Sta, viator, heroem calcas: The Spectacle of Death
| thought I'd write this in English, just so.
A briefing for non-Lithuanians: someone famous died two days ago. He was a bard, a singer, a showman, an actor. Suddenly, everyone's LJ friendpages were full of poems, songs, pictures and last words to the deceased. People were lining up to pay respects for him in Vilnius University's church, and that was on the news. The national television modified its Sunday evening programme to show the most famous movie where the deceased had a supporting (but famous) role, and his last interview after the movie. Today, though it was a workday, people went to the cemetary to see the burial, or simply stopped in the streets to watch the car with the urn pass by. As
ezhux has noted, it seemed too much, it was death turned into a spectacle. Was the man more important to everyone than other singers and bards? Why all this mourning for someone you don't even know? All of this, and all of the LJ-friends posts have been really provocative for some good thinking on what this kind of mourning of the masses was all about.
I can't say I was a big fan of the deceased, by no means. In fact, his big days were before I was born or when I was a little girl. Only yesterday, as I was watching his last interview, did I find out much of what he did back in the Soviet Union. After the Independence he became more of a showman and a TV person than a bard, and that's the amplua my generation mostly saw him in. Still, if someone told me he was 'just a TV host', I wouldn't accept that. His songs from the Soviet times are far too familiar to every Lithuanian. No, I haven't heard them all. No, I've never heard him sing live. But the songs were everywhere when I was growing up, and they have become sort of new folklore for everyone. Even though many of the most famous songs are based on someone else's lyrics, the 'song' is still referred to as 'his'. So this man has essentially become part of the overall sociocultural milieu that independent Lithuania was re-born into and, since my generation grew up together with the newly independent country, we accepted his presence as a matter of fact. He was in his mid-fifties, by the way, and the reason of death was cancer. People about his age, our parents' and grand-parents' generation, remember him slightly differently than we do, because they themselves lived through those Soviet era years.
Surely death by cancer added to the whole mourning pomp. The reaction at least in part was natural and spontaneous, I believe. The relatives of the deceased didn't want to make a big thing out of it, but the people still turned up. The interesting thing is, there has been an exceptional number of deaths of celebrities in the past two years. Another singer about this man's age died last month from a sudden illness. A year ago it was a famous writer, cancer again. A film critic, a young pop singer, an actress (last Saturday, too)... And at least in a couple of cases there has been a certain spectacle to accompany the death. Especially about the writer: people were buying her books like crazy. I was in China at the time so I can't really comment on it, but apparently there were lots of people who recalled her just because she died.
That is the question. Why when they die, we deify them? Or do we? An old saying goes, "If you want to speak about the deceased, say good things or say nothing at all". As I said, I never was a conscious fan of the famous bard's songs, but now that everyone's talking, I'm pretty sure I am also going to buy his CDs, listen to the songs I haven't heard before etc. Somehow, even though I never went to see him on stage, today when I was walking to the library I stopped to bow my head and applaud silently for him as the black car virtually brushed past me in the narrow oldtown street. I was being part of the audience. Somehow, I remembered Emile Durkheim and his theory about how a society worships itself through religious rituals. It is a truth universally known that when someone dies we mourn not for him/her, but for ourselves. In this case it is the society that mourns for its disrupted functioning, albeit it might sound weird.
We shouldn't deny that the spectacle is here. Perhaps we even shouldn't say that it's wrong, that we should stop things like that happening. It's just a social fact, and if it is happenning, it is worthwhile investigating (a scholarly-bent mind speaking here...) Personally, I do not believe this fact has been totally created by the media and other power structures. Part of it, yes, and it certainly is manipulated by the media, especially because the deceased belonged to the media structure themselves. But there are other influences to this. I think, now is the right time for a sociologist, an anthropologist, or a psychologist to come to Lithuania and start researching the phenomenon of turning death into a spectacle. Here's a good study case for them...
