Crazy.
I rolled eyes in my mind hearing the awkwardly titled ‘Crazy, Stupid, Love’. But the next two keywords: Ryan Gosling, instantly hooked me up. I would describe it as ‘insanely good’, sucking what felt like a liter of tears out of me. This post, however, is not about the movie.
Let me ask you, how many times have you described a movie, a song, or a person with the phrase ‘crazy/insanely ________ (fill in the blank with positive words)’? Crazy awesome. Mad genius. Freaking fantastic. Without realizing, our culture has been conditioned to believe that the outstanding superlatives naturally pair up with the disturbed state of mind.
The current is such an irony to earlier century, which dismiss those regarded as mentally unhealthy. We are all familiar with how Einstein was not particularly a joy and pride of the society for his inability to care about his personal hygiene despite being a physics genius. Few understood Beethoven’s emotional swings albeit rare musicality.
Those typical patterns in geniuses have finally gotten into people’s minds hence the expectations of weird acts to cement one’s genius social status. Danger Mouse, one half of duo Gnarls Barkley crafted ‘Crazy’ based on this belief: “I somehow got off on this tangent about how people won’t take an artist seriously unless they’re insane…” Tabloids questions artists who do not do drugs nor possess weird behaviors just because they are expected to do so. Today we are in a phase where only extremes gain attention, probably online information overload can be blamed for this. The weirdest, the worst, the most dramatic, and so forth.
Society is thrilled to see how strange icons behave. John Galliano is one perfect example. The fashion genius with his outrageous and dramatic concepts are largely celebrated for decades. He constantly created to the world’s high praises to the days his career defeated him. He lost it, and the racist comments proved so. It is a tragedy soon shall halt, we all hope.
Soul standout Amy Winehouse was never known for her sanity. Her work pathed way for Duffy even Lady Gaga herself, but her absent mind was constantly apparent. Wandering around at 4am in bras and panties, came out scarred and bruised after lover quarrels, she was anything but ordinary.
And then we have people like Lindsay Lohan and now Miley Cyrus, who seemingly tried real hard to destroy themselves for the sake of popularity. Has society’s demand of genius and crazy intertwining come to a tragic outcome? That young starlets know only one shortcut to fame: get out of control and ‘lose it’.
I say, in the age where odd beauties like Ann Ward is much celebrated, it is high time eyes are opened for the grey areas rather than pure black and white.
photo credit: www.celebrific.com
