30 Days of De-Objectification: Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison

Photographed 1967 by Gloria Stavers

30 Days of De-Objectification:

Jim Morrison

The iconic images of the late Jim Morrison which everyone tends to focus on were only small parts of given photo shoots. The Strange Days documentary on Netflix shows more of one of these photo shoots. It shows Jim laughing and being goofy with the photographer and seeming to find the focus on him a bit silly overall.

A snapshot captures an infinitesimally brief moment; a moment which passes in the blink of an eye. Snapshots can capture the best of a person, at least appearance-wise. I am not saying that a snapshot doesn’t capture a certain element of that person. However, the truth about a person can be lost behind a particularly seductive image.

Jim Morrison was a strikingly handsome man, but there was so much more to him than his looks. He had an incredible voice and was a brilliant poet. He was intelligent, charismatic, and insightful.

However, behind the image of the Lizard King was a shy, insecure man who never really felt like he belonged.

Reducing Jim Morrison to a pretty pop star does him a great disservice. He was so much more than that.

I would love to have been Jim’s friend. I was only four years old when he died, but, if I could hitch a ride aboard the TARDIS, I’d love to go back in time, perhaps to listen in on a recording session, perhaps to catch a performance at the Whiskey A Go-Go. Those would be amazing things to do. However, what I’d really like to do would be to sit and listen to Jim’s take on the world, maybe to write poems together. I’d like to see inside his fragile eggshell mind. I’d like to sit and watch a sunset with him and to just be happy to make a good friend.

It honestly hurts me when I see people reducing someone like Jim Morrison to nothing more than an object. I want to shake them and ask them how they manage to miss out on the depth of this amazing individual. It isn’t a tragedy that he died because he was pretty. Its a tragedy that he died because the world lost an incredible artist and an amazing person.

Jim had his faults, to be sure. He could be a mean drunk. According to Ray Manzarek, there were two Jim Morrisons: Jim and Jimbo. Everyone liked Jim. Nobody liked Jimbo, and Jimbo didn’t like much of anyone, least of all himself.

Perhaps the worst aspect of Oliver Stone’s film (which Ray Manzarek despised) was the fact that rather than telling the story of the very human Jim Morrison, it only focused on the image of Jim Morrison: the scintillating spectacle captured by various snapshots in an all too brief life. This is, unfortunately, how most people view the man.

I had a friend in high school who well nigh worshiped Jim, but I didn’t find her obsession with him cringe-worthy. There was a reverence to her feelings which is lacking in people who tend to talk about how “fuckable” a given person is to the exclusion of all other aspects of said person. My friend would often share Jim’s poems with me. She carried a copy of his poetry book with her. Sometimes a group of us would go up on the hill behind the school, smoke a joint, and Kris would read Jim’s poetry to us. Then we would talk about Jim, his poems, and our own lives.

I think that Jim would have approved.

I love it when young people enjoy the songs from my generation and my parents’ generation.

I love it when they want to find out more about the amazing artists who created those songs.

When they talk about wanting to bang these aging, and, in some cases dead individuals?

I’m not keen on that at all.

I find it incredibly disrespectful and minimizing of talented and multifaceted people.

The music is timeless.

People are finite.

Have some damn respect.

 ~The Cheese Hath Grated It~