Anna Nicole Smith - Free From Us At Last

Did we kill Anna Nicole Smith?

Should we turn ourselves in to the police and confess that we were accessories and co-conspirators in the systematic disintegration of her 39-year old life? Are we guilty of involuntary manslaughter? Worse, could some of us have actually been voluntary participants in her slow and painful death?

The coroner has yet to determine the putative cause of death, an answer that will probably come from the toxicology reports that will undoubtedly be made public in a few weeks. But, that’s just after-the-fact lab work. It isn’t really going to identify the underlying cause of death.

Anna Nicole Smith died from public exposure. We stared her to death. We ogled every move she made on her perilous journey; we strained to hear every inarticulate and garbled word that she could speak. We plucked her from obscurity and made her a celebrity, thereby tossing her into a cauldron filled with a cultural acid that strips first the clothing and then the flesh off victim after victim.

There are many versions of the celebrity cauldron – one for “stars” of stage and screen; one for recording artists; one for professional athletes and Olympic champions; one for “super” models; one even for notorious rogues and occasional criminals; and then there’s the one that Anna was dumped in – the celebrity of appearance. We initiated her into a cleavage cult, where she was brainwashed and emotionally tortured into believing that blond hair, a bright smile, well-rounded hips and big breasts were a form of talent. Once we had her captive, or should I say captivated, we refused to let her go. She died still being held in our custody; she died under the influence of us.

What did she do to deserve our influential attention? She took off her clothes for a few pages of photographs in a soft-porn magazine that has become an anachronism to all but a few drooling, thick-browed chauvinists; she wore tight jeans in an ad campaign; and she married an incredibility rich and incredibly old man. For these accomplishments of mere appearance, we made her the subject of a reality TV show that bore no relationship to anyone’s reality other than hers.

At that point we had become voyeurs of an almost macabre scene – the breakdown of beauty, the dismembering of an otherwise common woman who happened to have blond hair, a bright smile, well-rounded hips and big breasts. We sat and watched a horrific accident unfold in slow motion right in front of us, and after the potentially deadly crash no one called 911, no one attempted CPR. We just gathered around the scene of the accident and watched the victim gasp for air and bleed to death. And then we walked away and asked, “I wonder what will happen to her baby?”

Her baby’s fate will likely turn on how much attention we pay to her. Will we take her captive and hold her in our custody year after year? Will we throw her into some boiling cauldron of celebrity, the one reserved for the offspring of publicly-proclaimed “stars”? Will we pay attention to this child because she inherits her mother’s “talents” and then tries to prove that fact to us on glossy pages or narrow runways?

We have to ask ourselves, “What are we doing to these people whom we choose to captivate, elevate, celebrate and shower with adoration that so often crosses the boundary into idol worship?” Are we so starved for celebration in our lives that we have to create surrogates so we can live fantasy lives through them? That proximate unreality; that parallel starry, starry night we inhabit is filled with pathos worthy of stage and screen. It makes our lives as sad and pitiful as those whom we crown as our celebrities and christen as our idols.

When it comes to Anna Nicole Smith I am perhaps painting with too broad a brush for those who will read these words. But, who among us is not an accessory to the death of someone higher and brighter in the starry firmament, someone like Princess Diana. She died running from people who wanted to show us yet another set of pictures of her with a man in a Mercedes. Apparently, we, the buyers of those pictures, made mediocre shots worth tens of thousands of dollars; good shots worth hundreds of thousands; and, dear god, a titillating shot worth millions.

To the voyeurs among us who find titillation and celebration only in the lives of others, it’s time for us to stop and build something worth celebrating in our lives. We’re unlikely to ever be charged in the death of Anna Nicole Smith or Princess Diana or any other celebrity, guilty though we may be. But we can atone for our crimes and offer penance in the form of lives worth celebrating in our homes and communities. That would be worth watching day after day.