«Look Who's Gone!» Chester Bennington as a Media Hero of Our Time

The article is devoted to the memory of the outstanding American rock musician, singer, poet, charity man, frontman of Linkin Park – Chester Charles Bennington. The text is the first attempt to consider the phenomenon of creativity and personality of Bennington as a media hero on a global scale, aesthetically, mentally and ethically influenced on the mental health of several generations in the first two decades of the new century. Using the fragments from the huge stream of comments in the Network for the musician's departure, the author analyzes some semantic blocks of these messages, revealing in them functional and typological coincidences with the heroes from traditional myths. In particular, the analysis of some semantic blocks of intertext on the death of Chester Bennington, suggests that similar to the heroes of traditional myths, Chester as a media hero performed paternalistic and soteriological functions, acted as an object of adoration (idol), was a role model, his departure marked for millions of fans keen sense of the passage of time. Also in the article, an attempt was made identify the specific features of the media hero, which are due to the special sphere of its existence, namely, media reality. Short, full of incredible turns, hard work, harmful tragic passions, love and compassion, the fate of Chester Bennington during his life began to acquire legendary features.


Introduction
The Genesis of the modern media hero goes back centuries. Centuries ago, vagrants, minnesingers, jugglers, troubadours were among the despised and disenfranchised social strata. This was because medieval artists spent most of their lives on wheels, moving from city to city, from castle to castle, giving performances. Their life was connected with a road. The road in those days was perceived as the center of evil and rejection. The roads were inhabited by robbers, lepers, foreigners The worst things on the roads took place at night, when «the night`s queen Moon» appeared in the sky. «Favorites of the moon» -so in the days of William Shakespeare was the name for the servants of various arts. This happened because the actors, musicians, jugglers had to play other people, to write something that was not in reality, to submit to their will by training animals -all this was perceived as magic and caused distrust and fear. People of art were considered to be incomprehensible and changeable, like the Moon changing its phases.
Echoes of these distant times can be found today in modern mass culture, where most shows -from theater to sports start in the evening or at night. If before the artists were outcasts, people were afraid of and sometimes hated them, but in the mass culture, which with the advent of technical media broadcasts its entire ideological, value, behavioral block through them, it is the «favorites of the moon» are at the «top of the world», as legislators of lifestyle for the masses. This is due to the fact that mass culture was born as a culture of leisure, as a culture of free time instead of regulated labor in machine production. Mass culture was designed to distract and entertain the masses, to create a sense of full and varied life, therefore, actors, musicians, dancers, designers, artists have become the main persons of the media and their power, first of all, of ethical and aesthetic plan.
However, the power of the main actors of mass media culture has a number of specific features: 1. In the media space there are no any real persons, but there are their image-simulacra, their «packaging». [1] 2. The vast majority of the «heroes» of the media does not seek to perform the functions of a traditional hero, and enjoy the benefits, that is, according to the words of Christopher Lash, «elude» from the fate of the man of mass, this stratum of society is characterized by narcissism, as a way of attitude to the world. [2] 3. As the goal of most media personalities is making money, they sometimes act as conductors (here they are -mediums!), broadcasting the will and values of customers, sometimes outside the media sphere. «... And yet the main question remains: what to do now, after an Orgy? All utopias have already acquired real outlines, but life is becoming more and more like a play, the text of which has not been written by us, and besides, it is unknown whether this text is real, or it is a simulacrum trying to become the reality». The words of the French philosopher very accurately characterize the essential state of the sociocultural moment in which the modern media hero functions. And further «... a sensual ectoplasm, which is Ciciolina, combined here with artificial nitroglycerin of Madonna or the charm of Michael Jackson -the hermaphrodite in the style of Frankenstein. They're all mutants, transvestites, genetically pretentious creatures». [3] However, in this strange field of simulacra and simulations real heroes appear, performing the functions of a traditional hero, almost completely coincide with their personal media in general appearance and characters of their artworks featured in the undeformed archetypal values.

