TV Has Its Place: When Death Comes To Television

This is one show that I hope the U.S. doesn’t crib from Britain.

She may not be a household word here in America, but in the UK, Jade Goody became famous the way most famous people have done so in recent years — she went on a reality TV show. A raw specimen of humanity, Goody entered Britons’ homes via Big Brother, on which she became the subject of an awful lot of fascination. She drank, swore and generally existed on the show to provoke at least feelings of ire if not superiority in all who watched her. The notoriously catty British press had its way with her, and eager readers couldn’t wait to catch up on whatever was dished out on her. When she was shown making racist remarks about an Indian actor on Celebrity Big Brother, the media did its level best to level her, in harmony with the public’s understandable outrage. She’s lived in the glare of the spotlight and cameras for many years. And now, according to the New York Times, she just might die in front of them.

Diagnosed with cervical cancer last August that has since spread, Goody is now living on borrowed time, she told the News of the World on Sunday. And in that time, she wants to make the most of it. The TV cameras were present when she received her prognosis — and subsequent proposal by her boyfriend, just out of prison for assault — and she wants to milk the rest of her life for all it’s worth.

It’s a bizarre tango of mutual exploitation between Goody and the press. They’ve both benefited from the symbiosis over the years, and Goody in some sense is having the last laugh, as cameras and reporters flurry about her, documenting her declining health online and paying her exorbitant sums for access to her wedding. But there’s a genuine perverseness at work that underscores the transformative power of television: Although it has been suggested that Goody is exploiting her condition for attention, with some even going so far as to suggest that it’s an invention on her part, her focus at this point is on sustaining the situation for as much profit as possible — so that she can leave her fortune to her children.

That leaves me to wonder: What will the viewing public, who derided her lack of intelligence, her uncouthness and, yes, her racial insensitivity, feel if and when this particular person leaves this Earth in front of their eyes? What part will they feel they have had in creating what this individual had become? Will they feel complicity? Will they feel encouraged that they’ve contributed to the survival of her children?

Likely as not, many won’t feel anything. Call it the dehumanizing effect of television, but so much of what we see onscreen is difficult to process as reality even when we know fully that it is so. But any way you do process it, Goody will have come out on top in the end — for all her faults, she will have accomplished a moral victory at the expense of herself, humbled the media and the audience that pointed to her as a symbol of national sloth, in addition to encouraging young women to seek screenings for cervical cancer. And for someone in her unenviable position, that’s as much as anyone could hope for.

1 Comment

  1. Let me first say, my heart breaks for Jade Goody and her family.

    But I’m not sure what to think about this one at all. I agree that there are PSA merits to what she is doing. However, for someone of consistently dubious intentions, I wonder if that’s ever been part of the plan. And while she may be leaving a monetary fortune to her children, she is also leaving them a lasting record of their mother’s detirioration and (God forbid the cameras continue to roll this far) death, plus a planet-full of cooly — and probably cruelly — detached opinions on the subject.

    There is more to survival than just sporting a heartbeat and having the means to pay the bills… it seems to me Ms. Goody’s legacy would be better served by spending her remaining time giving her children lasting memories that do not involve TV crews.

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