H. Brandt Ayers: Self-immolating celebrity - Anniston Star

H. Brandt Ayers: Self-immolating celebrity

Two world-class talents took their final bow on stage and screen last week.

In their leaving, and in their living, there is an epochal distance between the two.

Amy Winehouse, the British jazz and blues singer, chose to dance with the devil of alcohol and drugs an uncomfortable partner who brought her no inner calm. What did he promise her: riches, fame, adoring fans, yes, but not happiness or love?

Since the age of 13 when she began to strum on her older brothers guitar, she discovered a small flame of talent, a small protection from unseen life forces she seems to have fought against all her life until the end.

She began to record songs with a melancholy vision of the world: You Know Im No Good, Rehab, Love Is A Losing Game, and I Told You I Was Trouble.

When I first heard Back to Black, I was immediately taken by her sultry, nonchalant voice and complex arrangement. As it turned out, it was her own elegy she was singing: I tread a troubled track/My odds are stacked.

That album so accelerated the flame of her celebrity: the attention, the paparazzi, the tours, some great, some boozy flops; she was booed off the stage, drunk, on her last tour date in Belgrade.

The flame of her celebrity consumed her; the star burst in a Nova effect. And then there was nothing but silence, and the dark. On the last line of her hit album, she sang, You go back to her/ I go back to black.

She was found dead in her apartment, at 27, her tortured relationship with life over.

Other celebrities such as Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin have self-destructed, but there has to be more to it than that. What did they want that they could not have: stabilizing friends and family to help them see what is real in their life and what is not?

As unexpected as Amy Winehouses rise to fame and flameout was, who could have anticipated the depth and dimensions of imagination inside the blonde head of an unknown British woman, Joannie Jo Rowling?

Her vast outpouring worldwide of Harry Potter books has been translated to the screen by a trio of pre-teens who have literally grown up before our eyes during the 10-year life of the series.

Much of the action takes place at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, whose outlandish towers, oceanic great halls and the sinister, slithery underground spaces resemble a real British school just enough to have the weight of credibility.

The serpentine plots, with surprising and scary turns, are meant to retain interest in what is basically a story of how three good children discover the secrets of Harrys archenemy, Lord Voldemort.

In the film, a nose-less Ralph Fiennes is the epitome of evil; no witch dares utter his name. But by prophetic casting, Harry Potter has been designated as the only one who can defeat the Dark Lord.

Which he does, after scaring the pants off theatergoers to their delight, and to the moral satisfaction of all when good triumphs over evil.

But what of the flesh-and-blood child stars who lost their childhood while riding the escalator of fame that has made them as recognizable as Princess Diana or Elvis Presley were? How are they handling the weight of celebrity?

Quite well, it seems. Perhaps when celebrity has been rationed over a long period of time, the real person inside the flame has time to adjust to its voracious demands; a perspective denied to performers ambushed by fame.Take Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry. He was fortunate to have parents who knew that world, a father who was a literary agent and a mother who was a casting agent. They invested his fortune of 20 million pounds for him.

Daniel explains his decision not to go to university with the maturity of experience, one, because he already knew he wanted a career writing and acting and, two, When the paparazzi found out there would be a party, theyd show up and ruin it for all of us.

Emma Watson, who played Hermione Granger, is very bright and decided to go to Brown University in Rhode Island, a state not known to harbor guerrilla bands of paparazzi.

Later, she transferred to a joint program in her Oxfordshire home. She has done a few theatrical dates this year but resists total immersion because school life keeps me in touch with my friends.

The sudden onslaught of a fan-fed consuming hunger that tragically devoured Amy Winehouse came in small doses over 10 years to Emma and Daniel. They are refreshing examples of how celebrity can be seen as unreal, a thing apart.

H. Brandt Ayers is the publisher of The Star and chairman of Consolidated Publishing Co.