Something I can’t stop thinking about is Vincent Whittman’s visible spiral towards the end of his life
(Trigger Warning: Discussion of ED / disordered behaviors)
I can’t stop thinking about how brutal early television must’ve been, and how flawless, youthful and effortlessly thin the hosts were expected to look.
How, after years of starring on the screen, Vincent Whittman’s face and body becomes his brand. His body is all part of his product, and his product is his worth. For somebody as profoundly driven as Vincent, success, in his eyes, lends to nothing less than absolute perfection.
And what says perfection like the perfect body?
He’d never admit that he’s ‘funny’ about food. He tells himself that he’s simply disciplined, a professional in his craft, or somebody who is ‘staying sharp.’
But as he gets older, and the number of cameras on him increases, he finds himself drinking and smoking instead of eating. What started off as a few stimulants eventually evolves into a chemical concoction of amphetamines and drugs; uppers and downers, cocaine, really anything to keep him upright and shining. Anything to keep him smiling through the hunger pangs.
And eventually, the restriction stops becoming about vanity. When he’s being worshiped as a prophet, as a god, why would he ever need to be tied down to such earthly needs as hunger? Something as base and mortal as appetite is beneath him when he’s seeking transcendence.
Still, the emaciation visibly hollows out his cheeks and sharpens his jaw too much. It deepens his eye sockets and accentuates his heterochromia and, ever so slightly, he starts to look a little unnatural on camera. He’s still compelling, but the powder they dab beneath his eyes barely conceals the dark shadows that are forming there. They start to pad out his shoulders and chest beneath his suit too, and he hopes that it’s not obvious on camera. But it’s necessary; the thinness emasculates him and, in McCarthy’s world, it’s dangerous to be seen as anything less than hypermasculine.
So the styling continues, but after years of excessive heat, pomade and chemical hairspray–not to mention studio lights cooking his scalp–his hair is brittle, damaged and thinning at the temples. Styling it now requires even more product, which only accelerates the damage.
And those blinding white teeth celebrities had in the 50s? Those are a product of years of harsh chemical whitening, and repeated treatments that destroyed his enamel. And with his habit of chain smoking, consuming coffee and alcohol, and rubbing cocaine on the back of his gums, the treatments would need to increase in order to conceal the staining. So by the end, they’re extremely sensitive, and he experiences constant low-level pain; hot and cold drinks hurt, and even smiling for too long hurts. Yet he smiles anyway, because that’s the job.
But one tooth at the back, the one he rubs cocaine on the gums, becomes so rotten and painful that it needs to be extracted–much to his dismay. A missing tooth is an imperfection, something he never wanted to allow himself on camera.
He’s still handsome, people say. But now there’s something else, something slightly uncanny about him and the strain in his smile. Though still compelling, he’s lost that comforting, good-natured, celebrity charm people always admired from the audience and their living rooms.
And mutterings that he’s ‘past his prime’ begin to circulate. It’s not enough for the general public to really care yet, but enough that people in the industry start to notice. Behind his back, the younger talent begin to whisper, and his executives quietly make plans to hedge. To the public he’s still familiar, prestigious, and ‘one of the greats,’ but to those he works with, he’s volatile, thin-skinned, vindictive, and increasingly erratic.
But he doesn’t hear this; he doesn’t know that he looks unwell, that the audience are beginning to be put off, or that people around him are starting to despise him. Because, by the end, he has surrounded himself by Yes-Men.
Because, when it comes to Whittman, criticism is punished and any disagreement with him is career ending. Everybody around him has long-since learned to compliment his suit, to laugh at his joke, and to praise his script. If his staff value their jobs, they don’t refuse him, they don’t ask questions, and they certainly don’t repeat anything they witness.
This only accelerates his spiral, because the feedback loop is broken. He mistakes their fearful silence for approval.
So his self-destruction continues; he can always be thinner, his teeth can be whiter, his hair can be neater, the drugs can be stronger, the scripts can be newer, the sets can be bigger, the suits can be brighter.
Vincent compares himself to a supernova–a massive star that has burned so brightly for so long that it runs out of fuel, its core collapses in on itself, and it explodes in a bright, spectacular, violent explosion, briefly outshining an entire galaxy.
When he’s at his thinnest, most exhausted, most manic, paranoid and unwell, is when he pulls out his brightest suit with its sparkliest trim. Because if he shines brightly enough, perhaps no one will notice the disintegration beneath.
By the time of his death, he’s still visually striking, magnetic and compelling, but it hardly conceals the decay–both physical and moral–that has begun to consume him.
Just like a star, he’s burning himself up live on television.
