Well, it’s happened again, and it’s sad: Another young person found dead, surrounded by assorted remedies from the Western pill cabinet, naked. This time it was women’s fave Heath Ledger, the guy who bravely played the gay cowboy in “Brokeback Mountain”, and more recently, the Joker in Batman XXII, or however many remakes of the caped crusader we’ve had now (I know, it’s actually called “The Dark Knight,” and is set to come out later this year, no doubt causing a media emo-frenzy; will they buy concert tickets to go watch some celebs rap about life and Heath, and being beautiful? Will they take their African and Chinese adopted children along, swathed in their national costumes, to demonstrate their ethical superiority? Who knows?). Heath Ledger, with the young child and estranged girlfriend. Heath Ledger with the Australian family who are now shattered. Heath Ledger, blah, blah, blah.
But they’ve been doing it for years, haven’t they, this crowd? We can look back down the discombobulated timeline and see bloated Elvis having a heart attack while sat on the throne, to Marilyn Monroe’s overdose, to River Phoenix’s Hallowe’en OD outside Hollywood’s Viper Club back in 1993. They’re obsessed with death, many of them, and it is a dark and dismal crude that seeps through their heart-valves. Ever since the Lizard King was discovered in his Paris bathtub, nodded out forever on heroin - a drug he didn’t even like - to the day Brian Jones drowned in a swimming pool, all the way back to the 1593 stabbing death of Christopher Marlowe in a tavern brawl in England. Celebrities, man. They just like attention, that’s all it is. And it’s bloody ridiculous.
But poor Heath Ledger. Poor Heath, what a shame, they’re saying. Poor Brokeback gay Mountain Heath, the guy who’s not even American, who became bum-chums with his mountain mate (but only on screen, they remind us, he wasn’t really a queer), the guy who played The Joker in a really cool Batman that no-one’s even seen yet, who hung out with the weird-looking Olsen quadroploids, or twitlets, or whatever you call those freaks. Poor stoned, dead Heath.
Some people aren’t found in glamorous Manhattan apartments, and their deaths aren’t splashed all over the world news. They have never starred in big movies, but are nonetheless stars, of sorts. In a world full of “artists” who are paid millions for enjoying themselves, these faceless young people are taken every day, and they leave devastated families behind. They work hard all their lives, at being truck-drivers, carpenters, electricians, or paramedics, to name just a few. Hundreds of people attend their funerals, to weep and facilitate a collective catharsis, to spew their broken hearts together and, of course, to toast the departed and remember the good times over a few strong drinks.
But poor Heath. Poor Heath. Maybe we should all go buy RodeoHouston tickets, to remember Heath. That might be a tonic for the troops. So let’s do that, eh?
