| Except for those suffering from unbearable physical pain or extreme psychological depression, I don’t suppose that any day is a particularly good day to die. Even the very old, the very frail, the very lonely must — when push comes to shove — value one more moment of life over death. In answer to Hamlet’s rhetorical question, "To be or not to be," surely the answer can only be "to be." After all, dead men don’t only tell no tales, they don’t do much of anything.
Australia’s Steve Irwin died last week while snorkelling off the Great Barrier Reef, struck in the heart by a stingray while filming for his latest — now last — TV series, The Ocean’s Deadliest. Among the many who expressed immediate sorrow at the death of the 44-year-old "crocodile hunter" was Australia’s Prime Minsiter, John Howard. He was "shocked and distressed at Steve Irwin's sudden untimely and freakish death," and praised him for being "a passionate environmentalist [who] brought entertainment and excitement to millions of people."
This was the opinion of most commentators. Not all, however. Just two days after Irwin’s death, Australian-born feminist Germaine Greer launched an attack in the pages of Britain’s Guardian newspaper. "The animal world has finally taken its revenge on Irwin," she wrote, "but not before a whole generation of kids in shorts seven sizes too small has learned to shout in the ears of animals with hearing 10 times more acute than theirs." What irked Greer the most was that Irwin had "never seemed to understand … that animals need space." Every croc he confronted, every snake he waved for viewers to see, every critter he portrayed as a lethal threat to humankind was a victim of his misguided enthusiasm. "There was not an animal he was not prepared to manhandle,"Greer concluded. "Every creature he brandished at the camera was in distress."
Let’s leave all that aside, however, at least for now. What struck me more was the almost inevitable comment by Irwin’s friend and manager, John Stainton, who told reporters that Irwin had "died doing what he loved – filming life in the wild." Fair enough, but does this observation — for all its banality — really mitigate the fact that Irwin’s far-too-early death leaves behind a wife and two young children, who will now grow up knowing little or nothing of their father but a few reels of TV footage?
In recent years, I’ve heard that same phrase – at least he/she died doing what they loved — all too often, as if it somehow lessens the loss, perhaps even makes some deeper sense of a premature death. But surely this is wrong. Isn’t it far better to die doing something you don’t love doing?
Personally, I’d much rather die in the middle of something I hated doing — filing taxes, cleaning the toilet, sitting in traffic — than something that I actually liked and wanted to carry on doing for a while longer. That way, the experience of my own demise would be that much easier to bear. "At least he died unhappy," is all I want the vicar to say at my funeral.
But I suspect I’m in a minority, Even (especially?) in death, most of us want our lives to display more meaning than perhaps they did while we were alive. It’s life’s last irony, surely, that the one time that the sum value of our life is calculated and declared is precisely when we’re not around to appreciate it.
Funeral orations are not for the dead and departed, but rather for those who are left behind. Hence the need to portray Irwin’s "untimely" and "freak" death as somehow more symbolic than the mundane reality of a guy getting whacked in the chest by a fish that probably had no idea he was even there in the first place.
Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
The self-imposed moratorium on fictionalizing the events of five years ago appears to be over. Recent films such as Paul Greengrass’s United 93, Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, and the ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11 all attempt to bring new significance to the events of that day. They have to, for the basic story, the essential drama, is too well known to captivate any audience’s attention.
But are such vehicles up to the job? I watched A&E’s Flight 93 last Friday and confess to being moved by the events it portrayed, by the personal impact that 9/11 had on ordinary people who had no control over the events of that day. But even as I watched, I knew that I was being played. The film followed the tried-and-tested and all-too-predictable arc that all made-for-TV movies follow, urging me to identify with a set cast of characters, to feel — in true Oprah fashion — the full extent of their loss.
The result, unfortunately, was to reduce the very real horrors of 9/11 to the scale of just another primetime disaster flick. This sense of trivialization was compounded by the intrusion of commercials every few minutes. In particular, I recall an advert that promised to cure erection dysfunction (or "ED" as the pitchman preferred to call it). The wisdom of linking America’s darkest day in history to men who can’t get it up was lost on me, I must admit, but it did seem to detract from the gravity of the film.
And what about the 3000 or so individuals who died in New York that sunny morning five years ago? Can the recent spate of films make some sense of their deaths? Is there any sense to make? Did they, like Steve Irwin, die doing what they loved, and if so — as they sat down to work on September 11, 2001 — did this really make a difference?
Or, as we now watch actors portraying partial images of those men and women in order to sell more product in primetime, do we in fact dishonour the memory of their real lives, known only to those who knew them while they lived? |
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