I was going to post this yesterday, but waited. To see if the sadness would dissipate. If I'd gain a bit of perspective in the interim. But it didn't. I didn't.
Yesterday, Heath Ledger was found dead in his NYC apartment.
I don't know what about this news struck me so, but it's stayed with me, a whisper beneath the day's normal din.
I "read" US Weekly pretty regularly, but it's brain candy and not an obsession. I follow movies and Hollywood, but casually. I enjoyed Heath's acting, his choice of films, but would never have called myself a fan.
I disassociate with tragedy more than most people, I think. The Minneapolis bridge collapse...a Marine's remains found in the backyard of a superior's house...a local college student's disappearance...Brad Renfro's overdose. With all of these events, I say, "Oh, how sad." and I mean it. But I don't feel sad.
With this news, I felt it. And I still don't understand why.
Perhaps it is because he seemed like such a private person, who didn't seek the limelight and paparazzi like many of his Hollywood cohorts. Or because he seemed relatively well-adjusted and down to earth -- a star who you wouldn't think of in terms of "had it coming." Because the inital conclusions seem to indicate that his death was completely accidental, or because of the endearing pictures you'd always see of him doting on his little girl. Or, perhaps, it was because he was young -- not too much younger than me, in fact -- and that I barely feel as though my life has started at this point...and his life with so much promise ahead -- his life is now over.
Regardless, the world has lost a great talent. That alone is sad.
And then -- then! -- you have this, from the Phelps brigade -- the same
wingnuts who enjoy causing disturbances at
military funerals and have led Wisconsin and other states to enact laws to prevent groups like theirs from showing up...or at least getting close to those services:
Come now, people. This is the same schizophrenic reasoning that the Westboro Baptist Church likes to apply to military deaths, too (that solders killed in action are suffering for the sins of a country that endorses homosexuality). Apparently, since he played a gay man in a film, Heath Ledger should suffer the same eternal damnation that the Westboro Wingnuts place on all homosexuals. Under that line of reasoning, we would have started court proceedings to hit Charlize Theron up with the death penalty or arrange a Nuremberg Trial for Bruno Ganz long ago. Good lord.
It'll be interesting to see if they actually pony up the funds to fly themselves all the way to Australia to picket. For the sake of the Ledger family, I sure hope they don't.
Ugh...all the way around...on so many levels. I think I'm going to go shower off now.
Posted by Erin
7:39 AM
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