Let's Talk About Kevin Spacey's Dead Eyes

I was in call with someone today, who was watching the last ep of House of Cards. To which he had never seen the rather creepy Meachum scene.  He immediately asked the same question I had thought previous, "God this is creepy, I wonder if Spacey is gay".  A question that many have wondered about, and several interviewers had asked about, to no avail.

One thing lead to another, curiosity killed the cat.  I went back and watched the Inside the Actor Studio interview with Spacey.

He mentions two siblings. I was curious, thinking it would be amusing to find his brother (because sister could be married) on white pages.  Instead I found this.

Shrugging it off, it's just the oh so reliable fox news.

Which led me to this very relevant newspaper clippings.

Read those news paper clippings.  

Nazi rapist father.  

Think American Beauty.  

Think Long Days Journey Into Night.  

I would love to doubt the validity of this article.

It was published in a UK newspaper in 2004, and too my knowledge the UK press still had integrity. Spacey lives in London, in fact it is his only permanent home.  I then realized I had plunged into the deep end.  This lead to me going to Randy Fowler's (Spacey) website.

"Ok. It's a bad site from 1995", and then I saw the Hal 9000 icon which led to videos.  The first one I clicked on was this.

At only 15 views, and unlisted.  It appears to be Kevin Spacey brother's community college speech class presentation about his sexual abuse in childhood.  I  cannot seem to shake the horrible feeling that I have walked over a grave.

Author's Biased View:

I have often wondered about the genius of Kevin Spacey's acting. Where that seeming kind of blank stare originates, where that amazing acting originates.  Sure, none of my goddamn business. But yet, I could not help shake that HoC scene, and the scene in American Beauty.  Something in my brain registered something deeper, and curiosity soon followed.  And yet, it's of course none of our business.  But after reading that article, it pains me even more. To see this amazingly successful person, who I honestly believe was protected by his brother.  A person who is permanently alienated from other human beings, because of his inability to emotionally invest in anyone but his mother, who understands what people expect to see, but has no core understanding outside of the external action.  I see what somehow my brain perceived through Spacey's work, that in there is a dead person.  A psychopath or sociopath, who knows or cares. But just that there is a man out there, who has suffered enormously to protect another, and the other who succeeded because of that protection and holds no allegiance to the one that protected him.  Reading the agent's response was really telling, 'well sucks for you buddy'.  I see that $80 million+ net worth, and wonder if he has thrown a million to his brother for the hardship.  My instinct says... Probably not. At least those dead eyes finally make sense.

What do you want to BE when you grow up?

When was the last time as an adult you thought of your profession as a state of being?

For those of you that are teachers, you exempt from this.

Few these days would label their professions as a state of being, unless they are still paying off large sums of student debt.  Why is that?

People seem to have no issue identifying their job in quantified tangible terms.   Yet somewhere in the process of schooling there was a shift from 'being' to 'functioning as'.  I of course have met adults who identify with being their jobs, but generally they have job satisfaction.  It is an interesting rift, that.

The more pleased with a given current professional work environment, the more identified they are with it.  As though the job called to them, rather than them applying for the job.  I often ponder over whether this shift is a survival mechanism brought on by wage stagnation. 

From what I understand of yesteryear, jobs of any status has status associated with them.  The shift in the workplace seems to have robbed away not only pay increases, but job satisfaction.  The increase in productivity without any parallel in wages removed the status from virtually professions making less than fifty-thousand a year (net, not gross).  Wage is the only determining factor, for most profession below what I will call the 'realistic poverty line'.   I am not, of course expressing a need to increase the wages to all meet that line, in that it would simply inflate the costs of goods all around.  What I am attempting to bring to light is the seeming pervasive death of 'job status' within society. 

That is not to say there is a lack of passion in given professions, but there certainly is a lack of wages and benefits within American culture.  I would theorize that previously, part of a job benefit was the status and familiarity of a given class of people.  Take mailmen for instance.  Previously a high status job with little pay.  There was  built in cultural aspect of familiarity to mailmen, an instinctive friendliness towards them. 

I believe one of the major reasons for the death of 'job status' is certainly population explosion. There is very little means of garnishing a personal relationship in larger cities with given status jobs.  And without that small psychological boost, it would seem the only means of determining the value of a job and the self worth that that person within the job, is financial.