Perspectives on Grief in Popular Culture

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Contents Introduction……………………………………..………..…………………………...….…page 3 Mirror front pages (NB: the dates)……………………………………………….……...page 6

Lists………………………………………………………..…………………………..……….page 8

Grief in the Tabloids……...………………………………………………………….…….page 11

Personal accounts…………………………………………………………………………page 17

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………..page 21

Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………...page 23

How to use this book

This booklet takes you on a rapid-fire tour of representations of grief in the media. It

shows you different elements that have influenced The Grief Series, such as the

death of Princess Diana (which is heavily referenced in the Etiquette of Grief) to

more personal accounts (that reflect the style of The Reservation more). This booklet

is designed to be fast paced so that you can dip in and out of it. Think of it as a cross

between Heat magazine and a Sunday broadsheet.

As you are reading you can quickly see how the theories and articles have

influenced the projects in the Grief Series by looking for the pictures. Wherever you

see a picture next to a theory or article it means that article has had a clear

influence on the art work produced.

Key

Part 1 Etiquette of Grief

Part 2 The Reservation

Part 3 What Is Left

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Introduction Ellie: Through making The Grief Series I have immersed myself in the representation of

bereavement in pop culture. Some of these references have been actively sought

out as part of my process (the film and music lists) but others have been stumbled

across accidentally. It is popular to say that the death of Princess Diana was a

tipping point, that crying became almost fashionable at that time, and that the

fashion for crying has lasted longer than the trend for mini rucksacks that pervaded

the shops in 1997. It is difficult for me to judge as I was fourteen at the time and not

overly interested in celebrity or politics…or death. Perhaps things were changing. But

I know that the Enquirer printed pictures of Elvis in his coffin in 1977 which sold 6.5

million copies and Queen Victoria started a whole wave of grief chic when her

beloved Albert died over a hundred years before paparazzi chased a car into a

tunnel in Paris. Trends may come and go but evidently grief is the little black dress of

the journalist’s world. The general public have an appetite for grief. Looking back on

Diana’s death it seems to me that people were not crying for Diana but for their

dead mothers, fathers, siblings, children or pets. This was the impetus for making part

one of the series The Etiquette of Grief and in a review of the show, Andrea Hardaker

perceptively writes:

I can’t have been the only person to feel it - it literally coiled inside of me – personal

grief felt so much more uncomfortable than public grief and yet which would

realistically require more support?

Grief is a difficult emotion and perhaps the most overwhelming aspect of it is the

fact that it is a pain that cannot realistically be shared - even with our closest

relatives. It feels lonely, frightening and incredibly powerful.

In times of personal grief we can’t just break down in the middle of a street, wailing

and crying, waving candles and holding vigils. We don’t throw our arms round

strangers and gather together in crowds.

Instead we suffer, usually in silence – not because of our strength but because our

grief is distinctly too uncomfortable for others to bear.

(For the full article go to http://www.pickledegg.info/2012/01/etiquette-grief-

bradfords-theatre-mill/#more-4983 )

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I cannot talk to the children about her. The moment I try, there appears on their

faces neither grief, nor love, nor fear, nor pity, but the most fatal of all non-

conductors, embarrassment. They look as if I were committing an indecency. They

are longing for me to stop. I felt just the same after my own mother’s death when my

father mentioned her. I can’t blame them. It’s the way boys are. I sometimes think

that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing

good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do. And not only in

boyhood…

…It isn’t only the boys either. An odd by product of my loss is that I’m aware of being

an embarrassment to everyone I meet. At work, at the club, in the street, I see

people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say

something about it’ or not. I hate it if they do, and if they don’t. Some funk it

altogether. R. has been avoiding me for a week. I like best the well brought-up

young men, almost boys, who walk up to me as if I were a dentist, turn very red, get

it over, and then edge away to the bar as quickly as they decently can. Perhaps the

bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers. To some I’m worse

than an embarrassment. I am a death’s head. Whenever I meet a happily married

pair I can feel them both thinking, ‘One or other of us must some day be as he is

now.’ At first I was very afraid of going to places where H. and I had been happy—

our favourite pub, our favourite wood. But I decided to do it at once—like sending a

pilot up again as soon as possible after he’s had a crash. Unexpectedly, it makes no

difference. Her absence is no more emphatic in those places than anywhere else.

