The Anna Nicole Syndrome (or The Double-Standard in Dead Celebrities)

With all the passing of actors and the otherwise famous we've been experiencing so far this year, I think it's high time we delved into a phenomenon that I like to call "The Anna Nicole Syndrome".

What is it?

First of all, this is Anna Nicole Smith:



















She's hot, she's sexy and she's dead.

She was also the object of derision during her life because she was the classic archetype of both the terms "gold-digger" and "celebrity"; the former because she married J. Howard Marshall, an 89 year-old billionaire who left her untold millions after his death (which continues to be disputed by his immediate family to this day) - the latter because other than a few playboy spreads and a few really bad movies (and one good one: The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult), Anna Nicole had really done nothing of note with her life. At all.

Oh; she did drink like a fish, ingested numerous drugs (and equally numerous amounts of food), had plastic surgery out the wazoo - in fact, her wazoo was probably the only part of her body she didn't have work done on, partied harder than Paris Hilton on speed and was the topic of virtually every single tabloid TV show and rag mag ever created.

But then she died...and lo, the clouds opened up, the choirs sang and Anna Nicole Smith ascended into the Christ-Like. Benedictus spiritus sanctus, amen.

...and no, you didn't miss anything - that's basically how quick it happened.

Once Anna Nicole died, the very same press that pounced on every embarrassing, humiliating part of her life fell over its collective self to praise Anna for her battle over adversity, her struggles as a mother and her martyristic death from a drug overdose.

If they had just nailed her to a cross and then buried her in a tomb, we could have started a whole new religion.

Forgive me if I sound crass, but Anna Nicole Smith was nothing more nor less than a lower-level celebrity who parlayed her face and body into a career of money, drugs, booze and parties, latching onto a sugar daddy here and there for support, and now she's supposed to be some kind of a secular saint because of her sole virtue of being DEAD??

At any rate, that is "The Anna Nicole Syndrome": the act of canonizing in death someone who did little-to-no intrinsic good in life. And yes, there have been other examples of that - in Hollywood, especially:

Errol Flynn - Actor, womanizer, hard-drinking supporter of Fidel Castro during the Bay of Pigs, died of a heart attack while making love to his teenaged girlfriend (though an eroded liver may have played a part, also).

Bob Crane - Actor, sex addict and amateur pornographer, found beaten to death in his own apartment.

Kurt Cobain - Singer, grunge proponent and insufferable downer, killed self due to a combination of drug abuse and searing stomach pains.

Nancy Spungen - Obnoxious, manipulative hanger-on to the Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious; she was found stabbed to death with Sid a likely suspect.

Marvin Gaye - Singer and abusive sex addict, murdered by his own father during an argument over money.

And yet even they have their defenders.

What is going on? Why is there this glowing impenetrable shield around dead celebrities that make them - for lack of a better word - untouchable?

One thing that contributes to this is the connotation of the dead celebrities that came before. You know, like Marilyn Monroe, Jim Morrison, John Wayne, Bob Marley - Everyone liked them. They were celebrities in their own chosen professions. And they're dead!

Then again we're comparing apples and oranges, whereas those who came before are icons above reproach because they accomplished great things in their lives: Marilyn Monroe was the epitome of blonde bombshells and starred in classic films like The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot; John Wayne was The King of the Cowboys, the eternal tough guy who, in the hundreds of films he starred in, only died onscreen in about ten or so.; and Morrison and Marley were masters of their musical crafts, embodied the sound of the 1960s and created followings that exist to this day.

And hey; back then, the spin doctors for celebrities worked a lot harder than they do now.

So, what is it again that Anna Nicole Smith accomplished in her life?

...you see what I'm getting at?

Superficially, Anna Nicole could be compared to Marilyn Monroe - anyone can be compared to a peer on a surface level - but their legacies are far different. Once you dig down and uncover what they've both done in their lives, you'd never find two more different personalities. Two different points on a graph.

Which leads me back to what I was getting at in the beginning:

It is wholly unfair to Marilyn Monroe to lump her into the same group as Anna Nicole, just like it's unfair to Jim Morrison to pair him up with Kurt Cobain. Anna Nicole and Kurt had not earned that right to join their betters because neither had lived long enough to accomplish the same level of success in life as those prior.

So, how does "The Anna Nicole Syndrome" affect our recent crop of the famous deceased? Michael Jackson, for example? No question he was the King of Pop and created music that will live forever. Michael, however, had his vices and much was made of them. Which side of the fence does he end up on, then? I don't know, and perhaps it's too soon to tell right now. It may be that his good will outweigh his bad. We'll see.

In the case of Anna Nicole Smith, however, the case has been made and the judgment has been passed.

So if you're reading this and just happen to be famous, maybe you should consider changing any of your bad ways.

Or maybe your publicists. Either/or.

Dope out.

- TGWD