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Monday, 11 February 2008
Heath Ledger - Naked Dead Guy
Let's talk about Heath Ledger. It's about time.
He's dead, took too many different pills, but had the wits to die naked in the middle of the day.
Also had the wits to mix lots of interesting drugs: tranquilisers, pain killers, anti-depressants, sleeping pills – the definitive tortured artist list. How interesting, how tragic.
How pathetic.
Pathetic that he took them? Not at all. Any idea how many people take that lot every day in any Westernised country? Pathetic that we think it teaches us something about him.
It does – he was careless with pills. He was a man who was perpetually wound up and who found it hard to sleep. His performances have that odd repressed quality of something frenetic held down. It's what gives him that interesting fragility used to such great effect in Monster's Ball. The fact that he had been using cannabis all his life (yes, you all saw the – haha – suppressed footage on Youtube), but had recently given it up only ups the ante on the risk of medication overdose.
Here's a man who is hyper by nature. He sedates himself with cannabis. This works for him but he gives it up to go clean – being a father and all. He does a film role that demands a little of that old inner darkness. He's hyper, strung-up, can't sleep, can't use his usual crutch, (what's yours, friend? Chocolate, booze, cigarettes, sex?) result – he takes more and more prescription drugs, trying to get onto some kind of even keel, bingo – he's dead.
It's not rocket science. It doesn't mean he was chronically twisted forever by acting the Joker. It doesn't mean he was suicidal or tormented. It doesn't mean he was a junkie, dope-fiend loser from hell.
But, oh, we gotta build that story, we have to make something deep out of it. Suddenly Heath has to get his Dead Hat on. He can choose Dead & Tragic, or Dead & A Junkie Loser. He doesn't get to do just Dead & Fucked-up, that isn't nearly interesting enough – can't write me no eulogies on that one.
If he'd been fat & forty would he have lost the tragic card? Would he only have had the Sad Loser card then? The washed-up actor past his prime?
If he'd fallen down dead on the tennis court would he have had quite the same erotic appeal as naked on his bed waiting for the massage he never got?
It's so sexy. Yes, Heath had the wits to die a sexy death – naked, across the foot of his bed, waiting for Swedish Nympho Masseuse to turn up and deal with a real big stiffy – all the way to his feet and back.
Yes, I think it's tasteless. Tasteless and predatory and pointless. I detest the way he's reduced to a handful of filmic clichés, as if he's become his own plot in a bad B movie – Drug Fiends of Hollywood! Naked & DEAD! His Final Sleep in a NARCOTIC HAZE!
Has anyone seen pictures of the masseur/masseuse? Is he/she sexy? If you have, then of course they are. They only get to play a part in this great mythology we call 'News' if they've been screened by the casting department for The Drama of HIS Life!
Suddenly Heath's life is not his own. He has to become an urban legend for our gratification. We have to make 'sense' of it because he was too young and pretty to die and, of course, he had the world at his feet.
What makes you so sure? For all you know, in the Universe Where Heath Yet Lives, every film he made from the day of his death on was mediocre to crap. Maybe in the next ten years his career went steadily downhill until he was starring in bad sci-fi with Rutger Hauer (he too was once a beautiful demi-god with a shining future), or cheap thrillers with Malcolm McDowell (he too was once a demi-god with…) or Christopher Lambert (he too was once…) – need I go on?
The world is paved with beautiful people who don't die naked in the afternoon and whose beauty, talent, uniqueness goes slowly down the drain like some seeping banal decline. How about Terence Stamp? A man of extraordinary beauty (even now) who has just made more and more dismal films/TV (The Hunger anyone?) which don't even begin to tap the possibilities in him. See? If only he'd had the wits to die naked on his bed at twenty-five.
Living is humdrum, even for beautiful people. Dying is humdrum, even for beautiful people. Our need to turn it into some cheap Hallmark Cards tear-jerking parody of human life is nauseating beyond Chancery's Limited Vocabulary of Nauseating Things.
Heath Ledger was a talented, good-looking boy with a lot of charm and a few weaknesses, just like the rest of us.
Even if he was a drug-fiend of epic proportions it would be nobody's business but his own. If he shot up, snorted and popped on an hourly basis it would still be nobody's business but his own. Drug-taking has to be the ultimate in 'fuck off and bother somebody else' activities. Drunks piss in the streets, vomit on you, annoy you, start fights. The worst most drug addicts do is steal from their families. Annoying as hell for the families but as far as social nuisance goes – minimal.
Sure, every once and a while one mugs an old lady, shoots someone, but you're at no more risk from them than you are from the perfectly sober criminals doing the same things without the aid of narcotics or stimulants – so what's your beef? What the hell business is it of yours what Heath took or didn't take? Do you really suppose you know something about him by the medications he used?
Jesus Christ, get a grip.
On the odd day in the year you'll see me rollicking about the street with dilated pupils and an odd detachment. Stoned again. Of course. And I am. But only to go to the dentist. When I get home I even get naked and pass out over the end of the bed while waiting for a massage. Sometimes I've taken painkillers. Sometimes I take sleeping pills too.
Bingo, there I am, cloning Heath. God, we have so much in common – don't you just feel you really know me now?
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23:50 Posted in Film | Permalink | Email this