When a celebrity like Whitney Houston dies, America locks its eyes on the television screen. Or the internet news feed. Or we pay attention to the story on the radio.
Maybe part of the reason for that is the personal connection that some of us felt to Ms. Houston through her thrilling songs. But I think there’s more to it.
I think that, yes, a talented singer died. But, also, a myth is mortally wounded.
1. The American myth: part one.
Someone once said that poor people don’t think of themselves as poor people; they think of themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. And that truth reflects the power of the myth of our land of opportunity: the myth that someday we’re going to make it to the high life. We hope in this.
The myth is two-fold: the first part is the myth of upward mobility. But, as people like Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman point out, America has less upward mobility than other developed countries. In America, you are likely to die in the stratum into which you are born. This is particularly true as to the top and bottom strata.
Which is why people who climb into the economic stratosphere are important to us. People like Whitney Houston who rose from a modest beginning to get riches and fame and beauty and popularity feed our cherished myth. She validated our hope.
True, some of us don’t see a clear upward trajectory. Some of us are stuck in modest jobs or have no jobs at all. But that’s what the lottery is for: it’s a dream-generator. The most that almost anybody gets from playing the lottery is that pleasurable fantasy-life between the time that they buy the lottery ticket and the time that they learn that, once again, they didn’t win. And the reason that people play the lottery at all is that, as humans, our minds are not wired to understand how giant are the odds against us.
2. The American myth: part two.
The idea that we might be rich is one piece of the American myth. The other piece is that, once rich, we’ll be happy.
We imagine that riches will bring bliss. I’ve been flush, and I’ve been hard-up. The flush times are nice; there is much less anxiety when you have money to burn. I’d much rather make a heedless reservation at an expensive restaurant than fish through my suit pockets to find money to buy a burrito at Baker’s. But the money, per se, never made me happy. And I think that it’s generally true that money satisfies less than most people expect it to.
But we cling to the myth.
3. The myth debunked.
And that two-part myth contributes to our fascination with Whitney Houston. In her death, we see a dream disturbed. She was rich. She was talented. She was beautiful. She was famous. But she threw away her talent and her wealth and her beauty with drugs. And then, as she was getting ready to contribute to the American myth with a storybook comeback, death brought to a close the story of her life.
Death, the buzz-kill.
So in Whitney Houston’s death, and in the death of any celebrity, we grieve not just for her, but for ourselves. Her death is the beetle of reality into our hope stew.
Yet the myth is persistent. People will say that her downfalls were worth it for the triumph, while they lasted, of the highs, meaning the highs of fame and fortune and talent.
Well, for anyone who has listened to her music, but didn’t have to lie next to her while she puked in her sleep, that might be true. Her music is immortal, even if her bones lie in a coroner’s refrigerated drawer.
4. Toward a new reality.
But maybe the better truth is the truth of the goodness of a humble life. Maybe there’s more joy in a life without fame and riches, but rich with friends and with enough to live on. Maybe life is good enough with a little left over after necessities for simple pleasures like short trips with friends, or good books or DVDs, or the company of children and grandchildren.
Maybe a humbler life, one with fewer highs but also fewer lows, might have made a happier life story for Whitney Houston, a life story cherished by neighbors and family, if unknown to the world.
Maybe we need a new national myth – something that is not in fact a myth at all. Maybe we should cherish the simple goodness of the humble life. And maybe that’s the valuable takeaway from all of the attention being spent on the end of a turbulent and tragic life.
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On the lack of mobility in American society:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html?pagewanted=1
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