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Count me out of the tawdry Jade Goody freak show
The public’s grotesque fascination with the reality TV star’s death was a botched catharsis of an inability to deal with its own mortality
A union between a compulsively attention-seeking and ignorant racist wearing a dress donated by Mohamed Fayed, and a golf-club wielding thug, which was attended by Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, together with assorted superannuated pop singers, while Max Clifford span a line and wangled publicity deals from Richard Desmond's OK! magazine and Living TV.
On the face of it the wedding of Jade Goody and Jack Tweed was every single little thing every right-thinking man and woman in this country has come to loathe - the very recrudescence of the canker that infests the social body.
Yet to read the newspaper accounts you would've thought the tale of this gallows mesalliance was the contemporary version of Abelard and Heloise. And to set the seal of official approval on the Goody-Tweed nuptials, there was none other than our presiding fairy Godmother, the Justice Secretary, Jack Straw.
We’ll gladly look the Grim Reaper in the face, as long as it’s through a TV screen
It would be easy enough to dismiss Straw's relaxation of Tweed’s tagging restrictions as sheer media grandstanding - after all, he could've done so on the quiet - but I fear nothing is that straightforward, excepting possibly Goody's motivation.
JG Ballard once observed that "for a writer, death is always a career move". But as talent has been democratised in our society, so too has its prerequisites - now, death is also a career move for reality TV stars, however, unlike those who can expect posthumous royalties, the pay-out has to be on the nail.
It would be a hard-hearted cynic who would deny Goody the opportunity to earn her own bloody money, and so provide for her two young sons after she's gone. Well, I am a hard-hearted cynic - but I'm not gainsaying her that right, I'm merely dissenting from the grotesque sentimentalising of what is little more than a modern freak show.
It's death that's to blame - of course; death, and more specifically our collective need to at once gaze fixedly upon the memento mori of other people's extinction, while carefully averting our eyes from our own extinction and that of our loved ones.
Whether it's an assisted suicide in Switzerland, or a cancer sufferer in suburban Essex, we're happy to look the Grim Reaper full in the face, so long as that face is seen through a television screen, or a grille of newsprint. Our public celebration of death is only the botched catharsis we undergo, trying to cope with our inability to deal with it in private.
Shorn of religious faith, and the stoicism it inculcates, we go to our deaths sedated
I've had cause to remark before on what a curious fact it is that in the lifetime of the average Briton, 90 per cent of the expenditure on his or her healthcare occurs in the last six weeks of life. In such a strange world Alan Johnson should be dubbed 'Secretary of State for Death' - not health.
Shorn of any religious faith - and the stoicism that, rightly or wrongly, it inculcates - we go to our deaths sedated, palliated, screened off from public view, and attended by the same teams of medics that ushered us into this life.
Our overriding concern about our leave-taking from this world - given that we have no belief in the existence of any other - is that it be painless, and that we cause the minimum of distress to our families (given that they, too, are devoid of any stoicism).
The much-trumpeted view that our willingness to bear witness to Jade Goody's expiration is an example of how healthy our attitude to death is, is exactly the reverse of the case.
Goody may well be dying now because of her own capacity for denial - she ignored the follow-up letters following her cervical screening - but it's those who ignore the tawdriness of her demise, while claiming her as a Diana-type saint of public health awareness, who exhibit the most flagrant denial, and how strange it is that the justice secretary should be one of their number. ·
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Jane Tomilison did a great deal to raise money for charity in the time she had left and had a private funeral, Jade's family should had done the same. It was wrong to emulate Princess Diana's funeral, bearing in mind that Diana was a beautiful person and no way was Jade. When Jade got the fame she craved she should have made more of herself and she should have been what was decent when there are so many young girls looking up at her and learning that it is good to behave in the manner she had over a great deal of her time. Okay she did good at the end with the outcome being a person with cancer and again many young women going for tests and probably saving some lives but her family should have kept the funeral private.
Brenda
Upper-class, surely?
