The Tragedy of Luke Perry
Luke Perry in 1992's Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the one time I fell in love with a fictional character in a romantic way. I like to distinguish this feeling from a schoolboy crush, because I was not pining after the face or the idea of Luke Perry, the person and the actor, or the glittering orbit within which he moved. Nor was my crush a feeling of admiration for some ineffable Cool, which describes most of my fictional crushes, from Edward Norton in Fight Club to Woody Allen in pretty much any Woody Allen movie. No, my crush for Luke Perry was one that made me say, Aha! THAT is what I want for a boyfriend: the soft-spoken rebel, rough and romantic, caring, smart, independent-minded, and yet ultimately supportive.
How quickly the bloom of his glamor faded! I caught a bit of The Fifth Element last night on tv, in which he has a cameo appearance as the cravenly archaeologist. It had the aspect of a marble shattered and defiled in dust, to see his soft-spoken rebel ghost beclouded thus. I sighed, as one sighs for fallen empires. Could it be that a dream so perfect had to be so fleeting? I searched imdb for Perry's filmography, and sure enough, his role as Oliver Pike was his peak. Beverly Hills 90210 commenced the spiral down, and from there there was only a catalogue of movies no one cared about and tv appearances everyone forgot.
For one brief, brilliant moment only, I glimpsed a vision of a perfect desire; then Luke Perry's mortal burden caught up with him, and he became like the rest of us, besmeared by the certainty of failure.
How quickly the bloom of his glamor faded! I caught a bit of The Fifth Element last night on tv, in which he has a cameo appearance as the cravenly archaeologist. It had the aspect of a marble shattered and defiled in dust, to see his soft-spoken rebel ghost beclouded thus. I sighed, as one sighs for fallen empires. Could it be that a dream so perfect had to be so fleeting? I searched imdb for Perry's filmography, and sure enough, his role as Oliver Pike was his peak. Beverly Hills 90210 commenced the spiral down, and from there there was only a catalogue of movies no one cared about and tv appearances everyone forgot.
For one brief, brilliant moment only, I glimpsed a vision of a perfect desire; then Luke Perry's mortal burden caught up with him, and he became like the rest of us, besmeared by the certainty of failure.
posted by Rex at 8:09 AM
2 Comments:
Remember his ridiculous sideburns in "90210"? Did he have them in "Buffy"?
Well, they weren't quite as extravagant then, but I think he still had sideburns, as a part of his whole "James Dean" thing. But the important detail was this: he didn't have a receding hairline yet in Buffy. This made him look far less like the buffoon when playing a teenage heartthrob; plus his forehead wasn't so large, which may have had the optical effect of elongating those sideburns.
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