ABSTRACT
The heroic narrative considers that our society venerates the cult of celebrity so vigorously that to choose anonymity over adulation in the minds of most people comes close to certifiable behavior. This chapter notes that the persistence with which cultural heroism has been venerated, let alone how the parameters of the phenomenon have changed very little since the ascendance of Romanticism in the nineteenth century, is remarkable. To put the matter in cinematic terms, proponents of this approach conduct their narratives as if they occur almost entirely in close-up and abandon the critical perspective incumbent in the long shot. In that manner, the subjects of those narratives become the center of a narrow universe, in which the other characters circulate as little more than satellites. The chapter notes that all creative processes require joint efforts, and the solipsistic thrust of the heroic narrative blinds itself to this simple fact. To discuss the domain of popular music and ignore the efforts of producers, arrangers, recording engineers, publishers, back-up singers, session musicians or song pluggers reinforces the kind of Romantic rhetoric that should have disappeared quite some time ago.
