Carrie Fisher Appreciation

Rian Johnson (via fycarriefisher)

The thing that is getting to me the most about news of Carrie Fisher’s autopsy report is not the results themselves, but the way the media is handling it. Like it’s a Gotcha moment—like somehow we were tricked into thinking she was a better person than she actually was.

And that is profoundly bullshit.

Carrie was open about being an addict. Her opening line from her iconic stand up show (and book by the same name) “Wishful Drinking” was quite literally, “Hi, I’m Carrie Fisher, and I’m an alcoholic.”

She talked at length and in often brutal depth about her problems with substance abuse, her compulsive self destructive tendencies, and her dependencies to both illegal and prescription drugs. She wrote about it in her books, she talked about it on talk shows. She made an entire comedic stand up performance out of it, detailing the lengths she went to in order to try and regain some semblance of safety and normalcy in her life. 

She was brutally honest that every single day was a struggle for sanity after years and years of attempting to self medicate a mental illness that for most of her life was mistaken for feckless lack of self control. 

You know how they way “Religion is the opiate of the masses?” Well I took masses of opiates religiously! -Wishful Drinking

She was bright, and beautiful and bold about it. And she didn’t have to be.

Carrie Fisher didn’t have to stand there and take the shitstorm of criticism people launched at her for decades, let alone turn it into humor. She didn’t. She didn’t owe anyone outwith her immediate family an explanation for her erratic behavior over the years, nor the flack she caught for it. (Think of all the male actors in Hollywood who are in and out of rehab centers so quickly they could harness the revolving doors as a wind turbine. Then tell me the media press about her life and now her death are fair.)

But she did it anyway, because she knew it was important. And she took those bright lights of Hollywood shining down on her like a ruthless, malevolent child holding a magnifying glass under the sun—and she turned that merciless heat and pointed it at things that mattered, often at the expense of herself, opening herself up to ridicule and the severe cruelty of others who lambasted her for everything, ranging from her weight, her mental illness or her audacity to simply grow old.

Is it tragic that her addiction likely cost her her life? Yes, of course it is. Does it invalidate any of her achievements? The strength and vibrancy with which she lived her life and touched the lives of millions around her for the better? 

“I call people sometimes hoping not only that they’ll verify the fact that I’m alive but that they’ll also, however indirectly, convince me that being alive is an appropriate state for me to be in. Because sometimes I don’t think it’s such a bright idea. Is it worth the trouble it takes trying to live life so that someday you get something worthwhile out of it, instead of it almost always taking worthwhile things out of you?” 

-The Princess Diarist

Carrie Fisher mattered, her voice mattered. The things that she said and did, mattered. They still matter. And they are no less true and poignant in the light of these revelations.

Addiction is a disease. It’s a dysfunction of the brain’s reward system which requires constant management and care and often goes hand in hand with other mental health disorders. It is not simply a question of willpower or the perceived lack thereof. And while sobriety is to be praised and encouraged—of course it is, of course it absolutely unquestionably is—you cannot possibly know what may cause a person to slip or to feel like they can’t cope without that crutch. And shame on anyone who says it was therefore deserved. 

Shame and my heartfelt wishes that you never go through the things that can lead to serious addiction. Or that you are ever abandoned, derided and regarded as less than human because of it and your death turned into a smear campaign against your memory for the sake of a sensationalist headline.

Yes. Carrie Fisher was an addict, she had drug dependency problems related to her mental health. There was a time she kept it hidden, but after she made the decision to come out about it, she stuck by that decision and became a champion, for herself and everyone like her who struggles. Because she never wanted anyone to suffer like she did in order to get help. And she did it with as much grace and humility as she could manage—and a whole lot more indignity, immodesty, crass humor and love as well. Because that’s who she was and she cared. 

And that’s a hell of a lot more than can be said for those crowing over her death like it’s just deserts.

Fuck you.

People do not exist to stand up to your demands of a perfect ideal of humanity. You do not get to place that burden on the shoulders of someone then tear them apart when they fall under that weight—famous or otherwise.

Fuck you and your whole pretense at moral piety and the horse you rode in on.

Carrie Fisher was not your unproblematic fave. She was in fact extremely problematic, and no one knew that better than she did. 

“I heard someone say once that many of us only seem able to find heaven by backing away from hell. And while the place that I’ve arrived at in my life may not precisely be everyone’s idea of heaven, I could swear sometimes—if I’m quiet enough—I can hear the angels sing. Either that or I fucked up my medication again.” 

Can we take a second to talk about the I love you. I know. interchange in Empire?

I get in a lot of arguments with my guy friends about this. Bless them - I mean really - because they think they are being progressive. And its actually kind of heart warming to see. But, usually, the people who think Han is an asshole for saying I know instead of I love you, too chalk his behavior up to some kind of toxic masculinity. Han won’t say he loves her because he refuses to be vulnerable. Han is too arrogant to admit he has a weakness. Han is aggressive. Han is downright cruel at times. 

