A Great Disturbance in the Force
When Princess Diana died in 1997, colleagues and I discussed the reactions to her death. We agreed that she seemed to have married into a shitty life and it was sad she died young in that manner, but we weren’t in floods of tears, we didn’t buy flowers to leave in the park, and it didn’t disturb our emotional lives at all. This wasn’t an exercise in cynicism, it was just that she wasn’t known to us personally and personal grief wasn’t involved.
Wind forward nearly 20 years to 2016 and the roll-call of the fallen, most recently Carrie Fisher, whose death was announced yesterday. In the case of Carrie Fisher, of course I regret her death and have empathy and sympathy for those who knew her; but all year, as public figures have died, my Facebook timeline, when I had one, and my Twitter timeline have featured people declaring the depths of their sorrow at individual deaths in ways that veer towards the mawkish, featuring photographs of the deceased with strap lines attesting to the lachrymose desolation of the poster. These are not from friends and family, whose grief is understandable, but from normal punters. Ms. Fisher is the latest to trigger such reactions.
I don’t get it. I don’t understand why people want to make a public display of emotional inadequacy: what do they want, a medal?
Carrie Fisher: RIP
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