Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Anna Nicole Smith an American tragedy?
All week here at the Clarion we have been following the Anna Nicole Smith story from a distance. With sadness both, for a life that ended apparently unhappily, and because of the stupefying circus that has followed.
There was something in Anna Nicole that drew America toward her. She couldn’t act, sing or dance, yet, she drew American in...like insects to the light? She was the quintessential new millenium superstar. If you don’t have it,(talent) flaunt it.(your booty, your personality, and anything and everything else, including family, self-respect, ad infinitum, ad naseum in an effort to raise your Q rating.) Anna Nicole Smith was reality TV before the word was coined. Her life was America watching it’s mythos made true. A small town, nowhere girl who goes from the stripper pole to the penthouse. She was Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. She was living the American dream, or at least trying to once the old geezer croaked. Her lawyers were making a career out of her. The pursuit of money was their highest end. Means were no matter.
Her real life reality story was thoroughly covered by the tabloids and the TV news magazines. When she flipped the tables and did the meta meta thing (Life as Art imitating Life) on American culture and starred in actual reality TV show, she became more human, and ultimately, take your pick, a more sympathetic or simply pathetic character.
She said she was going to live like Marylin and the Clarion has seen other commentators say she didn’t, that there was no where near as much substance about Anna Nicole, nowhere near as much talent as Marilyn in Anna Nicole. But maybe that’s fundamentally because, they were both metaphors for their times.
best of other commentators
best of other commentators
other commentators, the courtroom angles
Meanwhile elsewhere and elsewise
Congress continues it’s important work
a 371 year old glass ceiling shattered
better late than never the Chargers get with it
There was something in Anna Nicole that drew America toward her. She couldn’t act, sing or dance, yet, she drew American in...like insects to the light? She was the quintessential new millenium superstar. If you don’t have it,(talent) flaunt it.(your booty, your personality, and anything and everything else, including family, self-respect, ad infinitum, ad naseum in an effort to raise your Q rating.) Anna Nicole Smith was reality TV before the word was coined. Her life was America watching it’s mythos made true. A small town, nowhere girl who goes from the stripper pole to the penthouse. She was Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. She was living the American dream, or at least trying to once the old geezer croaked. Her lawyers were making a career out of her. The pursuit of money was their highest end. Means were no matter.
Her real life reality story was thoroughly covered by the tabloids and the TV news magazines. When she flipped the tables and did the meta meta thing (Life as Art imitating Life) on American culture and starred in actual reality TV show, she became more human, and ultimately, take your pick, a more sympathetic or simply pathetic character.
She said she was going to live like Marylin and the Clarion has seen other commentators say she didn’t, that there was no where near as much substance about Anna Nicole, nowhere near as much talent as Marilyn in Anna Nicole. But maybe that’s fundamentally because, they were both metaphors for their times.
best of other commentators
best of other commentators
other commentators, the courtroom angles
Meanwhile elsewhere and elsewise
Congress continues it’s important work
a 371 year old glass ceiling shattered
better late than never the Chargers get with it
Labels: Pop Culture
Comments:
A friend of the Clarion, the Hammer, made a most insightful point upon a further discussion of the Anna Nicole Smith story. To paraphrase him as best we can, the Hammer thought that the center of the story was the drugs and the way it went down. He noted that the were numerous instances in public where Anna Nicole Smith was clearly impaired, with symptoms ranging from slurring to stumbling.
What the Hammer found amazing, and the Clarion upon further review has to agree, was the lack of intervention. How many people knew it was going this way for Anna Nicole and didn’t intervene? How participatory was the role of our culture, watching her die? How was it knowing that she was going out like that, that our society rather than insisting on rehab, did nothing?
Doing some background on this revealed the horrifying note that in her last few weeks Anna Nicole had commissioned a seamstress to make her a funeral dress, for her own ceremony! In perfect Anna Nicole counterpoint, she hadn’t updated her will in five years. The dress for the funeral viewing of her own corpse, on it, writing a will made out to her new born daughter instead of to her recently deceased son, whoops. Judge not. There but for the grace of God go I. Right? Si? No?
Bradford like Smith died a sad death emblematic of era he lived in.
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What the Hammer found amazing, and the Clarion upon further review has to agree, was the lack of intervention. How many people knew it was going this way for Anna Nicole and didn’t intervene? How participatory was the role of our culture, watching her die? How was it knowing that she was going out like that, that our society rather than insisting on rehab, did nothing?
Doing some background on this revealed the horrifying note that in her last few weeks Anna Nicole had commissioned a seamstress to make her a funeral dress, for her own ceremony! In perfect Anna Nicole counterpoint, she hadn’t updated her will in five years. The dress for the funeral viewing of her own corpse, on it, writing a will made out to her new born daughter instead of to her recently deceased son, whoops. Judge not. There but for the grace of God go I. Right? Si? No?
Bradford like Smith died a sad death emblematic of era he lived in.
