THE facts answer

Michael Douglas’ Destiny
and a Hug on TV
The actor, a cancer sufferer, asks to be embraced during a TV show. This gesture reveals many things...

by John waters

Watching Michael Douglas’ recent interview with David Letterman, it was impossible not to remark on something that emerged only as a subtext. The surface events had a clear meaning: Douglas had been diagnosed with throat cancer.  Already he had begun courses of radium and chemotheraphy.
But, as Letterman said, his appearance did not suggest anything of this trauma. He looked amazing for a man in his mid-60s. He wore a white linen suit and a pink shirt. He was tanned. At the start of the YouTube clip, there is an advertisement for shampoo, which inevitably draws the curiosity to his hair, which was bleached and extraordinarily healthy-looking. He seemed in good spirits. He mentioned his wife and children and the great summer they’d had. He played down the fact that his condition had gone undetected for some time, despite a persistent sore throat.
If I had watched the interview with the sound turned down, I would not in a million years have intuited its content. Douglas and Letterman were smiling throughout.
The two men appeared to be old friends, making the kind of banter that men who care for one another often use to maintain a distance while communicating affection. But the facts spoke solemnly. Douglas said he has an 80 percent chance of surviving this episode. “You don’t sound like you have throat cancer,” Letterman said. “Because,” replied Douglas, “I’m on stage.” But at the end of the interview there occurred an extraordinary moment. Letterman asked Douglas if there was anything, he, Letterman, could do. It did not seem planned. “You can give me a hug,” Douglas replied, beginning to rise from his chair. Letterman rose too and embraced him. It might have been a sentimental moment, but it went much deeper.
Douglas clung to the other man as though to speak to him of what had happened in a different way than they had just done for the audience.
In the commentaries that followed, the main theme has been to applaud the actor’s “courage” and to say that the openness of his approach to his disease is constructive for those who suffer in the same way.
Yes. But in this moment, we saw something else: the vulnerability of the human being in the face of the ineluctable mysteries of life and death, which must be faced alone by the famous as well as by those who encounter similar moments anonymously.  The embrace said many things: “Me too? I can’t believe it!”; “It will be ok, won’t it?”; “So, this is what it is like?”; “Am I really alone?”…
Douglas’ request came across, in the culture in which it occurred, as ironic. He was laughing. But the hug itself was not ironic at all: it spoke profoundly of his human need in the face of his ultimate fate. He needed to be embraced by another. It is a moment each of us must be ready to experience, and from which anticipation a new sense of being flies backwards to meet us. Even in this brave performance, Michael Douglas was crying out to be reassured by something beyond what is immediately evident.