Will Smith and the Illusion of Self

“Once you are real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.” ~ The Velveteen Rabbit

I was born six years before Marilyn Monroe was found dead of a barbiturate overdose. Mistress to political royalty, ex-wife to a sports god and an American literatus, she died an icon, an illusory image, creation of Hollywood yet fed by her own ambition. From a very young age all she wanted was to be a star, but in the end, the worship of millions could not quell her grief. She left as she had begun: lonely, and alone. 

A few short weeks after I left home at seventeen to attend university I fell in love with the theatre. After graduation one of my first professional gigs was to write and perform a solo show entitled, Monroe. My intent was to thoroughly research and present the soul of the woman, in all the glory of her confusions and pain. At the time this was a new idea; to see through the created self, into the broken child she had once been. To me it was much more interesting to attempt to truly understand her, rather than remain caught in the stories of failed marriages, drugs and affairs.

If our lives are human theatre, our great stage is everywhere, beneath the feet of every one of us, and the roles we choose are deeply significant. In a sense, we are a living art form, and it can be both freeing and useful to think of our challenges this way. There is no art without shadow, no great story that does not delve into tragedy as well as beauty.

It is interesting to look at those who play public roles intentionally, the politicians, actors and celebrities who step onto a visceral stage every day. These players may be swept up, believing in their own performance, or pulled up by birth, status or happenstance. Many live out their lives onstage in front of an audience eager to objectify, just as they themselves lose sight of the self within. 

It’s tempting for we common folk to judge, to assume that those with wealth and notoriety have everything, and deserve no mercy. We feel free to accuse them in ways reserved for the famous. We write about them and talk about them, just as I am doing now, without asking the same permission we would ask of a neighbour or friend. 

But are we not, rich or poor, all attached to our habits, fears, and illusions? Material success is no antidote to heartbreak, and can even magnify an existential isolation. Entrapment in a public, false self is a hell worse than many imagine, bearing all the unconscious torment of an addiction, full of rushes and crashes with little peace in between. 

When the faces of the Hollywood elite gather to give themselves awards, each one arrives in full costume of self, exploring the experience of presenting before a vast audience in a scripted and broadcasted conversation, knowing they will be witnessed, loved and judged all at the same time. It’s a night to observe which role each has chosen in this life: lover, rebel, clown or princess, as they pose upon the carpet leading into the great theatre, to compete, to take measure, to be revealed. 

Will Smith is a man playing a role on many stages. His life has become utterly public, intentionally transparent on camera, sitting around a red table with his wife, discussing her relationship with her lover before all the world. Without distinction between the surreal and the real, performance and privacy, perspective is lost. In their conversation he speaks of revenge. At other times he speaks of being suicidal. Helplessness, falseness and shame will lead us there.  

Add to this Will’s childhood experience of watching his father abuse his mother, and his shame at feeling he did not defend her, and you have a perfect storm.

Is it possible that when Will watched a man tread upon the honour of his wife, those hurtful words were perceived not simply as an attack on her, but upon his own shaken, dysregulated self.  A man who doubts in himself and his relationship may not be strong enough to tolerate the clumsiness or ignorance of others. In that moment, her dismay was his cue to claim the identity he seems to have lost. And if all life is a public stage, and all awareness seen through the filter of role play, in that moment, to enact the striking of a hapless comic was easy. The disconnected self doesn’t wait to think. 

Just as one man playing King believes in his right to invade a country without awareness of harm and cost, another man playing a defender of women can assume the right to a stage fight, fuelled by his own shame.

Such fears often command us at every level, and yet, to step off the stage is possible for us all. In fact, what the world asks of us now is to witness and dismantle the characters we have created, and to tell the truth about the illusion within. 

What happened at the Academy Awards this year was more real than anything seen in recent memory. It was so real, it was shocking and confusing, fascinating to viewers worldwide. An illusion cracked, and attention swerved from the very real horror of an invading tyrant across the sea, to one man’s public disconnection.

No one knew quite what to say or do. 

Some said it’s about time to see a man defending his woman, and words hurt as much as hands. Some said Hollywood was harder on Will Smith because he’s a black man. Some said it would have gone much worse for him, had he been a white man and others, that he has now fuelled public perception that black men are violent. Will’s son Jaden tweeted, “And that’s how we do it,” seeming to suggest, like father, like son.

Some said it’s time for Hollywood to grow up from the days of crude, roasting comedy and shallow, egoic personas. Perhaps, as Billie Eilish says, we have fallen for a lie.

In the midst of the fuss, we are asked to remember that a rebirth of our world is underway. We are beginning to see the cracks in the mirror, to notice that the emperor has no clothes and has, in fact, been stark naked all along. Perhaps the invitation to each one of us is to dare to choose the higher Self within the illusory self, in our own lives, and in our perceptions of others.

Perhaps it’s time for something real. 

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you…”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit. “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”  ~ The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams