Swayze Death Triggers Another Round of Emotional Outpouring
Whenever a celebrity dies, their status is cynically elevated by the media, and the public respond with an outpouring of emotions as to how big a part that celebrity played in their life. It's all nonsense, of course, because 24 hours earlier, they had no regard for the celebrity whatsoever, and 24 hours later they will barely remember their name.
The media, and specifically newspapers', cynical exploitation of the death is understandable of course. They need to sell newspapers to make money, but sometimes it is so brazen that it sticks in the throat. Michael Jackson was portrayed by the media as a pedo nutjob. Yet the day he died he was reinstated as the worlds greatest entertainer. A Jesus-like figure who was sent from heaven to deliver the moonwalk and high pitched "woo-hoo"s.
Swayze himself seems to have been elevated to a "great actor". Nobody was saying that before his death. Nobody. He was an entertaining actor with a relatively good body of work in the late '80s and early 90's, but he was no great. I'm not trying to be offensive to him or his fans, it's just a fact.
The public loves to wallow in their shared "pain". It's actually like they relish the death of the person they claim to care so much about. The other alternative is the cruel jokes at the water-cooler or by email. I don't actually think these reactions are very different from each other. I understand the motives of the media, but I don't understand this public reaction. Is it some sort of catharsis? Is is a way of celebrating the cycle of life without the real emotional ties of the death of somebody you know? I'm not immune from this myself either. This post is not me making judgements about people. I would just like to understand why we react this way. I hope that Swayze was at peace when he died. He seemed to be very determined to beat his cancer against all the odds, so I hope he managed to attain some sort of acceptance before it was too late.
