Heath Ledger's apartment. His shrine.
Sad.
I was shocked and saddened by Heath's death. Really sad. I liked him a lot. The general mourning seems to revolve around his potential, the he could have been...an era defining actor, a comforting face to watch over the next thirty years, a vessel for our mutual fantasy. The next Johnny Depp.
As my mom said, soldiers are dying in Iraq every day. Their faces flash across our evening news without notice except for those who knew them. So what's one more death? But Heath's face is familiar, its cultural property. We have seen it grin at us from giant wide screens, been enveloped in the fiction of fantasy worlds where we know Heath, we love Ennis. The fans at the shrine left notes referring to his films, like 10 Thing I love about Heath or I'll Never Quit you, Heath. This is how we relate to death: through filmic tropes. So its much easier to deal with an actor's death than a solider's- in any sort of communal way. His death ends in a moving, heart wrenching story and that's something Americans can get their minds around.
I feel it too. Because I invested in Heath. I went through a Heath phase, watched all his movies, had his face as my screensaver for months. His loss is the loss of something I connected in the swarming sea of popular culture. i picked him out of the mass to represent my niche of interests, the quirky, aching melancholy of films like Brokeback. Ang Lee. jake gylenhaal. their ourve was mine.
anyway, i will miss Heath Ledger, the actor. I don't think I can claim to miss Heath, the person, the partner, the father.
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