BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death

Subject: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: robomatic
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 08:58 AM

In today's New York Times, Frank Rich put to words some things I was thinking without having the words for it, since Princess Di's fatal accident and the over and over and over coverage which followed:

I've never been happy about posting huge tracts of other people's words, so I'm posting the link. You may or may not be able to read it without 'registering' with the NYT, which is free.

A Culture Of Death, Not Life

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:02 AM

THANK YOU FOR THIS! Celebrity worshipping and necro-porn--I've been trying to articulate this sick and twisted convergence for days!

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: wysiwyg
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:16 AM

The story linked above requires registration, but the sub-headline alone tips me off to the tone-- feasting on decomposing bodies?

NOT EVERYONE!

And hey, Di's death was YEARS ago. How do you stay preoccupied with that all this time, robo?????? How do you logically string it together with recent events as a "trend"?

I think it's actually funny how MSN, CNN et al got stuck trying to bring us "breaking news" instantaneously, on things that HAD to take more than a newsbyte of realtime. Thinking these deaths might occur at any moment, they were so eager to scoop each other on "the Death Announcement" that they got suckered into weeks of talking-head experts' fees. Eventually they actually started to provide some more in-depth analysis, background, etc., just to fill the "Continuing Coverage" hours they'd landed themselves with! In the end, they actually broke down and gave us stuff we could THINK about. Even more ironic, the best of the coverage only made me want to READ about the issues, in more depth. And the commercials they ran to pay for it all? I saw very few-- since they provided time to do chores, check Mudcat, learn new songs, and so forth.

Really, the trend started with war coverage-- shuttle explosions-- WTC collapsing.... it isn't even celebs people get glued onto, but "Continuing Coverage of Breaking Urgent News."

Culture of death? Not so much as Culture of Fear-Mongering. ANd that's OLD news.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: GUEST, Vulture of Death
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:25 AM

Princess Di's "fatal accident???"

From her handwritten letter to Paul Burrell dated Oct 1996...

I am sitting here at my desk today... dying for someone to... encourage me to be strong and to hold my head high - This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous - [Name blotted out] is planning "an accident" in my car, brake failure and a serious head injury..."

Sometimes there's reason to participate in a "Culture of Death". Discovering truth is one of them. And some of us are destined to derive nourishment from picking at dem dry bones.

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:26 AM

Susan, me thinks thou dost protest overly much. Which leads to me thinking the celebrity worshipping and necro-porn shoes fit you quite well.

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: John O'L
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:35 AM

Some time ago I stopped watching TV news because it was a predictable recipe for every broadcast:
Disasters first, then murders, then fatal road accidents, then any story for which there was footage available of cleavage or thigh, and only then, if there was time left, whatever news was actually significant.
I don't know if it's a culture of death though, I think it's just a tabloid culture which has been numbed by sensory overload.

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:42 AM

I hear what you are saying Severn. But to be fair to the author of the piece, he is talking about a trend that extends beyond the tv news to the entertainment industry in general (like Mel Gibson's "The Passion") and the tv entertainment industry specifically. He is talking about the #1 shows on tv (the CSI franchise), and the upcoming "Left Behind" tv movie, which is based on the "Left Behind" series of books about the fundamentalist Christian version of the apocalypse.

He isn't just talking about tv news, when he speaks of the culture of death. And the idea of the culture of death being embraced by the US political and business establishment isn't even new!

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: John O'L
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:50 AM

To a bloody pulp?

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: Jeri
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:02 AM

Tip for the day: If you find the article with a Google search for "A Culture Of Death, Not Life", you'll get the Times article, and you can read it from Google.

Personally, I don't think it's a 'Culture of Death'. I think it's a 'Culture of Pain' - a banquet of blood that starts with a gossip appetizer, goes through talk show salad and the meat and potatoes of news-for-entertainment-purposes (see whose baby got raped and murdered today!), 'reality' TV, and documentaries - "Just how DID she ditch the axe and clean up all the splattered blood and brains so quickly?" Death is just an ever-popular main course.

It might just be a distasteful part of human culture. Then again, maybe it's the flip side of something a lot more positive. Many of the same folks who stop at accidents and gawk will stop and help, if there's something for them to do. It's part of being a social animal. If these dead/dying/left-behind people lived next door and we mattered, maybe we'd bring them a casserole or walk their dog or something. The problem is that the world's too big to truly include us. We hear about all the bad stuff in the global neighborhood, but there's no way we can do anything to truly help. Instead, we focus on it here at Mudcat and maybe in meatspace. We gawk.

