Heath Ledger, Rest in Peace

Friday, January 25, 2008

I know I haven't posted here in a long, long time. I regret it dearly, but the good ol' public school system has really put a damper on my creative endeavors. How sad it is, then, and how angry I am that my return must be because of celebrity death news. I was infuriated by the extended, beating-a-dead-whale coverage of Anna Nicole Smith, and since then I have been jaded by anyone and everyone dying. However, I found something today that deals with the recent death of Heath Ledger that relates in a big way to a post I did a long time ago.

It must have been at least two years ago (the WoW has been around THAT long?) that I posted this, in which I railed against a radical Baptist church for protesting the funerals of American soldiers. It has since been two years, and during this time I have lost my support for organized religions and my hope in those who follow them. Some things remain static, however, as it turns out that these closed-minded, judgmental, completely-missing-the-entire-message-of-religion whack jobs are at it again, this time protesting the funeral of Heath Ledger. Why? For doing his job, of course.

Let's get something straight (figuratively, of course): I'm not what you would call a "fan" of Ledger's. I loved him in The Patriot, but I never really saw any of his other movies. I'm not defending him because I am a huge Ledger follower or anything. I'm defending him because he is a person, a person who deserves to have his memory preserved, a person whose family and friends deserve to mourn him uninterrupted.

Heath Ledger starred in Brokeback Mountain, a movie which garnered much controversy when it was released in 2005. Redneck white trash religious zealots who knew only that the two main characters were homosexual railed against the film. I'm not here to discuss the film in itself, though. I'm writing this merely to point out some objective facts, facts that maybe these uptight ignorant bastards have overlooked.

This movie came out in 2005. That was three years ago. Get over it. Even comedians have stopped making gay cowboy jokes, which is a clear indicator that something is of the past. Since then we've seen the release of The Da Vinci Code and Golden Compass, two movies that are at least relevant to religion in general. Please, go raise a fuss about something a little more recent, and maybe then you'll be taken seriously.

Secondly, Heath Ledger is what people with any sort of education would call an "actor." He gets paid to portray characters formulated by someone else completely in movies. That's his occupation. He portrayed a character who was a homosexual cowboy. He wasn't gay himself, and him dying has nothing to do with him playing a "degenerate" in a movie.

And finally, the man is dead. Wouldn't you, my dearest assholes, say that he has already faced the judgment that you seem to seek for him? I don't know the whole time frame between death and a meeting with the Big Man, but chances are it has already happened. You're too late, and what you have to say matters very little right about now. Let the lovers of that poor heathen mourn their loss in peace. You know what it's like to love, right? Right? Isn't that what Christianity's all about? Love? Why don't you take a little time to find some love yourself? I hear your siblings are looking better and better every day.

Sorry about the long time without posting, guys. For what it's worth, I've started maintaining a journal of ideas, which will hopefully at least spark up some creativity again. I'll try to post more often from now on.