Right off the bat (pun not intentional) let me say that no, curses don't come in three. There were hundreds of people who worked on The Dark Knight. The chances that events like Ledger's overdose, Bale's arrest and Freeman's accident could happen to anyone on a production are fairly good. Over the course of a few months, you can five or six people among a 200 person crew that have suffered events that one could label as a curse. We're just not privy to the comings and goings of most of the below-the-line crew--that sounded more cynical than I liked, but, oh well.What's amazing is how much of a personal connection we have with people we've never met. Ledger was never an actor I followed, but his death was shocking and effected me more than I thought possible.
When I hopped over to cnn.com yesterday to check the latest news, I could feel the bottom of my stomach drop as I saw Morgan Freeman's name in the breaking news header. My mind instantly jumped to the worse case scenario. And I must admit that reading that Freeman was in serious condition, but still with us, was a relief.
The fact that we often have to apply concepts like a curse to a series of events, speaks quite a bit about our need for meaning and to wrestle control over our environment. Heath Ledger's death still doesn't make sense. Linking it to other events, with some tenuous thread of connection, gives us a narrative we can work with. An origin point that gives us some sure footing.
1 comment:
Well put, Charles. You're right, it is about trying to find some sort of meaning, rhyme or reason for happenstance. Things happen.....sometimes they're within our control, sometimes they're not. Accepting the latter without some sort of justification holds a lot of implications that a lot of people can't (and don't want to) handle.
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