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:04 AM

Actually, some of us take political action, because we see the trends, and don't bury our heads in the sand claiming nothing can be done to stop the fundamentalist theocrats from taking over our country.

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: robomatic
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:36 AM

WYSIWYG I appreciate your response, but you don't seem to 'get it'. It was all the periodicals who WERE obsessed with Di's death that I had a problem with, and I am permitted to remember that little media feeding frenzy. I have to add that after starting this thread I talked it over with my brother and sister-in-law; they understood the attraction of Princess Di as a 'phenom' far better than me.

GUEST I enjoy your posts; as ever I prefer that visitors take on a monicker of some sort, even if only to identify themselves within the thread of the moment. You can still be anonymous and have a reference and everyone is happy.

Taking pleasure in the pain of others, plays an inevitable part of this phenomenon, but the NYT column by Rich captures the particularly bad flavor of our current crop of media harpies, Mel Gibson included. The incredible "Left Behind" series included.

-The Simpsons get the last word:

Homer: "Anyhow, Flanders is gonna fail, and that'll be so funny.

Lisa: "Dad that's schadnefreude

Homer: Schaden- what the?

Lisa: It's German. It means taking pleaure in the suffering of others.

Homer: Well, what's the opposite of schadnefreude?

Lisa: Sour Grapes!

Homer: Those Germans have a word for everything!

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: Amos
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:46 AM

LOL!! Thanks, Robo!!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: GUEST,Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:47 AM

I dont think it's a culture of death either. It's just part of the culture of television. Television news has a way of creating feedback loops that exaggerate the "importance" of certain events way beyond the levels at which those same events would have been perceived in the pre-television age. It's not about a major increase in human ghoulishness. It's about television intentionally exaggerating events to sell more laundry detergent. If the television news people keep telling their watchers that the death of an eighty-plus-year-old man, or of a woman who has had no higher brain functions for fifteen years, or of an ex-football player's ex-wife is a major news story, they'll eventually believe it. And once they believe it, they'll keep tuning in to see and hear more about it because, after all, it's really important, isn't it?

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:52 AM

There's a pattern in the way media deal with these things - there's a news story, then a splurge of media coverage of all the details, then a mass of pseudo-analysis of how the media have covered it, and how people are reacting to it; and we always end up with articles like this one, about how unhealthy it all is.

And then it all happens again, and each time they go back and recycle the previous cases. And rewrite the same articles.

Actually not that much of the stuff about the Pope that I read was actually about his death at all, it was generally about his life.

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:56 AM

The crowds are getting much bigger though, and I find that most disturbing.

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:57 AM

The business about "Culture of Death", it seems to me, misses the great point: Death is an aspect of life! No life is without its death; you're not going to avoid it.

Now, since death will come, it is incumbent on us to make that last transition meaningful, if possible, and as pain-free as may be.

I know I am going to die sometime; there's no secret about it, and no possibility of avoiding it. I will try to put it off as long as I reasonably can, but I hope not at the cost of loss of personal dignity, weeks and months of pain (to me and my loved ones), and/or financial ruination of my family. That last is important, because the family represents continuing life. I hope that if I were in Terri Schiavo's position my wife would have the courtesy to pull the plug (or the tube, if that's what it is.)

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 11:01 AM

OTOH, I was greatly relieved that the "culture of life" crowds which gathered outside Terri Schiavo's nursing home were so small!

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 11:18 AM

Public figures touch our lives more. We have them in our homes on the television. We have them on the front pages of press outpourings. We feel as though we know them, not personally, but we do feel as though we have insights in to their lives.

When they die, the crowds at their funerals will be in relation to the amount of exposure they have recieved in their lifetime. Not rocket science, just human nature.

People like to feel as though they have 'connections' in their lives. If they can post a message on an internet forum and say, "what a shame .....has popped his clogs", what's the harm in that. It would be preferable to the human psyche to be able to say that to a real live breathing person. But when one of them isn't nearby, people will use any means available to not feel alone.

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 11:25 AM

"Public figures touch our lives more."

I am curious about this suggestion of yours Guest 11:18 AM. Touch lives more than what/whom?

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 11:33 AM

Touch our lives more than before they were the staple diet of tv and press. We are subjected to their out takes in life too now. The inopportune comment, the hat that blows away, the gaffe etc...It makes them appear 'human', as opposed to some reported upon figure who we never see walk and talk.

