to be or not to be

TAR ART RAT and The Popeye Journals both had posts on Owen Wilson's alleged suicide attempt. TPJ talks about the stigma of mental illness.

I don't know whether Wilson did, in fact, attempt suicide and if he did I have no idea what led him to do so. I think, though, that this is something that is easily misunderstood.

As an actor Wilson faces a more extreme version of a problem we all face. A self is a set of habits; people like people to be predictable, consistent, to conform to a set of expectations. It's possible to find oneself trapped in a set of bad habits and expectations; someone who gets that close to the edge is like a train that has only two options: jumping the tracks or staying on them.

Consider the Hamlets of Gibson and Branagh. Mel Gibson had a track record as a sex symbol; Kenneth Branagh had a track record as a Shakespearean actor. In Branagh's Hamlet, we saw Branagh's yearning for what Gibson took for granted -- he'd gone blond, he'd spent months bodybuilding, here was Branagh striding the screen like a former fat girl who's reached her ideal weight. In Gibson's Hamlet, we saw Gibson's yearning for what Branagh took for granted -- the language of Shakespeare. Here was someone who'd spent years in the valley of McScripts, entranced by the glamour of the language -- giving himself the luxury of one the greatest parts ever written for an actor. To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them--

Who do you think you are, Mel? Just who do you think you are?

Eliot's Prufrock:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,	115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

When people see suicide as a sign of mental illness they want everything to go back to normal; they are often looking for someone who has been socialised to be an attendant lord or Fool to get back to the place he's been assigned. (Get back! Get back! Get back to where you once belonged!)

Borges:

Como todos los hombres de Babilonia, he sido procónsul: como todos, esclavo; también he conocido la omnipotencia, el oprobio, las cárceles. (Like all the men of Babylon, I have been proconsul; like all, a slave; I have also known omnipotence, opprobrium, prison cells.)

If we had the Lottery of Babylon we would not see that particular form of mental illness: killing off the body as the only way to stop playing the Fool.