something else? I guess that if I asked my acquaintances here (average age 20), most would have heard of perhaps two among Wayne, Presley and Monroe, and (so far as they did know their names) would think of them as hazy memories from the distant and receding past, rather as I think of Tom Mix, Bing Crosby and Jean Harlow. Britney Spears would merely be a reminder of their own now-embarrassing tastes of some years before. (To me, they represent different flavors of sleb wackiness. For a full range of flavors, just add Michael Jackson and Tom Cruise.) America would bring to mind Johnny Depp (I'm out of date with the popsters). Which one person would bring to mind America? Dubya, I fear. Now, this is mere guesswork, but at least I acknowledge that it's guesswork. Where are the attempts at definition in the article? Where's the cited research? Or will the improved article merely say that these people or those are "cultural icons" merely because Paglia or admirers of Mythologies have declared so? Considering the degree of support for a good article on this subject, I'm puzzled by the lack of enthusiasm so far for actually creating it. -- Hoary (talk) 13:05, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Um, er, my copy of Mythologies is in the loft, and the dog ate my Camille Paglia. Maybe give "One market under God" a shot" - give the teenies something to think about? Johnbod (talk) 13:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Okay, I'm a little strapped for time at the moment (and I no longer own a copy of Mythologies, nor can I lay my hands on one right now), but by way of understanding how the term cultural icon may be/is used in a serious context, consider this abstract of the article Teaching controversial topics: iconography and the Confederate battle flag in the South by Jonathan I. Leib:

This article examines various strategies for teaching controversial topics. As a case study, I present examples from my experience teaching about the cultural/political geographic concept of iconography in southern classrooms using as an example recent debates over whether governments in the region should sanction the flying of the Confederate battle flag. First, I discuss the recent literature on the teaching of controversial issues. Second, I examine the concept of iconography and the debates over flying the flag. Third, I present different strategies that can be used to approach this controversial icon in a classroom setting. I conclude by arguing that there is no perfect solution to the teaching of controversial topics that will succeed for every topic, irrespective of time and place.

  • ... or this abstract of the article The "end of race" and the future of early modern cultural studies by Francesca T. Royster:

Part of a section on race and Shakespeare studies. The writer discusses the depiction of Othello in Oliver Parker's 1995 movie version of Shakespeare's play. The audience is encouraged to enjoy Parker's (and Lawrence Fishburne's) physical Othello, to take pleasure in his body, in his rages, and even in his murder of the play's heroine. This is conveniently accomplished by reducing Othello' black identity to an appetizing and culturally acceptable icon: that of the athletic black male body. Most frequently, Othello is played as responding to characters around him with grunts, glares, or lapses into feverish sexual fantasy. Fishburne evokes in this way a cultural figuration of the American black male of the 1990s. It is paradoxical that by signaling Othello's ultimate unreadability through iconic representations, Parker engages with the history of the many ways that Othello has been read before. It is precisely his stimulation of cultural memory through the replication of past images of black masculinity that makes the film postmodern.

  • Sorry to take up so much space, but I hope these two quickly (lazily) found examples (via the Avery Index) show that cultural icon is a valid scholarly term, and that - something this article hasn't made clear - cultural icons are not the things/people themselves, but rather the images of them in popular culture. That is, in scholarly terms it isn't Marilyn Monroe herself that is the cultural icon, but the collection of ideas about her: beautiful, sexy, tragic, dumbish but inspired blonde, etc. that together form a persona called Marilyn Monroe. From the little I know about her, Monroe herself seems to have been a fairly smart, serious actress whose intellectual and artistic ambitions were continually thwarted by the implications of her public image - by her cultural icon/doppelgänger, if you will. But that's for another essay... Cultural icons have propagandistic aspects, but are seen as being non-political or at least politically neutral/all embracing. A further note, although I more or less randomly chose two articles on US icons, by no means is the term cultural icon reserved exclusively for US subjects. The image of the Taj Mahal presented in the article is quite apt, if undiscussed. Pinkville (talk) 15:10, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • If icon refers to anything at all in the last couple of centuries, then surely yes it does refer to flags, designed and flown specifically in order to invoke an entity (usually a nation). I don't know what the relationship is between Leib's subject and, say, images of Monroe. ¶ Meanwhile, the stuff by Royster is your standard Private Eye "Pseud's Corner" fare. (Isn't there a website somewhere, a "postmodern generator", that churns out gibberish such as this? But whatever the hell Royster is banging on about, she doesn't once use the string "cultural icon". ¶ You, Pink, quickly prove yourself to be a vastly better writer than Royster, and I follow some of what you're saying, but I'm not clear about the differences, if any, among "persona", "public image", and "cultural icon". Dick Cheney, for example, would seem to have a clear public image (although I only have anecdotal evidence for this); would this mean that the Cheney of the [I think] popular imagination ("Go fuck yourself", hunting incidents, etc.), is a cultural icon (for the culture of interventionist Conservatism, or of the imperial presidency, or of crony capitalism, or whatever), or would he not a cultural icon because statecraft (or statecraftiness) is not "culture" and he hasn't cut any hit records? -- Hoary 16:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC) ... PS Ah, I misread the end of your comment. Since Cheney is politically, er, divisive, his persona can't be a cultural icon. Wayne was a man of the wacko right, but people seem to overlook this (as they don't do for Heston). I wonder about the chances of the pussycat Snoop Dogg. ¶ But enough of particular persons: The start of the splendid film Team America is a wonderful confection of what I suppose are cultural icons (if the term means anything) for the US (or the pre-freedom-fries-US) of France; complete (if I remember right) with a DS -- perhaps a tip of the hat to Mythologies? ¶ Time for me to go to bed and dream of Zazie dans le Métro. -- Hoary (talk) 16:38, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Of course, Royster isn't the writer of the abstract of her article... neverthelesss, the abstract has: culturally acceptable icon, which reduces to cultural icon fairly readily. As for your other, more substantial points, I'll come back to them in the morning. Pinkville (talk) 03:42, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
  • [Drums fingers on desk] And, since we last looked, this article, on a subject allegedly of major importance to our world and Wikipedia readers, has experienced a major revision! Yes, it's yet more bad news for Britney Spears: she's out, replaced by the good-looking and ever-lovable Oliver Hardy. And, er, that's it. -- Hoary (talk) 01:31, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep. Notable topic (though, as many have pointed out already, the article needs a lot of work). Klausness (talk) 11:32, 27 April 2008 (UTC)


The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.