Digital Joe #35

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After 27 years on this Earth watching more movies than I care to list and examining my passions, something crystallized for me a couple weeks ago. I was watching "Shock to the System," a 2006 Here! TV Movie, on a cold Saturday night with my boyfriend. Chad Allen, who plays Private Investigator Donald Strachey, had just broken down crying--bawling, really--in the arms of his partner, Timmy. The thing causing this scene was simple: what would their lives have been like if they weren't gay? Tim was on his way to being a priest; Donald had a successful military career. In that moment when years of pent-up anger and guilt washed over Donald, it finally occurred to me, the one thing I've heard over and over again.

We build people up just to tear them down.

Whitney Houston. Anna Nicole Smith. Britney. Dozens others, all of whom were successful only to be fodder for the tabloids and gossip rags. At one time not too long ago, Whitney was at the top of the music charts. Same for Britney. Now they're punch lines. When someone who came from nothing makes it big--or at the very least makes a names for themselves--they are held up as symbols of the American dream. Success doesn't last forever. The public is incredibly fickle. Notice the number of people jumping off the "Lost" or "Battlestar Galactica" bandwagons lately.

We want something new all the time, so much so that the person we celebrated yesterday is a joke today. I never fully understood this concept until that scene in "Shock to the System." Here was this man who had been strong, resilient, nurturing, loving and smart-put together, in other words-for a movie and a half completely broken. It's not that I derived any sense of joy from watching the portrayal of immense hurt; sometimes we need to be reminded our heroes are human. That they have the same failings that we do. And, hell, even if they're not a hero, having a person fall from grace helps us identify with them.

Are we a vindictive people, wanting someone to fail just so we can pounce on them? Some people will say yes, but I don't think so. There are elements that are jealous of success and the people who have it. More than that, we like to see ourselves onscreen, warts and all. Having a 100 percent good person to look up to is boring, intimidating even. We know we'll never be as handsome, talented, rich, suave, or professionally successful as they are. We build resentment over that, silly as it sounds. It eats at us, slowly ... but it continues until a point where we can't take it anymore. We need to see some shred of humanity, some human failing come through.

Superman's failing is loving Lois Lane. King Kong's was Ann Darrow. It helps us to see we're not alone in being flawed, that we share the same issues and concerns as fictional characters. It also makes them more human to us. After all, no one is perfect.

An aspiring novelist friend of mine sent me a short story last week he was working on. My one note to him was that the characters felt real because there was a blurring between reality and fantasy. One wanted to know why the other couldn't be more like the people in his stories. Fantasy versus reality, simply put. Would any of us be truly happy in our fantasies? Maybe for a little while, but not for the rest of our lives.

Seeing the chinks in the armor of celebrities and heroes doesn't make them any less famous of heroic. Whether this person is real or not doesn't matter. It proves they are human. Donald Strachey isn't less of a man because he admits his insecurities; he's more of one because he finally embraced them. Say what you will about Anna Nicole. She still brought an immense amount of joy to millions of people through her picture spreads and her television programs.

The fantasy is that our heroes are perfect. The reality is they are as flawed as we are. That's not something to be ashamed of. It's to be celebrated.

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