Fake deaths, cheap resurrections, and dealing with real grief

October 20, 2014 5:24 AM

William Hughes writes movingly about the death of his partner and how it has changed how he reacts to the portrayal of death and resurrection in media.
posted by Cannon Fodder (15 comments total)

I immediately thought of "A Separate Peace" when I read this. Not because of any cheap deaths in the book, but because the big death in the book was also a blood clot in the leg that traveled up to the lung. I remember reading that as a kid and kinda being freaked out by it. Death by heart attack or stroke or car accident are things I could process at that age, but the blood clot thing seemed so bizarre and frightening to me at the time. Still does, really.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:58 AM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Poor guy. I went through the sudden death of a fiancé in my 20's and remember feeling astounded and incredulous that the world kept rotating. Not hard to imagine such a strong reaction to the seeming trivialization of death when one's entire world has been upended. It will take him at least a year for normal things to seem normal again.

I think it's especially difficult when it's a developmentally inappropriate death. Like if I had been in my 70's and had friends losing partners and was near widowhood age, it would feel more normal. When you're very young and the one you lose is also young, you're very alone and don't have much support and people act all weird around you. People at my work would not make eye contact with me, even though my fiancé died of a cardiac event and not a communicable disease.

Really feel for the guy. Very sad.
posted by Punctual at 6:10 AM on October 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

This reminds me of an NPR interview I heard once. The woman being interviewed had experienced the murder of someone close to her. She said that afterwards she was never again able to see homicide as "entertainment" - whether via tv shows, or movies, or even the game "Clue".
posted by jenh526 at 6:31 AM on October 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

Oh yes. After my mom died (she was much older but death was not something the doctors had thought was likely and thus was shocking in its own way) I got annoyed every time I watched a fictionalised death on tv or in a film. That just ... wasn't how it went. I was with Mom throughout the day it took her to die and it was not quick and clean and aesthetically pleasing. It's the awful panting and the fluids and the incoherence as she tried to speak to us. It wasn't beautifully lit and over before the ads.

As a result, death in fictional visual media simply breaks the fourth wall for me in most cases, especially when it's being portrayed "seriously" - having said that, the death of King Kong in the Peter Jackson remake just broke me, for some reason. I sobbed uncontrollably (it came out a while after Mom died) - something to do with the light behind the eyes going out.

And then there were the following years (even now, to a degree, although much less overwhelming) of what I called "compressed time", where you suddenly think it can't be a week / six months / next Xmas since she died as it felt like you were only talking to her yesterday. It was like life warped round you for a moment and threw off all the comforting blankets.
posted by Martha My Dear Prudence at 6:38 AM on October 20, 2014 [14 favorites]

Obviously, he's not alone in this reaction...not just to movies but to nearly everything in the world that triggers thoughts of a loved one's death. And, I can grasp the additional wrenching longing where there is an aspect of resurrection in the trigger.

Which, ironically, brings me to "Resurrection", a mediocre yet somewhat interesting show... I honestly believe that I'm continuing to watch it due to having lost my own son in an accident 25 years ago. Watching the characters Henry and Lucille Langston attempt to sort through the resurrection and return of their son is fascinating, heartbreaking, and terrifying for me. It's hard enough to randomly come across a photo of my son, I can not imagine how I would react if I walked into the room to find him standing there. I suspect the hardest part would be anticipating having to lose him again... resurrection only portends more grief.

My heart goes out to the author, and, he's right, over time it will get better, it won't be as hard... I wish him, and all of you that have experienced this, peace....
posted by HuronBob at 6:41 AM on October 20, 2014 [9 favorites]

This poor guy. That's one of the most frightening things I can imagine having to experience. I read the article hoping that he is in therapy, which might really help with his PTSD. What an awful thing.
posted by sockermom at 8:18 AM on October 20, 2014

This reminds me of an NPR interview I heard once. The woman being interviewed had experienced the murder of someone close to her. She said that afterwards she was never again able to see homicide as "entertainment" - whether via tv shows, or movies, or even the game "Clue".


I think I remember that one- I believe she also mentioned how grossly inappropriate it would be to have a "Rape mystery dinner" as entertainment, so why is murder OK?

