Amy Winehouse

So, now that she is gone and you start to recall all of the stories that ran through the media mill, did society learn anything? Do you wish you could have saved her? Is that your job? Did the media benefit from running stories of this seemingly inevitable train wreck while it was happening? Do they have any culpability? Why do we hold celebrities to a higher, much stringent standards to “getting better” while, simultaneously, requiring them to behave as an ordinary human being? We let them check themselves in, check themselves out, when in actuality they, of all people, may need more discipline than ever before, just so that they can survive. Others will say that it would be wrong to treat them in a way other than an average human being. But, when was the last time they were actually average? And when was the last time they were actually treated as a “human being” and not a product, a commodity, used to sell tickets? Used to sell an idea? An idea that says there is something cool and romantic about seeing a young person self destruct on drugs … tragically romantic? I say tragically romantic because this tragic story makes for great conversation at the next pot-smoking circle of peace, or the next session of injecting ones-self with liquid “understanding” in the dark corner of an empty warehouse-stooping so low so that no one will see, or the next set of binge-drinking nights so that you could be the “lucky” one to be so high, you can finally talk to Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendricks, even Amy herself and tell them that “you understand” their pain. Tragically romantic, would you say?

Adding Winehouse to a long list of young artists who have died at a young age at the hands of drugs, and then add the media disseminator, and then add the social network, and then add the insensitivity felt by audience members who are bombarded with a proliferation of bad news bad news bad news and then more bad news–bringing to life the desensitization process, ask yourself this….does the cultivation theory hold water here?

Something to think about hoping to bring a sip of knowledge without a hypodermic needle.