ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an exploration of the dialectical nature of both Rolf Harris and Jimmy Savile, and the social, emotional, and political damage they inflicted for various organisations and charitable causes. This dialectic is situated as the question of individual qualities in contrast to the camouflage of celebrity persona. Biography is a loosely used term that indicates life writing in which an artist turns into a metaphor of a personality brand, whereby the brand is a ‘differentiating mark’ and ‘value indicator’. The indexical substitutes of Harris and Savile are the resolution of their dialectic, the synthesis of individual and persona into emblems of our cognitive dissonance, and our attribution error and thus prompt the further dialectic between traditional labour-value and affective value. Persona and indexical value is contextual, temporary, and at risk of being manipulated for both positive and negative social, emotional, and political gain.
