Whitney Houston and her daughter
Elvis Presley
Michael Jackson
Judy Garland
Heath Ledger
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Carrie Fisher
Jimi Hendrix
There are a lot of them, both famous and obscure. Then there are the people whose lives the entertainment industry's corruption has ruined, even though it didn't kill them; there are a lot of them, too.
I think that part of the problem is that many of the people from that industry who manage not to die, lose all their money, have their health destroyed, or be turned into objects of public ridicule would rather think that they avoided these things because they are particularly tough or smart or talented or destined to be successful. I think they like looking at the dead or crippled bodies lying by the side of the metaphorical road to fame and fortune and congratulating themselves for not being one of them. The cult of their superiority doesn't motivate them to try to change the industry; it motivates them, if you can call it that, to defend the status quo.
They like to think that only the strong survive, but they're so alike in their self-centered cruelty that I think there's a personality type that predicts success in that industry.
Some of the traits of the Successful Entertainment Industry Type:
-Smart but not too smart
-Talented but not too talented
-Totally unoriginal. You are allowed to copy from the past. You must have absolute reverence for the shrine of Past Entertainment Industry Successes, or the entertainment industry's version of reality about everything that wasn't successful. For example, Marilyn Monroe was a miserable person. The world is not allowed to think of her that way, is not allowed to make the industry accountable for what it did to her.
Most of all, you have to be able to switch on the ability to care about nobody other than yourself and those whom the entertainment industry has approved as being on the list of people whose quality of life isn't a negligible or even laughable concern.
