Slow and Somber and the Oddness of Celebrity Death

What is it about the death of a beautiful, young celebrity that hits and sticks with people?

There's some strange effect that the death of someone like Paul Walker has on people; an effect that lingers. 

Of course, we all know it's not more a more important death than any other. It's not that it's not sadder than any other death. In fact, plenty of other deaths are more distressing especially when those who've died led difficult lives or are part of a larger problem. But oddly, a celebrity death can hit harder because it can seem more 'real.'

I suspect, for one, that there's something familiar about a celebrity's face which gives an artificial sense of connection. From the movies, or t.v., or music, you know how they sound and you know how their face looks when they smile or when they try to look serious. It's something you can't usually say about those who've died as the result of natural disasters or a shooting in your hometown. 

But there's something more. 

We don't really think of celebrities as real people until they show their own mortality. Sometimes as they age and grow frail, and other times when they die. 

The juxtaposition of such fortunate people with such unfortunate deaths, in particular, is a jarring way to be reminded they're not a different type of person. Many young celebrity deaths seem avoidable--car crashes, overdoses, suicides--and they happen to people who seem to have such good luck in life. They have good looks and a good career, or at least had those things at some point. Celebrities are very fortunate people. They are the ones who got lucky and landed somewhere they aimed to land. People idolize them. Not in a 'I want to be them' way, though sometimes that, too, but in a 'their lives seem so wonderful' sort of way.

Obviously that isn't necessarily true, but we rarely think of celebrities enough to think of their lives' imperfections. We see them in broad brushstrokes and their colorful lives seem awful nice. You'd think celebrities having children, getting divorced, etc, would make them seem human. Yet, that's all a part of a weird alternate universe they seem to inhabit in the brains of non-celebrity people. 

Then one of 'them' dies and that untimely death makes that person human again.

Suddenly the person doesn't inhabit a universe at all, but only exists in memories, pictures, and films.

And they linger because now we know they were actually real, and now we find it hard to grasp that if they were real then they're also really gone.

If this is how our brains work, think of what could happen if we could only make the people struck by the Philippines typhoon seem more real, too. Then maybe lingering effects deaths could lead to something more than reading celebrity obituaries online and rewatching The Fast and The Furious.