So, I was just thinking: has there ever been such a high-profile case of suicide by someone so generally beloved in the United States and, yes, even the world?
There was the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994. But he spoke to a more limited audience, if you will. I think Andy Rooney indirectly proved that to be the case when he blasted the outpouring of emotion following his suicide. Older people - and I'm not just talking about Andy Rooney's generation here - were not likely to be affected, because the music, and what it represented, simply did not speak to them. Kurt Cobain was, in many ways, the voice of his generation for the brief while that he was alive and in the limelight, but it was a limited audience that listened.
Going back much later, Ernest Hemingway committed suicide in 1960. But he was an old writer, and although he had been highly influential, even coming up with a new way of writing, he likely was not quite as beloved as Robin Williams.
The thing is, Robin Williams seemed to be living the dream: a successful actor in big Hollywood productions, and a hilarious comedian! Everyone seems to remember their favorite Robin Williams roles, whether it was very early on, with Mork and Mindy, or in some comedic movies, or perhaps more serious movies. He was obviously very talented in each role, and brought something unique, an endearing, very human quality to each.
Personally, my favorite is his role in Good Will Hunting, just for the record. And that movie came at a time when I still mostly thought of Williams as a funny man. But he was very believable as a down on his luck, aging professor trying to get a brilliant but troubled young man out of his spiraling self-destruction. Robin Williams also showed incredible diversity in his acting range with other movies as well, including What Dreams May Come, The Dead Poet's Society, and one of my favorites, Insomnia, where he plays this kind of creepy guy - a role that I would have thought difficult for him, since he seemed the consummate "nice guy", if you will, but which he nevertheless played flawlessly.
But enough of that. That is not what I meant to write this blog entry about.
The fact of the matter is that his death seems to have brought to the surface of public light an issue that is controversial and often taboo: suicide.
I already posted blog entries about Williams, and the negative press coverage, for that matter, that his death seems to have provoked. Some skeptics, like Shepard Smith, Rush Limbaugh, and Gene Simmons, clearly expressed their condemnation, and each did so in a particularly classless, undignified manner that was most disrespectful not only to the Williams family, but also to the millions of Americans (myself included, admittedly) who have, at some point in time in their lives, suffered from serious depression. These men accused Robin Williams of being a "coward", and in one case, of being too liberal (Rush, predictably).
I have heard quite a few people over the course of my life dismiss suicide cases as "cowards", and to be quite frank, I never quite understood that argument. Cowardly in what way? There is nothing cowardly about taking one's own life. And when a high school classmate of mine committed suicide, in the first ever case of someone that I knew personally actually doing such an act, it haunted me for a long, long time precisely because I could hardly imagine what it must have taken that young man to reach that point when he brought the gun upon himself and, yes, pulled the trigger.
What really bothered me about that was all of the things that I imagined he must have been feeling in those final moments before committing the act itself. How lonely and depressed he must have felt. How desperate, and how incredibly sad. But he must have had moments of doubt that he was actually going to go ahead with it, right? So, in a way that most people probably do not understand, to finally pull the trigger like that did actually take some courage, whether or not people want to admit that.
No act is more final.
I guess what people are referring to when they say this is that you are opting out of life, and maybe, the claim is that you are lacking the courage to try and make your life work out for the better? That you are leaving friends and family behind to be haunted by your very act of having taken a voluntary and very permanent exit out of life?
On some level, I can understand that. But at the same token, let's be clear: people that make those kinds of arguments also likely themselves did not suffer from depression, because if they did, they would not pass such easy and sweeping judgment on others.
Now, I'm not defending the act of suicide here. What I am suggesting is that it is far more complicated an issue than to simply wave away with comments like it's a "selfish" or "cowardly" act.
The fact of the matter is that people have to be seriously depressed by the time that they reach that point, and that is what people should be focusing on. Sometimes, the lack of curiosity that many people have about a wide range of things in this world really stuns me, but this is one of the areas that I am most stunned about.
Why?
Because when people take their own lives, that is deadly serious. And we should wonder how it reached that point, that a person decides to go ahead and take their own lives, rather than live in this world anymore. Perhaps that is even more the case when the case in question is someone who, generally, is seen by the public as "having it all", such as Robin Williams, Kurt Cobain, or Ernest Hemingway. These three men reached the very pinnacle of their chosen professions, and each had plenty of money and fame and esteem, yet they decided anyway to go ahead and kill themselves.
That leaves a lot of unanswered questions, and much to be explored. And to me, the cardinal sin about this, and almost any serious topic, is to try and shut down discussion, and perhaps, yes, debate, about serious topics like that.
To me, that seems pretty "selfish" and "cowardly" in it's own right, to be quite frank. For that matter, how courageous is it to attack a dead man, or his family?
That is why I sincerely hope that the silver lining from the dark cloud of Robin Williams suicide is that it perhaps finally opens people up to explore these weighty matters, rather than simply ignoring the problem, hoping that it goes away.
To that end, I wanted to read some articles that delved much deeper into this topic, and explored it further. And to that end, here are articles to refute the general misperceptions surrounding depression, and especially suicide, as well as media coverage of the suicide of Robin Williams, specifically:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/katie-hurley/theres-nothing-selfish-about-suicide_b_5672519.html
Newspaper Editor Shows How Media SHOULD Have Covered Robin Williams's Death by Catherine Taibi of The Huffington Post, August 13, 2014:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/13/daily-news-robin-williams-village-voice-editor_n_5675667.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063
No comments:
Post a Comment