In Memoriam: David Carradine
Although science fiction was always the chord that resonated most strongly with me during my impressionable youth, I heard plenty of other pop-cultural notes, too. One of those was the TV series Kung Fu, in which David Carradine played a half-Chinese Shaolin monk wandering the American Old West in search of his long-lost brother.
Actually, it's surprising this show left any kind of mark on me, when I think about it. It ran for only three seasons when I was very young, and I'm certain I couldn't have seen it often because it wasn't the sort of thing my dad -- who was of course the unquestioned master of the TV in those days -- would've been interested in. Kung Fu was, quite frankly, a weird show for its time, and Dad has never had much tolerance for weird. An unlikely mash-up of martial-arts films -- then still largely unknown to mainstream American audiences -- and the more familiar tropes of the Western, the series made extensive use of flashbacks to tell its stories, which often hinged on some bit of Zen philosophy (or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof). These elements, combined with highly stylized editing and slow-motion action sequences, lent Kung Fu a somewhat surrealistic quality that was very out of step with the usual cop-and-doctor shows of the early '70s.
And yet, probably because the show was so different from everything else, I have a powerful memory of sitting on the hearth with a blazing fire at my back, watching Kung Fu on our massive old console TV with the clunky tuner dial. I recall being simultaneously repelled and fascinated by the milky white eyes of blind Master Po (seen in the photo above with Carradine's character, Kwai Chang Caine). The image of Caine crouched in front of a red-hot brazier, preparing to sear tattoos of a dragon and a tiger into his forearms, stuck in my head for ages before home video finally made it possible for me to see it again. And of course the character of Caine himself -- serene, always trying to avoid a fight unless he had no choice, and then using only the minimum amount of force necessary to end it -- is virtually archetypal, at least for anyone who was around in the '70s.
Archetype or no, however, Carradine was never a hero to me in the same way as, say, William Shatner. I never pretended on the playground to be Caine, like I did James T. Kirk. I didn't follow Carradine's career, and I honestly know very little about his personal life. But his was one of the familiar celebrity faces I grew up with, and on some basic, purely visceral level, I liked him. I smiled when I encountered him in a B-movie or a television commercial, especially in recent years when he's been willing to make fun of his enduring connection to Kung Fu. Like his best-known character, Carradine was simply cool.
Which is why, I think, I've been having such a difficult time accepting the circumstances of his death earlier this week. First reported as a suicide, it now appears he died accidentally while engaged in a dangerous sexual activity known as autoerotic asphyxiation. You can look up the definition for yourself, if you're curious. The bottom line is that David Carradine died in a very uncool way.
Don't misunderstand, I'm not condemning him for having his kinks. I suspect most people probably do, to one degree or another, and I try always to be open-minded about such things. I figure whatever gets somebody through the night is nobody else's business. But on the other hand, there are kinks I simply do not get. To risk your very life in pursuit of a mere orgasm? You'd think a 72-year-old man who'd been around as many blocks as David Carradine would've known better. His death was so unnecessary, and so bloody undignified.
Of course, part of the blame for the lack of dignity must be laid on our culture's insatiable prurience and the media that's all too happy to dig for every last sordid detail. Decades ago, the media and the public both would've shown a bit more restraint, and while you may have heard rumors about the bizarre way in which a celebrity met their maker, we wouldn't have wallowed in it as we do now. But that's a subject that probably deserves its own entry.
The thing I keep running over in my mind, the thing that makes me feel so deeply sad about this, isn't that David Carradine was one of my idols who has now left us. It's that, because of how he died, he's likely going to be remembered as much for his bizarre death as for his life and work. He's going to become the punchline for a lot of tasteless jokes. In fact, he already has; I've seen a number of message-board comments that play off Master Po's famous command for Caine to "snatch the pebble from my hand."
I hope those remarks will have a short half-life, and that eventually Carradine's career and personality will return to the foreground. In the meantime, I'm going to try my best not to remember him as an old man who died alone under sordid and pathetic circumstances in a Bangkok hotel room, but rather as I first saw him: strong and mysterious, walking barefooted out of the desert with only the clothes on his back and a small satchel at his side, a different kind of hero because he wasn't interested in being one...
Comments
A very nice tribute, dear.
Posted by: The Girlfriend | June 8, 2009 9:58 AM
Over time, I become more and more amazed at what people perceive to be their business and what is not.
Unless a crime was committed (people have the right to know about crimes being committed in their town, state, country, etc.), I don't see why I need to know anything more than "David Carradine died." The rest is between his family, his friends and possibly his doctors & lawyers.
I'm thinking this all stems from Marilyn Monroe...
Posted by: Brian Greenberg | June 8, 2009 10:06 AM
Oh, and P.S. - you should know that we've reached a point where upon hearing of a celebrity death, my first thought is typically "I wonder what Bennion's going to write about it."
These are always well written, and this was no exception.
Posted by: Brian Greenberg | June 8, 2009 10:07 AM
...upon hearing of a celebrity death, my first thought is typically "I wonder what Bennion's going to write about it."
Heh - well, it's kind of an oddball claim to fame, but I'm willing to accept the mantle. Thanks for the compliment. :)
As for when and how this seedy combination of disrespect and curiosity got started, I think it's probably been there ever since the creation of the modern celebrity (consider the character Danny DeVito plays in LA Confidential, set in the '50s, for example). Marilyn's death and the resultant conspiracy theories about it probably helped push this sort of thing into the mainstream press, but it seems to me the real catalyst was the death of Elvis Presley, which was almost immediately followed by a rash of quickie tell-all books as his former sycophants tried to cash in on their insider knowledge.
I was only seven when he died, but I still remember the demented glee that so many seemed to feel in repeating the story that The King of Rock and Roll had died on the toilet. Because, apparently, he deserved to go out in such an ignominious fashion for having once been such a sensation, or some damn thing.
I also remember how those stories affected my mother, a lifelong Elvis fan. They may have been true, but what was gained by telling them? Nothing, except to embarrass and hurt millions of people like my mom, who didn't want to think of their hero going out that way. I wish there was some way to put an end to it, but it's a genie-and-the-bottle situation, I fear...
Posted by: jason | June 8, 2009 2:58 PM