Maybe it’s because I just finished Glee for the third time, or maybe it’s because Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington recently passed away, but I got to thinking about why we care so much when celebrities die. People die every day- friends, family, strangers- but when a celebrity dies, everyone stops what they’re doing, tweets about it, and mourns for days or weeks at a time.
I remember exactly where I was June 25, 2009, when Michael Jackson died (my uncle’s study in Bogota), August 11, 2014, when Robin Williams died (touring Princeton University) and February 11, 2012 when Whitney Houston died (having brunch in Coral Gables). Ask me twenty years from now and I’ll still remember where I was and how I reacted. Spoiler alert: I cried.
And while it pains me to say this, I think I cried more when Cory Monteith died than when my own grandfather died. Granted, I was seven and didn’t really understand the concept of death, as compared to being fifteen and understanding what was happening. I had also spent the past four years getting to know Cory Monteith or at least Finn Hudson on a weekly basis.
I had spent my whole life listening to Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson on the radio and to this day will hear songs for the millionth time before realizing they’re Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson songs that had such a positive effect on my life and childhood. When they passed away and the idea that I would never see them on TV or hear them on the radio finally occurred to me, that’s when it hit me. The reason I cared so much, the reason we all care so much, is because we take these celebrities for granted.
Not a day goes by where I don’t think about how I one day won’t have my mom and dad around to help me and guide me. And yet I can’t begin to imagine what life without Taylor Swift would be. I’m not saying she means more to me than my parents, I think what happens is that we put celebrities on this pedestal, allowing them to become huge parts of us, these magical beings, and then we lose them, and are reminded of what humanity really is, that rock stars have problems, and sometimes old age takes you away, people get sick, and cars crash.
We don’t treat celebrities like people, we treat them like invincible heroes. That’s why it hurts so much when they die, because heroes aren’t supposed to die, they’re supposed to always be there.
We spend so much time listening to their music and watching their movies that we can’t even begin to imagine what our lives would be without them. They start to become a part of our lives and the glitz and glamour that come with fame allow us to forget that they’re real people. Eventually, the inevitability that is death catches up to them, and us, and we lose that part of our lives.
When we’re reminded of their humanity, we’re reminded of the effect they had on so many people, and that’s why we care so much. Not because they’re more important than anyone else, but because their deaths mean something different. They remind us that there are few certainties in life, one of which being that there will come a day where we, and everyone else we know, will no longer be here.
No one is immune to death, even those we idolize. It’s a hard pill to swallow sometimes, but I think that if anything, it reminds us to live our lives to the fullest and follow our dreams.
