[Ahead of my annual
trip to Charlottesville with my sons, a trip that always features a good
deal of swimming
pool action, a series on pools and swimming in American history and
culture. Leading up to a special weekend post highlighting one of my favorite
pieces I’ve had the chance to write in the last year!]
On the two Olympians whose divergent narratives reveal a great deal about
their respective eras.
America has had its share of Olympic stars, but I don’t know that any have
been more successful, or more famous, than Johnny Weissmuller and Michael Phelps. Weissmuller won
five swimming golds, a bronze in water polo, and numerous other medals at the
1924 and 1928 Summer Olympics (along with 52 US National Championships during
the decade); he then went on to an epic Hollywood career over the next
twenty-five years, starring in a dozen Tarzan films and thirteen in
the Jungle Jim series (which also
became a short-lived TV show). Phelps is the most decorated Olympic athlete of all time, winning 22
total medals across the 2004, 2008, and 2012 Summer games, and his 8 golds in
2008 were also an all-time individual record; he has since started his own charitable foundation and begun to
work as an advocate for swimming and health initiatives, amassing nearly 1.5 million
Twitter followers in the process.
That last clause already highlights just how distinct fame and celebrity
have become in the nearly 90 years between Weissmuller and Phelps’ Olympic
triumphs—not only because our 21st century stars (in sports as in
every other arena) are expected (if not indeed required) to interact with the
public quite consistently and thoroughly, but also because the lives of those
stars are just as consistently and thoroughly scrutinized by that public
(through its media middlemen). As a result, Phelps’ missteps and problems—a party where he apparently smoked pot, an arrest for DUI, various romantic
misadventures—have been chronicled and dissected time and again; Weissmuller,
on the other hand, was married five times between 1931 and 1963 (the years during which he was at the height of his film
success) but received far less public scrutiny or critique for those personal
details.
The causes of this shift are obvious enough—the proliferating mass media
and 24-hour news cycle, the rise of the internet and social media, changing journalistic
ethics and agendas. But it’s also possible to argue that Weissmuller and Phelps
illustrate an under-noticed effect of this shift in public attention. Phelps’
life and work are far from over, but it’s difficult at best to imagine him
going on to a thirty-year acting career, or staying in the public eye in any
capacity for that long; or, more exactly, it’s difficult to imagine anyone
wanting to do so, given all that such celebrity requires and entails. F. Scott
Fitzgerald, author of yesterday’s text, famously wrote that “There are no second acts in American lives”—Weissmuller certainly proved him wrong (although
Fitzgerald was, in fairness, referring principally to the possibility of a
second act revival after a first act collapse); but perhaps such second acts
will indeed prove far harder to achieve in our 21st century moment.
Next pool
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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