As CBS has officially replaced the walking still that is Charlie Sheen with Ashton Kutcher on their hit series Two and a Half Men, it seems that the stream-of-consciousness chapter that was Sheen’s relevance can come to a close. Granted, there will be inevitable tweets and Youtube videos featuring the irate Sheen continuing his obloquy against Chuck Lorre while not-so-discreetly wiping the remaining cocaine from his upper lip as he plans another installment of his “Violent Torpedo of Truth: Defeat is not an Option” tour, an ironically relevant indicator of the abject subjectivity of “truth,” a word seemingly as oxymoronic as “reality television.”
Charlie Sheen embodies the personified contradiction of what we see in edited snippets when it’s juxtaposed in real time, without cameras, the pause button, the retakes, and the veritable supporting actors to cover one’s foibles and flubs. This contradiction also exposes two violent truths about those who purchased tickets to Sheen’s debacle of a show, something that Charles McNulty of the L.A. Times has called a “cruddy potluck”: there is difficulty differentiating between the performers and the avatars they portray in the glimpses we get of their public personas, whether it be on television, in tabloids, or streaming via paparazzi. The other glaring truth, and to my heart’s discontent, is that Sheen’s audience members have never seen – or, at the very least paid attention to – Network.
Initially, some might wonder the point of paying money to see Sheen sit on stage with his goddesses. The “who” is clear: “largely white, slightly more male than female, the majority seemingly under 40.” The “why” is a bit occluded considering Sheen has never been an improv man, and truthfully, his few-minute rants on digital media don’t support the notion that he could expand these minutes into a full set. At the same time, his demographic – people who “paid for a show when [they] didn’t know what [they] were getting” as Sheen condescended at the Fox Theater in Detroit, Michigan – is searching for an articulation of its rage: the very same commodity that Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) asserts Howard Beale (Peter Finch) offers the public in Network.
Both men have their breakdowns, but the enjoyment of each respective breakdown is carefully constructed, filtered, and then regurgitated through the media, allowing a minute aperture of vision for the viewer. The cracked-out Charlie Sheen who asserts his biological possession of “tiger blood” and “Adonis DNA” is a sound bite, disenfranchised from the reality of his other twenty three hours and fifteen minutes of daily existence. The same is true for Beale whose outburst on the air only takes up a few minutes and his individual segment lasts less than the time of a traditional segment. In both cases, the viewers are privy to the marionette, but not the manipulator, and in both cases, the fabricated individuals connect with their audiences by providing the illusion of transgression and rage without consequence.
Beale has a breakdown on air and proposes to kill himself live on television. Instead of derision, this prompts record numbers of viewers to tune in the following night. While his suicide is avoided, his presence continues to draw viewers, and in turn, market share. His emotional pain elided – or at least obfuscated – Beale’s rants and declarations that he’s “not going to take it anymore!” become a catch phrase for the masses and a catharsis for their pent-up aggression, a result of the turbulent seventies that saw a breadth of riots, the rise of the Weathermen, the end of the Vietnam War and the resignation of Richard Nixon. As viewers, they are not necessarily empathetic to Beale’s depression, nor do they understand that he is in fact crumbling for his own reasons; rather, they assume his rage stems from the same source(s) as their own.
Sheen may not offer an articulation of rage against society, but he embodies the illusion of transgression without repercussion – much like a number of Hollywood stars. Verbally announcing cocaine binges, martini benders, numerous flings with prostitutes, and the repeated occurrence of violence against women to a vast media network would often result in an average person’s immediate firing, if not incarceration, and at the very least, fining. Despite the fact that Sheen was ultimately fired from the CBS production, these outbursts and admissions are not novel; rather, they have been common knowledge for many years, but as Anna Holmes suggests in “The Disposable Woman,” Sheen’s behavior has been repeatedly and affectionately dismissed as the antics of a ‘bad boy’ […], a ‘rock star’ […] and a ‘rebel’,” and within these branded monikers, the aforementioned viewers see a part of Sheen that they admire because he is able to get away with these antics while they simultaneously castigate him for the very same reasons when he fails to deliver on stage.
Perhaps Sheen’s antics – while they aren’t commendable and are often laughable in the funniest and most unfunny senses — also give us a dose of our own medicine and are a lesson not to break the fourth wall. In other words, Sheen has unintentionally but successfully mocked our love of watching people self-implode. For examples, see Britney Spears’ shaved head and subsequent umbrella-waving tirade, David O. Russell’s diatribe on set, Christian Bale’s freak out, Jessica Simpson’s charted weight gain, David Hasselhoff’s submergence to the bottom of a bottle and their respective “hits” or “views.” None of these stars have suffered the criticism that Sheen has, primarily because they haven’t taken their show on the road and exposed the dessicated talent that buffers the moments of amusement.
Sheen, and his rapid descent into caricature on a television, phone, or computer screen is easily removed from our reality and our comfort zone. Looking away, laughing or closing a browser is a simple and a quick analgesic for our discomfort at his clown-car engulfed in flames. It’s the live shows that cause us discomfort and prompt us to ask for our money back as our realities forcibly intertwine, giving him the momentary last laugh before the house lights go up and the curtain closes, signaling our return to the comforts of constructed and processed reality.