P.S. I have just become fully aware of the fact that my home is on what could be called 'the frontier of life' (or death). I live close to the cemetary were many famous people are buried, and also rather close there's the biggest chapel-thing were a lot of people are laid out before they are burried. Not to mention a church (and a monument for the KGB victims on the other side of the river, I can see it through my window...) As I would say in modern Lithuanian, mjoa... :]
A briefing for non-Lithuanians: someone famous died two days ago. He was a bard, a singer, a showman, an actor. Suddenly, everyone's LJ friendpages were full of poems, songs, pictures and last words to the deceased. People were lining up to pay respects for him in Vilnius University's church, and that was on the news. The national television modified its Sunday evening programme to show the most famous movie where the deceased had a supporting (but famous) role, and his last interview after the movie. Today, though it was a workday, people went to the cemetary to see the burial, or simply stopped in the streets to watch the car with the urn pass by. As
ezhux has noted, it seemed too much, it was death turned into a spectacle. Was the man more important to everyone than other singers and bards? Why all this mourning for someone you don't even know? All of this, and all of the LJ-friends posts have been really provocative for some good thinking on what this kind of mourning of the masses was all about.
I can't say I was a big fan of the deceased, by no means. In fact, his big days were before I was born or when I was a little girl. Only yesterday, as I was watching his last interview, did I find out much of what he did back in the Soviet Union. After the Independence he became more of a showman and a TV person than a bard, and that's the amplua my generation mostly saw him in. Still, if someone told me he was 'just a TV host', I wouldn't accept that. His songs from the Soviet times are far too familiar to every Lithuanian. No, I haven't heard them all. No, I've never heard him sing live. But the songs were everywhere when I was growing up, and they have become sort of new folklore for everyone. Even though many of the most famous songs are based on someone else's lyrics, the 'song' is still referred to as 'his'. So this man has essentially become part of the overall sociocultural milieu that independent Lithuania was re-born into and, since my generation grew up together with the newly independent country, we accepted his presence as a matter of fact. He was in his mid-fifties, by the way, and the reason of death was cancer. People about his age, our parents' and grand-parents' generation, remember him slightly differently than we do, because they themselves lived through those Soviet era years.
Surely death by cancer added to the whole mourning pomp. The reaction at least in part was natural and spontaneous, I believe. The relatives of the deceased didn't want to make a big thing out of it, but the people still turned up. The interesting thing is, there has been an exceptional number of deaths of celebrities in the past two years. Another singer about this man's age died last month from a sudden illness. A year ago it was a famous writer, cancer again. A film critic, a young pop singer, an actress (last Saturday, too)... And at least in a couple of cases there has been a certain spectacle to accompany the death. Especially about the writer: people were buying her books like crazy. I was in China at the time so I can't really comment on it, but apparently there were lots of people who recalled her just because she died.
That is the question. Why when they die, we deify them? Or do we? An old saying goes, "If you want to speak about the deceased, say good things or say nothing at all". As I said, I never was a conscious fan of the famous bard's songs, but now that everyone's talking, I'm pretty sure I am also going to buy his CDs, listen to the songs I haven't heard before etc. Somehow, even though I never went to see him on stage, today when I was walking to the library I stopped to bow my head and applaud silently for him as the black car virtually brushed past me in the narrow oldtown street. I was being part of the audience. Somehow, I remembered Emile Durkheim and his theory about how a society worships itself through religious rituals. It is a truth universally known that when someone dies we mourn not for him/her, but for ourselves. In this case it is the society that mourns for its disrupted functioning, albeit it might sound weird.
We shouldn't deny that the spectacle is here. Perhaps we even shouldn't say that it's wrong, that we should stop things like that happening. It's just a social fact, and if it is happenning, it is worthwhile investigating (a scholarly-bent mind speaking here...) Personally, I do not believe this fact has been totally created by the media and other power structures. Part of it, yes, and it certainly is manipulated by the media, especially because the deceased belonged to the media structure themselves. But there are other influences to this. I think, now is the right time for a sociologist, an anthropologist, or a psychologist to come to Lithuania and start researching the phenomenon of turning death into a spectacle. Here's a good study case for them...
P.S. I have just become fully aware of the fact that my home is on what could be called 'the frontier of life' (or death). I live close to the cemetary were many famous people are buried, and also rather close there's the biggest chapel-thing were a lot of people are laid out before they are burried. Not to mention a church (and a monument for the KGB victims on the other side of the river, I can see it through my window...) As I would say in modern Lithuanian, mjoa... :]