sunshine_queen | The stars have lost their glitter... (Reply)

Let's see. Today was dramatic and tramatic because of the whole Philly-Eric thing... Philly's taking it hard, and she's confused, but she has good taste in music. Next up was the fact that Heather's sister was suspended until school ends because she got caught skipping school as she waited for the metro with some friends. This sucks for Lara but is a blessing for Heather, because now they will "love her".

Nothing too fantastic happened to me today... I love reading 'Anne of Green Gables' and I love my CD and Philly likes my music and I heart my friends and I wore my Moulin Rouge bag to school and it looked good. :-)

Watched A Star is Born with Judy Garland today and cried my eyes out. It's one thing to single-handedly destroy yourself, and it's completely another to do that when you know that someone is completely and utterly in love you, almost entirely dependant on you. Norman was a raging alcoholic, and no matter how many times he tried to stop, he couldn't. He adored her, but he was helpless in the face of his own weakness and disease. At one point, Esther says how she loves him for trying but hates him for failing- and how she hates herself for failing him, because she feels helpless. She thought that love could save him, but even she could admit by then that love was not enough for him.

At the end, after he spent months in rehab getting sober, he gets torn apart by an old enemy who calls him washed out and chides him for living off of his wife, and he spends four days drinking and worrying Esther to death. He gets arrested, and Esther has to go save him. When the judge gives him 90 days and publically humiliates him, Esther quietly gets up and promises to take care of him and be responsible for him. Esther takes him home, where he spends a day sleeping it off. At one point, an old mutual friend of his talks to Esther on the terrence, and Norman listens to the entire thing. He asks if she loves Norman or if she just pities him: she is amazed to think he can even consider the former. She says that she blames herself for his relapse; if she had been home more and more attentive... she has to believe it. She is going to leave the movies and leave with Norman to take care of him. She wants what's best for him, and it doesn't matter that her career and her popularity are at their apogée.

Norman decides he can't let her do that. He gets up after the friend leaves and acts so deliciously normal, sending Esther back to cloud nine, believing her husband has come back to her. He asks her to sing for him, and she agrees that she'll go and make him lunch and open the kitchen window so he can hear her singing as he goes for his swim.

He walks into the ocean and commits suicide, listening to his wife's voice.

I don't understand how he could think that was best. The sun rose and set with him; how could he entertain that his death would be better for her? She was devastated by his death.

She was able to overcome, of course, when a friend called attention to what we all knew but she didn't: Norman knew he screwed up everything in his life, and she was the one thing he hadn't ruined yet. She was his pride and his joy, and anything that threatened it had to be eliminated, himself included. Norman killed himself so that she, his creation, could live untainted.

Such a sacrifice is eerie.