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(This article
was first published on April 19, 2001.)
With the
mega-hits Meet the Parents and There’s Something About
Mary, Ben Stiller has establishedf himself as one of
the most talented and popular comic actors in Hollywood. The son of
comedy veterans Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, he has been able to repackage
his parents’ witty and sardonic humor for an entirely new generation.
In addition,
Stiller’s work on Saturday Night Live and his own sketch
comedy TV show have allowed him access to some of the brightest comedians
working today. Assimilating this diversity of comic stylings into his
inherently creative mind has given Stiller the unique position of working
in the Hollywood mainstream while simultaneously satirizing the glitz
and superficiality of the star-maker machinery. As his birth chart maintains,
Stiller’s work ethic and capitalization of recent transits has allowed
him the power to wield his creativity liberally and in a diversity of
roles without jeopardizing his outsider integrity.
Humor
in Woe
 With
responsible, work-oriented Saturn square (90-degree angle) his natal Sun,
or self, Stiller is anything but the Gen X slacker he is fond of parodying.
This tense aspect between the Sun and Saturn has given him a very disciplined,
consistent work ethic. With Saturn in hard aspect to the Sun, Stiller
has been able to carve a singular niche with a high degree of authority
in the movie industry, sustaining a long period of relative obscurity
before achieving broad recognition. Although he made his debut in Steven Spielberg’s
Empire of the Sun in 1987 as “Dainty,” it wasn’t until eleven
years later that Stiller gained wide recognition beyond a small, devoted
following with There’s Something About Mary.
This Saturn-Sun
combination also affords a self-deprecating, “everyman” style of comedy.
The ineffectual, slightly neurotic and dejected characters Stiller has
portrayed in comedies are reminiscent of roles that Woody Allen has cast
for himself. Allen is a filmmaker who, like Stiller, has Sun in Sagittarius square Saturn in Pisces.
There is
often very little humor to be found in the difficult, hard and sobering
combination of Saturn in aspect to the Sun. However, since Stiller’s Sun
is in Sagittarius–the sign ruled by optimistic and philosophical Jupiter–there
is a tendency to celebrate and make light of the demands and problematic
circumstances offered up by Saturn.
While watching
Flirting with Disaster, we cannot help but laugh and commiserate
with Stiller’s character’s neurosis-induced search for his biological
parents and the mayhem and hardship that happens along the way. Playing
the awkward and ordinary Ted Stroehmann in There’s Something About
Mary, Stiller lets us laugh at the unapologetically tasteless
material that would be tragic and horrific if not cloaked in humor. Finally,
in Meet the Parents, Stiller’s Greg Focker endures
rejection, ostracization and humiliation by his would-be in-laws in a
film that, ironically, turned out to be the feel-good comedy of 2000.
Return
of the Repressed
Stiller’s
niche is cerebral comedy for the Gen X intelligentsia, but his departure
into mainstream low-brow, gross-out comedy with There’s Something
About Mary struck a vein with America-at-large and thrust his
career into overdrive. During the filming and release of Mary,
Stiller was undergoing a Pluto conjunction to his natal Sun. Pluto is
the planet of power and transformation, and a potential expression of a
Pluto transit to the Sun is to allow one to achieve and wield more power,
to accomplish on a broader scale and to be in touch with one’s life force
to a greater degree than ever before or after in one’s life.
During this
nearly three-year-long transit, Stiller’s career took off, and he became
a household name by starring in some of the highest grossing comedies
of all time. No longer considered a chancy newcomer appealing to a cult
following, Stiller has achieved legitimate bargaining power in Hollywood
and is one of tinseltown’s most sought after and highly paid stars.
Other Sagittarian celebrities who have had a recent power thrust indicative
of Pluto transiting their Suns include Britney
Spears, Ed Harris and Lucy
Liu.
Pluto is
also symbolic of anything and everything that lies beneath polite societal
conventions, and is representative of all repressed material. Like an
eruptive, instinctual force, a Pluto transit can destroy any lid that
keeps taboo material from surfacing. The humor in There’s Something
About Mary relied heavily on scatology, body
parts and fluids, and vulgarities–material witnessed and acknowledged
privately in our daily lives yet not suitable for public discourse. Stiller,
with his Pluto-Sun transit, was front and center in some of the grossest–and
funniest–scenes in film history. Critics and audiences were drawn to There’s
Something About Mary for its cathartic power and its ability to
safely discharge and deflate societal repression through humor. Momentarily,
then, Ben Stiller was the carrier of the collective shadow, that figurative
repository of disowned, threatening and provocative material alive and
vital in all of us.
Success
Through Variation
Although
most known for his recent roles in Meet the Parents and
Mary, Stiller has found success in a diversity of capacities:
as director, producer, screenwriter and Emmy-award winning television
writer and author. This eclectic approach toward professional life is
indicative of a natal Jupiter placement in the sign of versatility and
communication, Gemini.
Jupiter’s
house and sign position in the birth chart is often a good indication
of where we find success in life, professional or otherwise. Stiller’s
Jupiter in Gemini has allowed him to favorably pour his comic talents
into a number of outlets, expanding well beyond the boundary of comic
actor. Since Jupiter is also associated with personal fulfillment and
joy, it would be hard to envision Stiller happy pigeonholed into just
one of his chosen pursuits.
In spite
of the pressure for Stiller to exclusively reprise his triumphs in Hollywood
comedies, his greatest success and gratification have and will continue
to come by dabbling in a variety of media. With Jupiter returning to
its natal position in his birth chart this summer, there looks like no
end in sight to the number of creative hats Stiller can wear in and outside
of Hollywood.
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