I have a friend/colleague whose son committed suicide last year, and it's really changed how I view media with that (particularly anything involving hanging) or any flippant use of "Yeah, I wanted to kill myself"; I can't imagine what she must be going through, but this article certainly gets close.
posted by damayanti at 9:00 AM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

It is interesting to me how many life events can really change how you approach entertainment. Like, after I had kids I found it much more difficult to watch movies that put kids in danger for reasons that this author would consider cheap manipulation. I just have no interest. So I think I'd feel very much the same as he does given his experience.

And let me weigh in on how cowardly the death of Kirk in New Trek really was, too. If you're going to go there, at least leave him dead until the next movie. A gutless, emotionless counterfeit of the greatest Trek film out there.

I always thought the death of Buffy's mom on Buffy the Vampire Slayer was an excellent example of how much real death is really awful. One of the best episodes of an excellent show.
posted by dellsolace at 9:07 AM on October 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

Finally, the rest of the world is beginning to hate J.J. Abrams as much as I do.

I don't want to sound heartless, I mean, I really feel for the guy deeply, but I feel like the inclusion of his personal experience in this case sort of dulls the impact of his main points. The points are all super valid -- death is [WAY OVER]used as a cheap "Emotion Button" in Hollywood flicks and qualifying it with "but I'm hurting from my own experiences so this might not be an objective reading" isn't as effective an addition to the discussion as the one-off comment about the Orpheus myth.
posted by Mooseli at 10:15 AM on October 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

I lost a relative to AIDS in the early 1990s, and I've had this discussion a couple of times before with friends and whatnot: I'm not usually bothered by the way that superhero comics kill people off and bring them back with abandon. But that they brought back Illyana after the Legacy Virus--seriously, thinking about it right now is practically enraging, I can literally feel it in my jaw. Because that storyline ended up meaning a lot to me at that age, in that situation, and it was like a slap in the face to have it all turn out okay. I know this is an emotional thing for me, but I still regularly find myself trying to explain it in a way that will make other people Get It.
posted by Sequence at 11:22 AM on October 20, 2014

It still freaks me out that violence is entertainment. Murder, rape, suicide, torture, death are all there on our screens to entertain us, children and adult, all day every day. It's not instructive at all, not cathartic, it's just cheap. Garbage.

I grew up in a culture that isn't afraid of death, that celebrates death as a part of life, that doesn't see death as an ending really, but as the beginning of something else entirely, and I am still disturbed by death as entertainment.

And not for nothing: But women this young throwing blood clots and having strokes? Hormonal birth control.
posted by GoLikeHellMachine at 11:33 AM on October 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

My response after losing my wife, now almost three years ago, has been the opposite. I find myself more easily welling up at even blatantly manipulative tearjerking.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:34 AM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

I think it is interesting how people can react different to media given their experiences. Its sort of obvious when you think about it, but its not something I do a lot. Theres a lovely passage in About a Boy where the mother has just (spoilers for fairly early on!) attempted suicide, and she and her son decide to watch a film. He picks Groundhog Day, a comedy, only to find that it contains an extended sequence where Conners kills himself. It was something I hadn't really thought about in the film before.

Of course this all relates to the idea of triggers and content warnings, and how they might help us avoid media which can deeply upset us.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 12:27 PM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

MartinWisse: My response after losing my wife, now almost three years ago, has been the opposite. I find myself more easily welling up at even blatantly manipulative tearjerking.

If I had a nickle for every commercial that's made me tear up since Mom passed…

Hell, I got choked up a few weeks ago when I was helping a friend look for an over-the-sink cutting board and found a link to one like Mom used to serve us pizza on when I was a child.
posted by ob1quixote at 6:33 PM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Of course this all relates to the idea of triggers and content warnings, and how they might help us avoid media which can deeply upset us.

I spoil myself regularly as a way of controlling when and if I watch a show with victimization, violence, and rape in it. I wish trigger warnings were more prevalent, but I'm no longer willing to be gut punched by an unexpected horror once I care about the characters.

It's one of the reasons I was so glad when Seanan McGuire said her characters would never be raped; it gave me a level of comfort with her many series that is palpable.
posted by Deoridhe at 1:33 PM on October 21, 2014