There are two prevailing views on Charlie Sheen: he has never fulfilled his potential, and he has never had any to fulfil. Either way, the meltdown of glorified soap star has received disproportionate attention – most of it a mix of faux-sympathy, awkward chuckling and superior disgust. However, Bret Easton Ellis has torn it all up in a column at The Daily Beast. The Empire is losing, says Bret. Charlie is… winning.
If you’re not put off by Easton Ellis’ sweary drawl, I urge you to read the unabashed piece in full. But here’s an
excerpt:
‘It’s thrilling watching someone call out the solemnity of the celebrity interview, and Charlie Sheen is loudly calling it out as the sham it is. He’s raw now, and lucid and intense and the most
fascinating person wandering through the culture. (No, it’s not Colin Firth or David Fincher or Bruno Mars or super-Empire Tiger Woods, guys.) We’re not used to these kinds of interviews. It’s
coming off almost as performance art and we’ve never seen anything like it-because he’s not apologizing for anything. It’s an irresistible spectacle, but it’s also telling because we are watching
someone profoundly bored and contemptuous of the media engaging with the media and using the media to admit things about themselves and their desires that seem “shocking” because of society’s
old-ass Empire guidelines. No one has ever seen a celebrity more nakedly revealing-even in Sheen’s evasions there’s a truthful playfulness that makes Tiger’s mea culpa press conference look like
something manufactured by Nicholas Sparks.
The people unable to process Sheen’s honesty can’t do this because it’s so unlike the pre-fab way celebrity presented itself within the Empire. Anyone who has put up with the fake rigors of celebrity (or has addiction problems) has got to find a kindred spirit here. The new fact is: if you’re punching a paparazzo, you now look like an old-school loser. If you can’t accept the fact that we’re at the height of an exhibitionistic display culture and that you’re going to be blindsided by TMZ (and humiliated by Harvey Levin, or Chelsea Handler-princess of post-Empire) walking out of a club on Sunset at 2 in the morning trashed, then you’re basically fucked and you should become a travel agent instead of a movie star. Being publicly mocked is part of the game now and you’re a fool if you don’t play along with it and are still enacting the role of humble, grateful celebrity instead of embracing your fucked-up-ness. Gaga’s little monsters, anyone? Not showing up to collect your award at the Razzies for that piece of shit you made? So Empire. This is why Charlie seems saner and funnier than any other celebrity right now. He also makes better jokes about his situation than most worried editorialists or late-night comedians. A lot of it is sheer bad-boy bravado-just saying shit to see how people react, which is very post-Empire-but a lot of it is transparent, and on that level, Sheen is, um, winning. And I’m not sure being fired from Two and a Half Men and having to wear those horrible rockabilly bowling shirts for another two years is, um, losing…
What do people want from Charlie Sheen? Knowing more details about the benders and the porn stars and the trumped-up anti-Semitism (well, yeah, maybe, whatever) and being a “womanizer” (what the fuck does that archaic term mean)? What has been labeled “freakery” is really just a bored, pissed-off celebrity whose presence helps make a TV network an insane amount of money and by comparison is paid accordingly. When I tweeted “I love Charlie Sheen” on February 28 after watching him on the Piers Morgan show (and no, I wasn’t being ironic), the number of tweets I received agreeing with me (not ironically) from both men and women was a surprise. (It was the fastest I had been RT’d since something I tossed off about Angry Birds a couple of months ago.) Look, I’m not denying he has drug and alcohol problems, and perhaps even struggles with mental illness, but so do a lot of people in Hollywood who hide it so much better or that the celebrity press just doesn’t care enough about, and I’m not denying that Sheen is exploiting a problematic situation that he has helped create. But you can’t step around the fact that the negativity certain people feel about Sheen has never outweighed our fascination with the hedonism Charlie enjoys and which remains the envy of any man-if only women weren’t around to keep them liars. His supposed propensity for violence against women hasn’t hurt his popularity with female fans either (and if you want to get into what that means then that is a whole other story for another article-or about fifty books. Jezebel.com take note.) And, of course, if Sheen was a rock star (another anachronistic term from the Empire), not many people would be paying attention.’
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