There she sat all listless, cocooned girth — occupying the couch completely. Her pooch Sugar Pie nuzzled against her belly. There would be no nap time interruptions — despite the spooky, toothless Texan cousin hovering outside the front door hankering to “just show Anna how much I love her.”
With her head buried into the sofa, Anna made slo mo swatting motions towards her lawyer and E!’s production crew.
But wait, suddenly she was stirring, squinting at the camera — the description of her cousin’s dental condition had captured her attention. Soon she was whining through a medicated haze, demanding “donut holes and chocolate milk.” Dough and libation were delivered.
Jump cut: Meticulously coifed and upright Anna. Gorgeous and glittering in her limo, ever-present drones beside her.
The Middle East crisis was broached. Anna: perplexed and blank and “Who’s killing the Jews?” she wanted to know. Her lawyer explained the political situation. Anna’s facial expression was pure female mall rat who’s just discovered that T.J. Maxx is no longer stocking her favorite shade of lipstick. Suicide bombers? “Why would they do that? Don’t they think it’s kinda painful?”
Jump cut: Sugar Pie’s doggie psychiatrist was in the house. The diagnosis? The canine needed a male lover to quell her separation anxiety. She also had a tendency to mirror her bachelorette mom’s unfulfilled libido. But no mate is needed, as Anna explained: “One time Sugar Pie saw me fucking this guy and the next day she just started doing it, and she’s pretty good at it.”
Anna tossed a big red stuffed toy bear onto the floor to show the shrink how Sugar can self-fulfill herself. The dog mounted and then dry-humped the bear with frenzied zest. The segment concluded with Sugar Pie walking across the dining room table, squeezing out a fart — right in the poochie psychiatrist’s face. Poo on all of this analytic bullshit.
I’d realized, months after watching The Anna Nicole Show repeatedly that my rapt fascination had nothing to do with the obvious: A voyeuristic trance that was stoked by the Texan’s solipsistic haze du jour. That kind of tabloid-lovin’ fervor’s too easy to explain. No, I’d suffered from closet identification — followed by the joy that a patient experiences once the symptom — the complex — is exposed.
What I was really watching every Sunday night was a dramaturgical verification for my id’s existence — and bad behavior.
Anna Nicole made it OK that I didn’t change my pee-stained underwear everyday, or that our moldy refrigerator might have been harboring a cure for cancer.
And fuck it, I didn’t want to ponder politics or the bad economy every day — or my brokendown relationships with my siblings. In fact, on the days I just wanted to eat Cheetos, swill soda, masturbate to porn on the web, avoid my meditation practice and revel in the olfactoric disturbance of my own farts — well, Anna was always there — looming — Jabba the Hutt-gigantic within my psychic landscape, fending off my super-ego, cheering my sloth and tempting me, once again, to take another dip into my stash of dentist-prescribed Percocet.
Just for the hell of it. Just because I could. Just because Anna could and did.
Anna’s nimbus radiated wide across our nation, touching you and you and you — her unfeigned and omnivorous “bigness” made all of The Osbournes combined look contrived and wan. She moved like Hecate across the face of the water — and land, gracing California mansions, Kentucky trailer parks, and, yes, even the White House.
If the inept George Bush is the personification of our collective’s deteriorated empire, it was a balancing gesture of the universe to give us yet another Texan to represent the intemperate matriarchy that sustains corporations like Revlon, Pfizer and Krispy Kreme.
Anna was the unfazed feminine shadow waiting impatiently for its next Botox injection. The kind of mother that explained to her kid: “Son, you know those naked magazines I catch you looking in sometimes? Your mom is in one of them.” The very force that prompted sociologist Camille Paglia to write that if women ruled the world we’d still be living in grass huts.
TV critics grumbled that The Anna Nicole Show represented the end of civilization. Party poopers! Let’s pay proper homage to Anna and remember her fondly for reminding us of everything that’s fabulous about this country.
As Lisa Carver, one of my favorite pop-cultural commentators puts it: “Americans have forgotten what’s great about being American. It’s not our sensitivity. It’s our impatience, our changeability, our excitement, our openness, our cheer, our sexuality — our very crassness.”
Anna Nicole you will be missed.
God bless and R.I.P. darlin’.
Thanks for posting that so soon, David. I knew I could count on NIGHTCHARM to clarify what I have been feeling today. I think that Anna Nicole was, like so many of us gay men, the perpetual outsider - and she was someone who at times looked as though she had it all, and then the next day had nothing. Or maybe it’s that she appeared (and has proved to be) a more disposable Marilyn than even Marilyn herself had been. In any case it’s just sad when anyone -whether ‘rich and beautiful’ or ‘poor and ugly’ - is unhappy. I hope that she wasn’t - and that she finally did find some happiness.
that was a really good post, nick.
(and btw why is Nightcharm always quoting Camille Paglia?)
