Last week, like countless others, I was moved by the death of Michael Gambon, a British actor who did amazing things onstage and off. As his obituary headlines poured in, I noticed they almost uniformly mentioned him first and foremost as the second Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter franchise of films. This he was, taking over from the deceased Richard Harris. He made Dumbledore his own and provided some of the more interesting and reflective moments of Goblet of Fire and Deathly Hallows—Part 2. If someone has been involved in a current franchise craze, Marvel or otherwise, and passes away, they are noted for their appearance in high-grossing films rather than the majority of their work otherwise.
But Gambon was so much more than Dumbledore. A staple of the theatre community, he acted marvelously all his life and made many more movies than the Harry Potter film series. This “soundbite obit” phenomenon of linking artists with not their best but they’re most commercially successful efforts harkened back to an X-post I had seen a few weeks ago mourning that most of the official obituaries of the late novelist Cormac McCarthy had mentioned the films made from his novels more so than the novels this prototypical novelist wrote. He opined something like, “Who cares what movies were made from them? The man was a novelist; that’s how he should be remembered.”
The American theatre has this problem too. Judging by the obituaries, American playwrights are only known for one work. I knew when Arthur Miller died, the obits would read “Death of Author of Death of a Salesman” while Miller wrote many other great plays (at least between 1944 and 1964), including The Crucible, which may be the great American play. Tennessee Williams, likewise, was (according to obituaries) famously known for A Streetcar Named Desire (maybe also Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) and the film versions especially. Now this is understandable to agree. More people in the world go to the movies than the theatre. More people go to the movies than read books. But this franchise frenzy we find ourselves in now? If Michael Fassbender were to unexpectedly leave us, would he be known for his Marvel movies or some of the more penetrating and moving performances of our time?
Oftentimes obituaries pave the way for the manner in which an artist is remembered. Eugene O’Neill has somehow been relegated to this idea that he wrote a good deal of plays and eked out one masterpiece before he died, Long Day’s Journey into Night—that one written long after he had won the Nobel Prize in Literature and had given American theatre a voice—the voice of a master, the voice of an authentic American dramatist, whose Iceman Cometh may end up being seen as the better play.
Our concern with mourning the artists we lose has reached a fever pitch. Indeed, we have lost so many since COVID, not just a result of that disease but a baby boomer generation dying out, and we heap on the most financially successful of their endeavors. This may be appropriate when considering Paul Reubens, a man who was (for all intents and purposes) known only really for playing Pee-Wee Herman. But Gambon deserved better. I could scarcely take my eyes off him when seeing him in Conor McPherson’s film version of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame and, even in tiny roles—like that of the film mogul in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou—he was a presence to be reckoned with.
Sure, once you click the link, it might mention his other work. But should Alan Rickman and Robbie Coltrane be known as Potter characters when they both carved out their own niches in a country brimming with top-tier actors and gave us many more memorable performances? Will they deign to make Harry Potter part of the headline for Dame Maggie Smith’s passage (may it be many years away)? Or will they acknowledge one of the great actors of our age, whether she participated in Potter or not?
Are journalists and readers so itching for clickbait that they will reduce an artist’s career to one major work just to get views? Is it the journalists or simply the editors (who, after all, often rename pieces of journalism)? When Robert Altman died, I don’t remember obits about the man who made M*A*S*H or Nashville, but a man who nearly made forty movies, some of them not so great, but what can you do?
For the love of Pete, our artists deserve better tributes to their memory than just having participated in Harry Potter or the MCU. They are not given obituaries in major papers because of one incident in their lives, which they were most likely drawn into because their grandkids would be mad at them if they didn’t. If that were their only claim to fame, one would get it, but that’s just not the case.
If franchises are what you’re about—if you crave the new serial from these fan bases—good for you. But know the artists involved are people whose accomplishments are far greater than the world of Young Adult, or even Child, Fiction that you should have stopped reading years ago in favor of something nourishing to your adult soul.
“Well, how many characters do I actually have in an obit headline?” I don’t know, but “Michael Gambon, great actor” would have been sufficient. The people already know his image, so let them read the bloody article and find out more about the artist who inspired them. Open their world. Open your world to new information.
A man with nearly 200 credits in film and television, not to mention his radio and theatre performances, deserves better and so do you. It’s a shame we live in an age where journalism is what it is: mouthpieces for gatekeepers of one shape or another. But we owe our ailing and deceased artists more than pity and boxes to keep them in.
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