Schrödinger's Comments May Have a Lack of Depp

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Schrödinger's Comments May Have a Lack of Depp
by J. Edward Tremlett, Columnist

September 8, 2003

"Down On the rANT Farm"

J. Edward Tremlett 1) Depp Perception:

Notable actor Johnny Depp may or may not have said some negative things about his home country, recently, which is usually the case with celebrities who suffer from Hoofinmouthitis.

Unfortunately, these things - which may or may not have been said - may or may not have been said in front of a reporter's microphone. Shortly thereafter the comments appeared in a German magazine, and when translated back into English they got him some very bad publicity very quickly. And this is also usually the case with celebrities suffering from Hoofinmouthitis.

Depp disavowed these possible comments not long thereafter. According to him (or his press agent, at least) the statements were all taken out of context. And this - you guessed it - ALSO usually the case with celebrities who suffer from Hoofinmouthitis.

One then has to wonder whether the magazine that interviewed him played cut and paste with his quotes, or else caught him when he was as out of his mind as the amusingly sun-baked pirate captain from his latest movie, and just let him rattle on for an hour or so.

I wonder if Comedy Central has ever considered dropping the somewhat lackluster, obviously-prescripted "I'm With Busey" show and making a totally unscripted "I'm With Depp... Maybe," instead. Watching Johnny Depp wander through life as though through a filmy cloud of stardust could be even more entertaining than The Osbournes is purported to be.

But then, we weren't there, so we don't know what happened. I wonder if Mr. Depp, does, either.

I also wonder if he was even there at all...

2) Schrödinger's Comment

Those doomed to study Physics on the collegiate level often have to learn to spell the name Schrödinger. This is because of the late Erwin Schrödinger's contributions to the field of quantum physics: namely, the appropriately-named "Schrödinger equation" which founded the field, itself.

As I wasn't among the doomed, I couldn't tell you a damn thing about it, except what one could possibly extrapolate outwards from Mr. Schrödinger's unfortunate cat.

According to the story, one puts three things in an airtight box: a pellet of poison, a radioactive element, and a live cat. One then closes the box. As of the moment you close the box, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. And this is because you have no way of knowing whether the poor kitty is alive, dead or somewhere inbetween until you open the box, thus taking a measurement of the cat's being alive or dead by virtue of the enraged puss scratching your face off, or not.

(And NO: I don't know what the poison or the radioactive stuff was in there for. Maybe as a last-ditch precaution to keep some smart-ass kid in the back of the room from asking how long it took the poor kitty to dehydrate.)

The story all has to to with atomic structure. Atoms are made up of particles, or so they say; They could also be made up of waves. That's because atoms behave like particles some of the time, and waves at other times. And scientists - ever searching for a reasonable explanation as to why they can't find an explanation for everything - posit that the atoms can actually change from being waves to being particles at the drop of a microscopic hat, and that they don't actually formally assume one state or the other UNTIL THEY ARE MEASURED.

It might sound an awful lot like Dr. Sot's infamous proclamation that the cause of cancer amongst any given batch of lab rats was actually the rats themselves. Or maybe it really does make a whole hell of a lot of sense if you have a P.H.D. in Physics, no fashion sense and the Periodic Table of Elements pinned up in your locker instead of Ms. September, 2003.

But, either way, that's the scoop on Schrödinger's cat. In brief, given that the very building blocks of "reality" are in constant flux, then we can say without much wishy-washyness that, as regards any contentious situation, "either way, you're probably right."

3) A Lack of Depp:

Which means that Johnny Depp both did and did not make those comments. He may or may not have said them. He may or may not have meant them. He also may or may not have been saying them to Stern Magazine at the time he may or may not have been saying OR meaning them.

So there may have been absolutely nothing taken out of context. There may be nothing to disavow at all.

He might not have even been there. It could have all been some strange hallucination. Maybe they were actually talking to Michael Moorcock, instead?

And the glorious thing about it? Either way, it really doesn't f@#$ing matter! Who really and truly gives a damn what Johnny Depp - an actor - may or may not think about the home country he's already moved out of?

We don't pay him to give HIS opinion on anything, do we? Of course not. His opinion doesn't really matter worth a damn.

We pay him to put on a costume, get in front of a movie camera and pretend to be someone else. To give someone else's opinions. To be that man and his opinions in action when the story heats up.

Johnny Depp is not famous because of who he IS. He's famous for being who he's NOT, on demand, day after day on the set. He's famous for being an Anybody. A fluid fiction.

A quantum field.

We experience The Quantum Field That Is Johnny Depp (TQFTIJD) for a period of time that looks like only maybe one and a half to two hours to us, but was in reality more like six months to a year or so to him. We pay him to live outside of time in some weird limbo where we only see him when we really want to.

And the rest of the time he's... where? France? Hollywood? Planet Hollywood? Planet Ten? Does it really matter where he goes? No, it doesn't.

And does it really matter what he says? Does it really matter who he marries, what he buys, what he thinks, who he votes for, what he does with his time, and what he says to some German magazine that needs to put naked women on the cover in order to compete with Der Spiegel?

No. It doesn't.

4) Inconclusion

Johnny Depp is Schrödinger's man. He can be everything and nothing because it's part of his job. Only his celebrity status - granted for living that strange life as both One and Anyone - guarantees that a microphone will magically appear when he wants to say something. But given his state, what the man has to say is about as important as turtle droppings on the beach. Before long, they're gone, replaced by sea foam, sea shells and the occasional, crumpled can of Iced Tea endemic to any daytime walk by the shore.

The art produced via the job he does MAY survive. The man will not. The art will go on. The comments surrounding it will mutate and go forward. The comments about him, the person who played the man in the art, will eventually die out and be of interest only to biographers and historians. And nobody reads that s@#$, anyway.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my own, personal way of saying that we're making way too much of what TQFTIJD either said or didn't say. Besides, unlike most persons who really seem to dislike America, at least he actually got up and left, which is a lot more than can be said for far too many: most notably those who were going to leave in disgust back when Clinton was both elected and then reelected, but then elected to stay so as to not miss a day's worth of Rush Limbaugh - yet another man who may or may not be for real.

Item: most Physicists I knew in College were staunch Libertarians. Make of that what you will. ***

"Someone kicked my dog Mavis and I'm gonna find out just who the hell it was / I'm all messed up on cough syrup right now, so just, like, never mind."

"Rastabilly" - Dead Milkmen ***

J. Edward Tremlett is a published author, political thinker and self-described "mean-spirited crank." He lives with his wife and two cats in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

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Photo of J. Edward Tremlett courtesy of staff files