Capitalising on Tragedy
Death; no one is talking about it and yet, everyone’s talking about it.
The taboo of death in our society seems alive-and-well (excuse the pun). Most people avoid even uttering the word, instead substituting in fluffy euphemisms like ‘passing-on’ or ‘no longer with us’ to paint over the grim reality with white clouds and pearly gates.
We, at least from my experience in the UK & Ireland, are death-avoidant in our personal relationships - doing almost anything to skirt around the frank and honest discussions needed about the definite end of the tunnel waiting for all of us, and the fact that, contrary to what Mr Morrissey promised us, there is a light and it will most definitely go out.
It’s been observed by theorists that for post World War II generations, who generally lack first-hand experiences of death, the phenomenon of death and dying becomes abstract, uncertain, and unknown. As humans, we don’t deal well with unknowns, they bring us fear and anxiety.
To combat this, we are unusually hush-hush about one of the most natural processes in our lives. It’s almost like we think that if we don’t make a sound the grim-reaper can’t see us - he’s like a T-Rex in that way.
The problem is, when you sweep things under the rug they often manifest themselves in unusual ways and when it comes to our death-denying habit, it seems that real-life avoidance has morphed into an on-screen obsession. Beyond that actually; it’s on-screen, on-the-page, on-the-radio, in-games, in-podcasts. All media outlets fuel a non-stop festival of sensationalised death and dying.
It feels like not a week goes by without the launch of a new murder-drama where glamourous people sulk in dimly lit modern kitchens and appear mysteriously unaffected by their wife’s disappearance. What’s that? It’s just a coincidence that you purchased that shovel last week? That blood on the floor’s just from a paper-cut? Sure, we believe you, Colin.
Or how about a glossy Netflix documentary where the gruesome details of a many years old cold-case are drawn-out over eight - should-have-been-two - parts with not much other than morbid fascination holding it all together.
Worse still is the scramble of media writers and influencers to give their hot-take on a tragic event or manipulate a terrible incident to get a bi-line and add to their portfolio. It is jarring - thousands of articles, think pieces, share-worthy infographics, you-tube testimonials. They pile up fast post-tragedy.
Even the language used by the media to describe horrid, tragic murders begins to reflect the language used in documentaries and films. ‘The case of’ is a great example of dehumanising a serious offence, taking a tragic murder of a real person and distilling it down to just another dusty file in a cabinet ready to be opened up in a new flashy documentary. Whether this is a life imitating art or visa-versa situation is unclear but one thing’s for sure it’s much easier to switch off when you’re faced with clinical, professional lingo than emotive language. And the media know this. They understand that we can’t get enough of it, we eat it up like rabid animals and discuss it over lunch the next day at work.
I have to wonder whether all this collective schadenfreude is good for the psyche. Who is benefiting from this addiction other than the dealer? Especially when our media-fantasy leaps off the screen into the life of a real person.
For every true-crime series, every ‘case of Jane or John Doe’ painstakingly dissected by wanna-be comedians in podcast format, every serial-killer turned biopic, every soap star’s dramatic cancer storyline, there are real victims. And real victims have families, and those families have grief.
After you lose a loved one, it feels like the whole entertainment industry is out to rub salt in your wounds. TV shows, films, songs, advertisements; you begin to see the tragedy of death and dying everywhere and it feels like a cheap shot. It’s not that it wasn’t there before, but you become acutely aware of it when you experience death firsthand. Knowing that your heart could potentially plummet to the floor, unleashing the floodgates of tears that you’ve been holding back all day... every single time you turn on the television.
Death-by-media is a sensationalised view, it’s very rarely a reflection of the real deal. There’s a glamorised intrigue to crime-scene investigations that paint death out to be something that only happens on-screen or to characters in stories. The unusually chiselled cheek of a media killer is a stark contrast to the drawn-out, grey days of sorting pain medications, working out finances and wondering whether today will be the last. The fact is, the later is the form most of us are likely to face at least once, if not more than once, in our lives.
How can you process grief when you have no escape from fetishised death in the media, and simultaneously, little-to-no ability to discuss it frankly with your peers?
You won’t see someone four weeks post-funeral in the mainstream media; the people left behind with their life feeling irreversibly broken. Why is that? Well, it’s because media creators are tragedy capitalists. They know that we are scared to face the truth, scared to lose our love ones, terrified to lose ourselves. So, they will always keep the story squarely fixed where the money is. To get the views, downloads and streams they feed our addiction to an unrealistic death-narrative with increasingly flimsy content. I mean, honestly, how many Ted Bundy documentaries do you really need?
Right now, we’re a year and a bit into a life-shattering global pandemic in which the world has lost almost three million people. I think it’s fair to say that post-world war II generations now have a first-hand experience with death. And, it’s about time we had some first-hand, honest conversation and content on how to process that too.
Fortunately for us, however, there is beginning to be a change in the tide when it comes to conversations surrounding death and dying in the media. A version of post-life content that looks to celebrate life and living-with-grief rather than capitalise on death and instil fear.
Podcasts like grief-cast and social media accounts like Let’s Talk About Loss are bringing death and grief education into the light - highlighting the real face of what it’s like to experience a loss.
It’s not glamorous, and most of the time no one’s coming with a cheque and a camera to gloss over the rough stuff but there is no reason to be afraid.
Written by Dominique Daly
Dominique Daly is a Belfast born music-fanatic and stalker of neighbourhood cats. When she's not writing about technology and marketing for her day job as a Content Marketer, she can most likely be found somewhere comfortable drinking wine and moaning about politics.
