Hollywood Eats Actresses Alive :: Brittany Murphy

Hollywood Shuddered Yesterday, Like An Earthquake, About Actor Brittany Murphy

Surviving, by professional acting in Hollywood, is hell.
Professional actress-ing is much harder.

It appears that Brittany Murphy died of natural causes yesterday. No matter what the maggots say as they feast on her flesh, with one eye on their Google page rank.

Hollywood eats actresses alive, as if they are absolutely entitled to.

Actresses eat themselves alive too. Never quite matching up. Get pecked from the outside, get pecked from the inside.

An actress’s shelf-life often ends before age 32. Or around that age. Anything older, and they fall into cougar status, if they have any apparent sexuality.
There also aren’t many auditions.

Auditions, at any age, are different for actresses than for actors.

In an eerie coincidence of timing, Saturday Night Live, recently, did a particularly mean skit on Brittany. (Which SNL pulled from Hulu, but I posted below.) Not because they portrayed her as a bimb, but because the inspiration for that sketch was that she had recently gotten fired from a film. I love comedy, and no, not much is sacred. But, even without her dying, the skit seems more woman-hating, actress-hating, than comedy. Cringeworthy personal attack, on Brittany Murphy.

Our industry is kookier than the early characters Murphy played well. We don’t want real actors in our female talent. We want goddesses. Goddess is a synonym for actress, isn’t it? We don’t even care if they are talented. Doesn’t matter, if they can act. Hollywood and, we as a culture, only demand that they are perfect.

Then, we shred ‘em.

Brittany Murphy was a child actress for whom natural talent didn’t seem to be enough.

To herself. Why should it seem to be? To a young girl? Or any woman in the industry? She wanted to be a goddess, and rightfully so. Her employers, the industry that she had already made great inroads in, (out of New Joizey!) doesn’t have a whole lot of reverence for actresses with talent. What else would a little girl want to be?

Beauty supersedes talent, when it comes to women, in front of the camera. Beauty trumps talent, beauty abolishes the need for talent, and frankly, there really aren’t too many roles for women with talent. In this era, gender may be considered equal, sex has never been.

In Hollywood, little girls are accepted, even welcomed, if they are funny. Or can do character work, with a charisma that Murphy showed in her earlier roles. As grown women, that’s a bit too much talent. A bit too much power. As is, talent altogether, in a female form. No, no, in our culture, we want our goddesses perfect looking; when they get to be of sexual age, and we actually prefer them to lose any thing else. It kind of spoils the high.

In Hollywood, in females, who needs talent?

An actress’s main role is to make sure the men in the audience get a lot zinged. We are all used to it. The women in the audience, are too, and so afterward, may talk about things, like, the outfits. And if the male they are with talks about how great so-and-so was, because she was nude, or sexy, or poledancing, or her ass, or just G-d-given beautiful…The woman conversing with him may join in the convo as if she is a male, in a certain way. Never do women say, yeah, she had a great body naked, but I wish someone up there was trying to zing me, while I was sitting in the audience too. Or yeah, she was gorgeous, but the man was far from anything to look at. (Which can be the case.)

It’s an impossible paradox, for an actress. We, the audience; we our culture; want them to be gorgeous and kind of a bimbo. She has the looks, while the male onscreen has the talent. Inwardly, we as women in our culture hate them for being beautiful. As do maybe the men, because the one that he truly has in his bed, could never be. (Not without the same stylists, anyway.)

We require our actresses to be bimbos, but we hate them for that too.

One reason might be that it’s the times. No one hated Marilyn Monroe for being out-to-lunch in the brain department. They didn’t even hate her for her other weaknesses, such as drugs; which is what everyone’s trying very hard to make sure that Brittany was doing. Or is it anorexia, and if so, why is that something to ridicule? Marilyn had eating disorders.

Why is everyone digging, anyway? And why do those in the press act like this information is a feather in their professional cap?

