Michael Jackson and the grief tourists

OK, now that Michael Jackson’s death has finally stopped being billed as ‘Breaking News’ by the news networks, I feel as though I can say this…

Wrong star on the Walk of Fame

One of the strangest side stories resulting from Jackson’s passing away was that fans had rushed to pay homage at his star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.

The only problem is that they got the wrong star – the right one was covered by the scaffolding for the Bruno film premiere. So the ‘fans’ were laying flowers and wailing for the cameras outside the star of a talk radio host.

For me, this just highlighted an insidious trend that some call ‘grief tourism’. I prefer to call it corpse opportunism.

Diana and Steve Irwin

We’ve seen this sort of thing before. There were the sheep-like thousands that turned up to sign the condolence book at Althorp House when Princess Diana died, or those that rushed to Australia Zoo when Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray.

It’s a horrible, ugly form of tourism. Let’s make no mistake about this; it’s not about paying respects to the dead – it’s about making people feel self-important and giving themselves something to talk about. It’s about basking in the reflected glory of the recently deceased in order to boost social standing.

Were people really affected by Diana’s death so much that they had to trek across the country to sign a book that would make absolutely no difference to anyone? Of course not – they went because, deep down, they thought doing so would make them seem temporarily more interesting.

Those that had actually known Diana, Steve or MJ, I can understand – but surely they would just pass on their condolences to the family? And privately too.

Faux mourning

To travel somewhere just to be seen to be mourning someone you’ve never met or had anything to do with is a horrible thing to do. Yes, you might have liked their music/ admired their charity work/ enjoyed watching them wrestle crocodiles on telly – but you really played no part in their life. You aren’t relevant, and what you’re trying to do is to make yourself relevant by shamelessly latching on to the biggest story of the day.

I can’t imagine it gives any comfort to the families of the deceased – rather disturbing in fact. What’s wrong with just being a bit sad that someone whose work you admired has died? Why the need to go somewhere and prove how much you liked that person by mawkishly weeping in the most public place you can think of?

Such corpse opportunism does no-one any favours. It’s like rushing to a disaster site just to say you were there when you really weren’t. What possible justification can there be for such grief tourism other than a vile, calculating desire to grab a pathetic crumb of someone else’s fame?

Tags: California, Grief tourism, Los Angeles, Michael Jackson, Princess Diana, Steve Irwin