Inexpressible Heaviness of Being

Infamous \ˈin-fə-məs\ : having a reputation of the worst kind

Being a famous celebrity is difficult. I wouldn’t know anything about being one, although the clerks at the corner liquor store have started recognizing my face- most likely from being an alcoholic (I’m not proud as I am self aware, that may or may not be one of the 12 steps stairs that are so easy to fall down). But once you are publicly known you can’t escape it, you can only wait on the march time to take it’s course, but then run the risk of looking pathetic, like most ex celebrities, being treated like a failure at keeping us entertained. Thus we ridicule them on Family Guy for the inactivity they probably longed for in the first place while under the brutal cold eyes of America. This is, of course, null and void if said celebrity topped their field somehow. No one ever bothered Johnny Carson after retirement, nor Woody Allen and no one has anything on Paul McCartney except for the fact that he married some one legged bitch.

Being an infamous celebrity is harder. It is, in most cases, like killing yourself, and not by suicide because suicide implies you, alone, are doing the killing of your own body. No. This is different and diluted among all members of a pop hungry society creating more of a a two way street. This is similar to putting yourself blindfolded in front of a firing squad, or doing heroin. While you don’t literally do the killing, per se, you sure have allowed yourself to be killed. Being infamous means you were less known as something and more known for something. This can never be beneficial nor fulfilling, but it sure seems like it would be. It’s all over once you are given a label or stereotype particularly one involving something unordinary. People will always expect you to either be that label, or worse, you will expect them to expect you to be that label. That’s why many celebrities snap and go crazy. That’s why many turn to drugs which run rampant in the entertainment industry. People sell themselves in that business. Not their services or skills like a business but actual selves through music, writing, acting, comedy, film making, whatever. That goes farther than media, you can easily gain fame without being involved in it’s creation just by being a topic in it. Unlike a business, which has no face, celebrities are just people and people are fragile scared animals when pushed to far we will devour each other.

Will Smith is a famous person by every means, he’s a great actor and a seemingly fabulous father and person. We know in our Fresh Prince loving hearts that Will Smith will NEVER do anything drastic. He will never punch out a waiter for cold soup, never dangle his kid over a balcony and never stage protests for the release of detainees in some war torn country. Why would he? He’s a known actor but he’s not known for acting any other way but than himself off camera (and even on camera portraying that “AWWW HELL NO!” character that I and America love). He is a normal man besides the fact that he could literally buy a man and a whole island nation. Our culture doesn’t expect anything but who he is, a great actor in blockbuster movies.

You never want people to know you any other way than what you are. Most times being know for something, either an idea or modus operandi is nothing short of a curse. The American Public kills those people, we can’t get enough. The people who transcend who they are with for our entertainment or ideals will never survive in our world. They can’t. I’m going to investigate 5 people. All different fields of work, all famous, all killed by human hands directly or indirectly to show you why.

Chris Farley was a raging bulk of a bull in terms of appearance and hilarity, he weighed over three hundred pounds and has made me laugh the hardest of anyone I’ve ever seen or met… ever. On SNL he was always the same type of character: loud, clumsy, physically hilarious, part type casting, part all he knew how to do in terms of comedy. But it was infectious and he inevitably shot to stardom, milking that caricature of a man who didn’t exist. Never had a cast member become famous overnight. And According to anyone who ever met him, he was ALWAYS on, bursting into rooms cracking jokes constantly, so energetic and friendly but consistently hilarious. He felt he flat out needed to make people laugh. In some late night appearances it was clearly forced but was funny. Who cares how hard he’s trying when he’s succeeding? He started thinking that he needed to be like this all the time because thats what got him noticed so quickly. He turned to drugs, spiraled out of control to keep this “image”. The same exact thing also to John Belushi, who, after Animal House, was seen as everybody’s favorite party guy. They were too afraid of falling out of the public eye if they changed. They couldn’t, we were suffocating them with our expectations of how they should be, rather than what they were. While we never asked Farley and Belushi to be comedians, we fostered their self destructive, self deprecating behavior. It’s only logical they would get addicted to that image. If you saw Farley talking like a real person, calm and quiet you’d say it sucked. We killed them. Both comedians died at the same age of 33, of the same cause: drugs and the pressure we put on them.

