Mark Wahlberg has become one of the most celebrated actors of the 20th and 21st centuries. Whether starring alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in The Departed or Will Ferrell in The Other Guys, Wahlberg has proved that he has the appeal and the versatility to play many different roles on set. He is in every sense a celebrity icon. Like many celebrities of his stature, Wahlberg has a devoted following. In my own group of friends, he is universally liked and respected. Yet violence and anger stain Wahlberg's past. As a teenager growing up in Dorcester, Wahlberg beat a middle aged Vietnamese man unconscious in an unprovoked outburst of racial hatred, permanently blinding the man in one eye. During Wahlberg's teenage and young adult years, the Boston police reportedly arrested him between 20 and 25 times for crimes that ranged from cocaine possession to assault to attempted murder. Wahlberg frequently ridiculed racial minority groups, and reportedly used racist language during many of his assaults. In his early 20's, however, Wahlberg abruptly changed his lifestyle, relinquishing his violent past and focussing his energy on his acting and producing career. He has since established himself as one of the most successful and prolific actors in America.
While Mark Wahlberg has accomplished a great deal in his acting career, I wonder why I and the rest of society choose to forgive him for his past grievances. After all, his transgressions in youth match or even transcend those of Joseph Rakes, the supposedly soft-spoken subject of Stanley Forman's pulitzer prize winning photograph, do they not? Why, then, does Joseph Rakes still live under the shadow of his youthful anger, and Wahlburg has been able to transcend his violent and racist behavior? The answer lies in two of the concepts we have discussed this term: branding and worthiness. Mark Wahlburg is an important man. He endorses products (Calvin Klein, for example). He stars in movies, and produces ENORMOUS revenues for movie companies. The media (by means of the advertising filter) has every incentive to market Mark Wahlburg as a person worth emulating, as a good image of Wahlburg benefits the goals of advertisers who use him as a marketing tool. The movie industry also wants to keep Wahlburg's image in a good light for financial reasons because they need to promote his brand for their brands. As for the people who already know about Wahlburg's past, we tend to overlook many of his wrongdoings because we like his movie characters and his close-up shots at the Academy Awards, in which he appears elegantly dressed and smiling. We assume that, because he is a person respected by the movie industry and the mainstream media, he deserves our respect as well. Also, we find it easy to ignore Wahlberg's past because of his efforts to change his old ways (the fairy tale story of converting from the dark side and thus gaining the ability to ignore past evils is such an American, Starwars image, ingrained into our heads from such a young age that it is immensely difficult to question). In contrast, Joseph Rakes, who grew up in the same racially charged time period as Wahlberg, cannot overcome the demons of his past because he does not provide the people in power with an incentive to vindicate him. To twist Chomsky's definition of "unworthy victim," Rakes is a victim unworthy of absolution because his absolution provides no benefit to the one responsible for his acquittal. Rakes has one claim to fame: his portrait in Forman's photograph, and that he has been branded with that identity. Wahlberg can escape this image because others have had a desire to brand him differently.
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