“It Takes a Sinner to Appreciate the Blinding Glare of Grace”: Rebellion and Redemption in the Life Story of the “Dark” Celebrity

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Notes

Examples of subsequent coverage would include promotion and reviews of the biopic films Ray, starring Jamie Foxx, later in 2004, or Walk the Line, about Johnny Cash, in 2005. The plots of these films—featuring actors approved by the celebrities themselves prior to their deaths and full of “authentic” details meant to create the feeling of documentary rather than fictional texts—strengthen and advance the stories that were told in journalism just after Charles's and Cash's death, and they are relevant to the broader cultural phenomenon examined in this article. They are not analyzed here, however, because study of the conventions of film versus those of journalism may call for expanded theory and method not within the purview of this article.

I owe this insight to Patricia Bradley, Professor Emeritus at Temple University, in correspondence about the death of Richard Pryor (personal communication, December 12, 2005). She commented on the forgiving nature of news coverage of his passing, noting, “bad boys are allowed to be bad boys when their badness apparently only hurts themselves. The truth is that badness always impacts negatively on the world around them. But since these negative aspects of bad boyhood primarily hurt women, they are brushed aside (how many interviews have we seen with any of the exes, even the many that bear celebrity children)?”

For this insight, I thank one of the anonymous reviewers of an earlier version of this article, who is right that “celebrity journalism is full of the tribulations of stars who work hard against the threat of fat, and their struggle is documented approvingly, making them more human and sympathetic. Brando's indifference to this is reproval to the code of celebrity, and I think it is an important element in his failure to be redeemed.”