Hunter S. Thompson was the voice of the drug generation. He made republican candidates shake in their boots and had Nixon on his steel toes all through the his re-election campaign. His brutally honest Rolling Stone contributions on the campaign trail are more meaningful and unmistakably reflective of what American Youth was feeling in the 70’s but couldn’t or didn’t want to say. Unfortunately that was a stepping stone to reach that world wide myth status. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas got nationwide acclaim, the story of a psychedelic drug addict recklessly searching for the America Dream in his adventures of journalism. People mistakenly thought he did those things word for word, even though he admitted the fabrication on several accounts saying “Only a goddamn lunatic would write a thing like this and then claim it was all true”.  It is the Doctor’s great authoritative writing that leads us to believe he experienced this and was always on drugs, to which he probably was to a lesser extent. He became to the uninformed, a reporter crazed on drugs and pissed at the government, to which he was to a lesser extent. Like Farley, Belushi, he acted like that, but he wasn’t that exactly: that was his vehicle to reach people, more specifically, the 1970’s youth in the heyday of the golden age of drug use. He was deeper than that, his early writing is very enjoyable but none of that mattered, none of it so significantly noticed. What mattered is what crazy thing will he show up to wasted and comment on. He was a walking legend so much so that “The Doonesbury” cartoon turned him into a character, literally and figuratively making him a caricature. He despised it, he never knew if people wanted to meet the man or that cartoony legend.  Another curse of the good doctor was just because he could handle the drugs, doesn’t mean they didn’t take it’s toll. He could not handle the effects the drugs we drove him to and expected him to take to appease our notion of him. Thus he got old and lost the magic of his writing. He shot his brains out.

John Lennon. Here’s a different story not involving being crazy on drugs, even though he was, please listen to Abbey Road and watch Yellow Submarine to get a sense of how many drugs the human being can handle. What separated John Lennon from the other 3 Beatles (or 4, depending) was his active role after the band. He was the ultimate peacenik. He ruffled government’s feathers and used his stature of being “the most successful band leader ever” to get people to listen. Listen they did. He lived for his message, pure, simple: “Peace”. He was a walking legend for his music and also for is message of hope and prosperity, he re-spread this hippie generation idea onto us so much so that it became his identity. He was the face of world peace. He voiced everything us liberals and democrats wanted to be told. You can make a difference. We can change things in the country that he wasn’t even from.  He eventually was murdered by one of us, someone weirdly obsessed by the most overrated book ever written and a self described “fan” so angered by the statement that the Beatles were “Bigger than Jesus”. He harvested that anger for a decade, snapped and shot Lennon ten years after. Lennon was only commenting on how their fame and status was growing out of control, it was. Hundreds of screaming girls never showed up to any church I’ve been to. He was murdered for speaking against his fame. He just used the wrong but fitting comparison. Sadly Chapman was blind to the fact that Lennon and Christ had the exact same message and reasoning. All they were saying was “Give peace a Chance”.

Princess Diana is the modern day fairy tale; a rags to riches story complete with it’s own evil stepmother and even worse queen. There’s one difference: this didn’t have a happy ending by any means. Princess Diana died tragically, killed by paparazzi. She was literally killed by society sick fascinations with fame manifested in the form of “journalists”. Saying a paparazzo is a journalist is like saying a fly is a fertilizer expert, both of them eat shit, are annoying, and just as meaningless. We were enthralled by the notion that anyone could be a princess, regardless of the fact that she did so much for Bosnia land mine awareness and the first celebrity to deal with AIDS prevention. She could have sat on her ass all day while a man looking like Zeus rubbed her feet with a triceratops horn and we would have been equally impressed and obsessed. Our need to see her and live vicariously murdered her. The blood is on all our hands,

Jesus Christ is said to be the son of God, whether he is or isn’t (this won’t become THAT discussion), historians and anthropologists are very certain he was a real person. We know one thing, he was never bigger than the Beatles. I’m joking, kind of, Beatles still hold up. Jesus had followers (disciples and apostles if you will) and a reputation for being the son of God. Jesus had to die, not to save our sins (but I guess also for that if you wanna dip back into THAT discussion), but more because we put him on that chopping block like Thompson, Farley, Princess Di and Lennon. It would be completely out of line to say we killed Christ, no one alive now physically killed him. But we did, as in the public did. We made him a legend, and because of OUR BELIEF IN HIM, he was crucified. He could not sustain our idolizing. Whether we was or was not the son of God determines how bad we should feel about it, either way he was going to die, the son of God could never walk around freely, he’d be locked up or killed by a Baptist out of jealousy. And yet he always died because of us, either FOR us or BY us, Jesus shares the same fate those others felt. He became bigger than the man, reaching celebrity or on the exact same wave length, God like status and was murdered by our idolization.  Celebrities and gods aren’t so different, in fact the reason TMZ and Perez Hilton does so well is it captures stars doing things just like us, or better yet doing things to show their failure.

Why do we do this? Why do we murder off these walking legends, people who were doing what they thought was right. When you show alot of potential, people will attack you in every way they can. Not necessarily because of jealousy, but curiosity. These people had a light in them that drew in others, and rather than put up a fence (like Will Smith did, of solid gold eggs made by the last living dodo bird) these five drew you in as close as possible. And like a plague of moths we blotted out every ray. Celebrity hungry culture will drain you emotionally/mentally because you have shown you have no limit, you have become a super celebrity capable of addressing or easing everyone’s problems. When you have no limits people will always test that validity, and that is your problem and yours alone. Sometimes the pressure is too much to handle, other times we become so obsessed that we will flat out murder. Either way all those people stood for something, an idea or philosophy, and if there’s one thing Alan Moore taught me it is this: Ideas are bulletproof. Unfortunately for our times on Earth, brains and the people they belong to, are not.