Shepard Fairey grew up one town over from mine in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. On the walk back home from my elementary school, my friend Albert, the coolest kid I knew, showed me the first of Fairey's "Obey" series, an inkblot caricature of Andre the Giant with a tiny declaration that the deceased wrestler "had a posse." These stickers went on lampposts and attached to bathroom stalls in my school, giving the custodians one hell of a mess to clean up.
Since then, Fairey's drawings have been slapped on buildings far from South Carolina. His most famous image, which last I checked is still hanging in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., is the often-duplicated, stenciled, and possibly plagiarized (but nevertheless iconic) portrait of Barack Obama entitled Hope.
This image, and the controversy surrounding it, likely didn't win Fairey many friends back in McCain Country, SC. This much was obvious, but I was still surprised to find that it didn't keep him from one of the highest honors I've seen bestowed to anyone on this left-leaning coast: An invitation to sit on a panel to represent and discuss "Good Men."
The two good men who founded the panel, Tom Matlack and James Houghton, were self-described as "bored" financiers, burnt out after nine years of hard success as venture capitalists. And, like the silent majority of the bored upper-class, they inadvertently founded something "good" for the rest of us. Matlack's memoir turned into a book of around 30 mini-memoirs from "Good Men," which in turn inspired a documentary film and a foundation. These "Good Men" were described to me by Matlack as ordinary guys who have faed a kind of crucible in their roles as husbands, fathers, workers, or sons.
To discuss these roles, and indeed manhood itself, T.M. recruited Matt Weiner, creator of the TV show Mad Men and Fairey for a panel held at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood on Dec 7th. As far as I'm concerned, Weiner's place on the panel was guaranteed the second he gave life to Don Draper, perhaps the most classic fictional male role model we see on screen today. But Weiner's genius is in his portrayal of Draper's private life, his quiet moments, the time between 5 PM to 9 AM when most macho role models are off-duty. It's during this time of reflection that Draper is shown as a real man with true vulnerability.
Weiner's expanded view of manhood is much the same one championed by Matlack in his "Good Man" project. Matlack's aim is to air these vulnerabilities without judgment – to allow fallibility entrance to the identity of "good men."
And this brings us to Fairey. When I asked him about his battles with perfection, legality, and the idea of being being a male role model himself, he danced around the question a bit, discussing briefly that most classic symbol of masculinity, John Wayne.
Then Fairey did something unexpected and unquestionably masculine – he addressed his problem with plagiarism head-on. He talked about sidestepping the allegations at first, how he tried to cover them up, how he would have done anything to avoid admitting he made a simple mistake. And how he still had to confront this idea of masculine perfection established 50 years prior, courtesy of John Wayne and George Patton and Frank Sinatra.
Suddenly, I saw what Matlack meant about not passing judgment on a man before hearing his story. I saw the point and the purpose of the project itself. And I saw Shep Fairey – neighbor, iconoclast, artist – become a good man before my eyes.
Originally in Los Angeles Magazine at: http://www.lamag.com/do/blog_post.aspx?id=22602&blogid=1592&blogid=1592
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