Aaliyah - Princess Di all over again...

[Hail Ants]

Obviously anyone's death is tragic.

However if you're say, over the age of 15, and you become physically emotional (i.e. sobbing, can't sleep etc.) over the death of someone who you never, EVER, had any personal contact or association with, then there is something wrong with you.

[Guinastasia]

I disagree.

What about people who were depressed over the Kennedy Assasination, or the murder of John Lennon?

[Sterra]

What about fictional characters that are only a few scribblings on a piece of paper?

IMHO one has to be deeply insecure to declare anything they don't understand wrong. Or maybe just very close minded.

[Joe_Cool]

Originally posted by Guinastasia
I disagree.

What about people who were depressed over the Kennedy Assasination, or the murder of John Lennon?

Well, your question was answered in the OP:

if you're say, over the age of 15, and you become physically emotional (i.e. sobbing, can't sleep etc.) over the death of someone who you never, EVER, had any personal contact or association with, then there is something wrong with you.

I think it's pretty clear. Look, I'm sorry she died and all, but do you go into mourning every time a human dies? That must be one heck of a full-time job, considering somebody is dying about every minute. Life is full of enough crap without piling artificial sentimentality on top of it.

[Duck Duck Goose]

[out of the loop, checking in]

So, this is a singer who was killed in a plane crash?

http://news.excite.com/news/r/010828...mas-aaliyah-dc

Singer Aaliyah's Body Flown to United States

Updated: Tue, Aug 28 6:58 PM EDT

By John Marquis
NASSAU, Bahamas (Reuters) - The body of the late pop and soul singer Aaliyah was flown back to the United States on Tuesday as safety experts examined the plane that crashed in the Bahamas, killing her and eight others.

Heartbroken fans gathered outside a Nassau funeral home to watch as a black hearse drove away with the body of the 22-year-old singer and movie actress.

Is this the same topic as the "Buckley" thread, namely, "why do people get so upset when celebrities, whom they have never met, die?"

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/...threadid=83954

Well, to address the OP (the thread title, at least), no, it's not "Princess Di all over again", because even those of us who are chronically out of the loop heard about it when SHE died.

And I was once personally acquainted with a dear, sweet 14-year-old, the daughter of a friend of mine, who came out of the first-run release of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan weeping helplessly. "What's wrong?" her mother asked in alarm. "Spock dies," Lizzie told us briefly, and she cried all the way home.

Go figure. [shrug]

[Joe_Cool]

Originally posted by Duck Duck Goose
And I was once personally acquainted with a dear, sweet 14-year-old, the daughter of a friend of mine, who came out of the first-run release of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan weeping helplessly. "What's wrong?" her mother asked in alarm. "Spock dies," Lizzie told us briefly, and she cried all the way home.

Go figure. [shrug]

But come on, It's Mr. Spock!

[Sultan Kinkari]

Hail Ants
Come on, I cry at movies, and you say that somebody must be a total washover if they cry when someone dies who actually happens to be real. At least they still have their priorities in check. Besides, who are you to judge someone who acts on their feelings and is in touch with their human condition.

Remember, human beings do develop deep emotional bonds with people or even things all the time and can relate to the feelings that her family and friends must be feeling at this time. Have you no respect for people that can recognize when a good, honest person has been taken from this earth without their emotional consent, and as a result are promoted to tears(remember that tears for most people are a rare condition that should be not necessarily relished, but experienced), and experience is knowledge. They are necessary, and that is why they happen. I acknowledge that it is rare when a truly loveable and chaste person leaves our earth, and that is why some people feel so cheated(consciously or not) when they are taken away.

Don't take this as a brash assumption about your emotional maturity, but I think you just havn't had a close friend, or someone you felt really close to, die. It hits you like a ton of bricks and crying is completely, 100% beyond your control. FYI, some artists are real artists, which means that they put their heart and soul into their work, like Aaliyah. Some people, those whom you have so boldly chastised, feel that they really connected with Aaliyah, like they were friends. Just because you don't(didn't?) have compassion for those who truly delve into their emotions doesn't mean that you have to be an asshole(am I wrong?) and call them a bunch of crying babies. Have a heart, man. Let people feel what they want to feel.

Whether you experience some sort of emotional transformation after reading this is beyond the limits of my control, but I would like to impress upon you that until you have been privy to a wider spectrum of the emotions characteristic to the human experience, and make judgements upon those who have, I think you are simply making tactless remarks to preserve an illusion of security that will hopefully be admonished through your natural{again, [i]hopefully) maturing processes.

Read it twice if you didn't get the gist on the first go-around.

[Sultan Kinkari]

BTW, why the hell is this in GD?

[pennylane]

If someone cries because of someone else's death, why should anyone else care? What if I cry for no reason at all? How pathetic am I...

By the way my signature is only a quote from the animated TV show "King of the Hill", and the character who said it was referring to someone he actually knew (if animated TV characters can know each other)...

[MonkeyMensch]

I was all ready to jump into this thread and say something about how ludricous our attachment to pop figures is.

Now that I've read the posts I have been given food for thought.

