Charlie Sheen’s Crazy Hedonistic Appeal
Charlie Sheen
When I first heard Charlie Sheen’s rants, I thought that they were the last words of man before he enters the institution, never to be heard from again. However, a funny thing happened. Charlie didn’t go away. He came back and kept coming back. People listened to him: some in disgust and some in admiration.
Here was the guy who had been the highest-paid TV actor of our time who lost his job because of his constant drug use. He frequently runs on and on about his “evil” former bosses in expletive-laden rants that often border on incoherent. He has also insulted his co-star, Jon Cryer, for no reason whatsoever.
However, there was another side to Charlie Sheen’s rants: his bragging. He bragged about his tiger blood and Adonis DNA. He called himself a “total freaken rockstar from Mars.” He claimed his brain was not of this “terrestrial realm.” Of course, he also went on endlessly about his “winning.”
It’s a easy to dismiss his tirades against his coworkers as delusions of persecution and the his bragging as delusions of grandeur, but the why isn’t really important, the public response is. The popularity of Charlie Sheen has outstripped everyone from Lady Gaga to Justin Bieber. So, the question is why?
The answer lies in the fact that even though Charlie Sheen may be crazy, he’s doing something so extraordinary that people are drawn to it: he’s enjoying himself. In our culture of self-denial and self-loathing, people who openly enjoy themselves are stomped down so fast that we seldom see it. That would have been the case with Charlie too. He was trashed repeatedly when he first spoke out, but he was crazy enough to keep going.
Here’s a clear example: Charlie was asked in his ABC interview if he loved to party. The question wasn’t really even a question, it was more of an admonition, as if to say “how could you.” Sheen was supposed to come back with some remark about his regrets. Instead, he replied “what’s not to love?” It was a statement of pure hedonism.
No one says things like that publicly. You aren’t supposed to enjoy life. Doesn’t Charlie know that people are in misery somewhere in the world? Is he not consumed with guilt? Apparently not, and that’s a uniquely good thing.
People are eating it up. We’re sick of people attacking every little bit of enjoyment that we have in life. We’re tired of it, and if it took a crazy man to show us the way then so be it. Perhaps, it was what was needed.
Perhaps, Charlie Sheen will have the last laugh too. For all the mockery of his incessant use of the word “winning,” Charlie Sheen’s attitude may win in the end. He’s become the biggest thing in entertainment, and he just needs to find a way to cash in on it. In the end, he may be crazy, but he might be crazy like a fox.