Grief Porn : media and mass mourning

BY Visa Ravindran| IN Media Practice | 10/08/2009

The steady multiplication of news channels, and the frequency of ¡®breaking news¡¯ have also multiplied the number of times we watch visuals of the same event in a day, or several days, as is often the case in celebrity deaths.  First Princess Diana¡¯s accident and death, and now Michael Jackson¡¯s recent demise, are events that have seen mass hysteria on the part of fans, in addition to a no-holds-barred snooping, and a continuous focus from the media.  The coverage has been so sentimental, that the personalities involved appear to be chocolate heroes, and serious deviations are viewed as mere peccadilloes.

Times journalist, Patrick West, called this new phenomena, ¡®conspicuous compassion¡¯, a rite born of a personal need þu"mourning sickness is a religion for the lonely crowd that no longer subscribes to orthodox churches.  Its flowers and teddies are its rites, its collective minute¿s silences its liturgy and mass¡­¡± Carol Sarler, as guest columnist for The Times, noted that though "this new and peculiar pornography of grief" is sometimes called a ¿tribute¿, " the cruder truth is that ersatz grief is now the new pornography; like the worst of hard-core, it is stimulus by proxy, voyeuristically piggy-backing upon that which might otherwise be deemed personal and private, for no better reason than frisson and the quickening of an otherwise jaded pulse.¡±

This over-heated response is fed into by repeated viewing of the event, which distorts and confuses, sometimes enhancing seriousness, reducing it at others. The viewer, being a ¡®grief junkie ¡® ( Daniel Finkelstein), mourns continuously, with disbelief suspended and his/her box of tissues in place. The dancing that was said to be a spontaneous celebration of Michael Jackson¡¯s life, somehow seemed inappropriate within minutes of the death announcement, and totally lacking in thought for the immediate family and genuine mourners who adopted other rites of remembrance for their departed idol. At this juncture, the speculation about cause of death, wills or the lack of, children, custody, money, debts, the Neverland ranch were all intrusions into a time of mourning. If TV channels and journals felt the need to satisfy public curiosity, the timing could have been more thoughtfully chosen.  Always in a time of grief, loss, fear of death [ the attacks on students in Australia], or mourning [ the killing some years ago, of an Indian engineer in Afghanistan], restraint is the imperative need of the hour, and the dignity of victims. and consideration for their shaken families should outweigh the exploitation of opportunities to capture audiences.

Cultural criticism of media-generated mass mourning has described it as, mourning for the benefit of the mourner, rather than the departed soul. It seems to be a vicarious projection of oneself into the shoes of the bereaved to gratify oneself.  Robert Yates, Assistant Editor of The Observer, says he first noticed this after the death of Princess Diana, when media coverage seemed to be producing, "gratification derived from a tenuous connection to the misfortunes of others; the gratuitous indulgence of tangential association with tragedy; getting off on really bad news".  Psychologists have also seen this indulgence in the present economic downturn as springing from a deep-seated need to turn away from more real, and present, anxieties about the future.

Is this an artificial commisseration on the part of the public, or one whipped into exaggerated life by a media-driven frenzy, an ersatz rudaali? There is more fodder for the mills when celebrity deaths are surrounded by questions like, was it death or murder/ homicide or manslaughter?  Was the princess pregnant? The speculations, from Diana¡¯s relationships, to Jackson¡¯s plastic surgeries, his medical and other needs, including the child abuse accusations against him ,his extravagant lifestyle and his colossal debts, continue. No wonder then that media coverage of  the exaggerated mourning following celebrity deaths has, pejoratively, come to be called ¡®grief porn¡¯.

James Thomas of the University of Cardiff, writing in the International Journal of Cultural Studies, looks at the phenomenon of mass mourning and its manipulation in the media. Did deaths such as Princess Diana¿s, and the unprecedented outpouring of public grief that followed it, signal a national ¿togetherness¿ and communal spirit, he asks? Was this apparent national spirit a product of the press? He queries also whether it suppressed dissent, and what recent, highly-publicized celebrity deaths and the press reaction to them tell us about the state of media preoccupations, and the celebrity culture that they engender.

 Lighting candles, laying flowers, breaking down under the gaze of the camera and the interviewer¡¯s harsh queries (¡°what was your first reaction to the news?¡± and other inane questions that have only one answer) are all new rites of passage in a setting of global mourning.  Whom the gods love die young, and then the media takes over, loving them to death and beyond. If the celebrity is as unconventional as Jade Goody, marmite jars and handbags too join the wreaths and the mementoes; solemnity takes a back seat, and with the huge collective sighs of the excited mourners, icons are born in a sentimental storm. Like the old-fashioned rule that required murder, suspense, royalty, dogs and doctors to make a story widely-read, the new public breast-beating is an automatic product, combining the elements of  youth, fame, scandal, disaster, disease and death.

When Mahesh Bhatt came to Bangalore to promote his book on U.G.Krishnamurthi, he said two things that are pertinent here. U.G. wanted no memorial after his death, but Mahesh Bhatt had to write about him because, ¡°it is the whispering of my heart, the lava in my veins. Even ecstasy after a point, is agonizing.¡±  And secondly, ¡°We need our idols to put up, and tear down,¡± he confessed. Both remarks illustrate the need and the forms it takes when tragedy strikes a confounded public, and a sensation-hungry media. It also shows how and why they feed on each other. Personal grief and private sorrow are the casualties in this scenario.