‘A Star is Born’ and our problem dealing with addictions

Behind the music and romance, the underlying story is one where we fail to understand how to help people with addictions.

A couple of days ago I went to the movies with my friends to watch the latest Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper film. Needles to say, we all left the cinema shedding a few tears and with a lot of things to say.

Well, at least I did. So here I am.

But before we start, let’s get some things clear. My interest in the film and the point of this article is not about the quality of the film per se (some people will love it, some people will hate it), but about the character’s story. More specifically what it tells us about how we fail to understand and deal with addictions. Which I think is the most interesting part of the film.

A little bit of background and disclosure

In case you didn’t know, this film is the 5th remake of a story Hollywood obviously loves telling. So, I don’t feel the need to announce *spoiler alert* as not only the story follows a very archetypal arc, but the film is worth watching EVEN if you know how is going to play out (otherwise they wouldn’t keep making remakes!)

My interest and ‘legitimacy’ for writing this article is because *spoiler alert* I’ve dealt with addictions myself and was in a relationship in my early teens with someone that also dealt with addictions and suicidal thoughts. So, we can say I sort of understand the dynamics of codependent relationships. I am not claiming I am the ultimate expert on the topic, but I do have some things to say.

So let’s start at the beginning.

In case you haven’t seen any of the films, the story greatly summarized by Alissa Wilkinson goes as follows:

“An aging male celebrity, hamstrung by his addictions, meets a talented, younger woman with whom he is instantly smitten. He connects her to the platform and contacts she needed, and she becomes a sensation almost overnight; meanwhile, his career is bottoming out. The two fall in love and marry, and her success then becomes a problem for him. In every version of the film, he meets the same end…”

So the aging male celebrity, Jackson Maine, is a musician with a very heavy drinking and drug addiction. You could say that because he is a rock star his drinking habits don’t shock anyone around him, but I think this is exactly the problem. Everyone knew he was an alcoholic but nobody did anything about it.

The problem of normalizing addictions

In today’s society there are two addictions that are so normalized people rarely notice those who suffer from it: alcoholism and eating disorders.

Going out for drinks constantly and being on a diet are so frequent that you wouldn’t blink twice when seeing people close to you always having just a little too many drinks or worried just a bit too much about their weight. Because today, who doesn’t and isn’t, right?

But if there is one thing the film gets right about addictions is that they are a disease. Yes. Having an addiction is not a sign of poor character, it is not lack of will power, it is not a phase; addictions are illnesses. So I wonder, if your friend had diabetes and you saw him binge on ice cream and chocolates every night you would probably say/do something right?

You wouldn’t be able to cure him, in fact his disease doesn’t have a permanent cure, but you would tell him he should go to a doctor, get treatment and adjust his lifestyle. You would understand how difficult life is now, how much he really misses ice cream and how dealing with the insulin is a bit of a pain in the ass, but ultimately, you’d show your support and avoid eating sweets in front of him. At least at the beginning.

So why dealing with addictions is so fucking taboo?

Why do we prefer to fall into the sweet trap of denial and pretend everything is fine when most times it clearly isn’t?

The awkwardness of confrontation and breaking the status quo

There is no easy way of confronting someone we think has an addiction. Because the tricky thing about addictions is that even if they are a disease, people hold on to them as shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean. And here is where people who haven’t gone through an addiction find it harder to understand.

Addictions, in the most simple definition, are coping mechanisms. We all have them. Is just that some are less harmful than others. Some might exercise, shop, gamble, have sex, others drink too much, use drugs or stop eating. It is the way we learnt at some point in our lives to deal with the shit that happens to us. Again, we all need coping mechanisms, the difference is when those become self destructive.

So the first problem of confrontation is that most addicts will first try to pretend they don’t have a problem. They will say you’re crazy, you’re imagining things or even react aggressively –which ultimately proves the point they have a problem. They do that because they cannot fathom their existence without their addiction. It is what has helped them survive all this time and letting go feels borderline suicidal.

So people prefer not to do anything that would upset things. We prefer to keep the status quo than accepting that someone we love deeply is having a very shitty time right now but can’t ask for help the way we expect them to.

Because here is another detail about addictions. They not only get worse in time, but every self-destructive act becomes more evident, more aggressive, almost impossible to ignore. Because deep down, they are screaming for help.

Going back to the film (don’t worry, I hadn’t forgotten) we see Jackson since his very first scene completely wasted and finishing a bottle of gin in his car right after a gig. He is clearly not OK, yet his driver simply pretends is all normal. After realising he has no more alcohol in the car, he tells his driver to pull over to what would be the triggering moment of the film. The place he meets her.

What a poetic story. His alcoholism drives him to a random bar where he meets the woman that would save him from his misery.

Not really.

The false promise of love as a cure

We could fairly say at this point of the film that Jackson is somehow aware he has a drinking problem. Or at least he knows he is not in a happy place in his life. So when he meets this incredibly talented woman, Ally, he is mesmerized. She makes him feel life again. If only a tiny bit. And for a second, it feels good, almost better than drinking.

So he falls into the trap of believing she could cure him. He gets fixated with her and after a day of meeting her, sends his private plane out for her so she could go to his next concert.

A romantic or desperate gesture? I let you be the judge.

The story then unfolds first as a beautiful almost magical adventure. He invites her to sing on stage, they rock it together, he performs like in the good old days and then they go on tour. Classic Hollywood romance.

What initially frustrated me is that Ally is pretty aware that Jackson has a drinking problem right from the beginning. She is clearly not super happy about it, but she doesn’t seem to do much about it either. Let us be clear, it is not her responsibility nor she has the powers to save him, but she could have suggested and eventually pushed for him to go to rehab sooner. She alone was not going to fix him, and believing she could was a fatal mistake.

