A reader writes:
You've got to temper that clip from The Royal Tenenbaums with a little bit of wisdom. Regardless of what you think of that movie, that scene is just God-awful. It romanticizes and even glamorizes suicide as a kind of artful shrug, while completely burying any consideration of its consequences.
I know, I know. Many of your readers will shout back at me, "It's art!"
I'm a former artist myself, and a staunch free-speech advocate. I wouldn't dare ask you to take the clip down. But we have to realize as a group, whether society at large or readers of The Dish, that speaking about and depicting suicide carelessly, without consideration for those who are prone to it, is a costly practice.
Suicide Contagion, or the emulation of suicidal acts, can be triggered by actual suicides as well as fictionalized ones. Most of us will watch that movie clip and move on. But those harboring thoughts of dying, or God forbid fantasies of dying, may very well find something more meaningful there – and hang onto it.
I know we've got to pick our battles, and I don't mean to be a fanatic, but suicide rates are staggering. One of the reasons is our reluctance to face its many harsh realities and instead see it as a kind of private, solemn, and even beautiful choice.
Trust me as someone who knows: suicide is none of those things. It's not private because it can't be contained. It's not the end of suffering; it's the proliferation of suffering. It's not solemn, because most, if not all of the time, it's a mad scramble. We'd like to dignify suicides with forethought and reason. It's so much easier to digest, say, Virginia Woolf's suicide if we allow her capability and agency. But it can't have been as pretty as Nicole Kidman played it. (The director of The Hours built a railing beneath the water's surface so Kidman would appear more sure-footed going under.)
Finally, there is no beauty in it. Suicide is the wreckage of beauty. When we buried my sister, only 27 at the time, and a vivacious, fun-loving beauty with a laugh you could hear a mile away, I was beside myself with how decrepit she looked. The 20 hours she took to die added 20 brutally hard years to her face.
Say what you will of that scene in The Royal Tenenbaums. Some among us deserve – no, need more.
The Dish 