Robin Williams and the Overlooked Beauty of Changing Your Mind

Sure doesn’t feel like it’s been seven years since he left us

I am very fortunate to have wonderful commenters who engage deeply with my articles and my ideas and treat me and each other with respect. I have a wonderful community here that adds immeasurably to the site on a daily basis. 

That’s partially due to the exceedingly modest size of Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place. Nobody is going to end up here unless they are a fan of me and my work and want a nice, smart place to discuss both. 

A lot of pop culture websites get traffic and advertising money by giving readers what they think they want, which is a never-ending blast of news and think-pieces about the biggest and most talked about entertainment of the day. 

I, on the other hand, have accepted that this website will never be the least bit popular or lucrative, so it may as well be honest and pure.

Readers consequently go to these slick content hubs largely for new information and do not feel as intense and personal a connection  to these sites as they do a site like mine, which is one unfiltered, uncensored dude in the wilderness trying to make sense of the world and his place in it one day at a time. 

It is consequently very rare, thankfully, for the site to receive angry, negative or vitriolic comments. So you can imagine how surprised I was when, some ten months after I wrote an earnest, well-received blog post about missing Robin Williams in his absence and feeling bad that I did not appreciate him and his extraordinary gifts during his lifetime I got the following response,  “Well congratulations and a big round of applause to you sir! The likes of you and your "poison pen", is one of the main reasons this wonderful soul felt so miserable, he eventually gave up on life. Your constant bespatter led to the demise of one of the brightest lights on this earth. Your noxious blathering and non-sensitive smug criticism destroyed something truly beautiful, and for that alone, you should be deeply ashamed, for the rest of your useless life. The fact that you still have audacity to continue your scatheful game, makes you the lowest of the low.”

Like most writers, I am hyper-sensitive to criticism and convinced that the world is full of Pandora’s Boxes that, if opened, would reveal the ugly, incontrovertible truth that pretty much everybody hates me and my career as a writer is fundamentally over. 

Yet the tone of the comment was so histrionic and over the top in its verbosity that it was damn near impossible to take seriously. It felt like it had to be a bit, that no one could genuinely be that apoplectic about a sincere essay about how Robin Williams was a lovely man and a great artist and sometimes you don’t value people until after they’re gone. 

If it wasn’t a bit, or a strange form of trolling, then the commenter wildly overestimates the impact and influence of my writing. I can’t say for certain, but I’m pretty sure that Williams ultimately chose to take his own life because he had a horrible, incurable disease that made it impossible to control or even trust his body and mind, not because I (and every other critic in the world) gave Patch Adams a negative review as a twenty-two year old freelance film critic for The A.V Club. 

Despite this excitable fellow’s contention that I should end either my career or life as penance for being largely responsible for Robin Williams’ death I one hundred percent stand by the piece and think you should NEVER be ashamed to change your mind about something in art or entertainment, particularly if that change involves being kinder, softer and more empathetic and grateful as you get older. This is true even if it somehow leads to someone accusing you of murdering beloved funnyman Robin Williams with your harsh words about the movie Father’s Day. 

There’s nothing wrong with appreciating someone anew after they die. That’s not hypocrisy or opportunism or being performative in your fandom: it’s an admirable part of human nature. 

Besides, I’m way less attached to my opinions than I was a young man. At 25, I was way too invested in my opinions. I thought they mattered. I now realize they do not. What’s important about people like Robin Williams and DMX, who die way too young and leave sizable holes in a lot of people’s hearts, is that they made a profound impact during their lifetimes and leave behind incredible legacies, not that I gave their work negative reviews as a neophyte critic barely out of college.

People grow and change and evolve, sometimes for the worst and sometimes for the better but it’s essential to embrace change in all of its complexity because otherwise we’re doomed to become rigid, brittle and bitter at a world that by definition will similarly never stop changing, whether we want it to or not. 

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