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Friday, March 23, 2012

Have you had enough Whitney Houston News yet?


Are tributes to dead stars genuine, or a chance to cash in one last time? It's getting to the point where I wonder if an artist died if I stumble upon more than two of his or her songs when tuning the radio. We live in a society where no one stays in a limelight for long: if a radio or a TV station wants me to pay attention to a performer, they had better trigger a strong emotional reaction. I will listen to Whitney Houston if I hear that she just died today.
Whitney Houston is a perfect example of this public mourning process: after being considered as a 'has been' for years, she unexpectedly dies. People buy her last album, watch tribute on TV and do some research on the internet, making Whitney Houston a popular figure one last time. Do we actually feel sorry for her? We are more curious about how she dies. About a week later, we learn she has a long history of substance abuse and probably died of an overdose or of complications after taking too many different pharmaceuticals. She is no longer the 'new angel' we were paying tribute to a few days ago.
Perhaps her fans were genuinely touched by her death – but most of us just jumped on the mediatic bandwagon and helped spread the word during lunch break instead of talking about the weather – or worst, we posted about it on Facebook. Everybody quickly moved on: she was not a part of our lives and she has not even been an important part of the musical scene for a long time. We are not mourning a cultural icon or the death of an era. Meanwhile, her producer were cashing in one last time on album sales and memorabilia.
Did we really need this? If we actually had respect for someone, I think there would be a better way to pay tribute to their memory than to write a Facebook post. I wish music producers would stop taking advantage of our pathos and need to talk about morbid things to cash in on a dead person. How do you think Whitney Houston's family feels about this? 

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