FAME AND ANONYMITY

I watched "Listen To Me, Marlon", the documentary about Brando that's almost all drawn from audio tapes he made over the years. I assume every actor is out there watching the movie - Brando gives a master class in acting.  Listening to his voice, it's clear he was a brilliant man, sensitive, compassionate, which is something of a miracle given the childhood he had with two alcoholic parents, one of whom liked to knock his mother and him around. The demons that chased him all through his life were born his hometown in the mid-west.
     I was struck with what he said about fame. He hated it, hated that he'd lost the possibility of moving through the world seeing, rather than being seen. He was very aware of people treating him differently, in a way that kept him from learning who they were. When people looked at him, they saw Stanley Kowalski and The Wild One and Terry Mallow. He knew he was nothing like those characters. The myths about him put up walls that were impossible to scale. He found himself isolated, which was an enormous deprivation for a person who was endlessly curious about other people. When he first got to New York, he'd stand at the window of a cigar store and watch people going by. He felt he had them, who they were, their story, in the few seconds it took them to pass by. Fame made that impossible. No wonder he loved Tahiti where no one knew he was a movie star or, if they did, they may have been unsure of exactly what that meant. This actor, this great and unique impersonator, was desperate to be himself.
     Many famous people talk about the cost of the loss of anonymity. Most of us don't believe them - how could you not like the spotlight, being the center of attention, having every door open for you. Not to mention the money. In our culture, fame is the prize. But most of us live our lives unknown except to family and friends and the other people we actually encounter. It's enough for most of us as long as we feel rooted in the world we travel in.
     The opposite of fame isn't that kind of anonymity. It's not being noticed by others in the world you move through. It's the feeling that no one sees you, not only as you are, no one sees you at all. It's the same isolation that's at the heart of fame - the sense that you can't break out of the bubble you live so that you can be seen as you are.
     That there are so many people who live that life is heartbreaking. They aren't characters in a movie or book and to begin to think about them risks going down a very deep well. And yet to do nothing puts us in a moral limbo. Our culture says, "love you fellow man" and it also says, "keep your head down, look away, take care of your own." We all exist in the heart of that dilemma; sometimes we're drawn to one side and sometimes to the other. The seesaw is always going and all we can do is the best we can do. 
     A few years ago, a book came out about our culture, focused on the loss of community and a shared civic life. It's called, "Bowling Alone." It's hard to think of anything sadder.