To Be Sheen and Not Heard

We’ve all seen them.

On facebook walls, twitter feeds, blogrolls and news sites, evolving and proliferating like some snarky bacteria, redolent of schadenfreude and glib as a Bieber tune. Qaddafi (“Ghaddafi?” “Khadaffi?” “Degrassi?”) guest-stars in one, Kenny Powers in another. Gary Busey’s can’t be far off, if it’s not out there already somewhere, that big horse-toothed grin of his positively daring us to underestimate his brain damage. They are the Sheen-memes ("Sheemes?"), and they are everywhere, and if we look closely enough, they might not be quite as funny as we think.

"In celebrity culture," writes Chris Hedges in his grimly brilliant book, Empire of Illusion, "we destroy what we worship." He devotes a sizable portion of the work's first chapter to an analysis of Michael Jackson's funeral--perhaps the strangest parade of hideous glitz and saccharine self-delusion of the waning television age--and the industry of what he calls "celebrity for profit" that had turned Jackson into a commodity and, in doing so, destroyed him as a human being. "When you spend your life as a celebrity," Hedges claims, "you have no idea who you are." This culture essentially reduces all of humanity to two categories: the famous on the one hand, and the failures on the other. When, as Hedges asserts, "fame is its own denominator," it matters little how one gets famous or who gets hurt in the process--renown and notoriety have been rendered all but synonymous at this point--only that fame is achieved. A bizarre side-effect of this is that, just as all non-famous people are deemed equally insignificant, all famous people are elevated (or reduced) to the same level. Hedges illustrates this brilliantly when he recalls that, in one of the funeral's surreal slide-shows, a photo of Jackson shaking hands with Nelson Mandela was immediately followed by one of him smiling alongside Kermit the frog.

That, Dear Reader, is insane.

"So what?" I hear you asking. "What's all this got to do with a wild-eyed ex-Estevez blowing glitter-flecked lines off a stripper's tits?" Well, on its face, not a lot. The two celebrities in question have little in common at first glance, after all, beyond a penchant for exotic narcotics and a talent for tossing off truly inscrutable soundbites in interviews. Also, Jackson is dead, whereas Charlie Sheen is still in dress rehearsals. I contend, however, that they both share a kind of inner emptiness that arises when one is turned into a salable good. Hedges again:

"In America, most human beings, rich and poor, famous and obscure, have been conditioned to view themselves as marketable commodities. They are objects, like consumer products: they have no intrinsic value."

This idea should not strike anyone as particularly surprising or new; after all, any number of self-help or job-search guidebooks exhort readers to "develop your brand!" as a means to "sell yourself" to employers. Likewise dating books have begun to reflect this strange trend of openly and unashamedly emphasizing outward manner over inner character (more on this in another post). The very idea of people "branding themselves" (a phrase which makes me profoundly uncomfortable, by the way, and not just because it reminds me of hot irons and charring flesh) has become so culturally acceptable as to be almost beyond question, but there may be serious psychological and emotional consequences to viewing oneself this way, and Jackson and Sheen might be examples of this idea taken to hideous extremes.

Obviously, there are shades of gray to be acknowledged here. For instance: of course a resume is a sales pitch; a heartfelt letter about who you really are inside is about as likely to land you that sweet investment banking gig at Cthulhu Capital Management as a copy of The Communist Manifesto. Any reasonable person would concede that "branding" oneself is, in this context, the appropriate tactic, but the key thing to remember here is this: to your employers, you are a commodity. To your employers, you are not a human being; you are an entry on a spreadsheet, and you have no "value" to them beyond your ability to help them make money. That's fine; that's how work works.

But, in the unfortunately immortal words of Heart, "What About Love?" That is, what happens when you apply that same commodity-logic to the process of trying to connect with people? And what happens when it starts to shape how you see yourself?