The Media Phenomena of Chester Bennington
Such rare phenomena in modern mass culture includes the personality of Chester Bennington (1976-2017), whose life and sudden departure, in fact, was the reason for thinking about the Hero as a cultural phenomenon. It is impossible to measure the scale of personality experimentally, but in the process of these measurements there is something similar to the law of hydrostatics, discovered by Archimedes, in which the mass of the body is determined by the amount of water displaced by it. Similarly, the scale of personality can be «measured» by the volume of emptiness that arises in society after the departure of this personality.
In the era of culture, reproducing the essence and meaning, leaving, the absence of the hero was clothed in silence (remember the death words of Prince Hamlet: «further is silence»). «The people are silent...» -everybody knows these well-known lines from Pushkin's tragedy «Boris Godunov». Indeed, for thousands of years, those who were called «homo simplex et idiota» («simple and uneducated man»), or «vile estate», that is, the mass was «silent».
There were several reasons for this. Firstly, the vast majority of those who worked on the land and engaged in crafts were illiterate, and secondly, there were no means of communication that would allow quickly and from many sources to collect and disseminate information about the event, phenomenon or someone's opinions. Thirdly, the ancient or medieval society functioned in the system of object-semantic hierarchies and manual technologies and did not need to know about individual emotions and opinions. However, in the conditions of the new «system of objects» [4] -in which (according to Valery Savchuk) «... new technologies and the mediareality generated by them not only become independent, but also the only, or, strengthening the thesis, ontological condition of human existence. They are no longer technical intermediaries, transmitting something that is absent in them, that only through them is transmitted, passed, but they appear themselves to be an all-consuming and all-encompassing environment, that is, the reality of experience and consciousness». [5] The gaping emptiness that remains after the departure of the Hero, generates an information flow of a special property, which is designed to fill or, at least, give a sense of filling the void that has arisen.
The modern Internet space, as the newest and essential part of the media reality, can be compared with a huge mirror placed in front of millions of inhabitants of the planet, which reflects not the person, but the life of the human soul with its joys, experiences, love and hatred, in the conditions of information civilization this is really a territory of «experience and consciousness». «The thinker must immediately answer the questions and make a decision, and before the theories which has satisfied us... are no longer able to help us» -this categorical statement of professor Norbert Boltz is mentioned by V. Savchuk in one of his works.
[6] Despite such wishes, it seems that the scientific community is not yet sufficiently focused on this almost spontaneous ocean of private commentaries.
Meanwhile, it is in them today that the mental layer of elusive everyday life, routine (vita quotidiana) is fixed, the importance of which was stressed by the leaders of the school of «Annals» and Martin Heidegger.
They reflect the new planetary digital «folk» culture. It is this ocean of the world soul that brings real «folk heroes» to its giant crest. Chester Bennington's departure did not raise a wave -a huge shaft of comments swept through the world Network. From the separate phrases connected by me absolutely freely from these messages, there was a text which could be called a monologue and which is said in unison by millions (metaphysical action!), and in the context of postmodern aesthetics -it is, in fact, intertext, which integrity rests on the semantic and emotional conjugation of fragments of different texts, born at different times and in different places.
Here In fact, we really have the «chatter» of an ordinary person, which reflects the voices of time and space, different life and cultural experience, that is (I am not afraid of this word) the voice of Being sound, but not the abstract, cosmically cold, abstract life, and the living and throbbing life here-and-now, which tries to inquire ourselves about ourselves. This is what one of the great thinkers of the XX century, Martin Heidegger, once wrote about: «Such being, which we ourselves are and which, incidentally, has the existential ability to ask, we terminologically grasp as here-being (Dasein)» [7]. The focus of Dasein's questioning is the anthropological question, the question of a Man, in this case this is a very specific individual -Chester Bennington.
Here, this seemingly unpretentious intertext explicitly raises the question of existence from the point of view of its understanding, comprehension of its meaning, questioning about it! It is precisely because questioning is a mode of being that attests to the existence of the one who asks -it is this that indicates that the former «silent majority» came out of the noumenal layer of hidden existence and found both its voice and its language.