It’s not local at all. I suppose that if one were forbidden all salt one wouldn’t notice it

much more in any one food than in another. Eating in general would be different,

every day, at every meal. It is like that. The act of living is different all through. Her

absence is like the sky, spread over everything.

(C.S Lewis, 1961, p10-12)

Ellie: Dead Celebrities have become the conduits for our tears at the deaths of

people we do know. The dead celebrity, or the weepy film removes us just enough

to feel safe enough to grieve. A magazine or a DVD is tangible and so makes an

excellent site for us to project onto. But if I were the grieving relative of a dead

celebrity I imagine I’d feel doubly hurt to see the masses commandeering my loss. I

would stick to the films as they are designed to move us. You might want to work

your way through the film list or play some songs to grieve to and have a good cry.

After all, that is what they are there for.

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Lists: Grief in Film, Television and Culture.

Films about bereavement

1. Rabbit Hole

2. Shadowlands

3. Truly, Madly, Deeply

4. A Single Man

5. P.S I Love You

6. The Lovely Bones

7. Charlie St. Cloud

8. Three Colours Blue

9. Volva

10. Ghost

Bereavement on TV

1. A Short Stay In Zurich

2. Twin Peaks, Pilot Episode

3. Getting On, Series Two (various)

4. Six Feet Under (various)

5. Buffy The Vampire Slayer, ‘The body’ Season 5, episode 16

6. Fresh Meat, Series 1, episode 6, 8

7. Mad Men, Season 3, Episode 4

8. The Royle Family, The Queen Of Sheba

9. House, Season 4 finale.

10. Grey’s Anatomy, Season 2, episode 22

Books/paintings/miscellany

1. The Sad Book by Michael Rosen (children’s book)

2. A Scattering by Christopher Reed (collection of poems)

3. My father had two coats by Linda Chase (poem)

4. Crying Men by Sam Taylor Wood (Photography series)

5. Edward Munch paintings: The Death Bed 1895, Death in the sick chamber

1895, The Dead Mother and The child 1899/1900 as well as the Sick Child paintings

6. Dad’s Clothes by Andre Penteado (Photography series)

7. The Welfare State International’s Dead Project (book/event)

8. Ashes to Diamonds (TV documentary on Channel 4OD)

9. The Long and Winding Road by Michael Pinchbeck (performance)

10. Art and Death by Chris Townsend (book)

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Scenes of Grief

1. Step Mom

2. Harold and Maude

3. American Beauty

4. Jack and Sarah

5. Don’t Look Now

6. Brokeback Mountain

7. Submarine (fantasy scene)

8. Beaches

9. Twelfth Night

10. Enduring Love

11. Four Weddings and a Funeral

12. Bambi

13. Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet

14. Moulin Rouge

15. Jude

16. Little Children

17. La Vie en Rose

18. Damage

19. Lolita

20. The Lion King

21. Sylvia

22. My Girl

23. Leon

24. Dead Poets Society

25. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

26. The Rules of Attraction

27. Revolutionary Road

28. Time Travellers Wife

29. Harry Potter (various)

30. Forrest Gump

31. Shaun of the Dead.

32. The Poseidon Adventure

33. Richard III

34. Sophies Choice

35. The Cure

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Songs to Grieve to

1. My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion

2. Candle In The Wind by Elton John

3. Gone Too Soon by Michael Jackson

4. Tears In Heaven by Eric Clapton

5. Dance With My Father by Luther Vandross

6. You’ll Never Walk Alone by Gerry and the pacemakers

7. Imagine by John Lennon

8. The Weeping Song by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

9. Gloomy Sunday by Billie Holiday

10. Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley

11. Everybody Hurts by R.E.M

12. Angel by Sarah McLaughlin

13. Nothing Compares To You by Sinead O’Connor

14. Wind Beneath My Wings by Bette Midler

15. Bright Eyes by Art Garfunkel

16. The Way We Were by Barbara Streisand

17. Memory by Elaine Paige

18. Fields Of Gold by Eva Cassidy

19. Bring Me To Life by Evanescence

20. Without You by Harry Nillson

21. Requiem Mass in D minor, Lacrimosa by Mozart

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From celebrity tribute issues in tabloids to

personal accounts of everyday people in

broadsheets.

