So.. Heath Ledger is Dead.. Whoopy Doo..

January 28th, 2008

<beginning of rant>

Ok.. so the title of this post is senseless. I agree. I too have felt a sense of loss with the passing of Heath Ledger. I guess the nature of mass media is that we all like to see something of ourselves in those folks we adulate, and we feel let down when they pass away earlier than the natural order would usually dictate.

That said - the fact is this - anyone - absolutely anyone - passing away at such a young age is tragic. Naturally as soon as we hear the news, we empathise - it’s human nature.

But the sheer volume of information about Heath’s unfortunate passing is beginning to give me the shits. There is speculation about drugs, speculation about relationship problems (with the ‘natural’ conclusion that he must have indeed suffered a semi-deliberate overdose), speculation about his recent partners - crikey.

Heath was an actor with an absolutely unbelievable talent - he was also an Aussie. Heath was a man of about my age, and a man that liked doing the same kind of things that I like doing - having a BBQ, hanging out with mates, spending time with family, looking forward to building the future. All good things, and it depresses me that he’s missed out on his future..

but.. Heath Died.

One paragraph, page one - due to the fact that he is well known would suffice. I don’t want to hear about every last minutae of Heath’s life. If I want to know who he went to school with and who he last spent the night with I’m sure I can happily Google that.

What pisses me off is that Heath was, really, just another person. He was, as his dad said ‘just an Aussie Kid that liked riding his skate board, only he got to do it in NY’. Heath had a good life, and ended it with some form of misadventure - we don’t know what yet, but doubtless that will also spend weeks on the front page when the toxicology results come in. Does it REALLY matter?

So why are we seeing this story dominate the news? It seems a bit shallow.

The media is not interested in REAL stories. The media likes to give lip service to much greater problems (like those in Darfur) without really spending any time investigating them - the world is much better served with valuable front page real-estate debating whether or not Angelina has twins on the way, or whether the Olson girl sent in her guards to ‘clean up the scene’.

Give me a break.

A few years ago I drove through a town called ‘Wujul Wujul’ - it’s in the middle of nowhere, about an hour south of Cooktown, about three hours North of Cairns - very much off the beaten track. It’s an Aboriginal ‘Mission’ - in other words, it’s where the Australian government puts black folks that it doesn’t know what to do with - the thirld world in a first world country.

On my way through that town, I stopped to get some fuel. While I was pumping my Landcruiser full of diesel, a little kid came up to me - a black kid. That kid would have been about 14 years old. It turned out his ‘missus teacher’ was teaching him shapespeare, and  he gave us a few lines ‘Friends, Romans, Country Men, lend me your ears’ - from whence he pretended to remove his ear and pass it to us

Seriously, it was cute - adoringly so, but also really well done - the kid was a natural.

He asked me what I did for a living, which I explained to him. He showed a great deal of interest - and explained he had ‘uncles’ in Mossman - a few hours South, where I was living, and he hoped to get there one day - seemed he thought that Mossman was the ‘big smoke’ and that’s where he’d get his big break in life… a kind of myopia inherent to kids who grow up knowing nothing more than the confines of a institutionalised upbringing.

A couple of years later my friend Rodney (who was along with me on that trip) pointed out a young kid lying, crashed out (drunk) on the footpath in Mossman and let me know that this was the same kid that we’d spoken to a few years back.

Front page news? No. A tragedy - yes. And yet the same diabolical drama is played out day in, day out, all over the world. Talent lies wasted, much greater tragedy lies undiscovered, unspoken.

Give me a media that spends time on highlighting the injustices that stop simple funloving kids like him from spreading their joy to the world, from reaching their full potential, and I’ll be beginning to feel like I’m living in a world that really gives a shit - a kind of Utopia.

Instead we live in a world that spends weeks bathing in mock misery (ala Travolta) about poor old Heath. There is something wrong with this picture.

<end of rant>

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