Consumer culture--in particular, its marketing and advertising apparatus--has managed to convince us that we can express our true selves through performance and presentation. We have been persuaded, in large part, to confuse personality with identity. Walk into any Hot Topic or Gap or Apple store and you'll find a thousand different mass-produced, pre-shrunk ways to "be yourself," fresh from the sweatshop floor. Of course, none of this works; not really. What it does is make us sad. At some point, the personality cart got put in front of the identity horse, and all of a sudden we were depending on these pre-designed, totally impersonal "expressions" to tell us who we were. Doubt me? Google "Apple Tattoo." Think Different, my ass (full disclosure: this is being typed on a Mac).

I know, I know: typical anti-consumerist hypocrisy, but once again: let's bring it back to Sheen, shall we? Sheen, in my mind, provides an answer to a question nobody had yet thought to ask: "What happens when you combine that deep, existential, confused, consumerist unease with lifelong, worldwide, paparazzi-dogged fame, heavy substance and psychological problems, and enough money to burn stacks of hundreds just because it makes the whole house smell like a campfire? Well, now we know: Charlie Sheen. Charlie Sheen is what happens.

Back to the memes in a moment, but first some more Hedges:

"The stories that enthrall us are real-life stories: early fame, wild success, and then a long, bizarre, and macabre emotional train-wreck."

All of this--the rambling interviews, the hollow eyes, the proclamations of face-melting finger magic--this is our entertainment. Sheen is either on the David Lee Roth diet of cocaine, stripper sweat, and more cocaine, or he's had some kind of drug-induced psychotic break from reality. Maybe both. What is almost certain, however, is that when we tune in to hear him prattle on to 20/20 about god-knows-what, we are aware, on some level, that we are watching a man die.

Sheen, as crazed and addled and porn-warped as he may be, is a son, a brother, a father, and a fellow human being. He is clearly in a great deal of trouble, and will most likely die fairly soon. Why, then, is it so easy for us to laugh when quotes from his diseased diatribes are put up next to those of a brutal, ruthless, and manifestly insane North African Dictator? I believe that, though we may not all be as far gone as Sheen, we've all learned to some degree to view ourselves--and thus other people--as objects when it feels convenient to do so. And it's certainly more convenient to laugh at the crazy rich guy on TV than it is to think of what his children must be going through, or how trapped and alone he must feel, or what it must be like to have no idea what it feels like to just be a regular, boring, non-famous person.

Compassion and empathy take work. One reason consumerism is such an easy sell is that convincing oneself that establishing an individual identity can be as easy as changing your wardrobe or restyling your hair is a seductive proposition. The alternative--forming a self based on internal, self-determined, and rigorously examined ideals and ambitions--is a road blocked at every bend by self-doubt, failure, and the hard work of thinking one's own thoughts (as much as one can), but it's definitely the more human one.

And don't think for a second that Sheen's breakdown being all over the place is some kind of accident, or the result of intrepid bloggers and internet-hounds being on-point enough to catch this and make it go viral. The reason we're all talking about Charlie Sheen is because we're supposed to be talking about Charlie Sheen. It's easier for the corporate culture dependent on our continued isolated, lonely consumerism to keep us buying as long as the news media it supports keeps feeding us this meaningless, gossipy garbage we've been conditioned to accept. We laugh at Hollywood's fallen to forget our own impotence. Meanwhile, of course, in Wisconsin, empathy, compassion, and solidarity are going toe-to-toe with the ruthless corporate forces whose conception of human beings as commodities is the very one we've started to internalize, and the outcome there will likely send shockwaves throughout the country and may indeed mark a key step in the corruption of our democracy into a Russian-style oligarchy. Look at the birdie, look at the birdie.

If you're an American, and old enough to read, you probably already know somebody who's had an addiction--or a nervous breakdown, or an eating disorder, or any number of other problems based all too often in not knowing how to live and be happy in one's own skin. Maybe that person was you.

So go easy on Sheen. After all, remember Hot Shots? That movie was hilarious.