I was never a big fan of Robin Williams. His TV show, Mork & Mindy, was funny for a sitcom, but it was so long ago I no longer remember much about it. I think one of the stars was murdered by a stalker. None of his movies jump out to me. People tell me Goodwill Hunting is great, but I never watched it. These things are a matter of taste and for whatever reason Robin Williams never did anything for me.
The public reaction to his decision to kill himself is interesting to me. I read a lot of sites and always read the comments. I can’t recall the last time I saw a reference to Robin Williams. Yet, it seems everyone is now commenting upon the guy, as if he was a national treasure, who died after a heroic fight with cancer. Because he was a weird and deeply troubled comic, everyone is trying to draw lessons from his death, other than the fact he was a deeply disturbed person who killed himself.
This story about his money trouble is not terribly flattering.
Robin Williams‘ tragic death at age 63 came as a shock to the world who knew him only as a lovable comic figure. But a source close to the Mrs. Doubtfire star tells RadarOnline.com that in addition to his addiction struggle, the actor recently confided to a family friend that he had “serious money troubles,” and was worried about his family’s financial security.
According to a family friend who had spoken to Williams recently, “All he could talk about were serious money troubles. There were clearly other issues going on and Robin sounded distant during the telephone conversation. Robin was known for being so generous to his friends and family during the height of his success, and would help anyone out that needed it.”
“There was also frustration that Robin expressed at having to take television and movie roles he didn’t want to take, but had to for the paycheck,” the source said, referencing his recently announced decision to film Mrs. Doubtfire 2. “Doing sequels was never Robin’s thing, and he wasn’t that excited at having to reprise the role of Mrs. Doubtfire, which was scheduled to start filming later this year.”
Robin Williams made an enormous amount of money so it took an enormous amount of effort to squander it. Most people in serious money trouble are worried about making rent and buying food. Williams was worried about making a sequel. A lot of people in would give their left nut to be so burdened. I’m sure suicide sounded like a great way out his troubles, but is hard to see how that is going to help his family. Thanks to his selfish act, they are facing even bigger financial problems.
Then again, maybe they are relieved of a greater burden now. That is the thing seldom discussed about suicides. The people who do it are usually a burden on their families and friends for a long time. Their constant depression and demands for attention put a lot of pressure on everyone around them. It is very frustrating for family. They try to help the person, but there is little they can do but suffer along with them. Inevitably, there’s a fair amount of bitterness and resentment.
When I was a kid I stopped a family member from killing herself. They were on some sort of meds and tried to swallow the whole bottle. I’ll never know if she staged it so I would stop her or it was just dumb luck. Either way, I forever resented that person afterward. Even as a kid it struck me that the person was being horribly selfish. There are some things you can never ask of another person. If you do, you fail at the basic human contract, the unwritten and unspoke agreement.
I suppose that’s why I can’t muster much sympathy for Robin Williams. Even if I was a fan, I’d still be thinking about his poor family and the horrible things he put them through and what he has done as his final act. The man leaves three kids who will forever be haunted by the fact their father killed himself. It’s hard to respect a man who does such a thing. Suicide was his last act of cowardice.
Then there is the proportionality. Robin Williams was a comic and an actor. Not one single life on this planet would be significantly altered if he had decided to be a plumber or a truck driver. If Obama drops dead, the world changes in a big way. If a famous scientist dies, then we have a great life worthy of mourning. If a doctor drops dead, his patients will suffer a real loss. That’s worth remembering. The death of a man who got rich pretending to be someone else is just not that big of a deal.
BTW, open heart surgery causes severe depression. I have opted out. There are worse things than dying.
In 2009 Robin Williams had open heart surgery for several arterial problems that pediatric researchers have been saying for years are the end-stage sequelae for developmental PTSD – that is, the kind of PTSD that occurs in children before the age of 14 and is never processed with a responsible adult when they happen. The children are seen as “doing fine” when in reality they dissociate, mentally move out to left field…and overcompensate with things like acting out via comic responses to an insane, scary world. Or going to a mall and shooting people.
