Another One Bites The Dust
Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll: We wonder who’ll be next to succumb to Hollywood tragedy.
So, Brittany Murphy is the latest celebrity to be found face down in a pile of her own vomit, the main constituent of which was prescription drugs. All you need is a divorce, an eating disorder and an intriguing yet ultimately meaningless reoccurring figure and youโve got the plot for a bad B-movie.
It makes great headlines of course, but whilst reading a Grazia article about a whole host of celebrity deaths in the past decade (instead of doing my vacation work), I couldnโt help but think that something is very wrong when beautiful, bright, twenty-somethings are dropping like flies. Now no one is saying that Brittany Murphyโs estate should anxiously await a posthumous โBest Supporting Actressโ Oscar nomination, but equally, she was well known enough for her death to make the national press. And in the precipitous world of acting, that signifies that she had done pretty well for herself, even if 90% of her show reel comprised American high school movies. She was apparently happily married, had a pretty face and a successful career to boot. So what went wrong?
โThe pressures of fameโ can only be used as an excuse for so long before it all just becomes faintly ridiculous. Maybe actors are just โcreative peopleโ, a little bit crazier, a little bit more neurotic than the rest of the world. Whilst a career in the public eye is understandably cruel if you are more on the insecure side, the intense scrutiny celebrities are placed under day after day on internet blogs and gossip magazines inevitably affects them. Possibly to the point where they need something extra to cope. Enter Vicodin. Or Ritalin. Or plain old fashioned alcohol. Cocaine if youโre feeling retro.
Increasingly relying on pills has become acceptable for ordinary people. Lily Allen even wrote a song about it, and chances are you know someone whoโs open about being on antidepressants. Hollywood is an exaggerated version of reality. If weโre upping our Prozac prescriptions, then celebrities are going much further. Taking drugs – both legal and illegal – is now socially acceptable. The only condition is that you keep a lid on the fact that youโre falling apart and keep up the album tour, the adorable talk show interviews and the red carpet appearances. Why is it that there were no public rumours about Amy Winehouse and drugs until she was spotted clad in blood-stained ballet pumps looking like she would fit in nicely at the womenโs penitentiary? And how come Kate Moss is back modelling for Cavalli, designing for Topshop and doing very well thank you very much, despite those infamous cocaine revelations, images sporting โCocaine Kateโ, and her subsequent high-profile trip to The Priory?
These days, itโs all about keeping up appearances. As long as the โimageโ is still intact, it doesnโt matter if celebrities are falling apart. Daily cocktails of prescription drugs, eating disorders, alcohol abuseโฆall accepted as long as itโs kept on the down-low.
Thereโs a certain glamour to the crash-course of therapy and Harperโs Bazaar interview revelation, when the recovering actress details her spiral into depression and then revels in the success of her rehabilitation. That is, of course, until theyโre found cold in a hotel room a couple of weeks later; when the facts come out and the contents of their fridge is made public. For Anna Nicole Smith that was methadone (the drug that had previously killed her son), Slimfast Shakes, vials of medicine and supplements for โan active lifestyleโ. Shocking, yes, but once the news storm had died down we all forgot about it. Then along came Health Ledger. Then Michael Jackson.ย And now Brittany Murphy.
The question becomes not, โhow did this happenโ, but โwhoโs nextโ? Lindsay Lohan appears to be a time bomb waiting to self-destruct. Kerry Katona makes her addictions public property, so sheโs got a good chance of spiralling out of control one final time in the near future. The thing that really grates is that nothing is being done to change things. Our culture, and in particular our celebrity obsession, is still one based on greed. The desire to have it all. To be the best. To work the hardest, be the most productive. The means always justify the ends. And our love affair with pushing ourselves to our limits will continue long after the next starlet drops down dead.
Weโll be shocked. Weโll read the magazines, the exclusive reports. Weโll watch those documentaries revealing secret diary entries and continuous โcries for helpโ, and add them to the list of the victims. And weโll wait for the next one to fall.