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Personal Accounts

Bill: Whilst public grief of celebrities is relatively easy to find in tabloid newspapers,

personal accounts of grief about everyday people seem less easy to stumble across.

Whilst researching for the Grief Series we noted that these sorts of accounts were

typically found in broadsheet newspaper supplements and magazines. These

accounts tend to deal with the nuanced complexities of grieving and take in to

consideration the wide variety of ways that people deal with grief. In this section we

will summarise and highlight some of these more personal accounts as a

counterpoint from the more hysterical representations of grieving that celebrity

deaths seem to incur.

Once we Had a Daughter (Guardian Weekend Magazine 22/4/2006)

Bill: In this account a mother tells how she lost her daughter through a suicide

relating to the daughter’s struggle with bipolar2 depression, the article details the

daughters manic periods and explains that she was a talented photographer. The

mid section details the mother’s key memories leading up to her daughter’s suicide,

including a trip to visit her at university. The section that concerns the Grief Series the

most is towards the end of the article when the mother details ways in which the

family grieves.

We grieve in different ways, which can be difficult. The whole

dynamic of the family is changed when suddenly you are four,

not five. I was shocked in the spring when I asked Ben where he

would like to go in the summer: “Somewhere where nobody

has heard of Alice” he replied. It had not dawned on me that

he was angry with her. “She’s ruined our family” he said. “It was

the most selfish thing she ever did.” They had been so close. I

had felt raw hurt, guilt and of course the fruitless but endless “if

onlys”, but never anger (p30)

The section contrasts with the perceived mass sadness of celebrity deaths, and picks

out the complexities and mixed emotions that grieving for a loved one can bring out.

It is honest and frank about what could be viewed as more negative reactions to

someone’s death, however we must endeavour to take these less romanticised

emotions into consideration whilst creating work that explores the theme of grief.

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This article is an extract from

Making Toast: A Family Story by

Roger Rosenblatt. From Guardian

Weekend Magazine 11/09/2010

Bill: This simple snippet portrays the

way in which grief can affect

different people in different ways.

The rest of the article goes on to

explain the different strategies

that have been put in to place to

enable them and the kids to

grieve, as well as interventions in

to their daily lives that allow them to get on with life. What strikes me in this account

of grief is the reliance on small everyday tasks to assist in the grieving process:

I wake up earlier than the other members of our household,

usually around 5am, to perform the one duty I have mastered.

After writing the Word for the Morning on a yellow post-it on the

kitchen table, emptying the dishwasher, setting the table up for

the children’s breakfast, I prepare toast. (p24)

“And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job—where the

machine seems to run on much as usual—I loathe the slightest effort. Not only writing

but even reading a letter is too much. Even shaving. What does it matter now

whether my cheek is rough or smooth? They say an unhappy man wants

distractions—something to take him out of himself. Only as a dog-tired man wants an

extra blanket on a cold night; he’d rather lie there shivering than get up and find

one. It’s easy to see why the lonely become untidy, finally, dirty and disgusting.”

(C.S. Lewis, 1961, p11-12)

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Conclusion

Ellie: As a researcher of all things grief, my attitude towards the death of others has

changed somewhat and I’m not sure I like it. On hearing the news that a celebrity

has died my initial thought is not for their grieving relatives but for my research

outcomes. I have been like this for a while. I have bought copies of magazines with

dying people on the front cover and not thought twice. It wasn’t until Whitney

Houston died that really I felt torn about whether to buy the memorial edition of OK

Magazine. Sony hiked up their album prices as soon as she died and magazines

were trawling the archives searching for pictures for ‘special edition’ tribute issues

with a special, additional price tag. I bought it. Perhaps I wanted to be a witness to

this awfulness. Keep a record of the insensitivity. Or perhaps I have an appetite for

gossip at anyones expense. I don’t know.

It is easy for me to sneer at the articles in Metro or the covers of OK! Showing

Michael Jackson on a stretcher. I can tell myself that these are the disgusting acts of

the media. Thank goodness artists would never exploit grief in that way. And yet I

was reading an article bemoaning the way writers make money from writing grief

memoirs and the fact that in these books the dead person’s personality is totally

drowned out by the writers wailing. It is about the writer, not the dead. And of course

I see myself doing that. I am charging people ticket money to listen to me talk about

my considerable experience of grief. Am I any better than these writers or people

who sell stories about Jade Goody to the papers? And yet they always say write

what you know and this is what I know. I know that I have experienced grief and felt

silenced. I know I have struggled to discuss it with others experiencing grief and I

would like this to change. I want to hold myself to account as well as change

others.

