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[LosingNow]

An absolute gem..
--
Anna Nicole Smith
By TUNKU VARADARAJAN
February 13, 2007; Page A24

Breathless commentators these last few days have likened Anna Nicole Smith -- whose untimely death, like her much-observed physique, was not the result of entirely natural causes -- to Marilyn Monroe. This comparison is preposterous: Arthur Miller, who married Monroe, would have had little time for Ms. Smith beyond the obvious dictates of chivalry. It would be hard to imagine Ms. Smith courted by contemporary playwrights either, and not just because so many of them do not, as it were, handle women well.

Playwrights notwithstanding, Ms. Smith was the object of a fierce popular fascination. It could be said -- and said not entirely as metaphor -- that Anna Nicole Smith embodied America. She embodied its bounty as well as its overabundance; its exploitability, and its propensity to exploit. She embodied, also, its litigiousness, its enterprise, its universal offer of the chance to remake oneself (Gatsby did it one way, Anna Nicole Smith did it another). And to many foreigners -- particularly foreign men -- she embodied America in a literal way, too: in a brassy blondeness that people in repressed cultures marvel at. It is no coincidence that the places in the world where women such as Ms. Smith are the most popular are typically those with which the U.S. has the worst diplomatic relations.

For all her gaudy excesses, there is in some of us -- or there ought to be -- the urge to treat Ms. Smith gently. Hers is a pathetic story, of ersatz celebrity, dead children and the pursuit of money, sex, drugs, weight loss and validation-through-litigation. That this pursuit was so thoroughly unembarrassed is a comment not so much on Ms. Smith's personal aesthetics as it is on human folly, U.S.-style, taken to its logical extreme.

A girl boosted almost to the point of malformation married a wheezing, aged, wheelchair-bound Texas billionaire (one can visualize his clawlike fingers laying claim to her torso): Some have condemned her as a "gold digger," but she wanted what you are supposed to want -- money -- and she worked industriously with what she had. And one must note that in America -- where most adult relations have been recast as transactions -- breast enhancement is the perfect meeting of commerce and sex: a means to lay bare the frankness of your opening gambit, and to make plain that it invites a response. What you see is what you get; now let me see how you propose to get it.(LN: ROFL!!)

We watched Ms. Smith take off as if from nowhere, then crash-land in our midst, and then self-combust, all through a process of theater designed to give us a perfect view of the repellence in others, while sparing us from taint or complicity. The scale of the celebrity meltdown in the U.S. is phenomenal -- supersized, as it were; and Ms. Smith's was no different. Everything in America is larger than life (and, alas, despite America's best efforts, smaller than death). But without the camera, she might only have caused forgettable (if scandalous) damage in a small town, and crumbled inconsequentially into the smallness of her natural milieu.

In fact, Ms. Smith turned us all into inhabitants of that small town, the American blonde who burst her bounds, expanding her conduct along a vector with no known or safe landing strip. One of those women who instantly turned us all, men and women, into voyeurs -- if only to see where her story could possibly end -- she was a permanent invocation of the question, "What happens to a woman who . . . ?" In American culture, the arc of some lives still promises something uncharted, just as the country itself offered that promise at its inception.

It is possible that in private, Ms. Smith's life held its own sad end in view -- she must have known her own trajectory, even as she shrank from its darker motions. But in her media incarnation, her outsize smile and busty brightness suggested always that she'd burst out of the frame and create an entirely new possibility, a new plane where such creatures as she triumph, or laugh afresh all the way to the bank.

Finally, a critical word. Anna Nicole Smith was also a lowbrow (or really, a narcissistic) version of the American dream -- the American dream of only bravado and guile, bereft of character or principles or talent. She was proof that the dream applies even to people with nothing to offer but themselves. If she is a tragic and cautionary tale to Americans, evidence that the American Dream requires substance and character, she may be evidence of the opposite to outsiders who see only the magic of wealth and fame won through the mere presentation of self. She inflates the reputation of American possibility abroad, making it seem like anything is possible in America -- even reward without merit. (LN: well said!!!)
Mr. Varadarajan is the editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal

[RicePlateReddy]

Thanks for posting this, LN. From the title, I expected seeing Sri Vardarajan talk about the history of Tamil Nadu politics -- the more boring 'Anna'!

Tunku surely saw the self validation of his thesis in even choosing to write this article -- the editor of Wall Street Journal commenting on the life and times of an entertainment bli(m)p. After ANS passed into the great unknown, Larry King of CNN and large-object-fascination fame goes "she was a genuine person". Trust a serial womanizer and former grand larcenist to sniff that one out: http://www.nndb.com/people/429/000022363/

[LosingNow]

Thanks for posting this, LN. From the title, I expected seeing Sri Vardarajan talk about the history of Tamil Nadu politics -- the more boring 'Anna'!

Tunku surely saw the self validation of his thesis in even choosing to write this article -- the editor of Wall Street Journal commenting on the life and times of an entertainment bli(m)p. After ANS passed into the great unknown, Larry King of CNN and large-object-fascination fame goes "she was a genuine person". Trust a serial womanizer and former grand larcenist to sniff that one out: http://www.nndb.com/people/429/000022363/

LOL on both bolded items.

