Thoughts on John Hughes, Celebrity, Mediation

As another famous person dies, I see once again, many of my friends lamenting. And again it feels foreign to me. I loved Hughes' movies, and as my roommate will attest, I could watch many of them everyday of my life. Sometimes I've loved them because I could relate to them, sometimes because well...I grew up in the 80's so of course I like Hughes' flicks; they don't really capture the reality of that period but they do what art does at its best and that is capture the essence of something however fleetingly.

But I guess the thing is, that as much as I love them..or relate to pieces of them..they don't and never did define me. I see that's not the case for many, and I know it's bound to sound like I'm saying I'm better than someone, but really I'm just wondering...Is it so good to be so passively defined by art? For most of my growing up, the things I did with my friends (Cell 144 as an example) are what defined me, consequently almost all of my art hearkens back in some way to that period. I will always be that little boy growing into a man, I will never be Duckie wanting so badly for Andie to notice me.

But then again even as I write this I remember that in the novel I'm desperately trying to finish, I make reference to not pulling an "Andy Carmichael" so perhaps these pieces of media define more of me than I'd like to admit...at the very least they are a frame of reference through which I can communicate to the world something about myself that they will understand, however imperfectly, however fleetingly.

Maybe this is part of why I don't feel impacted by the passing of writers, or musicians, or actors. I've always fallen in love with the stories and the characters, seldom the artists who created them. What I have fallen in love with is, more or less, eternal. What I have fallen in love with is myself in relation to the story not the story tellers. Fitting considering my low esteem of rock stars and artistic popularity I suppose. I like to think of it as a philosophy I came to but perhaps this too is just a product of mediation?

It's a difficult ball of yarn to unravel for sure.

To date the death of an artist that affected me the most was the death of Madeleine L'Engle. I'll admit even to actually shedding a tear over that. But why did it affect me that way? I think because it was her work that first instilled in me the reverence for the narrative and the corresponding necessity of humility for the artist. It was still mediation of a sort, I mean, I wasn't mourning her, but who her media had made her become in my mind. I was mourning a kind of person who the living L'Engle may or may not have resembled at all. And perhaps, as odd as it may seem to me, Michael Jackson was that to others, certainly I can very easily see how Hughes fulfilled that role for people.

Media theorists with sharper minds than mine might have an easier time sussing it all out, but as a person who likes to help a story tell itself I can say at least these two things:

First, that the power of a narrative to define us or to help us understand each other is as important, and mythic as the idea of God, and with that in mind..we ought to be very careful about the kinds of stories we help to tell. Second, that whether you fall in love with a story , or the person who tells it...the best way to celebrate their lives and their deaths is to live the kind of life that will allow you to tell the kinds of stories that will do for others what those stories and their tellers did for you.

Comments

[chris]

Maybe when people mourn the death of an artist they are really mourning the fact that they will never get to experience anything new from him or her. John Hughes is dead and will never make another film. Sure we can appreciate his life's work, but part of us must lament the fact that his life's work is over. It's a selfish way to look at this, but we're all pretty selfish. And on an even deeper level, an artist's or celebrity's death (anyone in the public eye) reminds us of our own mortality -- something we try to put out of our heads everyday.