The scene where this is super clear is when he collapses drunk after a gig in his neighbor's garden. His friend helps him out and again, everyone pretends what he did was not a problem. Ally finally arrives to meet him and she’s both worried and angry, perfectly normal given the circumstances. She says it is the last time she’ll come back to clean up his mess.

This scene is then followed by a somehow sweet speech by his friend about how “she could be his way out” whatever that means. Jackson then decides that marrying her was the way forward, so he proposes right there –doesn’t leave her much room to decide– and somehow they manage to organise a wedding that same day. ( I have to confess I felt a bit offended they didn’t invite her dad nor his brother, but I guess I am a bit old fashion with these things)

So why did they marry when he was clearly not alright?

Codependency doesn’t happen by chance

I later understood why Ally couldn’t confront his husband about his drinking problem. And it is both telling of the character and of what happens in codependent relationships.

It took my friend and I a few moments of discussion to articulate what we felt was missing from Lady Gaga’s character. She did a great performance, but something never fully clicked. The simplest way to put it is her lack of agency.

From the first until her final scene it feels like she’s always being moved by external forces around her. More specifically by other men, as the film doesn’t even have any other female characters. Everything revolves either around her ex-boyfriend, her boss, her dad, her friend, Jackson or her manager. She rises to stardom almost inevitably –not because of her talent, because as they say in the film, everyone can have talent– but by the opportunities men offer her and almost force her to take. One is expected to be happy for her because her dream of becoming a successful songwriter and singer becomes true, but we never really know what she thinks or how she feels. Things sort of happen around her and she plays with the flow. Which I find rather ironic since the message they keep repeating throughout the film is how important it is being able to say what you have to say. (I know, really deep)

What we do know from her is that she is a very talented yet insecure woman about her physical appearance that feels the need to please the men she loves. When she becomes famous overnight I understand she was more focused on dealing with her own insecurities, and doing the best she could, even if it meant dying her hair and singing crappy commercial songs.

The key part to understand about their relationship is codependency. She has massive insecurities he soothes and he has an addiction covering a lot of emotional baggage, childhood trauma and an incapacity to express his feelings. They enter their relationship needing one another without being able to really help each other. Which as the film shows –and I can corroborate from personal experience– is a recipe for disaster.

There is more to the ending that meets the eye

The ending of the story is undoubtedly a tragic one. But one that accurately reflects reality.

Men are three times more likely to commit suicide than women. And it isn’t just a weird fun fact, it tells us something about how men lack the emotional tools and space to better deal with their emotions. It tells us that self-destructive behavior is intrinsically linked to their suffering and incapacity to process past traumas. It shows that men, even when they feel broken, they find incredibly difficult to show their vulnerability and reach out for a moment of connection and help.

This emotional handicap is crystallized in the film in so many ways. For example, when Jackson finally goes to rehab we have a moving scene where he’s finally sharing his past and very conflicted relationship with his father. He tells his counselor how when he was 13 he tried to commit suicide in front of his dad but the father was so drunk he didn’t even notice. He then adds that the ventilator from where he tried to hang himself but fell down remained on the floor for 6 months. The moment is so tense both men start laughing as if the last bit of the story was a punchline.

But a 13-year-old boy attempting suicide isn’t a joke.

When Jackson is finally going back home, he shares what feels the most heartfelt conversation with his older brother and former manager Bobby. In an awkward goodbye, he struggles to find the words, he hides his tears and feels almost embarrassed when his voice starts to crack. He probably says the most beautiful thing to him: “You were the one I always admired, not dad”, yet fails to make eye contact and then flees from the car without looking back. Bobby, also containing tears in his eyes, instead of getting off the car and hugging his younger brother that just came out of rehab, drives away as fast as he can.

As if emotions were radioactive.

From the beginning of the film, we know that one of Jackson’s major torment is the fact that he is slowly losing his hearing which for a musician is pretty devastating. He not only rebels and refuses to take care of himself — a very normal attitude for people that are dealing with addictions– but never ever talks about it with his wife. In fact, it seems that she is not even aware that her husband is going deaf nor how painful must be for him to know his career is ending while she is rising to fame. The fact that he doesn’t feel capable of sharing his pain, fears and most vulnerable side to the women he so clearly wants to love is a tragedy.

Jackson’s suicide is a reflection of how we raise men to be emotionally disabled.

His tormented and very difficult childhood are of course a major element, but his incapacity to ask for help to the people closest to him –his brother and wife– and everyone’s passiveness and complicity with his addiction (easier to see a drunk man than a man who suffers) all pushed him into a corner he felt there wasn’t another way out.

The million dollar question: whose fault was it?

The scene that really got to me was when Bobby and Ally are crying together after the funeral. I don’t remember the exact dialogue but his brother tells her that she shouldn’t blame herself, that it wasn’t her fault, nor his, but Jackson’s. And that really got me upset because I didn’t believe that for a second.

The easy answer of course would be to blame Ally’s manager. He was the dick that told him he was never going to fully recover and that he was a major liability to her career. But that would be too easy. And it would ignore again how massively complex addictions are.

I started this article saying that the underlying story is one where we fail to understand how to help people with addictions. I think Jackson’s suicide is ultimately everyone’s fault.

Because we still fail to identify, understand, help and treat those who suffer from addictions.

Because we still raise boys with limited emotional tools, afraid to accept and show their vulnerability and expect men to deal with their problems alone and in silence.

Because ultimately, we keep pretending everything is OK, when things are clearly not.