Celebrity culture is deep-rooted into the western world. People idolise celebrities who are talented and ones that are not so talented, many buy magazines and newspapers simply to read about the lives of people they don’t know.There is a weird fascination in people that entertain us, this fascination is almost always heightened when a celebrity is going through a bad time. We love to see our stars rise to the top, but to many people, watching them fall from grace is even better.
With this in mind, it should have come as no surprise to me the reactions when the news of Amy Winehouse’s death filtered through. But given what has taken place and still is going in the world right now, I kind of thought the worlds celebrity obsession would have taken a back seat, just this once.
At a time when 80 + young people were shot by person filled with unbridled hate, hate that our best selling newspapers consistently want to exacerbate. A time where millions of people starve in East Africa even though the western world throws out enough food to feed all of these people. I just thought that some type of compassion for human beings that aren’t famous would eclipse that given to a single person.
Yet on Friday night when news of the Norway shootings was breaking out, hardly anyone was talking about it, and hardly anyone talked about the famine in East Africa, there was very little sympathy on my twitter feed and there was much less on my facebook. As soon as a celebrity died however, there was condolences and expressions of sadness coming from all angles.
And I just thought to myself what a strange world we live in. I guess it must be the case that ‘a celebrities death is a tragedy and anyone else’s death is merely a statistic’.
The biggest point from all three of these tragedies is that they should all give vital lessons.
Amy Winehouse’s death should serve as a reminder of the way we treat drug addicts, that governments over the world are failing to combat the problem of drugs in the most effective way.
The terrorist attack in Norway should serve as a warning that we cannot continue to fill our world with hate.
And the famine in East Africa is another reminder that our world is hugely unbalanced, greed is rife and more needs to be done to make things better.
R.I.P to all of those who lost their lives over the weekend.
