Healing Metaphysics Home > Archive> Not much glory being ordinary

Weekend Australian - August 2-3, 2003
Emma Tom

You have to die in a really interesting way to make the media these days. Wrestling with the steering prong of an exploding space shuttle, for instance. Being masticated by a shark. Spontaneously combusting.

What we in the fourth estate require is something with a little human interest. Something with a little glamour. Something with a little action, poignancy, excitement, horror, suspense, drama, intrigue, terrorist subplot, celebrity stalker involvement and killer-bee action.

Is that too much to ask?

Sadly, most modern bucket-kickers aren't trying nearly hard enough. About 1800 Australians die each year in car accidents- the common cold of carking it. Hardly very original. Not if you're after 10 column centimetres of fame, anyway. Death by cancer, death by liver disease, death by old age dribblyness...it's as if people don't care about providing journalists with salaciously newsworthy material when they shuffle off this mortal mosquito coil.

While many citizens feel overwhelmed by the vicious competition for obituary centimetres, extensive media coverage of one's death is a cinch. All you need to do is follow a few simple rules:
1. Live in the First World.
2. Be a celebrity.
3. Ensure your expiration is really, really freaky.

Bleeding heart egalitarians regard point one as harsh, but it's well known media fact that the lives of pale-skinned English speakers are more valuable than everyone else's.

That's why the thousands of innocent civilians brutally murdered in the US in September 2001 got so much more press than the thousands of suspicious foreigners ethically euthanased in Afghanistan during the start of the US's war against terror.

It's hard to put an exact figure on how many Third World lives equal a single First World one, but Phillips Adam's old primary school teacher, Mr Moody, came up with a pretty nifty formula.

"A million dead in China is equivalent 500,000 dead in India, is equivalent to 100 dead in the US, is equivalent to 200 dead in London...or a couple dead in your own street," he told young Phil and friends back in 1952.

The reasons for this situation are many and varied. But it undoubtedly has a lot to do with the fact that the West owns most of the television cameras. And the bulk of those are pointed at pale-skinned, English-speaking celebrities.

In a piece in The Guardian in the aftermath of September 11, English writer Blake Morrison asked how many readers remembered Bhuj. Just eight months before the terrorist attacks on the US, Bhuj, the capital of the state of Gujarat in India, was hit by an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale. At least 30,000 people were killed – 15 times as many of those decimated in New York and Washington. "Admit it, you can't even remember Bhuj," chided Morrison. "Why hasn't it lodged in the same way? Where was your compassion then?"

A stupid question. Does he not remember that the date of the Bhuj earthquake was also the date the world grieved in unison at the news that Britney Spears and Madonna would never perform a duet together!

Jeez, Morrison. Priorities.

Which leads us nicely to point two. While first world citizenship is all well and good, it will only get you so far with the media if you are not also a breathtakingly glamorous celebrity (preferably pale-skinned, English-speaking and American accented).

Mr Moody's scale is in sore need of an update to reflect the fact that:
a) the US is the centre of the universe; and
b) race and culture aren't the only filters applied to coverage of death.

There's also the all-important fame and glamour factor. Which means that 1 million unsightly nobodies dead is equivalent to 500,000 slightly better-looking nobodies dead, is equivalent to 1000 former models dead, is equivalent to 200 current models dead...or one sneak paparazzi photograph of Nicole Kidman on a Caribbean beach.

Who cares if our Nic's not deceased? As long as she's pulling her bikini bottom out of her bum, eating something or just staring into space, we'll run it.

As you can see, one of the truly great things about being a celebrity is that you don't have to die to please the press. All you need to do is use footpath and it's front-page news.

This is why Ben Affleck's decision to buy his bride-to-be, J-Lo, a jewel-encrusted toilet seat received more coverage in our newspaper than the single paragraph allocated to the 56 people who died and 116 who were injured in flooding in central Vietnam last August.

It's also the reason Melanie Howard's recent decision to try on wedding dresses received more coverage than the 41 people who died of food poisoning after eating at a fast-food store in China last September.

For those who missed this shamefully under-reported news story, M. Ho was spotted at an exclusive Sydney bridal boutique where customers at a nearby café were able to watch her trying on several gowns as they sipped their coffees.

Of course, while you don't have to die to get extensive media coverage as a celebrity, it does help if you're sick.

The Sunday Telegraph was one newspaper with a lot to say about Delta Goodrem's diagnosis with Hodgkin's disease. In an editorial, the paper said that the hearts of all Australians have gone out to the "talented, beautiful and innocent" singer in her battle against the ugly hand of cancer. Talentless, plain and guilty citizens with Hodgkin's disease simply cannot compete. Particularly if they aren't brave but cowardly, tearful and fear ridden, as I know I would be.

Journalists waxed in a similarly mauve fashion about the death of conjoined Iranian twins Laleh and Ladan Bijani. Confused, perhaps, by the fact these women were non-celebrity inhabitants of the axis of evil, many commentators found themselves questioning their obsession with the case.

It certainly wasn't because of Laleh and Ladan's freak-show value, they wrote again and again.It was because of their optimism and personality and courage and humour. And did they happen to mention it wasn't because of their freak-show value?

Methinks our correspondents did protest too much.

The good news is that if the conclusion to your breathtakingly ordinary life is breathtaking ordinary death, you can elevate proceedings with one of the US's new and improved "alternative dispositions." A work of art using watercolour paints made from your ashes, maybe. Or perhaps an underwater plaque on a private, artificial reef. You'll have to be a First World inhabitant with a celebrity-sized income to afford these freaky options, but that's life.

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