I recommend reading Bessel van der Kolk. He’s been looking at this in depth for about 40 years, first at Baylor and then Harvard. He says the huge spike in heart disease is due to d-PTSD. Somebody consistently abused Williams as a kid, when he couldn’t escape except thru his head. As van der Kolk says, “the body keeps the memory…” and turns it into heart disease, arthritis (and other auto-immune disorders).
His reported generosity was a good example of trying to buy security. And Jonathan Winters is another example…lots more.
“frustration that Robin expressed at having to take television and movie roles he didn’t want to take, but had to for the paycheck”
Most people spend their lives working jobs they do not particularly like. And even if they like the type of work they do, they have to work harder and longer than they would like. And sometimes have to please people they don’t like.
The brain is an organ and organs malfunction. A depressed person cannot will himself to good health any more than a cancer patient can.
I’ve begun to hear a number of public service announcements on the radio about suicide. Apparently there’s been a significant amount of grant money from the NIH dumped for that purpose. Perhaps it was a big amount on a single nonprofit that submitted a stunning proposal or a change in criteria within the NIH for granting.
Whatever, here’s what I see coming. I predict a huge spike in suicides. Between Williams checking himself out and the media blurb, folks on the cusp of deciding to end it all may realistically examine the option again and just do it. Many people are susceptible to suggestion. The baseline number I recently read was 30k per year. That’s 2,500 per month. Maybe it will become the new fad like piercings and having yourself “inked.” There’s something self destructive in the human psyche.
All true, and the pious reaction of the cultureverse is more than a little sick-making.
Still…..
Another part of the public reaction that is more than a little nauseating is the proud scorn for clinical depression that everybody’s so happy to confess (Matt Walsh, you, apparently, lotsa commenters)
What I think killed RW was his embrace of relativism, which is to say that his world was so hip nobody believed that anything was true. And that’s deadly if you’ve got clinical depression, believe me.
Depression is something that nobody knows shit about unless they’ve lived in it, believe me. Imagine Satan sitting on your chest every morning explaining how everybody would be better off if you’d just check out. And then the rest of the day gets worse.
It’s like a cancer in your mind, and everybody just thinks you’re feeling sorry for yourself. Why is it that alcoholism is now regarded as a sickness but depression is still regarded as mere self-indulgence?
Time to wise up, kids. There’s gonna be a lot more folks drowned in hopelessness around, the way things are going.
I was told long ago by a medical professional who had seen a lot of suicides that carbon monoxide is the way to go. Self-strangulation would be last on my list.
Anyone who would hang himself is already certifiably crazy, just my opinion. But it does also seem to be an aggressive act. The message I get is–fuck you, whoever you may be.
Jonathan Winters was the original Robin Williams. I’m not saying Williams slavishly copied Winters, but the true ground breaker of zany, genius comedy was Winters.
Money problems may have plagued Williams, but I wonder if he was a victim of his own high standards and was depressed by the realization that he could never be as good again as he once was when the comedy was fresh. He was a tough act to follow, even by himself.
Well, so I don’t find it too odd that people mourn his death. If you really enjoyed his work, then you would be sad that he is no longer contributing and supplying you with that enjoyment. Your world is a little bit different now that a favorite figure is no longer a part of it. I was bummed out when Breitbart died for instance. He did some great work.
Anyway, what I do find odd though, is the degree of public collective emoting that people all engage in now. Have you read Phillip K Dick’s: “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”? Do you remember the concept of Mercerism in the book?
“The main Earth religion is Mercerism, in which Empathy Boxes link simultaneous users into a collective consciousness based on the suffering of Wilbur Mercer, a man who takes an endless walk up a mountain while stones are thrown at him, the pain of which the users share.”
I get that people will be bummed out – we don’t like change in our lives. But people were really really upset, like it was a member of their family that had died. And they took to social media to publicly rent their clothes and cry out the pain they were feeling at Robin’s passing. Very weird and Mercer like. But maybe it’s me who is wrong, and big public mourning displays are normal, now the scale is just different thanks to the internet and social media.