On Tunku's choice .. I frankly am heartened that someone wrote about this with a more balanced eye and an opinion that points out the obvious flaws in this "tabloid (and now mass) media appointed" diva's personality and her process of getting to where she got. Somehow, the CNNs and MSNBCs of the world think that we have lost a very important and decent person. NOT!!

[kban1]

Applause for posting this LN

Very good read!!

[sudzz]

An absolute gem..
--
Anna Nicole Smith
By TUNKU VARADARAJAN
February 13, 2007; Page A24

Breathless commentators these last few days have likened Anna Nicole Smith -- whose untimely death, like her much-observed physique, was not the result of entirely natural causes -- to Marilyn Monroe. This comparison is preposterous: Arthur Miller, who married Monroe, would have had little time for Ms. Smith beyond the obvious dictates of chivalry. It would be hard to imagine Ms. Smith courted by contemporary playwrights either, and not just because so many of them do not, as it were, handle women well.

Playwrights notwithstanding, Ms. Smith was the object of a fierce popular fascination. It could be said -- and said not entirely as metaphor -- that Anna Nicole Smith embodied America. She embodied its bounty as well as its overabundance; its exploitability, and its propensity to exploit. She embodied, also, its litigiousness, its enterprise, its universal offer of the chance to remake oneself (Gatsby did it one way, Anna Nicole Smith did it another). And to many foreigners -- particularly foreign men -- she embodied America in a literal way, too: in a brassy blondeness that people in repressed cultures marvel at. It is no coincidence that the places in the world where women such as Ms. Smith are the most popular are typically those with which the U.S. has the worst diplomatic relations.

For all her gaudy excesses, there is in some of us -- or there ought to be -- the urge to treat Ms. Smith gently. Hers is a pathetic story, of ersatz celebrity, dead children and the pursuit of money, sex, drugs, weight loss and validation-through-litigation. That this pursuit was so thoroughly unembarrassed is a comment not so much on Ms. Smith's personal aesthetics as it is on human folly, U.S.-style, taken to its logical extreme.

A girl boosted almost to the point of malformation married a wheezing, aged, wheelchair-bound Texas billionaire (one can visualize his clawlike fingers laying claim to her torso): Some have condemned her as a "gold digger," but she wanted what you are supposed to want -- money -- and she worked industriously with what she had. And one must note that in America -- where most adult relations have been recast as transactions -- breast enhancement is the perfect meeting of commerce and sex: a means to lay bare the frankness of your opening gambit, and to make plain that it invites a response. What you see is what you get; now let me see how you propose to get it.(LN: ROFL!!)

We watched Ms. Smith take off as if from nowhere, then crash-land in our midst, and then self-combust, all through a process of theater designed to give us a perfect view of the repellence in others, while sparing us from taint or complicity. The scale of the celebrity meltdown in the U.S. is phenomenal -- supersized, as it were; and Ms. Smith's was no different. Everything in America is larger than life (and, alas, despite America's best efforts, smaller than death). But without the camera, she might only have caused forgettable (if scandalous) damage in a small town, and crumbled inconsequentially into the smallness of her natural milieu.

In fact, Ms. Smith turned us all into inhabitants of that small town, the American blonde who burst her bounds, expanding her conduct along a vector with no known or safe landing strip. One of those women who instantly turned us all, men and women, into voyeurs -- if only to see where her story could possibly end -- she was a permanent invocation of the question, "What happens to a woman who . . . ?" In American culture, the arc of some lives still promises something uncharted, just as the country itself offered that promise at its inception.

It is possible that in private, Ms. Smith's life held its own sad end in view -- she must have known her own trajectory, even as she shrank from its darker motions. But in her media incarnation, her outsize smile and busty brightness suggested always that she'd burst out of the frame and create an entirely new possibility, a new plane where such creatures as she triumph, or laugh afresh all the way to the bank.

Finally, a critical word. Anna Nicole Smith was also a lowbrow (or really, a narcissistic) version of the American dream -- the American dream of only bravado and guile, bereft of character or principles or talent. She was proof that the dream applies even to people with nothing to offer but themselves. If she is a tragic and cautionary tale to Americans, evidence that the American Dream requires substance and character, she may be evidence of the opposite to outsiders who see only the magic of wealth and fame won through the mere presentation of self. She inflates the reputation of American possibility abroad, making it seem like anything is possible in America -- even reward without merit. (LN: well said!!!)
Mr. Varadarajan is the editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal

This is a great article and really points to what the actual cost of 15 mins in the sun is.

But replace USA with almost anywhere in the developing world and you wont be wrong, most certainly you would not be wrong to replace USA with India and Anna Nicole Smith with Mallika Sherawat for example.

The whole drive to raise oneself to a level where one wants to a level where attains instant fame, recognition and money is crazy.

I dont think it is anymore limited to the cities alone, the number of aspiring miss India in rural India is astounding, I think the essence was nicely captured in Bunty aur Babli and that movie unfortunately is a true reflection of the seedy underbelly of development.

[Blwe_torch]

An old gem.............I believe, she had a very eventful but tragic life............................somehow the comparison with Monroe isn't misplaced ( without getting down to the nitty-gritties).