The Dark Knight, Death, and Why We Buy Into It
Posted by Mark Olson on the 23rd of July, 2008 at 7:12 pm under Rambling. This post has 4 comments.What really makes a great movie? Actors, special effects, a great director, an amazing advertising campaign? Death surely needs to be up there. No midnight movie premiere has any business making $18,500,000 at midnight. Simple math would dictate that at $10 per ticket (average), 1.85 million assholes sat outside in lines to go see this movie, all because Heath Ledger, an actor who was never really praised for much other than Brokeback Mountain, and maybe 10 Things I Hate About You.
I’ll give the aforementioned Heath Ledger one thing, he did play a hell of a schizophrenic lunatic, which might not have been too far from the truth, considering he died from a mixture of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam, and doxylamine… Okay, when someone takes that many prescriptions in a short enough time for all of them to interact with one another, there’s an issue. Just look at the guy, the eyes, they’re crazy. No denying the eyes.
Now, in all honesty, Heath Ledger played a great part, and probably would’ve had a lot of hype had he not eaten a bucket of pills, but it definitely adds hype. Same with Tupac Shakur, The Notorious B.I.G., and Kurt Cobain. They all were nominally good, had decent followings, but after they died, everyone felt they needed to pay an eternal tribute to them.
Tupac Shakur, the biggest example of capitalizing on someone’s death, put out SIX albums after his death, even though he had only put out five studio albums while he was alive. The Notorious B.I.G. had three, albeit one a Greatest Hits Album. Kurt Cobain had no studio albums put out after his death, thank Christ (the music sucked, seriously guys), but he did have a book of his “poetry”, ramblings, and random bullshit that only because popular because he popped his top off, a few documentaries, and thousands of Seattleites crying that he was actually murdered.
My main point in this blog is, why does death make everyone an icon? Especially Ledger and Cobain, who made irrational decisions to end their lives. Why do we make them heroic figures? Why do we buy their shit, further enabling the people capitalizing on their unfortunate deaths?
Ledger will win a few Oscars, an Academy Award, and every other award, only because he died. His performance wasn’t that good; it just had a mystique because we all know he died.
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