TheGeoffRe(y)port

photo credit: Howie_Berlin

Immediately after Heath Ledger died, especially for the time that it looked more likely that it was a suicide rather than accidental death, the reactions were remarkably interesting. There was the standard fan response - tributes and the like, but there was another response that I found to be remarkably interesting. It came in letters to the editor and blog comments and went roughly along these lines:

• “Why would he do this to himself?”
• “This guy had everything, and yet he’d kill himself”
• “How dare he do this?”

It wasn’t just disbelief - this was an angry response. The very same comments could be heard about Britney Spears’ latest breakdown, or whichever celebrity it is who has been caught drink-driving or checked into rehab. There is a real anger that these people would have everything - and “everything” is the word that gets used to describe it - and yet that’s not enough for them.

It seems to me that this anger doesn’t look much different to the sort of righteous indignation we get from fundamentalists at having their nicely boxed theologies challenged. Celebrity, and with it the concept that fame and fortune are somehow the pinnacle of human endeavour, is the state religion. So it doesn’t go well when someone’s actions come along and challenge that.