I go to movies. I love movies. I become involved and care deeply about fictional character's lives for a couple of hours or so. I worry for the twists of fate they suffer. I weep for their outcome. Am I coo-coo? Nah. The screenwright just did a good job, that's all.

So now, when a real person dies, how do I feel? Well, if it's Aaliyah, not much. That's only because I didn't know her. I can think of a number of other musicians, Kurt Cobain and Stevie Ray Vaughan jump to mind, whose death affected me. I didn't know them personally. They didn't call. They never came over for dinner at the house. But their music made a connection with me and I miss that connection.

So, more power to ya, if you miss her. It means you're human. It means you're still alive to miss her.

[Eve]

I am certainly not a weepy person, but I teared up when Gilda Radner and Divine and Richard Amsel and Cass Elliott died, because I enjoyed their talents and thought it was a shame that they wouldn't be contributing any more to the world. Aside from the sadness of relatively young people dying in the first place.

I'd never heard of Aaliyah and didn't cry when she died—but it is an awful shame that someone 22 years old was cut off from what seems to have been a very promising career. Plus, she seems to have been a good role model for poor inner-city kids, judging from the news interviews I saw last night.

[Bricker]

If I weren't such a tough, manly bastard, I would admit to tearing up when Eponine dies in Les Mis, just before the Phantom lets Christine go, and when Kim dies in Miss Saigon.

Question: does the OP therefore consider there to be something wrong with me? (Er... if I did admit it, that is?)

- Rick

[Guinastasia]

Or Martin Luther King, Jr. I'm sure there were plenty of people who cried and probably felt depressed when he was killed-same with Ghandi.

[IzzyR]

Originally posted by Hail Ants
if you're say, over the age of 15, and you become physically emotional (i.e. sobbing, can't sleep etc.) over the death of someone who you never, EVER, had any personal contact or association with, then there is something wrong with you.

I agree that the media tends to blow the importance of these celebrities way out of proportion, and to depict them in an artificially glorified manner. And people who buy into this are being irrational to some degree - or at least misled. But I don't agree that such people have any emotional problem at all.

[NYR407]

I think this is getting into a male/female (AKA Mars/Venus) debate. Women are supporting the right to cry whenever they feel like it and the men are arguing that it is inconceivable to them how people can become so emotionally attached to someone they never met. How many times have you been to a "chick flick" (I am going to get abused for that one) and see/hear women crying and you know most of the men wondering why the hell they are crying and when the hell is the movie going to end.

While I was saddened by the deaths of Lennon, Phil Hartman, (list is long and morbid) etc., I (being male) never felt the emotional bond between us (the audience) and them (the public figures). I never felt the need to cry of their deaths.

However, when my uncle past away a few years ago I did feel the emotional bond between us. I was brought to tears.

Of course, I am only generalizing the male/female emotional diferences.

[Patty O'Furniture]

There were eight other people in that plane... why a special pedestal for Aaliyah? I can't, off the top of my head, think of anybody (that I'm not personally connected with) who's death would provoke a reaction other than "what a shame" or "how unfortunate for his/her loved ones". Carl Sagan was the last famous figure to die that had any impact on me, and my heart sank a little just because I thought of the loss to scociety as a whole.

Maybe it's just my coping mechanism, or that I thought Aaliyah didn't have much to contibute to scociety as a whole (any more than the other 8 people who died on that plane).

[Acco40]

Attryant:

Mass media gives some people the impression that they truly know a given celebrity, and therefore feel empathy for their trageties.

The other people on that plane weren't known, but that doesn't trivialize their deaths... it just overshadows them.

[pldennison]

Originally posted by NYR407
I think this is getting into a male/female (AKA Mars/Venus) debate. Women are supporting the right to cry whenever they feel like it and the men are arguing that it is inconceivable to them how people can become so emotionally attached to someone they never met. How many times have you been to a "chick flick" (I am going to get abused for that one) and see/hear women crying and you know most of the men wondering why the hell they are crying and when the hell is the movie going to end.

**cough**Dale Earnhardt**cough**

[NYR407]

Sorry, Dale Earnhardt didn't affect me one bit. But I see your point about grown men crying over his death. Well taken. I bet they cried when Old Yella died too.

[ThisYearsGirl]

Originally posted by pennylane
By the way my signature is only a quote from the animated TV show "King of the Hill", and the character who said it was referring to someone he actually knew (if animated TV characters can know each other)...

Is that the episode where Buckley's angel appears to LuAnne on the trampoline? I thought that entire episode was so awesome and well-done.

Back to the subject. . .
Personally, I wish all celebrity deaths were covered by the media the same way Aaliyah's death has been; the major news networks and papers did a mention of it, and the networks she mattered to her more (MTV) did a fairly classy little bio and tribute to her, showing parts of shows she did, talking to fans, and so on. There's no big drama, no crazy overdone news coverage, no matrying of her. I think it's very classy.

Unfortunatly, anyone more famous than her has the potential to have their death (and life) totally overblown in the media.

