Quote:
Originally posted by purse junkie
TM, I think you're utterly discounting the impact "live fast, die young and leave a good-looking-corpse" has on icon-hood. Would anyone give a crap about Diana 30 years from now if she hadn't been a tragic short-lived beauty, instead of just another princess humiliated by her wussy royal husband and his horse-faced mistress? Or James Dean, if he'd lived to be a dessicated old drunk? Would you lionize Marilyn so much if she'd lived, like fellow celebrated beauty Jane Russell, to be an old, wrinkly bra spokeswoman?
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Good point.
But I think it's not the live fast, die young attitude that makes her such a huge icon still. I think it's that we can only remember her as a young beauty. Dying young ensured us that she would always be remembered that way.
But my point still stands. We remember her that way because we are obsessed with who she was and how she looked in her prime. Therefore, if she came up now, that same appeal would apply (to a certain extent).
TM
