After Heath Ledger's death, Jack Nicholson was quoted as saying "I warned him."
Ledger recently told reporters he "slept an average of two hours a night" while playing "a psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy ...
"I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.
I wondered what happens to any actor with great talent who can pour himself so completely into the persona of a sociopath. Does the permeability of his psyche leave him especially vulnerable?
Can a person become contaminated by a preoccupation with evil?
Maria Hsia Chang explores that question in Peering into the Abyss in the New Oxford Review.
"I think the Joker killed Heath Ledger." So writes licensed attorney and former public defender Jay Gaskill in his review of The Dark Knight. Gaskill is not being melodramatic; he is simply stating what other reviewers only hint at.
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Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." This famous but cryptic quote by Friedrich Nietzsche is understood to be a warning against too close a contact with evil. As one interpretation has it, if a person gazes too long at evil, it will become a part of him. Did Ledger fall prey to this mysterious phenomenon?
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To begin with, who are the potential victims? It appears that "looking into the abyss" refers to anyone whose work or interests brings him into a close proximity with evil. It can be an actor, such as Heath Ledger, who immerses himself too deeply into portraying evil and, in so doing, invites malefic forces into himself. It can be a writer, such as Iris Chang, whose subject is a historical account of man's inhumanity toward man. It can be FBI agents, soldiers, and policemen who enter the arena to directly confront and fight evildoers.
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But how exactly does evil exert its nefarious influence on a person? Evil's baneful effects may be likened to the invisible, odorless, and deadly radiation emitted by uranium. While it is wholly conceivable that writers such as Iris Chang would become disheartened by their research, why should it trigger such an acute depression that life becomes unbearable and relief is sought only in suicide? All of which leads one to wonder just what is this evil that lurks in the abyss.
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It is oft said that the greatest achievement of the Devil is to convince us that he does not exist. Catholic priest and scholar Malachi Martin called this "the ultimate camouflage." As he explained, "If your will does not accept the existence of evil, you are rendered incapable of resisting evil. Those with no capacity of resistance become prime targets for Possession."
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The clergy's reluctance to speak of the Devil and of Hell is all the more ironic because available evidence points to the laity's belief in both. Gallup polls of American adults found that in 2001, 71 percent believed in Hell. Increasing numbers also believed in a personal entity of evil called the Devil, from 55 percent of U.S. adults in 1990 to 70 percent in 2004.
via Chronicles of Atlantis