Friday, February 09, 2007

Anna Nicole Smith - a tribute

The Fundy Post learned this morning of the death of Anna Nicole Smith, the well-known celebrity. We would like to make it known that we do not give a stuff.

9 comments:

stephen said...

I do think her life is/was a tragedy, in the dramatic sense. Fatal flaw and all that. The fact that it became trashy and frivolous amidst the misery makes it more tragic. I feel sorry for her, and even more sorry for her offspring.

harvestbird said...

In light of the sentiments expressed in this post, you may find Fairfax's page for loving tributes less than tolerable.

Paul said...

Nice Toucan. I thought I would not be able to bear the tributes page but then I saw comments such as "Farewell Anna-Nicole; in your too-short life, you achieved the impossible - you made Courtney Love look like a intellectual" and my mood lightened.

Less I be thought of as quite heartless, I do feel sadness that anyone should die and sympathetic towards her family. But then I feel the same when I read about a fatal car crash on State Highway One. What bothers me is that all the clocks are being stopped because someone famous has died.

Alan MacDiarmid, someone who made real achievements and a New Zealander as well, died suddenly yesterday. I have yet to see any tributes pages in the national media.

stephen said...

According to latest experiments, "mcdiarmid" made the cut on the 8th, while ANS has yet to do so.

stephen said...

Or perhaps not. On reflection, ANS is international news, which I'm not scraping yet.

harvestbird said...

I think if the ruminator extended its scrapy reach to international waters, it might need another name--the alienator, perhaps?

I do find it curious that when a celebrity dies so many people offer public condolences in the same manner as they might to the family of, say, a murder victim. It's as if the strange confection of the deceased's celebrity--its spectacle, its inventedness--gets forgotten.

stephen said...

It's no different to ritual mourning of the death of Tammuz (or Princess Diana, for that matter). The celebrity persona (as distinct from the famous human being) is a simulacrum for worship.

Celebrity is a religious practise with spontaneously evolving deities, like voodoo or candomble, which is why the truly devout build shrines and sacrifice their existence to the acquisition of esoteric knowledge of the adored (doris magazines). Its devotees are intimate with their deities just as Christians are familiar with Jesus. ANS was the most recent incarnation or avatar of the Monroe entity.

This comment brought to you by the Golden Bough and Adcult USA.

harvestbird said...

The avatar principle might explain why, since hearing news of Ms. Smith's death, I keep remembering snippets of the version of Candle in the Wind that Elton John sang at the late Princess of Wales's funeral. The incarnations are massing, apparently.

One of the reasons I remain sceptical of a collective unconscious as a kind of afterlife substitute is that such an entity would surely be chock with celebrity trivia, at least near the surface where such knowledges seem to float.

Anonymous said...

Who will take care of her assets?