It’s bright in here and it smells
I haven’t posted the last few Budos. This one was apt as Ms. Goody has finally passed away. I was weirdly moved by the news; I don’t think I’ve ever had any strong feeling towards her, except when she insulted Shilpa Shetty. Otherwise, there was just nothing going on. But I recognise a brilliant story and god, I wish I’d written it. The times quietly side-stepped the news and instead reported the death of Nicholas Hughes, son of Sylvia and Ted.
Plath’s friend, the poet and critic Al Alvarez, once said: “I would love to think that the culture’s fascination is because Plath is a great and major poet, which she is. But it wouldn’t be true. It is because people are wildly interested in scandal and gossip.”
I admit to that. Which is why the sudden change in tone has been so disconcerting. The newspapers want stories because we want stories. When someone is alive and well we do everything we can to find out the moist, intimate, details, then we broadcast them as loudly as possible. I’ve never noticed this before, but the redtops shout stories. Then, when someone is about to die or dies, we change. We forget completely the hatred and irritation we felt.
Two-faced? Double standards? I was listening to Radio 4 soon after Cecilia Tsvangirai died and the interviewee said that where he comes from there is a saying: a man can be bad in his life, but once he dies he becomes good. You can feel compassion towards the worst child-murdering bastard who is being ill-treated. I, for one, do not support the death penalty or torture or anything else that reeks of revenge, because it goes against my basic, primal, knowledge that people are helpless in the face of death. We’re pathetic when it comes to The End. I wouldn’t (seriously) wish death on anyone because there is nothing more terrifying or more final. That’s it! You’re gone! Curtains! You will never walk on this earth again. This brilliant, magical thing called life which can be so oppressive, is all we have. There’s nothing else. So as hypocritical as the papers seem, I think the sudden shift in attitude is a sign that, at bottom, we’re still humane – we wouldn’t go on slating the woman out of spite or stubbornness.
I have no problem with Jade’s, or anyone else’s, funeral being televised. Why do we see the births, marriages and deaths of royalty, but not an ordinary woman? Why was it tasteful, even obligatory, to film the two princes slow-marching at their mother’s procession? We live in the information age. There are far more sordid, vulgar things on TV, but perhaps we’re wary because Jade Goody is something of a construction; she isn’t quite real, and her death, with the accompanying twist of fate, means she has blurred the boundaries between fact and fiction to an uncomfortable degree.
“Wow. Are we still exploiting her?”
“Yes, yes we are.”
“Well, we’ll follow her to the edge of the universe, but uh, I think we should stop there…”
Her disappearance from our television screens is not the ordinary passing which is usually forgetfulness and neglect, nor is it the spectacle of a car crash/assassination/suicide. It’s tragicomedy. It’s ridiculous. It’s farce. It’s awful. It’s in digital. It’s a compelling mix of stark flesh and indignity. It’s pornographic. It’s like being sucked in to the strange rhythm of two people going up and down. It’s ‘Ugh!’ But it’s ‘Oh…’
Interesting thoughts on this, Jay. I found the whole performance around Jade’s death really distasteful, mainly because I feel the media, especially the red-tops, manipulated its readers to be more concerned about her death than any other in the past few months. She has been and still is unavoidable, we have been shown images of her face distorted in great pain, images of her bald, smiling-that-winning-smile face and getting married, and images of her close to death (the most obscene). The media has stirred up interest through its relentless campaign in covering her story and people have risen to the bait. At a time when newspaper sales are dire and falling, what better way to boost sales than to create a story like this that will run for a few months. Now she is close to being sanctified. St Jade. It’s a mad mad world.
I don’t know. I thought it was distasteful, but fascinating. So I can’t have found it that distasteful. And that creates a dilemma because maybe I am one of the leering, voyeuristic masses and maybe this kind of media is the one I respond to. That’s a terrible thought. But I suppose my point is that, at no time have I taken this seriously. I thought it was sad that she died, but it’s sad when *anyone* dies from cancer… so how have I been manipulated? Have I been conditioned to care or not care?
I think we will forget about her. Someone will write a book about her – probably Gordon Burn – and as a country we might have another moment to reflect on our behaviour. But I don’t think she’ll be sanctified – she was too grotesque.