If the main semantic units can be identified in Dasein's circuit, in his inquirer stream the following picture will appear: 1. millennia. Thought the problem of interaction of the hero in general (and the hero from media reality in particular) with subjects exists for several decades and constantly attracts researchers, owing to the dynamism and complexity is far from full and comprehensive understanding and, certainly, surpasses a format the article. Nevertheless, the analysis of some semantic blocks from the mental stream of media reflection of the masses can approach the understanding of this new global phenomenon -Media Hero.

Hero and Subjects -A Basis for Analysis
For the objectivity of the analysis, we will not apriori assign Chester Bennington the title of the Hero, but will use the advice of a very worthy source, namely the gospel postulate: «by their fruits you will know them». (Matthew 7:16). The first semantic stream is connected with the emotional background, these are feelings experienced by millions of people at the same time and in a certain limited period of time. These are experiences of pain, sorrow, loss. Given that comments with the same emotional coloring in the first months after the departure of Chester Bennington appeared in different countries, the scale of grief and pain can be described as planetary, expressed in spontaneous rallies, and in commemorative actions, and in people's memorials. In historical retrospect, this image of universal sorrow can be compared with a grieving Chorus in Greek tragedies. The comparison is amplified by the fact that on the day of Chester Bennington's death, crowds spontaneously gathered at the embassies and consulates of the United States, sang the songs of Linkin Park, resembling the ancient Choir, mourning the death of the hero. Thus a lot of people mourn over those whose lives and deeds were significant for every.
Although humanity has already passed the stage of large families, repeating in the comments the idea of orphanhood of an entire generation points to the need of modern man in metaphysical paternalism, not disappeared (remember the memorable to all who lived in the USSR -«the father of Nations» -so the Soviet mass media called I. V. Stalin), the need for some supreme patron who will help in difficult times and will always be there. Coming to the aid through the various gadgets the voice of Chester performed the functions of such an omnipresent patron. Although the source of this voice was invisible to millions of fans, but from time to time It was «expanded» with new songs, albums, concerts, videos, which gave a sense of his presence and support of the lives of these millions. With the departure of Bennington his voice, remaining on the technical media, will not be able to «expand» into the future due to new tracks, therefore, there is a mental sense of remoteness in time, which will only grow. As the result of this there is an experience of orphanhood, when the voice of the patron has no longer «lives» with his listeners-wards.
The idea that Chester -a piece of life of millions and the voice of the new Millennium, is repeated very often in a virtual sea of comments on these tragic events. For seventeen years, songs performed by Chester Bennington, music of Linkin Park accompanied millions of their fans, linking changes in their lives with new albums, with a new sound, mood, poetic images, intertwining in the event series of each individual fate. Probably, the multi-million group of fans of Linkin Park, seventeen years of their stay at the top of the musical Olympus now seem to be their «la Belle Epoque» [8], when at concerts, at special meetings for fans, the lucky ones could reach out, touch, take photos with their idols.
But the main thing at that time was the voice of Chester in the headphones, on the computers, at after-parties, in the minds and hearts of fans. After Bennington's departure, when it comes to the realization that all this won't be longer, that something is gone forever, a keen sense of time comes to everybody, his move is literally visualized in the eyes. The experience of the passage of time is the first quality of the hero's presence. Hero`s coming and leaving is always accompanied by a sense of the beginning and end of the period of time (Snt. Francis, Pushkin, Napoleon, Lenin, Shakespeare etc.) -the arrival-departure of any hero, in any sphere of life always marks a new period in the development, t. i. makes visible the «passage of time».
One of the most persistently recurring thoughts in the comments is the statement about the healing and saving role of Chester Bennington's work, which was a guiding star of hope for a lot of people. Bennington's tragic life path, filled with social and existential marginality and dangers, however, did not prevent him from achieving love, fame and wealth, through conscious/subconscious extrapolation of millions of the musician's fans gave raising to a sense of optimism and joy that they will have the strength to change their destiny for the better. Chester's voice (according to many comments) acted as an instrument of salvation from depression and death, was a source of positive.

Thus, based on the analysis of the first four semantic streams of comments, such characteristics of Chester Bennington's «acts» as salvation and protection (during life) and grief, mental orphanhood and a keen sense of the passage of time (after death) appear quite clearly.