Thanks for the beautiful tribute David. I’m still kind of in shock and can’t quite believe she’s gone. I cried watching the interview with Anna Nicole when she first talked about her son’s death. The grief was so deep and so real. For everything else that she ever was, she was still a very real and vulnerable woman; not quite as vapid as we might have thought at first blush. What a tragic loss.
Are you kidding me? Most of you are in serious need of perspective — and a life. ANS will be forgotten within weeks and remembered only as the merest blip on the cultural radar. Don’t blow it out of proportion. She was a talentless tramp who managed to squeeze an inordinate and undeserved amount of attention from the international media at a time when the catatonic public craved mindless diversions. Her death at a young age is certainly shocking and unexpected. But tragic? Only perhaps to her friends and family.
As usual, a thoughtful post with thoughtful replys; she wasn’t quite Marilyn talent wise, but then why are we so interested?R.I.P Anna.
In the words of our President, speaking in a different context but with the same bullseye precision: “Nobody could see this coming.”
About Oscar Wilde, but I think in some part it applies to Anna as well.
And alien tears will fill for him
Pity’s long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.
–an epitaph for Oscar Wilde
Cintra Wilson one of my favorite pop culture vultures gets right to the heart of the Anna Nicole phenom:
“What needs saying — what it seems nobody has yet said — is that when she was able to suppress her demons enough to pull herself together and look her best, she was fabulously gorgeous. Numerous red-carpet moments, the footage of which we now run over and over again like a televised rosary in order to understand her death, reveal this. Anna Nicole was a star because she possessed an unusually large amount of beauty. At her best, she didn’t evoke Marilyn Monroe so much as Anita Ekberg in “La Dolce Vita” — the strapless black dress, mounds of white flesh, piles of blond hair. She was indelicate, but an unstable element nonetheless — not so much a candle in the wind as a bonfire in a hailstorm. But the real similarity between Anna Nicole and Marilyn was their shimmering tension — an unsettlingly powerful physical beauty, collapsing irresistibly in real time beneath the frailties of its hostess. She was entropy porn at its finest.”
The full articles is here: (link)
oh yeah, heart of america, secret secret heart of america: and yes, we’ll forget about her, just as we forget about nearly every manifestation of this country’s secret secret heart: can’t hold onto ‘em - there’s always too many more to crowd the attention: evelyn nesbitt meet britney spears. america’s heart is as insatiable as its mouths, stomachs, butts, twats and fear-of-death.
kickass piece of writing, Mr. K. really fine.
bravo.
g
Great post, David. Helped explain why I unexpectedly and inexplicably felt a loss.
Poor Ms. Smith was unlucky enough to have been fashioned (by genes, willpower, and the medical-industrial complex) into Sevruga for the 24/7 gourmands. She was explosive and extravagant, with a joltingly brief shelf-life.
Anna Nicole Smith was licked to death.
Geisha Smile: you eulogized Anna Nicole Smith perfectly! I know she would be proud to hear it! “Not so much a candle in the wind as a bonfire in a hailstorm.” Damn the hailstorm.
Dear Robert,
You need or want perspective? Cool, go find it. I’m happy with the view from where I’m at. I saw a beautiful, troubled girl who tugged at my heart strings and I feel a genuine sense of sadness at her passing. Don’t be chastising me for having a thread of compassion tucked up my sleeve. It’s better than having a wad of cynicism shoved up there.
I don’t watch TV. I don’t read “People”. I try to distance myself from our consumerist culture and cult of celebrity as much as I can.
Why do I feel such a deep loss from her passing?
She had a special sweetness to her, despite the slurring and insanity, she seemed genuinely good-natured.
I think deep down people relate to her. Not the wild life and antics we often saw. But the part where all she was, a lost and lonely woman trying to find her place. Sadly taken under the arm of Hollywood and all it’s glam. So instead of finding her place or herself she goes to the life that was expected of her. She was a American Girl who lived like an American Girl… and she was trapt by it too.
I think as gay men we can relate to that lost and lonly side tryng to find our place.
It’s very sad for someone so young to die. Especially after having a new born child. That child is going to have to grow up without a mother. Not only that she’s going to have to grow up and be exposed to what her mother did.. but not only that what people say about her.
Robert maybe you need perspective. I always thought that having a little compassion was a virture not a sin. Maybe you need to look at your life a little more carefully as well. You aren’t better than her or anyone else here. You live your life the way you know how. She lived hers the way she knew how.
It’s a sad passing.
You freakin’ rock. As always, you’re right on the money …shot. I really love your writing and please…keep it coming.
I was deeply saddened to learn of Anna’s death. As hard as it may be for some to comprehend, her life had meaning and purpose. Whenever I saw a photo or or watched an interview, I was always left wanting a little more. I recognized in her insecurity and vulnerablity and I believe she dealt with life as she new how. You will be missed…