Q: Obviously commoners are not allowed to touch Royalty on account of our divine lineage. Sadly, many of the “people” are now ignorant of this and the protocol is often broken, but only at behest of the Royal, who may deem to shake a hand or pose with a commoner’s pet. However, recently, a nouveau riche commoner completely shattered protocol by putting his big, powerful, black arm around me. He was a large commoner, good stock, and covered in the intoxicating musk of the peasant, I felt so small and vulnerable yet protected within his embrace! I have to say, it stirred certain feelings and they’re scary! What should I do?
Confused Kate
Dear Confused:
Many Royals harbour secret desires to go “slumming,” and you shouldn’t be alarmed that this commoner has stirred such feelings in you. However, you must remember that serving your country is of cardinal importance, and that nothing, not even a new and thrilling lust, should get in the way of this holy duty! You must not let the public face of the Royal Family slip!!!
However, you should keep in mind that for millennia Royals have been fulfilling this need for “slumming” by indulging their fetishes in private, behind castle walls, using slaves, concubines and prostitutes. You have a vast and excellent staff working beneath you, utilize them! They will be only too happy to earn a shadow of your gratitude by corralling the vulnerable and desperate to serve as playthings for you! Don’t get hung-up on this one peasant, remember, they’re in limitless supply and completely disposable!
Q: Imagine that a great King was put in a situation where he had to impose a law on his people to prohibit sex for all between the ages of 9 and 18 in an attempt to quell the AIDS pandemic. It would be a wise and just law, no? The King loves his children and wishes to protect them! Imagine then, that this great King, much loved by his people, had 25 wives, and legions of “liphovela,” all trying to become pregnant by the great King in order to prove their fertility and become one of his official brides. If one of them was selected, as is the custom, during the topless virgin reed dance, and she was between the ages of 9 and 18, would the great King then be in conflict of interest?
Great King
Dear Great King:
You are not only above the law, you are the law, so the short answer to your question is a resounding NO! However, it is important for a great ruler to keep harmony amongst his people, lest they rebel, and so I would respectfully suggest that you compensate the family of this particular liphovela with a token bought from your great wealth, which must certainly be in excess of 200 million, such as a cow, cell phone or Nutribullet. Easy-Peasy!
]]>One of the repeating themes I’ve encountered is that people cannot believe that somebody who made them laugh so much could possibly have such a sad and broken interior. There’s an obvious lack of empathy in such a position, in that these people cannot see a life beyond the surface one that they so greedily absorbed. To be a celebrity in our culture is to give up one’s interior, becoming a vessel in which the schizophrenic projections of the public push everything else out. It must get awfully stormy in there, and in the end celebrities exist as sacrifices to our need, the actual person (or self) tossed beautiful and adored into the raging, all-consuming volcano of our culture.
Williams himself said that in America they really do mythologize people when they’re dead, and prophetically, he’s now being mythologized. His death means whatever we need it to mean. For some people, it’s a clarion call to awaken the public to the insidious dangers of depression, to others it’s about the dark weight that many comedians carry with them on stage. Everybody seems to have something very real and personal that they feel in his death, but usually end up cannibalizing Williams in an attempt to find some sort of meaning, and perhaps even redemption, in this small, solitary and very sad act.
However, the one thing that seems universal is that everybody is declaring Robin Williams a genius. Although I am of the right age to have experienced the full sweep of his career, I was never much of a fan. I mean, I don’t have a favourite Robin William moment, and like a lot of people I saw a riot of pathology in his performance rather than genius. His need was so great and his onslaught so relentless, that I found it completely exhausting to watch him. He drained me, and I just wanted to hug him into stillness, letting him know that everything was going to be okay, even if it wasn’t.
His comedy was based on recognition rather than content. Middle-of-the-road and Baby Boomer friendly, he was an unfiltered convulsion of mimicry and pop culture references. He was elliptical, swinging from one character to the next before you could think about what he was actually saying, apparently being content in simply getting a reflex response from the audience instead of a contemplated one. You laughed because you recognized his characters, not so much because of what they were saying. It was nostalgic, even old-fashioned, and in a weird way I think Williams would have made for a fantastic silent movie star, so exaggerated was his stage personality. Creating the manic illusion of edge, Williams was safe and not very challenging. He had kind and vulnerable eyes, and always seemed to want to please us, for us to feel good about ourselves, and I think we loved him for that rather than his talent.
