OUTSIDE INFORMATION

The Beautiful Ugly
Tithonus and The Myth of the Return of the Reckless Rising Star










Maybe Bob Dylan is to blame for getting us in this mess. Or, even further, perhaps it's Jack Kerouac. Or Jack London. Or even Mark Twain. Twain's Innocents Abroad formed the wandering vagabond into an archetype of gentility. The lone soldier who wanders the nation or globe in search of the great Something.

Well, someone has to be blamed for the uniquely American aesthetic of the common explorer, reckless to the bone with life in order to squeeze every bit of vitality out of existence. It's the foundation behind the classic trope in book, film and music. Most recently it's found root in pop cinema with the success of The Wrestler and Crazy Heart: two films which share a common hero who has squandered life with a reckless existence befitting the trade they are consumed by.

It sounds like a VH1 Behind The Music. This is what we (Americans, at least) love to hear: one can consume oneself with the moment, fall hard and yet return to the former glory once had and lost as a result of negligence. It sounds like a working class theory of reincarnation. Except what it is, more directly, is the classic American myth of eternal youth. The quest which brought Ponce de Leon to Florida's shores over five hundred years ago still consumes us. Yet, this goes further than the Fountain which never was or Twain or even anything in our European ancestors.

This is the myth of Tithonus, the classic story of the tragic hope of eternal youth. It's what we all really want. Immortality is nothing without the option to enjoy. The myth (if you're a little rusty on your Greek, as I am usually - I looked up the full thing on Google) features Tithonus, a man in love with Eos, goddess of the dawn. Eos asked for eternal life for Tithonus (which he gladly accepted, of course.) But when he began growing older, shedding the beauty she fell in love with, she realized a terrible mistake in her request: the desire for immortality is a metaphor for the longing for eternal youth, to remain in the moment forever.

The Wrestler features professional wrestler, The Ram, long removed from his 80s glory days. He colors his graying hair to blonde, he takes steriods to maintain his once virile appearance and speaks in the lingo of two decades ago. He lives in the 80s when he enters the ring, but starves on the outside world where the 00s are slowly consuming him. Crazy Heart is the story of Bad Blake, who has chosen country music as his consuming muse. He lives out on the stage, consumed by the accumulated spirit of decades of performance which set him (like The Ram, when he's in the ring) unconscious of the passing world until it brutally slaps him in the face. To fight it there's alcohol, drugs and women - none of which or whom last long.

Yet, at the end we see both these characters transcend their circumstances. They do not transcend time, but still manage to return to the moment to which they have always longed to return. Even though in these two movies, the characters return (or are inferred to return) to their former circumstances. We want to live out of that dream, that we can return to a former glory.

They are Tithonus. Their Eos is not Magge Gyllenhall or Marissa Tomei, though; it is country music or professional wrestling - the being which once promised them (at least, they believe it promised them) eternal youth. It forsake them as they grew older, but has returned to them.

In the myth, Eos - disheartened by the tragic result of her decision - eventually transforms Tithonus (who loses the use of all his limbs and sits in potential eternal unhappiness) into a grasshopper.

In The Wrestler The Ram forsakes fate (which hints that he may die if he continues performing at his age and condition) and embraces the Eos, which may in fact kill him. In Crazy Heart, Bad Blake is returned to his former existence, a weekend evening performer, after having a brief shine in the spotlight.

They both become grasshoppers, small whispers on the face of the earth.

More or less, this is the common embrace of the Tithonus myth. It can go forward (as in Big) or backward (as in 17 Again). But these movies are not embraced with the fervency of movies wherein the main character is a rough neck who has recklessly driven his life off-course by living in the moment, yet receives a universal redemption, a chance to live the moment one more time.

Why is it these characters we love? Why do these characters inspire in us a deep love and catharsis in their "success" at the end of the movie?

Perhaps the clue is in "Tithonus", Alfred Lord Tennyson's dedication to the myth.

"I earth in earth forget these courts,/ And thee returning on thy silver wheels"

Perhaps it is a myth we live in as well. A myth that if we could have just one more chance to live our youth again that we would be content with it. That we would set things right. That all things would be returned to their perfect state (Back To The Future is a perfect example of this myth; we live out this desire vicariously through Marty McFly).

But these movies as well as the American ruffian hint that this cannot be the case, neither the circumstances nor the mindset.

Time hurts, but if it didn't hurt we wouldn't know the beauty of pain. The beauty of forsaking the desire to return things as they were, to change the moments that brought us to the present moment. It is tough to admit, but there are always things we would change, there are always places we would want to go, circumstances we would like to have escaped from.

But we would always long to alter just one more moment.

Ironically, this ruffian tells us that perfection is not just impossible, but wrong. To live a life of reckless abandon (whether it is done in the style of a picaro on the margin of society or the suburbanite who simply wishes to relive certain moments and do them just a bit differently) is life and even the mistakes (and regrets) must be embraced.