One of the reasons I appreciate Acculturated is that its
contributors are allowed to express differing opinions. Just earlier this week
Ashley E. McGuire argued
against fellow contributor Kate Bryan’s take on the “bossy” controversy.
And now Mark Judge has taken exception to my commentary
on the suicide of fashion designer L’Wren Scott, which leaves me no choice but
to challenge him to pistols at twenty paces.
In all seriousness, Judge and I do not seem to be embroiled so
much in a disagreement as in a misunderstanding. Here was the core of my brief commentary
about Ms. Scott: “Her tragedy is a reminder that we all have our demons, and
celebrity and luxury are illusions that cannot protect us. It takes an armor
welded from elements much stronger than ourselves – family, friends, and faith,
for example – to keep those demons at bay.”
Judge seemed to get both much more and much less out of that
than I intended. He described it as “a lazy dismissal of a gifted person” who “was,
above all else, an artist.” He wrote that I “admitted” I knew “nothing about
her and the reasons for her suicide” (which is only half-right – I did know about L’Wren Scott and her work).
He seems to think I was using her “as yet another pinata in the culture wars” –
I’m not sure where that comes from, since my piece was not about the culture
wars. And he felt that I failed to seriously assess her art.
But my short article was not about her art. It was about
what people on the outside saw of her life. Judge believes my piece lacks an
understanding of pop culture, but the tug-of-war between our fragile humanity
and the seductive illusion of luxury and celebrity is one of the most serious
issues with pop culture.
Judge wrote that “conservatives often dismiss artistic
endeavor, ignoring that it can be brutally hard work and take a lot of courage.”
There is truth to that, but I’m not sure why he assumes from my article that I
fall into that camp. I was a musician for many years, I tried my hand at
acting, and now I’m a screenwriter and a pop culture critic, so I know from
personal experience what art demands.
However, we have common ground. In response to my point
about people often needing something larger than themselves to keep it
together, Judge wrote that “the foundational things in life are the things that
can keep us out of trouble and even save our lives. But so can art.” I couldn’t
agree more. When I listed “family, friends, and faith, for example,” I wasn’t excluding art or anything else that might
work for someone, although in retrospect I should have elaborated on that point
to avoid just this kind of misunderstanding. Judge rightly points out that
family, friends, and faith can sometimes fail us too – they have failed me on
occasion, as I have them – and that art can be there for us in ways that
nothing and no one else can.
I fully agree. As just one example, last week I posted a
piece about actor John
Lithgow and the power of story to bring his ailing father back from the
brink of depression and surrender – “back to life,” as Lithgow put it. “Sometimes
a song, a play, or, yes, a dress, can make the difference,” Judge asserts, “pointing
someone to a life that is missing at home.” Absolutely. “And to assume that
celebrity and luxury precludes the possibility of these things reveals a kind
of misunderstanding about popular culture and art.”
I think the misunderstanding is his. I never wrote that
celebrity and luxury preclude that possibility, nor did I say that they were
even the cause of L’Wren Scott’s
death. I’m not sure how anyone can think I was lecturing or dismissing her or
ignoring the life-saving power of art; nor did I judge her for killing herself.
My point was that fame and fortune seem larger than life, but they are
paper-thin, and we all need something stronger to anchor us, whatever that may
be. I didn’t claim that this is an original or even profound observation – only
that it is something we need reminders of nearly constantly in our culture, and
Ms. Scott’s suicide is a poignant one.
“Fashion is the armor to
survive the reality of everyday life,” L’Wren Scott recently wrote, a statement
that would seem to bolster Mark Judge’s point about art being a refuge. And
perhaps that did sustain her throughout her life. But in the end not even that was enough. And she’s far
from alone; legion is the number of artists, both famous and unknown, who have
taken their own lives. For whatever reasons, in their final moments there was
nothing to keep them from going under – not even their art.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 3/20/14)