Almost every second comment contained thoughts that can be summarized with the phrase «I will remember and love forever». Such statements at the beginning of the XXI century, after several sexual revolutions are cosidered, at least, an anachronism. Very strange statements about the «eternal love» is not to a specific person with whom, at least, familiar, and to someone who lives overseas, who saw only a couple of hours or did not see firsthand at all, whose personal qualities are known a little, and familiar only to his creativity, his voice. And yet, millions of fans around the world have repeated this idea in their comments and their love was embodied in the name of the streets, concerts, memorials, numerous music tributes, documentaries, flash mobs, magazines dedicated to the memory of Chester Bennington. It is obvious that the physical, sexual aspect of such mass love is excluded and its purpose is not to create a family. Then what is caused and what is the purpose of a disembodied, disinterested feeling of millions? Reflecting on the essence of the love of the mass, it is impossible not to recall the lines of the medieval Syrian poet Abu al-Maari: «Everything that happens is truly similar -to what the world saw when it was younger!» About unattainable love, which has no room for physical attraction and sex, but only admired and beloved image, which lives primarily in memory, t. i. in the head, was known in the ancient world. These ideas found their literary incarnation in one of the most poetic myths of ancient Greece -the myth of Daphne and Apollo. The memory of his unattainable love for the nymph this solar God literally wore on his head in the form of a Laurel wreath. Later this incorporeal love became known as Platonic (that is weird because of pederastic tendencies of Plato). But, it was Plato who in his essay-dialogue «Feast» presented arguments about the ideal, purely spiritual love through the lips of one of the heroes of this dialogue -Pausanias. In the monologue of this character Plato tried to find reason for such love in mythological beliefs of the era. So in the sixth Chapter, Pausanias says: «There are two Aphrodites, and Eroses should be two. And these goddesses, of course, are two: the eldest, without a mother, the daughter of Uranus, which we therefore call heavenly, and the youngest, the daughter of Dione and Zeus, which we call vulgar. According to this fact the Erotes, related to both Aphrodites, are necessary refered to heavenly and vulgar. Praise should, of course, All the gods should be praised, but I will try to determine the properties inherited in the lot of each of these two». [9] Further there are some arguments that the first kind of love has nothing, except attraction to a beautiful body for the purpose of physical pleasure and further continuation of a genus. While the highest love, although it may begin from admiration of external features, gradually it turns into a sublime feeling -love of the highest degree, aimed at contemplating beauty and perfection.
The idea of higher love was very in tune with the rigor of medieval theocentric culture. Since the source of love was God, then all the representatives of the heavenly, divine world were the demonstrators of such Supreme contemplative love. «Amour de longe» -«distant love» -so the troubadours of Provence called sublime, not bodily feeling, for example, a knight's feeling to the virgin or in the realities of more material -to a Beautiful Lady. [10] Sometimes such love was really «distant» because of the long distance between lovers or life conflicts, which could not be destroyed. Because of the absence of meetings, communication took place through knightly feats, poetic dedications, exchanges of letters. Can be said, that «far love» is a kind of epistolary novel (Are these really modern comments of his fans?).
Ideas about the sublime love took place in the medieval Middle East, for example, in the esoteric direction in Islam -Sufism. The theory of Platonic love was developed by one of the humanists of the Renaissance, the head of the Florentine Academy Marsilio Ficino, who defined this kind of love as an individual feature of man, which further would lead his soul to the highest spiritual values and, as a result, to the idea of Paradise.
In light of this historical retrospective, it is clear that the love of fans for Chester Bennington is not something new and hitherto unseen. However, if in ancient times Platonic love had its purpose and its own perfection, and contemplation of the beauty of pure ideas (Eidos), and in the Middle ages and the Renaissance it meant the aspiration of the human soul to the highest spiritual values and the divine world, what are the goals and what is «amour de longe» of modern fans?
