You can't die you've been on the telly! (Celebrity deaths: Why do they affect us?)

Member Name: annieboo

Product:	Celebrity deaths: Why do they affect us?
Date:	02/04/09 (138 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Not a lot

Disadvantages: even less!

When I saw this topic it made me stop and think. Now before I start I must confess I don't really buy into the whole celebrity circus but I AM sometimes moved by peoples individual stories.
I am "lucky" enough to know a quite few people in the public eye but then again I know lots of people that are not. The point is that there are not that many differences between them. True, some(but by no means all)of the famous ones have more money but death is a great leveler. As the saying goes there are no pockets in a shroud.

Why is the death of someone in the public eye somehow more important then? Truth is I don't believe it is. The main difference is more people know them. It is a strange fact that somehow being in the public eye means that often people feel they have the right to comment on all aspects of their life-areas entirely unconnected with the area in which they are famous for. Taking this to its logical conclusion when a cleb dies we feel as though we have lost a member of the family.
Sometimes this can be the first expierence of death, thankfully with the improvements in health care and preventive medicine people are living longer. When a famous person dies after the initial shock(believe me death is ALWAYS a shock)their is a reminder of our own mortality. We see people living in a way that many people aspire to yet they still die. Money, fame and success and still they die.
Personally although I am sad when I hear about anyone dying(famous or not) I am not overly scared of the process. No i am not a ghoul but I do have far too much expierence of death(and no, I am NOT an undertaker either!) My sister died when I was 5, my Father in the September as I had turned 7 in July.
In the last year alone I have lost 3 people I was very close to. Obviously these deaths affected me far more as I KNEW them(and was related to two of them). However I feel that grief hits people in many ways. There is no "correct way" to grieve. The death of a celebrity can act as a catylist, it can "allow" people to show their loss. Somehow it is more acceptablt to be upset about someone you don't know, have never met and (had they lived)would never meet anyway!
The huge ammount of magazines simply dedicated to the lives of clebs simply promote the idea that we "know" people such as Jordan, Cheryl Cole etall. Losing a friend is awful losing someone you may read about every week can be almost as devistating I guess.
If this "trial run" helps to get death out in the open and allows discussion of the subject then it can be only a good thing. However there is a rather mawkish almost industry springing up which I don't feel is healthy.
I honestly think that it is important to be able to "draw a line" between those we know and those we THINK we know.
I can honestly say I was sorry to hear about Jade Goody but as I have never watched Big Brother(honest) and didn't follow her career in any way. I was sorry to hear that she had died but there again I would feel the same sadness if I heard about ANYONE so young and with such a young family. Death is tragic for anyone famous or not. Fame does not take the pain away.

Summary: Death the great leveller.