Our Obsession With The Truth

Rarely do I read a magazine article these days that really intrigues me unless it’s a movie, book, or TV review and those don’t entirely count. Those aren’t the “real” pieces of journalism - the ones that launch TV shows, spin exposes, and get the same degree of exposure as one episode of “Law & Order.”

A few years ago everyone was up in arms about James Frey and his fictionalized memoir. Oprah banned him from her studios and banished her support of his thriving business - the one she practically built overnight. A public backlash ensued. Frey’s account was built, after all, on a foundation of lies and if nothing else, America likes its truth. Even when it’s spoon-fed with every known artificial sugar substitute on Earth. About the time that everyone was roasting Frey (sorry couldn’t help the pun), I came out in defense of him.

I didn’t entirely condone his lying or embellishing his life’s story to make for more compelling content and misrepresenting himself, but felt that I wasn’t really to judge. I was not his moral arbitrator and unlike Oprah, didn’t have any sort of vested interest ($$) in his success. More to the point, the book as a stand-alone was still good enough to be capable of inspiring people and told an interesting enough story. Frey’s lies couldn’t change that, but Oprah’s withdrawal of support and vehement disapproval meant that this book would be reaching marginally fewer people and that those it did reach previously would not associate it with anything but Oprah’s disappointment.

I thought long and hard about what Frey did, as I’m sure many others did, and felt a sense of self-satisfaction when I able to separate what Frey did or didn’t do from and what this book came to symbolize from what actually important - what this book inspired in others suffering the same afflictions in knowing that they weren’t alone.

In the days, weeks, and months following Heath Ledger’s tragic death, everyone mourned in there own way but regardless everyone wanted someone to make sense of it all. There were those that stood vigil outside his apt. hoping to catch a glimpse of the relentless paparazzi taking pictures, others that preoccupied themselves with trashy gossip TV post-dinner and online, and still others who claimed indifference but in earnest wanted answers.

Why did we feel so entitled to these intimate answers when we took no role in this actor’s life beyond passively and sometimes uncomfortably fidgeting in our chairs while watching Ledger onscreen? The answer to this is far more disturbed and involved than I care to get into at the moment, but the end product is that we want resolution and closure to that which cannot be answered. I prefer to think this than that people actually get off on another person’s suffering.

My own personal truth is that I also wanted closure to this death. I needed order to my chaos and I finally found some semblance of it. As I stated before it’s rare for me to read a magazine article that’s not a review and feel any twinge of interest. Lisa Taddeo’s fictional account of Heath Ledger’s final days (Esquire, March 2008) changed that for me. Loosely based on Ledger’s hangouts and whereabouts the weekend leading up to his death, the article starts out with the following build-up:

It becomes theatrically important, after you die, what your last few days are like.For me, it was just like any other weekend in my life. I didn’t eat a last meal, I didn’t jerk off any more or any less, I didn’t climb a mountain or end up swinging from a noose with Mozart’s Requiem in the background. But suddenly it’s important exactly what I did, because they are the last few days, and what you do in the last few days, down to your last lunch, becomes a fairy tale.

If you force me to make my last weekend a microcosm of my existence, and what my existence means to you, then I’ll tell you how it went and who I played. But first things first: It was an accident. I’m not some fucked-up star who couldn’t deal. I could deal; I just couldn’t sleep.

I won’t tell you to read on if you don’t want to. My “truth” might not be yours after all, but at the very least, appreciate Taddeo’s work here. She done good. Besides, she’s not claiming to be anyone’s moral barometer here. Her brand of religion is much less prescriptive.

To read the article in its entirety, click here.

For more on Heath Ledger, click here.