Why do we care?

This woman had a heart that died. Yet everyone wants to undress her, rip her open because they are sure that wasn’t the cause. Even after death. Especially after death.

I’ll be frank, I actually don’t know Brittany Murphy’s work well enough to know the extent of her acting talent. I do remember her in Clueless, and she did a outstanding job, turning from a dork-ish duckling into a real swan. In such an enjoyable, but light-level movie; she created a charismatic memorable role, remembered long after the acting of some of her charming co-starring Bratz-era teens, wasn’t.

She also survived longer. Acting.

There’s a few more ironies about that film, Clueless. The leading teenage “lady” was Alicia Silverstone. No one questioned, or attacked, Alicia Silverstone’s slender physique, during Clueless. Her weight changed at different times in her short, youthful career, didn’t it? And even though if you really look carefully, and forget the assigned type of roles; Brittany and Alicia are pretty equal in the pretty department.
But then, Brittany moved herself from not so pretty, secondary character role, to very done up, leading role. And managed to continue to succeed as a movie actress, flourished! Well, she had the absolute brass ring for awhile…Starring leading (beauty) role… Majorly successful musician boyfriend (Eminem), followed by handsome co-star actor (Ashton Kutcher). She had it all didn’t she, by achieving Hollywood romance, too!

Look, I am not sure about too much here. I didn’t follow her career carefully, so I only know the bits about it that I have read today. I don’t have any inside information about her specific suffering through the actor-hardship that is innate in the profession, nor her individually, specific, suffering that comes along when being of the gender she is. Or was, rather.

I don’t know if there is some secret other reason that she died, nor do I care. I am not as interested in getting “inside” Brittany Murphy’s life; I am much more interested as to why nearly everybody else is…Why her own husband, who very well could be interpreted as very lovely male version of “I’m Mrs Norman Maine”, and I say that because I think their relationship looks beautiful, from the photos I’ve seen. He,who romantically may have protected her; and given her the love and attention she must have so desperately needed when her career took a downswing…and the public seemed to follow along, swinging some big dukes.

I know nothing about them as a couple, but he looks to me like a big loving bodyguard. I think she needed that, and he seems to be doing that same thing, now. Loving and protecting her. Poor guy.

Vultures are circling him now, too.

It’s just obvious, and a bit appalling, that she was excoriated before she died, and it ain’t lightening up any. The need to ridicule her and “expose” her is fiercer than ever

What I mean, really, is that maybe we should let Brittany Murphy rest in peace.

And that the frenzy to discover, or create something sordid, or to violate her dead body, instead, we the public, we the media…we can just let go of.

I mean, her family asked for some privacy for awhile.

So why is the media going at her, like carnage? What did ever happen to respect for the deceased?

And while we’re on it…Whatever happened to respect for women?

I am not trying to claim that acting, or Hollywood, or misogyny, or a heavy dosage of all three…killed Brittany Murphy.

Nor that she died of a broken heart, as if that and a heart attack are one and the same thing.

But I do say that her death at such a seemingly young age, of natural causes, or any causes…was G-d awful.

In this distorted view, of which I apologize for in advance–I muse that perhaps, if Brittany Murphy was having such a difficult emotional time of it over the last few years, as I have been reading about so much, today….well…then just a bit of it might have been some “saving grace”.

To much of the world, 32 is very young. In Hollywood-Actress…

Shelf-Life, it is undeniably,”over the hill”. If her career was rough on her, and hard to take, before age 32, it was surely would only getting worse. The rest of her life would be ever increasingly disappoinitng. Maybe with increasing public ridicule, as it was on Saturday Night Live.

If it’s this ugly in death, the best we can hope for is that she isn’t conscious enough to be aware of the gleeful or self-serving blows.

Peace, Brittany Murphy, from a community of fellow actors…

.

To my blog follows…

During this holiday season, and all along your acting path, may light and love illuminate your way.

Dana

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