Kevin Spacey’s surreal downward spiral has been, I believe, the most “2018” event of 2018.
His fall from grace has an element of everything that has defined this past 12 months: #MeToo, Netflix, an insane YouTube video, a court date, and an astonishing absence of self-awareness.
What the hell happened? Spacey used to be so cool, genuinely cool, back when he was doing killer impressions and playing charismatic anti-heroes. I’d go and watch a movie purely based on the fact that Spacey was starring, back when he was Frank Underwood.
And when he was playing Frank in House of Cards, he really tapped into the zeitgeist, the growing sense of distrust directed against our political institutions, acting out the sordid story that we suspected was happening behind the curtain.
The election kind of killed that show - it was a great political drama, but it wasn’t an accurate reflection of President Donald Trump and his bizarre brand of politics. But Spacey was soaring along regardless, about to star in Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World.
Until the first sexual assault allegation came along and completely derailed Spacey, with the accuser stating that he was fourteen-years-old at the time of the alleged assault. Spacey decided that the best way to defend himself was to come out as a homosexual, which might have worked in the heightened reality of his Netflix drama, but in reality, sparked a million memes mocking his ridiculous “defense.”
The flood of accusations that followed, many going back decades, seemed to confirm the worst. The #MeToo movement continues to expose the enormous scale of sexual misconduct in Hollywood, and Spacey appears to be one of the most rotten apples in a rancid orchard.
Spacey was fired from House of Cards, and in an unprecedented move, even edited out of All the Money in the World, replaced by the wonderful Christopher Plummer, who, as far as we know, is a very good apple.
Spacey disappeared for a bit, only making headlines when, strangely enough, his House of Cards co-star Robin Wright appeared to vouch for him in an interview, making vague statements about “second chances.” The public didn’t seem to be taken with the idea, and the story faded into the colorful media tapestry of 2018.
The sixth season of House of Cards arrived, now headlined by Wright, who tried her best to salvage a shoddy script, but couldn’t stop the show from sinking into irrelevancy.
Spacey (assumedly) observed the tepid reaction to the new season, and reckoned that the only way he could slide back into our hearts was through the show, relying on the public’s occasional inability to separate an iconic character from the actor who plays them.
Thus, Spacey filmed the most embarrassing, tasteless, out-of-touch YouTube video of the year, the same year in which Logan Paul filmed the corpse of a suicide victim while laughing. In the video, which you should really have watched by now, Spacy directly addresses the camera the way Frank Underwood used to, accent and all, and pleads with the public to forgive him, never breaking character and not-so-subtly referencing his real-life accusations through the fictional misdeeds of Frank.
It’s absolutely magnificent. It’s as though Kevin Spacey is secretly a brilliant conceptual artist who just created the ultimate piece of ironic, postmodern commentary on modern-day society, except he didn’t do that.
He begged for forgiveness while pretending to be a fictional antihero, hoping that we’d all just applaud like morons and start petitioning Netflix to allow him back on the show. I think it might have been my favorite moment of the year, or at least in the top three.
A new sexual assault charge was filed hours later, and Spacey is now hiding from the tabloid paparazzi under layers of scarves, like Sean Spicer in the bushes.
Obviously, the video didn’t quite have the effect Spacey thought it would. There’s debate over what exactly Spacey’s intentions were, but I think it’s fairly obvious from the video that he simply wanted to return to the show, and assumed his real-life redemption would follow suit.
Perhaps Spacey has spent too much time in La La Land, and genuinely believed he could make a compelling speech that would be followed with standing ovations, wipe his dirty slate clean in a single scene, like a lovable rogue from a 90’s romantic comedy.
Well, the video has been watched more than 8 million times, and even the famously opinionated YouTube commentators don’t know what to say. We’ll see what the next plot twist of Kevin Spacey’s larger-than-life life will be in 2019, but surely, it can’t get any weirder than this. Right?
But it isn’t just Spacey; celebrities, pop culture, and reality itself has taken a turn for the absurd in the last couple of years, and there’s been no sign of a return to “normalcy.” Whatever that was.
Here’s to an even stranger 2019; I have a feeling things are about to get really weird.