I usually don't get that torn-up by celebrity deaths (although I did cry over Phil Hartman, but that's because I felt so sad for his children), but I did real saddened by Aaliyah's death. She was only 22 years old. That's very close to my age, and really young.

[Hail Ants]

Sure, I can see sheading a few tears over the death of a singer you really liked. But I keep reading these posts all over the net of people who spent hours or days sobbing and saying things like "I felt so close to her".

Hello?! I have loved music my whole life. But it's just that, music. It is not a relationship with the person who writes it. I was surprised (not stunned) and bummed (not depressed) when Kurt Cobain killed himself. But I'm honest enough to know that what bothered me the most was - 'no more new Nirvana albums'.

I know that sounds cynical, but since Nirvana's music is the thing that mattered to me in terms of Cobain's life, it's what mattered to me in terms of his death.

I'm not saying your 'Nurse Betty' crazy, but I am saying that becoming seriously, physically emotion over the death of someone you had no tangible relasionship with is not normal. I cried like a baby for a week after my cat of 14 years died. But not for any celebrity.

[Guinastasia]

Well, if you were crying for a week, and really sobbing, moping about and really taking it personally, then that would be a sign, I think, of depression and signal a need for therapy, perhaps.

But I can see people being very depressed about the assassination of King and Ghandi, and feeling very upset for a while-because their lives had such a tremendous impact on society.

[Pyrrhonist]

Originally posted by Duck Duck Goose



Well, to address the OP (the thread title, at least), no, it's not "Princess Di all over again", because even those of us who are chronically out of the loop heard about it when SHE died.

Call me out of the loop too.

I still don't know who A-chick is, despite the hype. I’ve never heard a note she sung, so far as I know. Saw a photo of her on news site, but I probably couldn't pick it out with out a name. Means about as much to me as the death of NYC cabbie or Floridian accountant.

When Di died my mother in law called at 6:00 AM with the news rather hysterical. "Who cares?" I said and went back to sleep. The only thing shocking about her death was the massive overreaction from the public over the accidental death of a woman who did essentially nothing. The death of Sir George Solti the same week was a far greater loss, IMHO. Nothing to get weepy about, just a regret a the passing of a great musical talent. (But that is a different loop, I suppose.)

[Cosmopolitan]

Despite the fact that I'm a woman , you can put me in the "I don't really get it" category. Tears when you initially hear the news, sure, but I never understood the hysteria at the deaths of JFK Jr., John Lennon, Princess Diana, et al. I can I remember being 13 or 14 and having to comfort a friend who was inconsolable over Kurt Cobain's death. I thought it was interesting that she wasn't the only one so upset.

Put it this way; I love the song "One", by Metallica. It's more than a love, actually. It expresses how I've felt at my most depressed, most trying times. It was exhilarating to hear a song and think, "Holy shit, that's exactly how I feel!". From that day forward, I was a fan. Hell, I even wrote a letter to James Hetfield after he had an accident, consoling him (I was 14, okay?)and sending my good wishes. I have never sent, or thought to send, another fan letter in my life.

Was I bummed when I found out that Jason Newsted is no longer with the band? Yeah, man. Will it hit me when one of the guys dies? Absolutely. Will I shed a tear? Quite possibly. Will I be inconsolable? I really do doubt it.

I can better understand hysterical sadness at the deaths of people like MLK Jr. or M. Ghandi, the fathers of huge civil rights movements that helped millions. I can understand a week's mourning over JFK. Not only did the boomers see him as "theirs" and as the one of the leaders of a new...movement, I guess, but he was the leader of the freaking country! I imagine that having the leader of one's country die, especially violently, would break someone up for a few days.

By the way, I don't think that people who cry for days/weeks/etc. over a famous person are necessarily sick/weird/stupid...I just don't understand it. Maybe I'm the weird one.

[pennylane]

Originally posted by ThisYearsGirl

Is that the episode where Buckley's angel appears to LuAnne on the trampoline? I thought that entire episode was so awesome and well-done.

I thought it was really lovely too. I don't believe in angels but the episode made me wish I did. It was so moving...

[Living Dead Girl]

Originally posted by Attrayant
There were eight other people in that plane... why a special pedestal for Aaliyah?

This is the only problem I have with all the grief for Aaliyah - where are all the mourners for the other 8 people who also died? Are they somehow less important because they weren't famous? I just find it ironic that the same people who are claiming to be so shocked and saddened by the death of someone they never met didn't even react to the thought that another 8 people also were killed.

But, because they weren't young and beautiful and famous, they don't matter. Go figure.

[Gatopescado]

this is kinda off the point, but its something i really feel the need to spout:

i would really recommend famous artists/celebritys to stay away from small charter planes. they seem to be the kiss of death for these type of people. stick to the major airlines, they dont seem to kill you as often. i would have to take my pants and shoes off to count the number of celebs killed in small airplanes/helicopters. cant recommend the bus, either, for that matter.

i was pretty bummed out when SRV was killed. i wish i could have warned him first. i really think he had some contributions yet to offer.

[Guinastasia]

I'd still like to go back in time and save Glenn Miller.