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November 20, 2008

From Roger Ebert's journal... a 2,500 word history of self-image

Ebert cracks wise over the bludgeoning banter between he and Gene Siskel through the years as a way of getting into his history of body image. Like many recent entries in his blog, there are zigs, zags and fruitful diversions, and the 2,500 words may be his most adventurous yet. The tone and mood vary, but a taste: "I am so much a movie lover that I can imagine a certain (very small) pleasure in looking like the Phantom. It is better than looking like the Elephant Man. I would describe my condition as falling about 17% of the way along a graph line between the handsome devil I was at the ripe tender age of 27, and the thing that jumps out of that guy's intestines in Alien... I resemble the Phantom, but only to myself. I wear a bandage wrapping the general area of the Phantom's 1925 troubles, although good doctor David Reisberg and his colleague David Rotter of the University of Illinois at Chicago Hospital have just given me a test run of a handsome new prosthetic that will allow me to retire the Mummy look, and then Bob's your uncle. So to return to my opening question, what does it feel like to resemble The Phantom of the Opera? Not like much of anything. I rather avoid mirrors. I do not dwell on my appearance. I have bigger fish to fry. Nor do I mope about fearing that my cancer might return. If it does, it does, and that's what she wrote. At Pritikin they have a truism: "If you don't die of anything else, sooner or later you will die of cancer." We all nod thoughtfully." [Rude jokes, video and myriad musings at the link; the self-portrait before Ebert's surgery is from the entry.]

Posted by Ray Pride at November 20, 2008 04:09 AM

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