As I was driving home from work today, they announced on NPR that Heath Ledger had been found dead. Probably suicide. What a fucking shame.
Celebrity death is strange territory. It’s not a new idea that our society deifies and vilifies celebrities, nor that we presume to know something about them as people. So when celebrities die in such sudden, tragic ways, what’s the appropriate response?
I don’t know if it’s silly and fangirl-y of me to be so bummed out, but I’ll admit, this is really distressing news to me. It’s distressing on a basic level of mourning the loss of sincere talent, but there’s something more intimate than that. And I’m not necessarily sure that the fact that millions of people are sharing the same emotion negates the possibility of it being an intimate loss. After all, millions of people go through life with a broken heart, and that doesn’t make it any any less personal or painful.
Anyway, my thoughts and prayers go out to those who knew him better than me.