Streching a point

So it would be remiss of me to write a column this week without mentioning the passing of two “stars” of the entertainment firmament, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson.  It’s going to be a stretch to come up with something original, ok, because every blogger and commentator worth his or her salt has either written something or is planning to. And judging from the blogs (and comments attached to them) I’ve read in the last few days, their deaths have aroused everything from vitriol to rapture, indifference to deep sadness, and everything in between.

It’s actually been quite shocking (yes this hack is shockable) how cruel and unkind some people have been. And similarly the respectful, loving, grieving sentiments, with their echoes of shock and bewilderment at the death of a hero, have verged on the weird. I mean how do you grieve someone you never met, or who’s life you only ever knew through their movies, their music or the media (in other words, they have been experienced in a filtered, manufactured way)?

I guess both responses say more about the commentators than the stars. For those who are harsh, indifferent or “serious” (more than one writer has bemoaned the fact Jackson’s death pushed the turmoil in Tehran off the front pages), I think there’s an element of denial going on. You see I think the passing of the famous reminds us that we’re all mortal. I mean if Michael Jackson, a millionaire many times over with an entourage that would make a drag diva envious, can die IN HIS OWN HOME, with a doctor in attendance and the best medical attention only a gloved 911 call away, what hope is there for the rest of us? Shouldn’t we all be moved in some way by the death of another human – I guess I’d make some exceptions for the truly evil among us – even if we think they were narcissistic, shallow, slightly unhinged or really weird? I know we do need at times to disconnect from all this stuff – too much empathy can be overwhelming – but come on, a life is a life.

As for those among us who can’t separate fantasy from reality (you know, the front row concert light waving types who really believe that Michael is singing to them personally), these stars represent an escape from the banality of our daily lives. Or they are recipients of our projections of the fabulousness we believe we were destined to have. And even their human frailty can be inspiring because if Farrah can battle through anal cancer with her famous tresses denuded by chemo, then I can survive my own traumas. 

But I’ve got another angle on these two. Flipping through the inevitable “life in pictures” that we can click on at various websites, it’s so striking how plastic surgery changed them both. Michael’s was more in your face, as it were, and it’s very disturbing to see how scary and different he looked in recent years. It’s not just that his gender and race became blurred, I have a very real sense of sadness that he could not see how beautiful and sexy he was (well as a younger man anyway, we’ll never know how he looked at 50 because that wasn’t him anymore!).

As for Farrah, it wouldn’t be a stretch (there’s that phrase again, must be an unconscious obsession with tightness of skin as I write this) to say that her look in recent years was less Charlie’s Angel and more Hell’s Angel. I mean her 62 year old skin was unnaturally stretched, her features more a death grin than a cheerful smile, and the skin itself looked abraded – sort of coarsely smooth, if that’s possible. Again, I feel a sadness when I look at her and Michael’s features because they became masks. We couldn’t see who they were and they couldn’t show us who they were because this had been erased by a diligent, some would say disrespectful, surgeon.

I’m not against plastic surgery per se. Apart from the incredible work done on people who are disfigured, we all have the right, if we have the money, to change our appearance. Even as I write this I realise I am on some kind of slippery slope, because what is regarded as normal in the world of beauty and age appropriateness has shifted dramatically over recent decades. I suppose it’s not just that people can become obsessed with changing themselves, losing any sense of reality, it’s that they forget to do the inner work. Is there really any point to looking like a slightly unreal 60 at 80 if you’re boring, superficial and greedy? So Michael and Farrah have reminded this jaded homosexual to take stock – gay life is often unforgivingly obsessed with youth – and to make sure I stretch my soul as I tighten my skin.