Life & Style

Tanya Sweeney: There is genuine, grim theatre when it comes to celebrity death

When a well-known person dies, the spectacle carries on for days in the news agenda

Caroline Flack (left), Jack Charlton and Naya Rivera. Photograph: PA/The Irish Times/Getty Images

Tanya Sweeney
Sat Aug 15 2020 - 06:00

You don’t need me to remind you that 2020 has been a year thoroughly pockmarked with loss and tragedy. Yet even as a pandemic makes tragedy a part of everyday life, there appears to have been a strangely cruel wave of high-profile deaths of late. John Hume, Jack Charlton, Kelly Preston, Naya Rivera, Ennio Morricone, Ian Holm; even in very recent weeks, we appear to have lurched from one to the next.

The year has taken its fair share of legends already. Some can barely be described as untimely - Vera Lynn died at 103, and Olivia de Havilland at 104 - yet somehow when the news is delivered, it prompts a strange emotional mix of shock, nostalgia, and even vulnerability.

It's a strange experience, almost like grieving a friend or acquaintance

Time once was that a celebrity death was mentioned at the end of a nightly news bulletin, or in a newspaper obituary. A moment of warm-hearted tribute, barely to be repeated. We’d hear of a notable person’s death with a sad, resigned sigh and most likely we’d get on with the rest of the day.

But not anymore.

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The spectacle of celebrity death carries on for days with a spree of tributes and think pieces. News outlets mull over every single detail until the sad event has been juiced for all its worth. Celebrity death has been shunted right to the top of the news agenda, and stays there for days as details, aftermaths, final words are pored over. Final tweets and “poignant” Instagram posts make front-page news. On social media, the tributes come for days on end, with everyone feeling obligated to join in the chorus, or at least report the death as though they’re a one-person Reuters. The emotional responses get amplified manifold. Someone always seems to have an unsavoury conspiracy theory to hand. In some particularly awful cases, there are disturbing photos of the deceased person online.

“What happened there, do you know?” people would ask me of actress Naya Rivera’s tragic death in July, as though I might have some sort of strange inside track on how her death occurred.

There is genuine, grim theatre in the death of celebrity. It’s a strange experience, almost like grieving a friend or acquaintance. Childhoods, unrequited crushes and old memories of gigs in crowded concert halls or dimmed lights in cinemas resurface.

Sometimes, the days of mass mourning can feel fitting, possibly even heart-warming. With tributes coming at a steady clip, Ireland gave the likes of Gay Byrne and Brendan Grace the sort of affectionate send-off they deserved. Last week, too, was an opportunity to reflect anew on John Hume’s considerable political legacy.

Sensationalism

Yet at its worst, a celebrity death story can occasionally spill into the realm of sensationalism.

Last week, following an inquest into her death in February, I know more about the awful final moments of TV presenter Caroline Flack than, frankly, I should have any right to. What was clearly a hellish episode for Flack, not to mention her family, is being giddily consumed as entertainment.

How did we get from celebrity death being a footnote on the news, to a seriously macabre soap opera? For a start, we have a closer attachment and more acute sense of ownership or loyalty to these celebrities than we did years ago. They mean more to us and make more of an imprint on our experiences than they ever did before. Singers articulate our heartbreak; actors express our hopes and issues on screen. Mourning them moves way beyond the merely sentimental.

Perhaps this overblown, performative mourning is a way for us to confront our own mortality

Perhaps it depends on the public figure in question. If they lived their lives privately, they can sometimes enjoy the dignity and respect of a private death. Those who allowed their lives to be consumed publicly aren’t quite so lucky. The public’s voracious appetite for detail doesn’t stop at death.

Yet celebrity deaths prompt something else. We are shocked and scared not so much of the loss of a public figure, but of the reminder of the very one thing that will happen to all of us. Because we now expect to live well into old age, we have a cultural taboo around death that makes it feel so very far away. There’s a sense that if we try hard enough, we might just outrun death.

But death is the one thing that science can’t cure.

Perhaps this overblown, performative mourning is a way for us to confront our own mortality. There is a certain comfort in sharing our emotions with others. On the day that Prince died in April 2016, I was meeting friends for a drink. The news of his death reached us like a fevered whisper. And yes, I was giddy for details. Later, we arrived at a hastily organised tribute night, and listened to one Prince song after another. We were demonstrably maudlin. We were not die-hard fans, but we reflected on where he fit in our collective memories. In the end, we partied like it was 1999.

Celebrities have provided us with memories, escapism and entertainment. Some of them will have been involved in some of our best and worst moments. In many cases, it doesn’t occur to us that a full stop could happen to their lives. As the significance of organised religion and ritual ebbs away in modern society, celebrities have become quasi-religious gods these days. And no-one expects gods to die.

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