If people feel they know someone, and like what they feel they know, they will mourn their death. Not in a handwringing and wailing kind of way maybe, but in a 'Oh shit, another one gone,' way?

The more people worldwide who have been exposed to these 'celebs', means the more people there will be to comment on their passing. And thousands/millions of comments become mass hysteria? No, it is just a numbers game.

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 11:42 AM

Sorry, I have to disagree with you Guest 11:33 AM. Many of us in the West are becoming more and more disconnected from the tv phenomenon with the advent of the internet (thankfully!), and so aren't as prone to that sort of brainwashing about public figures.

Many of us can stand back from the media hysteria factor involved in all of these "public mourning rituals". Because we don't worship in the Church of 24/7 Perpetual Breaking News and Unholy Liberal Alliances, we can still see the forest for the trees.

There is much more going on here than I think you are recognizing. This papal funeral has demonstrated that Diana worship wasn't a one off phenomenon, and has at least anecdotally proved that evidence-resistant beliefs cherished by those who normally demand facts to support their theses, is pretty much running rampant along with this trend. Hence the "the pope wasn't such a bad guy" arguments, and the complete and total lack of reporting on the pope, Terri Schiavo, et al from a secular, skeptical perspective regarding these superstitious religious beliefs.

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 11:45 AM

Now, imagine that Karl Rove figures out how to capitalize on this phenomenon--and the Karl Roves of this world WILL figure out how to use this phenomenon in time (probably sooner rather than later)--what does that portend for the future of our civil societies?

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: Amos
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 11:48 AM

They'll use mass mourning events just as Bush tried to do with the Pope's-- by leveraging it for political gain and the manipulation of mass-think (sorry for the pun). This is already happening, not something they are still to figure out.

If you have Windows Media Viewer you can see Jon Stewart nail this issue nicely at:

http://movies.ziaspace.com/Pope_TV_Stewart.wmv


A

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 12:40 PM

Many of us in the West are becoming more and more disconnected from the tv phenomenon with the advent of the internet (thankfully!), and so aren't as prone to that sort of brainwashing about public figures.

You call it brainwashing. I call it exposure. It is only brainwashing if you allow it to be. And I don't believe that the media is responsible for brainwashing. In that case explain the birth of christianity.

You may be becoming more disconnected to tv world due to internet, but now you are discussing the very same stories on the internet instead? Same crap, different media.

People have always worshipped at the church of the holy flash bulb. And will continue to do so. That these people have more visible icons to worship, and therefore more visible icon's deaths to mark their passing of, is logical?

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: CarolC
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 01:27 PM

I tend to find myself thinking that it is a culture of adrenaline addiction more than anything else. They have to get more and more spectacular and grizzly because people and their adrenaline responses become inured to what they have already been exposed to quite a lot of. And it keeps them distracted. Bread and circuses.

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 01:42 PM

What's grizzly about death anyway? It's the only thing we know for certain is up ahead for all of us.

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 01:47 PM

carol I think you have hit on something there. We are becoming used to the 'big rush.' We want our rollercoasters to scare us more than the last ride. We want our emotions heightened. And grief could well fall into that camp.

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: Mudlark
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 02:07 PM

I perceive all this media coverage of single deaths, trials, etc. as bread and circuses for the masses, keeping attention well away from congressional manipulation, opague politial agendas, and the worldwide problems that are out there every day, thousands of people dying, many needlessly, in this unbalanced world of ours, polution rampant, civil liberties on the block.

What better than to focus, then, on media circuses with massive, nonstop attention to a Michael Jackson trial, the death of a single woman, braindead for 15 years, or even the Pope. I take nothing away from the good he brought about, but my local county paper devoted 6 full pages of huge photos, plus a little text, last Sunday...the entire front page section. Not a word for the deaths in Iraq, much let alone in the Sudan, not a word about gutted school programs, nothing about anything else happening in the whole world!, good or bad. Even if I were Catholic, I would see that as massive ... overkill.

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: Alba
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 02:20 PM

A culture of Distraction then?
Deflecting attention from the issues that People may take to to the streets about. The need to focus the adrenaline or frustration, anger and sorrow, all pent emotions in some direction so........
Mmm...interesting thought
Jude

Subject: RE: BS: Op-Ed Column: Culture Of Death
From: Amos
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:43 PM

ALba has the rights of it. The "circuses" part of bread and circuses is provided by the media.

Bread is of course restricted to those who can already afford it.


A