Along with all the posts, statuses, videos, and tweets about how Robin Williams is being remembered, there are a few negative voices, mostly dogging on Williams for taking "the coward's way out" by killing himself or harassing other people for spending so much time, energy, and attention on the death of someone they themselves had never met.
This sort of thing happens almost every time a celebrity passes away. Some people spend a lot of time thinking about that celebrity's death, reading all the news articles, watching all the tribute videos, even though the celebrity is not personally known by that person. Other people don't understand and wonder why this particular friend might be obsessed. There are a lot of reasons people fixate on celebrity deaths, but here are just a few of the reasons I can think people are spending a lot of time talking about Robin Williams.
1) Many people grew up watching Robin Williams, so he's been a figure in their lives for a long time. I myself am one of these people. As a little kid in the 70's and 80's, I watched Williams on Happy Days and Mork and Mindy. While I haven't seen every movie he's ever done, I've seen many of them, as well as some of his standup comedy and the times he's hosted awards ceremonies. So, for about 35 years, he's been a frequent if not regular presence in my own life. And because so much of his career was based in comedy, he was viewed as a happy and joyful presence.
2) As with many celebrities that have long and successful careers, people hear stories about their lives: their childhood, their family life, struggles that they've gone through. It is interesting to read about the lives of other people, so make comparisons between their lives and your own and see where the similarities and differences lie. You wonder what makes that celebrity tick, what has made them into the famous person they are. With Robin Williams, we all knew that he had troubles with drugs in the 80's but managed to soldier on and recover to a point where he didn't use anymore, at least not that anyone heard. For people who struggle with their own addictions, Williams could have been viewed as a success story, to be used for inspiration when times were hard.
3) When a celebrity dies, it is a reminder of our own mortality. If that celebrity, with every great thing that he or she has in his or her life, can still die, then we can too. It's a chance for us to consider death without it actually affecting our immediate family and/or friends. We've all experienced the death of someone from a car accident, like Paul Walker, or a drug overdose, like Phillip Seymour Hoffman, or a suicide, like Robin Williams, but without actually having to lose someone we know personally. And in the case of Williams, this death, because it was a specific choice he made rather than an accident or a disease, it gives everyone a chance to ask and try to answer all those questions about "How" and "Why" he would do such a thing, and in some cases even gives people insight to fix things that are wrong in their lives and get help.
My thought process has gotten a bit muddled here, so this might not have made as much sense as I was hoping it would. But I think that people have valid reasons for being interested, curious, or concerned with the deaths of celebrities, especially someone like Robin Williams, and people have the right to mourn for them in their own ways. No one should belittle or berate someone for feeling something about the death of someone else. Because we're all thinking a version of the same thing: "There, but for the grace of God, go I."
No comments:
Post a Comment