It is impossible not to see that in modern sociocultural conditions, some artistic phenomenas perform religious (more truly, quasi-religious) tasks. At the same time, it is impossible not to notice that in modern conditions, traditional theology and Christian religiosity no longer claim to be the unifying language of modern culture, as it was, for example, in the middle ages and not in the religious sphere, popular heroes of our time are born. If we consider that art is sacred in its genesis, and from the first steps of its historical existence acted as a «translator» of religious concepts into the world of cultural phenomena, it was quite able to take on a certain part of the communication of modern culture with God, t. i. art took some religious functions. This perception of contemporary art is typical not only for the leader of U2 -Bono, but also for another iconic figure of modern art culture -Nick Cave. He wrote: «I can't help but recall a picture of Holman Hunt that depicts Christ dressed in a mantle, where he is sad and beautiful, with a lamp in his hand». … «Christ, as it seemed to me, became a victim of the complete inability of mankind to creative imagination, the complete absence of fantasy in people. It will free us, our imagination, our creativity, so that we can soar».
[13] The atmosphere at rock concerts is very specific -it's a mixture of delight and worship, it is more than entertainment, the fans treat their idols with almost religious awe. It is no coincidence that some groups are called cults, that is directly correlated with the concept of cult, ritual, and, therefore, we can talk about some new forms of religious consciousness, not related to the traditional understanding of religious notions. One of the manifestations of this "folk" religiosity is the feeling of love, adoration of the object of worship.
In such a quasi-religious context, the repeated statement of «eternal love» for Chester appears as a manifestation of the modern cult, which is based not on religious dogmas (among the fans there are people of different faiths), but primarily aesthetic and ethical principles. Accordingly, the whole huge shaft of projects, actions, events related to the veneration of Chester Bennington can be seen as a sacrifice to his idol. When fans write about their love for the singer, the adjective «eternal» is important here, which is etymologically connected with the concepts of immortality, superhuman, divine.
If we also mention the fact that on the day of the funeral of Bennington as a tribute in some churches of Europe bells beat the famous hit Linkin Park «Numb», and already during the life of Chester was called an idol, a legend and sometimes depicted on photo collages with angel wings, there are already directly present elements of convergence media hero with the traditional understanding of the hero in the myth as a subject having a connection with the divine world.

The Connection Between the Mythological Hero and A Media Hero
The mythological Hero, perhaps the oldest character in the world of art, was essentially a two-nature phenomenon in which the highest (divine, spiritual) nature and the material, were most vividly united, in a sense, was Superman. And the word «hero» comes from the ancient Indo-European root «hier, hr, her», combining it with such concepts as «hierarhiae, haute, high, top» -opening the oldest meaning of this word. The hero was the one who was sent «from above», it was the one who united all worlds -from divine top to posthumous gloom. The hero was a «bundle» of worlds into a single universe, and in this sense the phenomenon of the hero for the ancients was not only a deeply religious phenomenon, but also had an important ideological message. Since the mythological hero was a man-God, the human principle in him contributed to the fact that he was the protector of people, their Savior -from Prometheus to Christ. The heroes as their protectors and saviors were worshipped as to gods, that is, there was a reflection of two important functions of myth heroessoteriological (salvific) and adoration (worship).
However, in the period of classical antiquity, another kind of the characters appeared. To the first, the oldest group -socalled descendant characters, (from the Latin «descendes») t. i., to the images of gods and demigods-heroes, as if descended from heaven to people, and remained in their world in the form of idols-dolls, paintings and other artistic images, was added another amazing group of heroes-ascentaries. [14] Ascendant heroes (from the Latin «ascendes») were those who were born not by the work of religious consciousness, but real people who were considered worthy to become characters in works of art (from sculpture to theater) and, therefore, in the end, to remain in the historical memory of civilization, that is, to obtain immortality, and thus to be compared with the gods of myths and legends.
