The shrines, which began in a major way with the death six years ago of Diana, Princess of Wales, almost instantly became an expected part of public mourning, flourishing after the deaths of John F. Kennedy Jr. and the victims of the 9/11 attacks. This aspect of public grief reveals a paradox in our supersized culture: the outsized, media-driven theatrics of the Reagan funeral are punctuated by small personal gestures and people waiting eight hours in the sun to file past his coffin for a minute. These individual acts are attempts to break through the weeklong wall of official mourning and the wallpaper of television coverage, a combination that doesn’t leave much room for private responses.
I’ve seen a lot of makeshift shrines to the dead in my time – live AND on TV – and it always seemed to me that it was a way for the “mourner” to insert themselves, Zelig-like, into the background. Or to get their sad little offerings on TV or in print.
There were kids at the spontaneous wake for Kurt Cobain in Seattle who kept rearranging their candles and records and flowers and teddy bears in the hopes that the MTV cameramen working the crowd would come over and pan past their little altars (which, yes, were everywhere).
You’ve seen the little roadside crosses, with faded plastic flowers and stained gimcracks whose colors have run in the rain. In Hawaii, there are also beachside crosses with silk leis that commemorate surfers and swimmers who died when a shark or a bad wave caught them.
It’s always crosses and not also Stars of David and crescent moons – I suspect because those traditions view this kind of memorializing as disrepectful.
Why do we feel the need to make and maintain these little shrines when someone famous passes? And why do they have to look so… messy, and tawdry? I suspect it’s so we take part in their fame and… feed off of it in some unhealthy way.
The thought of all those jelly beans dissolving slowly into goo is just depressing.
