Famous people dying and how the public 'grieve' - a thread for discussion

[PollyFilla]

People were very upset when Princess Diana died but many felt the outpouring of grief was strange given that most of us didn't know her.

Ditto Jade Goody. Most people posting about her death didn't know her.

And likewise Natasha Richardson's sad death this week has moved a lot of people.

So this is a thread to talk about public grief and why people feel the way they do and whether it is completely normal and proper and appropriate or whether it is a symptom of how our press operates in the UK: it gives us all a lot of information on celebrities and so we feel we know them even though we don't.

I think the whole area is interesting. What do you feel in terms of grief for famous people who die and why?

no idea about the class thing.
I think people are odd if they say the grieve, but it is sad. it is always sad when someone dies. on a place like mn you have a lot of people of Jades age group who also have young children so this will scare them, the same way when little Ivan Cameron died it scared me. to close to home.
but all the drama and posts about crying..

I'd like to know when this fashion for leaving flowers to mark a death began. Not very British IMO. Remember being startled by roadside shrines in Greece years ago - had never seen one in this country but it seems to happen now. Did it start with Diana?

When a death is reported on the news, I feel a moment's sadness for family and friends - whether that's a story about a horrible road accident involving Joe Bloggs or a celeb. Someone famous that I am interested in, like John Lennon, does have more impact. But would never dream of getting all emotional about it - I'm not a relative or a friend so it's not my tragedy.

I think it isn't grief for a start. I think it's to do with identification. So many posts go, "I have children that age." Or "I knew someone with cancer." It's more about the person expressing sympathy. It's a sort of pleasurable enjoyment of intense sympathy and melancholia and agony. Nothing wrong with it only, in my opinion, it's what drama was created for. And it's not a suitable emotion to feel for celebrity strangers who are actually real people, not characters in some soap opera of Max Clifford's creation.

I think it isn't grief for a start. I think it's to do with identification. So many posts go, "I have children that age." Or "I knew someone with cancer." It's more about the person expressing sympathy. It's a sort of pleasurable enjoyment of intense sympathy and melancholia and agony. Nothing wrong with it only, in my opinion, it's what drama was created for. And it's not a suitable emotion to feel for celebrity strangers who are actually real people, not characters in some soap opera of Max Clifford's creation.

Never understood it tbh.

I think it is ok to feel a fleeting sadness for a stranger, but any more than that seems strange to me. I've known people get more upset over a celebrity whom they have never met than they did over a relative who they hadn't seen in years.

Why it should be more for a celebrity than for some unknown person in another country (many must have died around the world since I started typing this) I don't know. I've always suspected that famous people are considered more important by many so their deaths matter more.

What I feel is not Grief, it is sorrow for those left behind and sadness about a young life cut short. It is similar to the kind of feelings I have when I hear about a work mate's cousin dying. I may not have known the cousin and I may not know the work mate well, but I can sympathise with the sadness they must be feeling.

I have lost a parent very suddenly, and there is nothing that can describe the sense of loss and shock one feels when something like this happens. It is a different more raw and shocking grief. It does however make a person understand others people's grief.

So - just as I can feel sad about a character in a film dying, who's life I have followed for an hour and a half on screen, I also can feel sadness for the lost life of someone who's career I have followed or whos life I have read about.

I didn't understand the wailing grief people had for Diana and I don't really get why people felt the need to line the streets of London for someone they didn't know. I certainly wouldn't want to attend Jade's funeral, I didn't know her and I am sure I am not invited. Same as I wouldn't attend the work mate's cousin's funeral.

I don't think feeling sorrow for the situation Jade found herself in, the speed in which it took her life and the gap it will leave in her children's lives is in any way mawkish or unreasonable and it confuses me why some people have this terrible unstoppable desire to tell other posters how they should be feeling or how they should be expressing that sadness.

When Diana died I felt really sorry for her boys walking behind her coffin .. how hard was that for them??? I imagine its a memory that will never leave them but

think its really odd that people want to lay flowers or write a card for someone that they didnt know

I personally think if you want to do something when a seleb dies you should donate to something they would have approved of

bu hey each to their own

Lockets sums up my views and I am too lazy to type anything else.

beanieb just asking about your last sentance. why is it that people seem to think if you don't admit to sadness and the rest and maybe question all of it, you are then deemd heartless?
with diana I was very sad, but I did realise that it was not diana I was sad about, at that time we were greiving in rl for my much loved fil, I think the "diana" stuff gave us the chance to be sad iynwim.
I am greiving a real loss at the moment and I can do that openly as it is my loss, so I don't need to latch onto "jade". maybe other people are in the place I was with Diana.
hope that makes sense.

I think it is because death is the last taboo subject and it is a way that people can explore it without it being too personal.

I haven't cried over Jade though. I might do something like that if I was feeling particularly emotional but it's not natural for me to cry over the death of famous people.

herb what a lovely thoughtful post

Well, hasn't this kind of thing always gone on? Members of royalty in the past were given public funerals at which people demonstrated their grief / sympathy.

Look at the outpouring of emotion when Eva Peron died. The deaths of Marylin, Lennon and Diana are well documented and I'm sure there was much discussion over Elvis, James Dean and the Manchester United team.

I think that the MAIN reason for public emotion is that they died in their prime and that is something that strikes fear into the souls of each and every one of us. By demonstrating grief we are actually showing our own fear of the same thing happening to us.

"why is it that people seem to think if you don't admit to sadness and the rest and maybe question all of it, you are then deemd heartless?" 2shoes, I don't think people are heartless for not crying. In real life I am quite stoical and some might say 'heartless' because I am quite in charge of my emotions.

What I do think is heartless (in the context of this thread and the death of people like Jade Goody or Princess Diana) is when people can't stop themselves from trampling all over other people's emotions and thoughts and telling them they are somehow wrong to feel sadness.

I actually do agree that there are some terribly mawkish posts on these subjects and I don't fully understand how people feel so connected to these famous people that they weep over them, but I think it's crass for me to march in and start telling them so.

The way I see it (re the whole sadness over jade's illness and death thing) is that as a member of a board like this, if you really don't feel "sadness and the rest" then don't express any. Simple as.

There's a difference between not feeling sadness and having to express the fact that you don't feel sadness IMO.

These kind of threads remind me of a book I read where a state of mind was referred to as "weltschmerz"

here

There isn't much there, but the line that stands out at me is:

"It is also used to denote the feeling of sadness when thinking about the evils of the world?compare empathy, theodicy"

I think that when a famous person (or not famous, just somebody you sort of know / know through a friend etc) you do apply the whole evil of the world logic. Is it fair that a young mother has died leaving her two children behind, be it Jade through cancer, or Princess Di through a car accident? No, of course it isn't. It does happen, all too often people die leaving young children or die "before their time".

I dont feel grief at the news of Jade's death - I have lost one loved one (I have been very fortunate to get to 27 having only lost a granddad) and the feelings are different, of course they are.

But it doesn't stop me feeling sad when I heard of somebody dying, either because the news is so widespread, or whether its a lot to do with sympathy if its somebody close to somebody I know.