This week saw the death of Michael Jackson and with it, one of the ugliest forms of participation sports began to rear its malformed head: public grieving.
It's always struck me as a bizarre practice. When a celebrity dies, one with a mass appeal, ordinary, seemingly sane members of the population turn into irrational fools. Crying on the news, lighting candles in their windows, posting over-emotional Facebook status updates and generally making me seriously consider emigrating and never coming back.
I just fail to understand how you could feel such grief for someone you have never met. I'm pretty sure a lot of these MJ mourners have poured out more emotion over his death than they have for real-life family members or friends who've died.
In my lifetime, I first remember this form of mass hysteria when I was 13 and Diana died. Admittedly it was a tragic event but the ensuing "Great British" reaction was one of the most embarrassing periods of recent national history.
From the radio stations not playing anything but classical music to the public weeping to the constant, mind-crushing news coverage it was a sad time for all the wrong reasons. Around the same time, Mother Theresa also lost her life but received about one hundredth of the attention. But then she didn't dance with John Travolta at the White House...
It's at times like then and now that I feel incredibly alienated from people as a whole. It's not that I'm denying the tragedy of death at all but I just don't feel linked enough to someone I have only ever encountered via the television to feel much emotion.
Along with Madame Tussauds and autographs, it's a side of celebrity culture that I have always failed to understand. I think it's another example of people desperately trying to cling to something they're not really a part of. By grieving for Michael Jackson and by telling EVERYONE about it via Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, messages in bottles, you're implying that you're part of this special community. Membership to this community puts you one step closer to the celebrity you're idolising, whether they be dead or alive.
If it was real grief of course, it wouldn't be so disgustingly public. It's this very reason why I despise RIP Facebook groups for classmates/colleagues/family members who have died. If I died and someone created a Facebook page to commemorate me, I would haunt them severely. Like proper Poltergeist haunting, none of that Truly Madly Deeply shit.
Another reason for this sort of insanity is linked to mortality in general. When Jade, Peasant Princess, died a few months back, people were scared by how young she was when she died. They projected their fears of their own death onto her and this whipped itself up into a frenzy of black-topped OK! covers and yet more public weeping.
This whole, horrible form of group grief will only worsen with time. The closer people get to their idols, by following their Twitter feed and pretending they have some sort of interaction with them, the more they can fool themselves into thinking they're allowed to wear black for a week when they die. I'm not denying that a lot of these people do feel genuine sadness when someone like Michael Jackson dies. I'm just worried by the frightening lack of perspective this might suggest.
Maybe I'm just a heartless bastard? I was labelled 'Tin Man' by an ex before. But personally I think real, genuine grief should be private and should also have some sort of basis in reality. To play me out here are some sample 'Tweets' on MJ's death:
RIP Michael Jackson never cried for someone as much as I have for you.
Why is it Pres. Obama is not making a statement over the death of Michael Jackson?
Dedicated my last two evenings to remembering michael jackson
cant sleep still thinkin bout mj.....
he reached across space and time, across genres and cultures, upward, outwards, beyond...a star on earth, now a star in heaven...RIP MJ x
MJ I MISS U MORE TODAY,THAN YESTERDAY....
Oh and just to point out these were all from the last 4 minutes...
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2 comments:
Hmm. While I kinda get the point you're making, I think the whole outpouring of grief by people who pour out more emotion for celebrities "than they have for real-life family members or friends who have died" is more significant than you're admitting; the reason they pour out such grief for someone they don't know is that they're crippled emotionally and can't grieve for people close to them. A celebrity they don't really know is an outlet for all their pent-up grief that they have no other way of getting out.
The tweets you've picked out maybe aren't so bad really - perhaps when someone says "dedicated my last two evenings to remembering Michael Jackson" they mean that they are remembering his music and its context in their life, and the good times - or bad times - they had with friends and family while his songs soundtracked significant periods in their lives. Music is such an emotive thing, and just a single phrase from a song can throw you back to memories of things you did years ago.
The public outpouring of grief is fairly gruesome from some angles, yeah, but I bet it's something that, for a lot of people, gives them a rare chance to consider their own lives, and their relationships with others.
We might be soulmates.
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