So if we agree to hold ourselves to higher standards and make

more rigorous demands on ourselves, then we can say in our work

“We have asked ourselves these questions and we are trying to

answer them, and that effort earns us the right to ask you, the

audience, to face these issues too.” Art demands action from the

midst of living and makes a space where growth can happen.

(Bogart A, 2007, p. 4)

Although I worry that I have turned into a kind of grief vulture. As well as making The

Grief Series , I teach musical theatre to Children and part of the way through their

rendition of ‘The Circle of Life’ it occurred to me that vultures are hopeful creatures

with a commitment to recycling. In native American culture the Vulture was

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considered a symbol of spiritual strength showing qualities of endurance in the face

of difficulty and cleansing the environment around it. I would like to think that the

Grief Series takes experiences that are negative (and out of my control) and

transforms them into something with new life that builds communities.

Perhaps the difference between the exploitative and the resourceful is merely down

to intention rather than outcome. One is to make money from creating something

that might resonate enough with people for them to part with their cash and the

other is to try and transform something negative into something nourishing.

If the motivation for action does not transcend the desire for

fame and success, the quality of the results will be inferior. If

your aim is intense engagement rather than self

aggrandizement, the results will be richer, denser and more

energetic. The outcome of an artistic process contains the

energy of your commitment to it.

(Bogart A, 2007, p. 5-6)

We may not like all the works of art that deal with grief, the work might fail but if the

intention is good then perhaps it is a valiant failure. With art it is a question of taste.

Not all the artworks that arise from bereavement will please everybody. Some works

will resonate with some and not others and some will be downright awful. There are

the odd couple that seem to be liked more often such as A Scattering by

Christopher Reid or A Grief Observed by C.S Lewis or the film My Girl but they are few

and far between. But a good intention, even if it ultimately fails is worth more than

any cheap cash in. Perhaps it is because of the abuses of grief that seem to

permeate our culture, whether it’s a picture of Diana trapped in her car or an

inflated Whitney Houston album price, that work that has a genuine passion is so

valuable. So we need to keep speaking and acting with the best of intentions.

We are living in very particular times that demand a very

specific kind of response. No matter the immensity of the

obstacles – political, financial or spiritual – the one thing we

cannot afford is inaction due to despair.

(Bogart A, 2007, p. 2 )

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Bibliography

APPLEYARD, B (1997) in The Sunday Times: The Princess’ Final Farewell p.1

BOGART, A, (2007) And then you act: making art in an unpredictable world,

Routledge

BRYAN, F (22/4/2006) in The Guardian Weekend: Once We Had a Daughter pp.19-29

HASKETT, D (11/9/2010) in The Guardian Weekend: After Amy p.24

LEWIS,C, S, (1961) A Grief Observed, Faber and Faber

ROSENBLATT, R (11/9/2010) in The Guardian Weekend: Making Toast, a family story.

pp.27-29

YOUNG, D (18/9/2010) in The Guardian Weekend: Join the Queue Ladies… pp.43-47

UNNATRIBUTED (24/9/2011) in The Guardian Weekend: What I’m Really Thinking, The

Bereaved Parent

ROGERS, K (ed.) (2000) Wills and Kate A Royal Love Story A Mirror Publication:

Liverpool, UK.

ERWIN, M (30/6/2009) in The Metro: The fight for Jackson’s children starts in court p.5

(10/7/2009) in The Metro: He’s the King of Pop…but not a legend p.11

MCGUINESS, R (29/6/2009) in The Metro: Even after death, Jacko is still the King of

pop p.5

HARMSWORTH, A (date unknown) in The Metro: Jacko ‘gave Jade hope’ p.21

MCGUINESS, R (7/7/2009) in The Metro: Host of stars will attend Jacko memorial

service p.7

UNNATRIBUTED (25/3/2009) in The Metro: Jade tributes ‘remind me of Diana’ p.11

HARMSWORTH, A (10/2/2010) in The Metro: I’ll die just like Diana in a car crash, Katie

fears p. 30