Why are the Beatles, Jane Austen, and Mona Lisa Famous?

Cass Sunstein: How to Become Famous (published May, 24, 2024)

 Why the Beatles?

“Some people are struck by lightning. The Beatles were struck by lightning, and so was Taylor Swift, and so was Bob Dylan. So was Leonardo da Vinci, and so was Jane Austen, and so was William Blake. So was Steve Jobs, and so was Johann Sebastian Bach, and so was Barack Obama. Some people are not struck by lightning, which is why you have not heard of them. As Benjamin Franklin put it, ‘There have been as great souls unknown to fame as any of the most famous.’” (How to Become Famous, p. 7)

Why, Cass Sunstein wonders, do some creators become lastingly famous and iconic, while others are ignored and forgotten. Above all, he concludes, virtually no one of lasting fame and adulation is perfectly deserving of his or her position — circumstances beyond possession of talent and accomplishment always play a role. Did Sunstein convince me of this? Maybe not completely, but I enjoyed reading his explorations of the topic. 

For the Beatles, successful promotion, in Sunstein’s view, was everything, along with a refusal to give up and above all with effective agents and publicists. This is what happened when the as-yet-unknown Beatles were rejected by recording companies:

“There are many paths to success, and in a host of counterfactual worlds, the Beatles might have found one even without Epstein, Bennett, Colman, and Martin. Lennon himself thought so, insisting that the Beatles were the best group in the world (using expletives before best and world). ‘Believing that is what made us what we were,’ he said. ‘It was just a matter of time before everybody caught on.’ ... The best accounts of the crucial period, when the Beatles’ fate seemed highly uncertain, reveal the possibility of radically different counterfactual worlds, suggesting that the group’s success was anything but foreordained. And as we have seen, the word ‘foreordained’ raises many puzzles. It is necessary to know what we are holding constant, and what we are changing, in those counterfactual worlds. …

  

“The Beatles’ enduring success—their rediscovery by successive generations, their spectacular success in various years long after they broke up—can be taken to support the idea that they were unique, and that their uniqueness made their success essentially inevitable.” (p. 213)

Sunstein never really commits to either the idea that succes was fully earned and the group was truly unique or the opposite idea that some other group could just as well have achieved a similaar result. The facts — in the case of the Beatles and the many other success stories in the book — are never conclusive. 

Why Jane Austen?

Jane Austen's fame is another of the many interesting subjects in this book. The question is always why some creative individuals become lastingly famous while others — who may look just as promising early on — are briefly recognized and forgotten, or simply remain unknowns, not even footnotes to history. Sunstein points out: “William Blake and Jane Austen have enjoyed cultlike success long after their deaths, in part because they spoke to relevant groups at relevant times.” (p. 101) There is a lot of discussion of Austen and her contemporaries, as well as of many other famous people, but finally the concluding explanation:

“Austen’s reputation ‘was created almost entirely posthumously, first by her siblings, familial descendants, and a few reviewers, involving what we’d now call celebrity endorsements, logrolling quotes, trash talk, commercial efforts, and enthusiast activities.’ Is there an Austen cult? Absolutely. In fact, there are plenty of them. A key moment was the publication in 1870 of A Memoir of Jane Austen, by James Austen-Leigh (Austen’s nephew). The book was effectively a production of the Austen family, including cousins. Its first sentence set the tone: ‘More than half a century has passed away since I, the youngest of the mourners, attended the funeral of my dear aunt Jane in Winchester Cathedral; and now, in my old age, I am asked whether my memory will serve to rescue from oblivion any events of her life or any traits of her character to satisfy the enquiries of a generation of readers who have been born since she died.’” (P, 128)

My reaction to Sunstein’s study of Austen’s fame was to want to reread her work. I mean read her original novels, not the copycat works the cult of Austen has also inspired. There are so many dramatizations in film and TV series, and so many knock-offs that repurpose her characters or try to create sequels. So far, I’ve read Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility. I admire them as much now as I ever have throughout many years of reading her novels over and over. In my view, the unique way that Austen portrays the disadvantages of women in her era and shows how they cope with their situation is brilliant beyond any other author I know of. Her use of faintly ironic language and sharply observant detail has no equal. 

So there, Cass Sunstein.

Domestic happiness is always a goal of the characters in
Jane Austen’s novels. A happy table with good food, wine, and company.
Hello, fellow bloggers at Elizabeth’s Tea Party!

Why Mona Lisa?

As readers of my blog know, I’m a collector of Mona Lisa parodies and of silly things that self-appointed scholars say about Mona Lisa, like the endless claims to know her “identity.” I’m afraid Sunstein didn’t say much on this topic that I haven’t read over and over in many books:

“Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world. Why is that? You might want to answer that question by thinking long and hard about the painting and the celebrated woman in it. You might consider her enigmatic smile. What secret is she hiding? You might ponder the way her eyes seem to follow you wherever you go. You might wonder about her folded hands. They seem to signal calm; but why, exactly, are they folded? You might emphasize the background, which is at once beautiful, dreamy, and mysterious. The more you think about the Mona Lisa, the more you might admire the painting, and find it entirely unsurprising that it has achieved its iconic status. (p. 28)

He repeats the predictable history: the Mona Lisa was always pretty obscure until the mid-19th century, when it was selected by critics for its newly-noticed excellence, and then how it was stolen from the Louvre and returned with great drama in the early 20th century. Nothing in this narrative is original with Sunstein. And in my view, it’s not an explanation. But I guess that’s his point: you can’t explain this type of mass adulation of a single artist or work of art — you can always find another that has similar good features.

Sunstein doesn’t mention that the Louvre at the moment is experiencing insanely serious problems with crowd control because so many people want to see the Mona Lisa that there are lines just to get into the room with her. Is this a mystery or a truth about human nature? Sunstein doesn’t exactly ask this question. For him, the fame of the Mona Lisa is a kind of touchstone for understanding the fame of others: “Star Wars is a bit like the Mona Lisa—really famous, and much more than good, but the beneficiary of a cultural norm (“this, you have to see”) that was far from inevitable.” (p. 219)

Throwing soup on the most famous painting in the world: January 2024.

 

Why the Impressionsts?

More icon attacks: a few days ago a famous Monet painting at the Musee d’Orsay was vandalized in the name of some cause.I don’t care what cause — I hate vandals! 

Sunstein never mentioned the Impressionists, but the exhibit I saw last week (blogged here) asks and answers the same questions that motivate his book: Why are they famous? How did they accomplish it? Inquiring minds want to know. The answer, in the case of the Impressionists, was that they banded together, created a dramatic moment with their own expositions, and made themselves into iconic art. As Sunstein says: promotion!

Review © 2024 mae sander