And… okay. I guess I can see where they’re coming from. But, to me, that is a really shallow interpretation of his character. 

I guess what I, and I think many people who ship Han/Leia, see in that interchange is that Han’s response isn’t motivated by his own feelings. His response has nothing to do with what’s he’s thinking or how he feels. 

It’s about validating how Leia feels. 

Which, honesty, I think she needed more at that moment than a mirrored declaration. 

Leia sacrifices everything for the cause. Her strength to put the rebellion before her personal interest is incredible. It’s her defining characteristic. It’s what we all know and love about her.

It’s also what she knows and loves about herself. By Empire, Leia has lost almost everything of any personal value to her. She’s lost her family. Her home. Her friends. Her position in the Senate. All she has is her own sense of identity. The only thing she can use to define herself anymore is her core values. 

Can you imagine how difficult it would be to let anything compromise that? 

Admitting that she has feelings for Han would be admitting that she has room in her heart for anything other than the cause. It would be admitting that her life is not solely defined by the rebellion that her family died for. It would be admitting that behind her emotionless, rational, militaristic persona is actually just a twenty-two year old girl with feelings, longings, and desires that are entirely selfish. 

Han knows this about her. 

Ultimately, it’s why Leia loves him. Because even Luke, her own twin with whom she shares a connection in the force, at times fails to see her as anything other than the princess. 

But somehow this dirty, cocky, smart ass, nerf herder is the one person who has ever managed to look into her soul and see past every single wall she has built around herself. 

Han knows her. She has never had to tell him anything. She has never had to pour her heart out to him. She has never had to make herself vulnerable in front of him. And yet, he still knows. 

I guess many people see that scene and they see a cocky smart ass being clever and evasive instead of sincere when he says I know. 

But that’s not what his eyes say. 

His eyes say…

I know you love me. 

I’ve known you love me for a long time. 

It hasn’t scared me away. 

It hasn’t made me think less of you. 

It hasn’t made me see you as weak. 

You’ve screamed at me, hit me, threatened me, insulted me, and done everything to push me away, but I still know that you love me.

And I know you know that I love you, too.

Because it’s taken an invasion of a base, a broken down hyperdrive, a giant cave dwelling slug monster, Boba Fett, a carbonite chamber, and Darth fucking Vader himself to actually make me leave you. 

Leia spends the beginning and middle of ESB completely refusing to acknowledge her feelings for Han. He tries MULTIPLE TIMES to get her to admit that she loves him, and every time Leia denies it. 

“Well, Your Highness, I guess this is it…”  “That’s right.” 

“You want me to stay because of the way you feel about me.” “… You’re imagining things!

“You should have seen us alone in the South Passage. She expressed her true feelings for me.” “My true–why you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerfherder!”

“You like me because I’m a scoundrel.” *shakes her head*

And, because of their conversations on Hoth, we can infer that these aren’t the first times they’ve had these arguments.

AND, we know that Leia is holding off on confessing her feelings not only because she feels she should be devoting herself solely to the rebellion (which I’m sure is true), but also because Han keeps saying he’s going to leave. Over and over and over again this is the cause of conflict between Han and Leia throughout the course of the movie. Even at Bespin after they’ve kissed, she’s clearly still keeping some distance because of it (“Ship’s almost finished. Two or three more things and we’re in great shape.” “And then you’re as good as gone, aren’t you?”).

Han has been repeatedly trying to get Leia to admit she’s in love with him, and Leia has been adamantly refusing to do so because she knows he’s going to leave and break her heart. She doesn’t want to make herself vulnerable to heartache and loss by admitting the depth of her feelings when she thinks–because he keeps telling her–that he’s going to hightail it to Jabba and never look back. Leia requires security–the knowledge that Han is in it for the long haul, committed to the rebellion and to her, and without that knowledge, she won’t put herself at risk after all she’s already suffered and tell him what he wants to hear.

So, the “I love you.” “I know.” scene is especially beautiful because BOTH of them are thinking of the other person.

Leia tells Han that she loves him not only because she might not get another chance to say it, but because she’s worried that Han won’t get another chance to hear it. He’s been all but begging her to admit it for the entire film, and she wouldn’t. Then in the carbon freeze chamber, when he’s either about to die or be sent to his death, she finally says it because she knew how much it meant for him to hear it confirmed by her. She makes herself completely vulnerable for him, baring her heart and confessing her love in front of their worst enemies, so that he wouldn’t die without ever having heard her say the words, without ever having known that he’d been right, and she did love him.

And Han does the exact same thing. He responds the way he does for Leia, so that Leia knows not to worry, not to feel guilty about denying it for so long. It’s not, “Lol yeah, I know, of course you love me, I’m so manly and I’m not gonna say it back, though.” It’s, “I know you do. Don’t worry. I’ve known it all this time, and I don’t regret anything.”

Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher & Billie Lourd: 1999 // 2015