Celebrity deaths are always a bit of a punch to the gut; you see these glossy, larger than life figures every day up on that silver screen going through the free-range motions of a thousand different lives, some exciting, a tad troublesome, fiercely bittersweet but always there in that blitzkrieg known as the performing arts, bringing magic and escapism right to our own unimaginative continuance. On August 11, 2014, the light of one such tour de force was extinguished all too early and the news has sent shockwaves throughout the world, even here in Pakistan where a million different problems make celebrity obituaries a ‘frilly’ little exercise in column writing abstraction. But I am here, penning these words, because, this Monday, the laughter died. Robin Williams, the 63-year-old comedy veteran, was found dead in his home from “apparent suicide”, a curtain call that came much too morbidly for the funny man who brought joy, laughter, mischief and, most of all, character to millions of households and generations of movie goers. His hyperbolic roles, exaggerated impersonations, fearless display of raw emotion and the kind of smile that could make even an isolated black cloud break out into song delighted the young and old, the healthy and sick alike. Take stock: have you ever met someone who is not a Robin Williams fan?
When movie stars fall sick, die in freak accidents, overdose on their poison of choice or fade out into the underbelly of disremembered fame, we accept this as the harsh reality of Hollywood time-lapse reality where a dime a dozen stars-on-the-boulevard-in-waiting line up to take their place. Once in a while, an irreplaceable goes too soon and the world reels, tributes follow and movie marathons ensue. Williams was one of them but the nature of his passing has brought a rare kind of silence and a blank television screen forgotten and thrust in a corner. He made the whole world roll in the aisles while his inner demons ripped him apart inside, he made people understand that it was okay to laugh through their tears (Patch Adams, Awakenings, Dead Poet’s Society) and let loose their inner child (Mrs Doubtfire, Jumanji) even while he lassoed and bolted shut a well of sadness inside him. Battling alcoholism and cocaine addiction throughout the four decades he was an entertainer, it was the chronic depression he was a regular patient of that got him in the end. Even though his personal warfare was public knowledge, no one thought his melancholy had hit so deep, so profound that all the chuckles and all the comedy in all the world were just not enough to save him from himself. His eccentricity and super charged perfect timing made him stand out; personally, being an educationist myself at one time, I will never forget him as John Keating, the irrepressible English teacher in Dead Poet’s Society who taught his students to “seize the day” (carpe diem). And that is what Williams did. He seized the day, with each day being a new character, a new idea of wonder whether an alien, a cross-dressing housekeeper, a doctor, a robot, a psychiatrist or a child. He brought the human into one dimensional roles, forever etching them into the mind of popular culture.
His death brings to the fore the very real, very debilitating struggle people have had with depression and substance abuse at one time or another. Chronic depression is the poker faced elephant in the room for most with many never admitting to being caught in its contemplative gaze, one that holds and locks you within, sucking the life and soul from every cry, every whisper, every giggle and every dream. The hopelessness, despair and melancholy with which bearers of depression spend their day is brushed to the far reaches of human excesses, especially in a place like Pakistan where other, more material issues are far more pressing. Why care about the light going out ‘up there’ when there is actually no light to power our homes, help us sleep, enable us to work — a cause for depression in itself. Here, if we cannot see it, we just cannot believe it. Competent mental health professionals are tragically rare here with most of them being a joke on the brand of medicine they profess. Williams would have had a few things to say about that comedy routine in all its desolate irony. We see over-reliance on drugs and isolation of patients here, whether of substance abuse or depression, with no real therapy and treatment. Stigmatising an ailment does not make it go away; it festers inside and rots the soul, ending in tragedy for the sufferer and all who are dear to them.
Despite his inability to exorcise this emotional decay, Williams did something few comedians do nowadays: he endeared himself to all ages, all people of all nationalities through some good ol’ clean fun, never relying on crass and crude jokes that are the run-of-the-mill staples on the celebrity circuit. He chose to make people laugh with the very basics of human delight, inexhaustible in his approach towards simple comedy magic. Why bring in sex when we can laugh about love? Why cover sensationalism when we can chuckle about simple pleasures and guffaw at a few great impersonations? Robin Williams, you started your career as Mork, the alien from Ork (Mork and Mindy, 1978) but you became more human than we could have ever thought possible. Thank you for the jokes, they will always be funny.
The writer is op-ed editor Daily Times