Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Robin Williams' Death: Life Imitating Art?


Robin Williams starred in a 2009 black comedy, "World's Greatest Dad," where he plays a single father and high school English teacher who hopes to become a famous writer. As a father, he tries desperately to bond with his underachieving, teen-aged boy, who is hostile towards him and sexually obsessed. Williams' character, Lance Clayton, comes home and finds his son, Kyle, dead one night after he accidentally hanged himself while engaging in his favorite sexual fetish, autoerotic asphyxiation. To avoid embarrassment to himself and the memory of his son, he stages Kyle's death to make it appear to be a suicide and pens a suicide note for him. Later when a student gets ahold of the suicide note and publishes it in the newspaper, the kid who his classmates wanted nothing to do with in life turned into his best friends, admiring his intelligence as expressed by his writings. Enjoying all of the attention, Lance publishes a phony journal he claimed his son kept as his son turns into a post-mortem cult phenomenon. Medical examiners in California today released the autopsy results from Williams' tragic death yesterday at age 63 and ruled it was a suicide by hanging: "He was found dead in his bedroom, clothed, slightly suspended in a seated position with a belt around his neck, with one end wedged between a closet door and door frame." A little too much like Kyle's death?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very sad. No less tragic is the loss of so many other American's, not famous by Hollywood standards, by their own hand as well.

Very sad that mental illness and depression are still talked about in hushed tones. We talk about and fight cancer in an open forum. Hopefully this will get the attention it needs.

MikeC said...

What dreams are made of was also about suicide