This is stage 3 in the history of pop-cultural affirmations of individuality; it came to me in a framed version of the photo below, an image that’s graced a wall close to my worktable for many years, but has now come down in the great project of dispossession, as I undo the contents of my condo, which was once a kind of gigantic museum of visual delights of all sorts, covering almost every vertical surface, also filling shelves and crowding other horizontal surfaces (on a variety of themes, of which my family and my life, penguins, mammoths, penises, attractive male bodies, cartoons, and collages (many of them both antic and homoerotic) were especially prominent), with an accompanying library of books of equally varied delight:
(#1) It turns out (as I discovered by turning the sheet over) that this was a page in a calendar (presumably from Raymer’s employer, the National Geographical Society, which went on to use it in a line of t-shirts, still selling well); in any case, some 20 or 30 years ago, Raymer put together some of his photos of rockhopper penguins and added the defiant caption i just gotta be me (a sentiment with a history, which I’m about to sketch)
On Raymer. From the “About Me” section in Steve Raymer’s Editorial and Fine Art Photography home page:
Photojournalist, author, and educator Steve Raymer — a long-time National Geographic Magazine staff photographer and senior editor — taught visual journalism, media ethics, international newsgathering, and reporting war and terrorism for 21 years at the Indiana University Media School. He retired as a tenured full professor in 2016.
… [Raymer] joined the staff of National Geographic in 1972, launching a career that has taken him to more than 100 countries.
Defiant individuality, stage 1. 1968. The American pop-cultural story seems to begin with the song “I’ve Got to Be Me” / “I’ve Gotta Be Me”. From Wikipedia:
“I’ve Gotta Be Me” is a popular song that appeared in the Broadway musical Golden Rainbow, which starred Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé. It opened in New York City at the Shubert Theatre on February 4, 1968, and closed just under a year later, on January 11, 1969. The music and lyrics for the musical were composed and written by Walter Marks in 1967; the production featured a book by Ernest Kinoy. This song was listed in the musical as “I’ve Got to Be Me”
… Sammy Davis Jr. recorded the song in 1968 while the musical was still running on Broadway, altering the title slightly to “I’ve Gotta Be Me”, and released it as a single late in the year. This version was a surprise hit for Davis
The Davis recording is still the one that defines the song.
Defiant individuality, stage 2. 1982, enter the penguins.
[Added later on 8/11. Noted in a comment by Joel Levin, below: as the penguins enter, Davis’s I’ve gotta be me is further reduced by the vernacular omission of the reduced auxiliary ‘ve: I gotta be me.]
A Gary Larson Far Side cartoon:
(#2) Larson’s penguin quotes the Sammy Davis Jr. song — I gotta be me — and adds an expansion with just that’s not in the Davis recording (or the Tony Bennett one): oh I just gotta be me
And the later Raymer version has Larson’s expansion (printed all lower-case, because of course penguins can’t manage the shift key): i just gotta be me
Davis gives us the song title, and then Larson and Rayner have penguins quote it — Larson’s exultantly, Raymer’s with an edge.
August 11, 2025 at 11:24 am |
I note one other transformation, however minor, that happened post-Davis (according to the Wikipedia entries you quote): the ” ‘ve ” was dropped, the better to go with “gotta” I would guess.
August 11, 2025 at 11:36 am |
Yes, in my hurry to get this posting out — it’s been a colossally awful day — I neglected to mention this further alteration along the way. Thanks for filling it in.