Shameless

It has never been one of my ambitions to make history by breaking all the rules.

I respect the men and women who have. In their rebellion, they have overhauled systems of law and commerce; these warriors have lived passionate lives, full of heroics, and they carry the torch of the "American Rebel" spirit into every new generation. Our pace of progress rests on their shoulders. Where would we be--in this modern age--without those individuals?

Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan (for better or worse) would never have pushed the envelopes of business and created the trust culture which financed our greatest industrial age. Nor would they have been the giants whose fall ushered in the rise of the middle class.

Carnegie looks cuddly, doesn't he?

Gloria Steinem, and her peers, would never have become the megaphones for feminism; and we might still ignorant of how low the "glass ceiling" could hang.

Sandra Day O'Connor might never have brought her brand of justice to that very important bench. 

Harvey Milk would never had changed the political landscape for the LGBT community.

Kathyrn Bigelow's remarkable cinematic storytelling might never have led to the first Oscar for a female director; more importantly, her storytelling in a male dominated world might never have been heard.

All impressive, all noteworthy...the list could go on, and on, and on. The warriors of our collective national history found rule books and they did what unlikely leaders do best: they broke every rule they did not like.

But there is another sort of individual who makes history: the Guileless Innovator.

 

The individual whose pioneering efforts created the incredible, the new, and the desperately-in-need-of-regulation category. And maybe, just maybe, they never meant to start a movement. These are the folks that bring a secret smile of admiration to my face. They never went to "war," or overhauled a system. Their mark on history is unquestionable--but their approach so very eloquent: these men and women did what they did first, and so they predated the rules and regulations of their so-called industries.

Mary Kay Ash, the entrepreneur, needed a business model that could grow while she slept. One that would allow her to succeed based on the quality of effort she put forward, rather than the scale set forth by a corporate culture. So, she launched a cosmetics company that has provided millions of women with financial independence over three decades. A model that is now mimicked by hundreds of boutique American businesses.

Oprah Winfrey, Media Mogul, tackled daytime television when daytime television was a breeding ground for little more than soap operas and appliance commercials. Sure, she knocked down several racial barriers in her career as a journalist, but her unexpected achivement came later. She built a platform on which the feuding (post feminist divide) Domestic Female could connect to her Career-Culture counterpart. On national television. She probably also inflamed a consumerism problem ("My Favorite Things"), but let's share credit where credit is due.

Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of the Wikipedia Foundation, saw an opportunity to create shared knowledge among nations, peoples, and neighbors. His presence in the modern subconscious is certainly as strong as that of Mark Zuckerburg, and his Facebook creation. The difference? Wales invited the world to share in authorship. And created one of the most visited information resources on the planet, with more information kept on its pages than in the lost library of Alexandria.

And, arguably, my favorite woman of cinema: the seductive, guileless Queen of Metro Goldwyn Meyer, Norma Shearer. The first time that I saw the film The Women, I was transfixed by this beautiful, gregarious starlet. Charming, witty and so very present. And I wondered why I had only a vague memory of her name. Well, one quick look into Tinseltown's history and you will find a woman credited with every (though few) brave cinematic roles in Pre-Code Hollywood. She played a naive little divorcee, a royal adulteress, and in The Women, a housewife who refuses to pretend that her husband's infidelity is not cause for a trip to Reno. In pre-code Hollywood there were no rules. Society may have had them, but no one had yet to say that the theater or cinematic world was a place for censorship. This was art. She was the first talkie super star. And, after all, if Shakespeare's crude comedies were still getting stage time, why not a shattered housewife, desperate to maintain her dignity while struggling with love for her husband? Well, Code Hollywood reacted to the lovely Norma with many restrictions. Script content was monitored, clothing choices were scrutinized. The lovely Queen of MGM? She simply took off her tiara, influenced the producer's chair and steered cinema into new waters by her hubby's side (Mr. MGM himself).

So, in the grand tradition of Navigating the Nuances, I bring you a topic from the far left field to consider. If the legacy were to be yours, which would you rather:

Be a rebel who finds victory in the spotlight,

Or be the guileless innovator who makes history before the spotlight has even caught up?