But who could be worthy to enter the corps of the ascendant heroes? Even Plato and Aristotle reflected in their treatises about the qualities of a man that could make him a hero, believing him as an ideal, embodying the best of the known human virtues. In antiquity, they were, first of all, the athletes who were for ancient people external physical perfection and great artists, first of all, poets. Finally, among «ascendes» heroes can be found and those who were not allocated external perfection as Olympians and were not famous as the great poets. The criterion of «ascension», t. i. possible transformation of real historical figures in the archetypal immortal (art) image was quite clearly formulated by Pliny the Elder in book 34 of «Natural history» where he wrote: «images of people were usually made because of something brilliant and deserving of perpetuation, firstly for a victory in the sacred contests, especially at Olympia.... I don't know, if it was not the very first Athenians who set up the statues on behalf of the state to the tyrant killers of Harmodia and Aristogiton..... This example was then followed by the whole world out of the human ambition, and at the forums of all municipalities statues became a decoration, the memory about people and their merits began to extend, in order to read about them for centuries…» [15] Comparing, at first sight, «strange comparable», namely the mythological hero-descendes, antique heroes-ascentaries and modern media character, in particular, in the person of Chester Bennington, there is clearly visible typological coincidence: with descentaries in soteriological and adoration functions (protection, deliverance and worship), and with ascentaries in the genesis of the hero, t. i. «ascension» from obscurity through the «valiant deeds» (in the case of Bennington's artistic achievements) to glory (global memory) and love of millions.

Specific Features Media-Hero: Conclusions
However, global information networks, media reality gave the hero a number of new features that are not typical for traditional mythological and historical heroes.
1. Media reality as a socio-cultural phenomenon, although verbalized in the leading languages of the planet, is not identified in ethno-cultural terms as it was with the heroes of antiquity from Gesar to king Arthur. Accordingly, its subject -media hero, as a rule, is a supranational phenomenon, i.e. metacultural, he does not possess sacredness and acts as an object of quasicult, as a rule of ethical and aesthetic plan. Media hero is identified as «mine» due to aesthetic, semantic, behavioral characteristics, appealing to recipients at the level of universal archetypes. 2. The formation of information civilization gave rise to another kind of elite. As C.  [16] In this respect, the musician was rather an exception. Chester Bennington, socially referring to the media elite, their way of life, demeanor and personal qualities, among which the most often mentioned (not only fans but also colleagues in the music shop) -modesty, responsiveness, compassion, kindness -in the eyes of millions around the world appeared understandable, native and close. His behavioral singularity for elite in the memoirs of his close people was often expressed by the phrase: «he was too good for this world».
3. Traditional heroes, as a rule, were carriers of the best human qualities. In the late 90-ies of the IV century B. C. Plato created a dialogue «Lahet, in which he tried to identify the qualities that should be inherent in man and that will contribute to the valiant acts in order to remain in memory, to become a hero. Qualities of the traditional Hero were shown with a certain model of personal qualities that must be nurtured in the younger generation (this was reflected in the so-called similarmay, i.e. mimetic function of the hero). In the case of Bennington, the similar component was also presented quite clearly. However, unlike the imitation of traditional heroes in ethical terms, here it was of a dual nature -not only in terms of combating with harmful addictions (alcohol, drug addiction) and for mental health, but also in terms of «iconic», t. i. imitation of the style of clothing, hairstyles, accessories, tattoos. In this phenomenon the specificity of modern machine technology is clearly visible, when the image of Bennington acts as a sample of «stamped» externally similar similarities. Unlike traditional heroes who showed outstanding positive qualities, the image of Chester Bennington is more complex, contradictory, reflecting both the unsightly features of our time and the best qualities of human nature, in a sense, he was an ethical ambivalent, although in different periods of his life.
So, the analysis of some semantic blocks of the intertext created on the basis of fan comments on Chester Bennington's leaving allows to claim that similarly to heroes of traditional myths the media image of Chester Bennington performed paternalistic and soteriological functions, acted as an object of adoration (idol), appeared as a role model, his leaving designated mental feelings of the course of time at millions of admirers.
His short life which is full of incredible turns, hard work, harmful tragic passions, love and compassion began to acquire legendary features. In the world media environment, there are awards, which, like the three-time Olympic winners of antiquity, are called «iconic».
These awards are given if not the most outstanding representatives of modern art, then, of course, the most iconic (they are the characters of the global media space), recognized as perfection in their field, perceived as an inimitable image, that is, in the mass consciousness, this award performs the function of fixing of the «ideal» -it is, in essence, «canonizationn» of the image of the media Hero. Chester Charles Bennington appeared as such an icon («rock sound icon») of modern media reality at the end of his life's journey.