[lit-ideas] Re: Sunday waffle...
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2005 10:43:17 -0400
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Sunday waffle...
>
A couple of more thoughts on this.
>
> The story of the young
> hero who chooses a different path is a powerful one.
A.A. I think regarding James Dean, that by buying a Porsche, he took the
expected path. Perhaps the desired path, the fantasized path, but
certainly not a different path.
(And Christ
> himself couldn't have held an audience if he'd gotten old.)
A.A. Moses managed well enough to hang in there. Marlon Brando played the
same sort of character and also managed to hold an audience while growing
up. Mary Pickford, silent star, was rejected by audiences who only liked
her in in childlike roles. She went on to found United Artists with
Charlie Chaplin and others. Along with many others, James Dean might also
have matured. The irony is that it was his buying into the fantasy (the
Porsche) that killed him.
The story
> of Christ is instructive because we see that many are called but few
> have to answer. The fact that he turned the other cheek and did his
> father's bidding means that we don't have to. His doing it is enough.
> We just have to point and say, "yeah, like him" and go our merry way.
> So James Dean died for all of us and we can grow old and fat and lazy
> and greedy, all the while saying, "yeah, like him...." And if we're
> riding a Porsche while we say it, so much the better.
A.A. In a sense James Dean is the reverse Dorian Gray. We get old, but
he, our idealized selves, stays forever young, the eternal teenager. He
rides off in Phaeton's Chariot while we forget the now legendary teenage
angst we suffered as we relive the good old of high school into eternity.
We can posit myths all we want, remembering that pet rocks were once a fad
too. Who knows what sparked this flock to swarm around James Dean.
Now I must take the expected path and go buy a lawnmower.
Andy Amago
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