CHICAGO — Oscar weekend seems as good a time as any to break the news:
Nothing is iconic anymore.
Iconic is dead. No one or thing is iconic now. Brad Pitt isn’t iconic. Zendaya isn’t iconic. The Oscar statue isn’t iconic. Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, Angela Bassett — not a one is iconic now. Closer to home, The Bean is also not iconic. Michigan Avenue is not iconic. Chicago’s skyline is not iconic.
Chicago itself is no longer iconic.
Sorry. But everyone and everything and every place on earth (and beyond) is now — thanks to social media, traditional media, and the collective efforts of millennials and Gen Z — iconic. Which means nothing is iconic. Yes, for exactly 367 years — since the first recorded printed use of “iconic” — humanity has understood the word “iconic” to mean various things, though fundamentally, it meant more than just famous or good: It meant a thing of such widely shared appreciation it represented more than itself, a thing so omnipresent that at times its very shape or silhouette was recognizable. Once, you could call the silhouette of Michael Jordan leaping on a pair of Air Jordans a textbook example of “iconic.”
The word is meaningless now.
The Academy Awards, like the Olympics and Super Bowl, was once an iconic event. It was attended by Hollywood icons celebrating (and sometimes creating) images that might one day take their place alongside decades of iconic cultural history. That was the fun of watching the Oscars (and the shock of Will Smith’s slap last year): You saw iconic take shape. You saw its roots sprout. Becoming iconic took time.
No longer.
You might argue this is the natural course of language. Words change meaning. They start out as one thing and become something else. “Cool” hardly denotes hipness now; “awesome” is rarely used to describe feeling awestruck. But the decline of “iconic” — a mainstay on those annual lists of overused words — still kind of hurts. “Iconic” had gravitas once; it was brought out sparingly to describe something rare, special and universal. Not that its fate should be much of a surprise: “Iconic” was acting promiscuous for years. The carelessness of its use on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok just suggests its hollowness is complete.
As I write this, “iconic” is being used on TikTok alone to describe a certain face Ariana Grande makes; Jake Gyllenhaal’s dance in the (barely seen) movie “Demolition”; the celebration style of Portuguese soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo; old homes in San Francisco; Ashley Tisdale’s bathing suit in “High School Musical”; court transcripts; runway walks. Ariana DeBose’s widely argued-over tribute to the British Academy Film Awards’ female nominees is already called “iconic” by the BBC’s TikTok account.
The trouble is, to spread “iconic” that thin is to say that, oh, a diner in Arizona and a temple in India are the same. “Iconic” was never meant to mean merely admired. For more than a century, Hollywood found its status in the idea that some performers loom larger than life and occasionally the movies they made represented more than a diversion. John Travolta’s white suit and finger in the air on a disco floor meant more than disco. It was iconic of the ‘70s. Peter Fonda in “Easy Rider,” leaning back on a star-spangled chopper, against expanses of open country, could be a stamp for the ‘60s. Bogart, Chaplin, Poitier, Hepburn — each was once so iconic that they recalled in us something more than a role or even their own fame.
They were iconic in the original sense. They were like holy objects to revere.
“Iconic,” and “icon,” derives from the Greek for eikon, meaning a representation or image; initially that image was religious. But in early versions of the New Testament, after Jesus asks what “eikon” is on the coins, he declares: “Then render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” Depending on your interpretation, Jesus was already nudging “iconic” (ironically) toward the secular. He was describing a person whose importance was so accepted, their name alone drew an image in your head. Just as Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever” is so iconic, you never need to see it to know its significance. Just as digital icons on your smartphone or desktop represent more than files or clouds.
But so little culture is a shared language these days. The Oscars, and the industry it celebrates, are no longer common ground. “Iconic” is only meaningful now if you’re paying close attention. Maybe that’s a byproduct of a country that no longer agrees on basic facts. Or maybe “iconic” is like marketing now, more or less. Think of Chicago. Deep dish pizza is iconic of Chicago, the blues are iconic of Chicago, and The Bean is iconic of Chicago — but probably, if you live in Chicago, those things mean more to the tourists.
I’m part of the problem.
A search reveals, during the past decade alone, I have used “iconic” about 150 times in the Tribune. I’ve used it to describe Mickey Mouse and Harry Caray’s oversized eyeglasses (those I can live with), but also Happy Meals and YA novelist Veronica Roth.
Not that I’m alone: The Tribune has used the word dozens of times just since Jan. 1 to describe a tower in Belvidere, the restaurants of Elmwood Park, that ‘70s public service announcement with the crying Native American, the Walnut Room in Macy’s, Bookman’s Alley in Evanston and the Tribune Tower. The New York Times, in that same period, used it to describe Peeps, the act of skipping prom, Chicago Blackhawk Bobby Hull and the Borrego sheep of California’s Palm Canyon. The Washington Post used “iconic” to describe both a band in Slovenia and a dry cleaner. Iconic is in the eye of the beholder today: “Iconic” now means a surf cinematographer (Hawaii News Now), the old Nokia logo (CNN) and an Indian American chef (NPR).
A decade ago, to stem this, humanity briefly came to its senses and the media began issuing staff memos demanding an end to the use of “iconic.” These included NPR, the Washington Post, Washingtonian magazine and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel; MSNBC named it “the absolute worst word of 2013.”
That war is lost.
The new “iconic” is all-inclusive and prolific. Along with reality TV and social media, it’s the latest proof that we are living out Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame. At least online, “iconic” has come to mean essentially really good or widely-liked. I recently saw a TikTok influencer explain, to be considered iconic, one must take small steps out of their comfort zone, because not playing it safe “is literally what being an icon is all about.” She meant iconoclastic, plowing ahead with against-the-grain ideas. Or perhaps she’s just ahead of the curve. The crowdsourced Urban Dictionary offers countless new definitions for “iconic.” One says it means the best. As in, to quote the sentence given as an example: “Katy Perry’s blonde hair is so iconic.”
Another (more popular) post claims “iconic” is synonymous now with “classic” or “established.” That didn’t sound too bad. All was not lost. Then I saw how this version of “iconic” was used in a sentence:
“‘Oedipus Rex’ is a classic, but the original ‘Planet of the Apes’ is truly iconic.”
Maybe Charlton Heston was right: “It’s a mad house! A mad house!”
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