On Carrie Fisher 1956 - 2016When I was a kid, I copied out the entirety of Marvel Comics’ Star

On Carrie Fisher 1956 - 2016When I was a kid, I copied out the entirety of MarvelComics’ Star Wars comics adaptation. I did it because I wanted to drawspaceships attacking the Death Star and Darth Vader, but more than anythingelse, it taught me how much I loved drawing people. Artoo, Threepio, and Vaderwere easy, in that their expressions never changed. Chewie and the humancharacters were much harder, but I persisted. I copied Han, Luke, Obi-Wan’sbeard and Tarkin’s cheekbones and I copied Princess Leia’s boobs (oboy) and herhairbuns. I liked how she mocked Han’s cynicism and resisted Vader’s torturedroid with sheer resolve. Han was funny and Luke was heroically earnest. He mayhave been strong with the Force but Leia had sheer force of will. For me, she was the new hope. Carrie Fisher was socool.Leia was about being fair and having empathy for your fellowbeings. She was about conscience, equality, and revolution. She was about doingthe right thing, about integrity, and, hey, she was mass-produced as an actionfigure. In 1978, I saved up and bought one with my own pocket money. She livedon a shelf with my other Star Wars action figures. I remember this too: years later, in the mid-to-lateeighties, in British gutter tabloids, Carrie Fisher was characterised as a drugaddict, a coke freak, a mess. She also happened to be a brilliant diarist andrecorded it all, how that situation (and the misinterpretations thereof) cameabout.Around the same time, my Leia action figure was pilferedfrom my studio where I now displayed her next to my Vaders and Artoos withdetached postmodern ironic cool. The theft was committed by a girlfriend(soon-to-be ex), who’d always coveted her, despite the little plastic cloakbeing a bit scuffed and ripped. This girl knew I knew her pretensions of“borrowing” Leia were bullshit, but I was really into her and she could wrap mearound her little finger. I still think about that stolen miniature Leia (the ex, notso much) and I forever regret letting her out of my sight. But, there you haveit – I learned then that Leia is an idea, a symbol, and you can’t lose an idea.That little toy possessed a fragment of the cool of her real-life counterpart,who, by this stage, was writing books that were full of ideas, both tragic andcomic, blurring the line between Princess and Actress, reclaiming her image andsculpting it into something all her own. Those books were a revelation. Carrie Fisher was about being herself, blindingly,brilliantly herself, above all else, suffering no fool or circumstance tocounter her individuality. She was a pop icon, and she also totally subvertedthat, stood that status and recognition on its head. She was born of Hollywoodbut Tinseltown’s corporate apparatus never owned her. She cared not a jot forthe publicity machine, for the way the game was supposed to be played. Shespoke up for and about women in pop culture, about being at the centre of themedia and male gaze, about working in that spotlight, about how it felt to beher. She was unfailingly honest, happy to send herself up, and yet she was alsoan activist – she destigmatised mental illness and drug addiction and did itfearlessly and somehow with both real dignity and surgical self-deprecation.Her disclosures seemed not ego-driven but self-aware and connected to ordinarydemons many people have to face. Not usually moved by celeb confessions of lifeproblems, then or now, something about Carrie Fisher’s candour kicked my ownslow awakening in facing clinical depression into a higher gear. She was a brilliant storyteller and raconteur, every linedelivered with glitteringly dry, dark wit. She was bananas, and incisivelyfunny with it. Her dog is called Gary Fisher. Carrie and Gary. When I firstfound out about Gary, I hoped they’d get him into Star Wars in a cameo somehow.I loved her for a lot of reasons, first for being aprincess, yes, for being the brave resistance, for defying fascists, bores,creeps, the armies of the dreary and those-who-would-control-you, but mostly,over the years, for ignoring every attempt to pin her down. Carrie Fisher, bothreal and imagined, was true royalty, in that she was priceless, fabulous,proudly wearing her contradictions for all to see and being inspirational withit. - Nick Abadzis -- source link

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