Distinction
Often pop icon status implies distinguished association with a societal ideal or archetype. It is not uncommon for iconic figures to have a nickname or sobriquet that is used to emphasize this association. Sometimes the very name of such individuals is even used as a synonym for common words or ideas.
A number of pop icons are distinguished for having died at a young age. These include James Dean, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Freddie Mercury, River Phoenix, Jean Harlow, Tupac Shakur, Bruce Lee, Janis Joplin, and Marilyn Monroe among others.
Some pop icons, such as Barney The Dinosaur, Mickey Mouse, Big Bird, Winnie the Pooh, Bugs Bunny, Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, Harry Potter, the Simpsons, and even Sherlock Holmes are fictional characters. Even inanimate objects have been recognized as pop icons.
Some figures attain transitory or context-specific "pop icon" status for particular events that captivate public attention, such as in the case of the O.J. Simpson trial.
Read more about this topic: Pop Icon
Famous quotes containing the word distinction:
“At sundown, leaving the river road awhile for shortness, we went by way of Enfield, where we stopped for the night. This, like most of the localities bearing names on this road, was a place to name which, in the midst of the unnamed and unincorporated wilderness, was to make a distinction without a difference, it seemed to me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Genocide begins, however improbably, in the conviction that classes of biological distinction indisputably sanction social and political discrimination.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)
“A distinction of property results from that very protection which a free Government gives to unequal faculties of acquiring it.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)