Drama, deferred

At work, we have Fox News playing in the lunchroom at all times (not because we are particularly interested in the thoughts of Greta Van Susternen, but because we don't know where the remote is, and therefore cannot change the channel), so it didn't take us long to find out about the death of Anna Nicole Smith. And soon, the entire office-- men and women both-- were abuzz with the information, speculating on cause of death (TrimSpa? Was it TrimSpa?) and remembering our favorite ANS moments.

I have to admit that, even as a well-educated woman of literate aspirations and supposedly lofty life goals, I am utterly fascinated by all celebrity disasters. For instance, I wrote a paper on the OJ Simpson civil trial verdict that got me a scholarship to my undergraduate university-- and I wrote it not to make an ironic statement, but because I was genuinely addicted to the OJ trial.

And now the death of ANS gives me a whole new stable of things to obsess over-- was it suicide? Did someone kill her? Does this have something to do with her dead son? Who is the father of that baby? Things I never would have really put any thought into otherwise-- ANS was not particularly high on my Celebrities To Watch list, despite her being batshit crazy.

But the question remains-- why do these things so interest me, when in theory, I am supposed to be reading up on literary theory and paying very close attention to the political climate around me?

I have two theories on this:

Theory 1: I. Love. To Gossip. But yet suffer from a crippling fear of fully gossiping about anyone for fear of being caught, and also, yes, because it's really just wrong to do so. I try to limit my gossiping to only well-trusted sources, whom I know will not repeat my gossip; I try also to stick with gossip I know to be true, not things I heard or thought possible. But my thinking is, celebrities sign away full gossip rights by stepping into the spotlight, and I am free to gossip about them with impunity. So now, I am free to go buckwild with my theorizing, and to share my speculations with anyone I see fit.

Theory 2: I also love drama, but as anyone who has attended an MFA program (or any school, for that matter) can tell you, too much personal drama can lead to very bad things. Celebrity drama, however, can be enjoyed at full-strength, because while you know Anna Nicole Smith, you don't actually KNOW Anna Nicole Smith, which enables you to delve as deeply as you want into the sordid details of her death without any personal emotional repercussions.

This, of course, does not mean I'm glad Anna Nicole Smith is dead; it's never good to hear that anyone has died. But am I interested in her death? Indubitably.