Gawking at Tragedy

Tragedy in the life of a celebrity or public figure is to the media what a fresh corpse is to the vulture, or a soul to the grim reaper. When the superhuman sphere separating the untouchables of society from us regular folks suddenly disintegrates, photographers rush to capture that moment-a cry, a frown, a forceful toss of a Starbucks cup into a trash can-any slight sign of emotion that will reveal them to the public as real people. Or better yet, mad melancholics.

Take, for instance, the plethora of photographs snapped of Jackie O in her famous bloodstained pink Chanel suit, which, like other artifacts of human origin, is now encased in a museum display. Or the wet-eyed, whimpering Nancy Reagan, who, though somewhat of a bore in comparison to Jackie, was the face at the center of every TV screen during the former president's funeral procession. Though I can't remember a word of Reagan's eulogy, or for that matter who made the speech, I can recall the images and headlines of the former first lady weakly leaning on the arm of a National Guard as she bent down to kiss her husband's casket.

The media capitalizes on tragedy because the pubic is affected by it. As early as 322 B.C., Aristotle claimed in his work On Poetics that tragedy was the highest of all poetic forms owing to its ability to inspire an audience to feel fear and pity. Just as the characters of a tragic play move us, we are touched by the public figures of the media's grief coverage because their stories remind us of our own misfortunes. A perfect tragedy then isn't the one with the greatest shock factor, but the one that is closest to portraying the reality of human grief.

The media's current coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's sorrow at the loss of her son to drug overdose is a prime example of a bad tragedy. Ms. Smith's dramatic displays of grief are not only overdone, but also are highly inconsistent. While one minute she is sobbing hysterically (refer to her truly touching performance in the E interview entitled "Anna Nicole's Breakdown!"), the next minute-with Daniel's body rotting in a funeral home awaiting further instruction-she is hopping aboard a catamaran in the Bahamas to get married. Something smells funny here, and it isn't just the decaying body and Trimspa chemicals. Although People magazine tried to sell the extravagant wedding in a time of death as the "first time Anna [had] come out of her grief for a moment," the plot is too convoluted for tragedy. While her tears may be somewhat sincere, it is hard to believe that Smith isn't milking the media attention for what it's worth: an escape from her child custody battle with ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead. In "marrying" Howard K. Stern(the ceremony was not legally binding), who had disclosed just two days before that he was Anna Nicole's lover on Larry King Live, Smith not only avoided a long-delayed paternity test meeting with Birkhead, but also succeeded in selling her longtime lawyer confidante as the father of her child.

To affect people, as Aristotle wrote, the "character must be true to life." Ironically, the more public Anna Nicole's grief has become, the less believable she appears in the role of a mother aching over the loss of her child. Like her breasts, her behavior has inflated to the point of seeming unnatural. Few people are affected by soap operas because melodrama belies the subtlety of genuine human emotion. What resonates within society is not what is universal and public, but what is personal and private. In the year following JFK's assassination, Jackie O cried in the privacy of her Fifth Avenue apartment and refused all interviews. Decades after, we're still wearing her signature large-framed, dark sunglasses of mourning.