Remiel

If James Dean hadn’t died, would anyone give a shit about him today?

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The premature death of a talented actor is like an unexpected and unwelcome breakup with your significant other. You immediately increase the perceived value of the relationship as a direct result of its loss.

As Daniel Gilbert argues in his book “Stumbling on Happiness”:

Among life’s cruelest truths is this one: Wonderful things are especially wonderful the first time they happen, but their wonderfulness wanes with repetition. Just compare the first and last time your child said “Mama” or your partner said “I love you” and you’ll know exactly what I mean. When we have an experience—hearing a particular sonata, making love with a particular person, watching the sun set from a particular window of a particular room—on successive occasions, we quickly begin to adapt to it, and the experience yields less pleasure each time. Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage.

James Dean divorced us right after the spectacular honeymoon, and so he became (as will Heath Ledger) “the one that got away”.

If that hadn’t happened, would he still be famous today? Yes, but he’d probably be remembered as more of a Gregory Peck sort of figure: gray haired, still sexy, still talented, but failing to elicit that visceral craving; “Do whatever you want to me, Dean. I’m yours, stud.”