But I think many of you are missing the point - the article isn't about Jade Goody, bar the introductory paragraph which uses the pretty common technique of taking something in the news - a hook - in order to start a discussion about something more fundamental.
Try reading it again, but leaving out the references to Goody (not many) and see if you can't agree with what he says?
Amen Dana! Sorry Ben, I think you have misunderstood my point. I completely understand Wills point of fame without talent but thought it very tasteless to write the article on the day of Jadeâ??s death and secondly not to write a balanced article with some positive reflections on Jades life. Instead the article is more like a tacky tabloid piece flowered with Latin phrases to show off his middle-class education!
Although I agree with a lot of what Will has to say, I find it slightly ironic that he would give into the machine of writing about Jade in the first place. If he finds the idea of people admiring her so deplorable, then stay away from writing about the matter in that contrarian way you love to use.
Charlene - Like a few others, you are totally missing the point of Will Self's article. There is no irony or ignorance in Mr Self's article, just a well thought out composition reflecting what he (and plenty of others) see as a nauseating development in the celebration and worship of fame. Just because he is writing about it does not mean he is contributing to this phenomenon. He is a journalist - it is his job to write about events that happen around him!
There is an irony to you calling Jade ignorant in your first paragraph when your whole article is based upon your own assumption that people only admired her either as a saint of public health awareness? or because it reminds one of their own mortality. Is this not ignorance on your own part?
Although Jades fame was a result of a reality TV show? she worked hard, and successfully, to build upon her fame and proved herself to be a very astute business woman. Her choice to publicise her illness in order to raise money for her sons only go to show that her loved ones were never far from her thoughts and actions.
Your barrage of insults and assumptions, not only reflect your own ignorance, but a lack of taste and class. To write this article on the day of Jade's death is both disgusting and distasteful. If you feel so strongly that Jade does not/did not deserve any media attention, why have you even taken the time to write about her!
We have become a very sad society. Churchill must be turning in his grave.
Great article. It say's just what i'm thinking. I don't understand why people lambast and almost demonise others who have a different opinion.
If you want to be counted out of the "Freak show" why are you writing about it? just because you have a negative view doesn't mean you're not guilty of contributing to the media hype as much as anyone else. Totally hypocritical...
Hands up anyone (with at least double digit IQ) who doesn't see current Western society as the inevitable, forewarned even if not actually intended (which I doubt - they knew what they were doing and didn't give a damn), result of the rabid Right's ascendancy, cod-darwinist individualism, complete with the voodoo economics for which we are now getting the bill.
The entertainment industry is just a distraction sponsored by the government as they whittle away at the citizens rights. As long as the people have fluff like this to keep their minds elsewhere, they'll never see the real issues. Goody's story, while tragic, has no impact on the lives of those who don't know her. I thought the vulgar worship of celebrities was bad in America, but you Brits take it to a higher level. Perhaps that is why Big Brother is watching you, while stateside, he is only beginning to.
Barbara...
I don't think that the column deserves the description of bile, no-one has said that she should not provide for her sons, although perhaps if less of the considerable amount of money she has earned over the years had been spent on pensions, insurance and such instead of flash cars, designer clothes and the assorted expensive bric-a- brac that the modern celebrity seem to have to have to fill their lives, there wouldn't be such a necessity for the tawdry grotesque spectacle that we are being bombarded with at present. As for there being more caring parents like that, there are, millions of them all over the world, all trying their best to provide and care for their children, but then again is caring for your children best done by marrying an out of work golf club wielding thug the best way.
What a column of bile, everyone is different, this girl wants to provide for her sons and has little time to do it.
She is doing everything she can to secure their future, what a pity there aren't more caring parents like that. She has no education and has done the best she can.
Hear, hear.
I felt the same way when I watched clips of her receiving the news of her illness on the Indian Big Brother. It was bizarre and slightly sickening to see them tell on camera. Surely terminal illness isn't something you'd want to hear about with the whole world watching? And her children will now have a visual record of their mother mapped out over the years - from nudity on the sofa, to racism, to cancer. How bloody morbid!