Exposing David Carradine's dark side

last updated 8 January 2015

"God knows we all have our little fetishes," said Dee O'Keeffe in the Dublin Herald. So it's sad that the world is consumed with speculation about actor David Carradine's sexual tastes because of the way he died—naked, in a Bangkok hotel-room wardrobe, with cords tied around his neck and genitals. Shame on the exes now sharing gossip about what one called Carradine's "deviant" sexual tastes—our "dark" fantasies should be allowed to die with us.

Things might not have gotten out of hand if a Thai newspaper hadn't "appallingly" published David Carradine's death photo, said Lynn Crosbie in the Toronto Globe & Mail. Carradine's family understandably wants to figure out what happened. But the rest of us should stop speculating about whether he committed suicide, or died in an act of autoerotic asphyxiation, or was murdered by a prostitute. It would be a grave injustice to remember Carradine, 72, not as a talented actor but as a "sad old freak."

Regardless of whether autoerotic asphyxiation "was the actual cause of Carradine’s death," said Yvonne K. Fulbright in Fox News, the circumstances of his death "bring attention to this potentially deadly form of sex play." Cutting off blood flow to the brain supposedly makes for a more intense orgasm for some people, but an estimated 500 to 1,000 Americans, most of them young men, die from the practice every year. Maybe all this attention to David Carradine's dark side will help warn people to find a safer way to get their kicks.