Fred Sneesby - Observations on Culture, Faith and Politics

Another Candle in the Wind?

February 11, 2007

I remember where I was when Elvis died. I remember very clear details from the days that Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King died. I certainly remember the day of John Kennedy’s assassination very vividly. I even remember Marilyn Monroe’s death – I was ten going on eleven years old. We were renting a beach house at Spring Lake when the news broke. It was a big thing and we had never even seen any of her movies. All of us children certainly hadn’t been to her movies and my parents never went to the movies unless it was to bring a carload to the drive-in to see the Absent-Minded Professor, Old Yeller, or some movie like that.

Nevertheless, we, along with most of the country, were shocked. Marilyn’s dying at a relatively young age and in such an ignominious manner was jarring because it just didn’t fit her public image at all. The youth, the glamour, the vitality, the understated rebellion against the mores of the fifties, the fame, all of it served to remove her from the vicissitudes of every day life; she was not subject to what the rest of us were: aging, drudgery, unfulfilled dreams and the like. Certainly not death. Certainly not the despair of suicide.

As it turned out, as Marilyn Monroe the real person became known, her death fit her life perfectly. The public persona that she wore as a layer over herself became a burden too heavy and artificial to bear. The real person could simply not support what had been created by and for the public. She was just an ordinary person with less than average coping skills. Having to play the role of Marilyn Monroe was really too much.

Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” provided the image for her tragedy: out there exposed, vulnerable, fragile. I have to admit that, for me, the song makes her too much of a victim; I cannot feel too badly for Marilyn Monroe or dismiss her responsibility for what her life became. She was not stupid. She had free will. She had as much control of her life as most other people. Her death a tragedy no doubt, but not a martyrdom.

And now a mini-Marilyn has died young and tragically. Anna Nicole Smith has passed. I know very little of her life – nothing beyond what anyone could have learned from reading headlines over the years – but I admit that I felt a certain shock and an “oh, that’s too bad” feeling that was stronger than it should have been.

May she rest in peace and I do not wish to make any judgment on her or the choices she made. For her, too, it seems that the real Anna Nicole Smith could not support what she was made to be for public consumption. I guess I want to zero in on the fact that I had a reaction to her death, a reaction unwarranted by any real knowledge of or connection to her. Why is her death a matter of concern or consequence to me or any of the American public?

The fast answer is that she was a celebrity. Her life mattered because it was in public view. It’s sort of like money in a casino: for everyone but yourself, the money that matters is not the money in your pocket but the money waged, the money out on the table, the money in play. A life on display takes on an independent value.

Celebrity, or the perceived life, is a key to understanding the modern soul. Our lives, even the dullest details, assume added value and an altered nature when they are perceived. Bishop Barkley of the 19th century wasn’t too far wrong when he said that things are only real when they are perceived. Nowadays, there is a mad rush to get ordinary lives into view. How many more regular and, if the truth be told, uninteresting people do we have to be subjected to on reality TV shows? There is a grasping for celebrity as people seek to imitate Marilyn and Anna and the countless others who are stars to some degree.

The viewers become mini-gods, omniscient deities, joining the ranks of the all-seeing as more and more of life becomes exposed through television and, more so, the Internet. Now we see all and the celebrity’s life has significance because it is seen by us, and, in turn, our lives would have that much more significance if only we could get them on TV, YouTube, MySpace, or a blog (or a website like this one!).

In my own experience, though, the most important and valuable parts of our lives are those that are not seen, that are shared with few. Living in a world of pretend intimacy and no modesty, knowing oneself and being known by someone who loves us requires a level of honesty and emotional courage that we rarely reach. Honesty and openness in relationships in which our real selves will be respected and treasured are quite different from what the broadcast culture means by these terms. The “interior life” and the “shared life” are not valued in the present time but are missed deeply.

Reflecting on the Norman Jean’s and the Vickie Lynn’s of our era may lead us beyond appearances and the illusion of the perceived life, back to a reverence for the unknown, for the mystery of life, for the Creator and all the created, and back to a basic gratitude that the One who is all-knowing is also the One who is all-loving.