Saying goodbye

Saying goodbye: Sometimes celebrity deaths make you sad

by Colleen Guzman

               Today we learned of the tragic untimely death of another celebrity. Anton Yelchin died unexpectedly in what appears to have been a freak accident. It is such a shame because he was still so young and had really just begun to show us what he was capable of as an actor. I love Star Trek and I truly enjoyed the newest installments in the Star Trek universe and I thought that Yelchin played a perfect Chekov. I enjoyed his boyish charm and I thought he took some notes from Walter Koenig that linked the character to my childhood memories of watching Star Trek with my parents. As I thought about this young

man and the character he played I began to wonder what it is about celebrity deaths that make them so important to us. I think some of the impact depends on how attached you feel to a particular celebrity or perhaps how attached you feel to the character they portray. I also think that losing a celebrity in the midst of filming or while they are playing a recurring character is difficult.

               If you've watched the show you may have heard my disdain for celebrities, and it's not that I have anything against them as people but I truly dislike the whole celebrity worship thing many people have going. I really can't stand the amount of money they make, their gall at asking us to help with a charity when they have so much and they get so much for free, their self importance, the fact that they want people to pay almost a full day's salary just to get a photo with them at a convention, etc., etc. I don't really like the whole system that surrounds them but I am not a heartless cad so when one of them dies I do feel for their families and sometimes when one of them dies I feel a little bad when they played a character that I truly loved. I

have made some pretty strong connections to characters, I have cried when they die in a book or show or movie so when I was thinking about celebrity deaths I could see how a person could be saddened by the death of a celebrity if they loved the character that celebrity was portraying. I know that when Heath Ledger passed away and since his passing I have thought about what a riveting Joker he was and how we will never have another Joker who was quite as convincing, quite as disturbing, that there will just never be another Heath Ledger Joker and for that I feel a sense of loss.

               Many times we don't see celebrities as people, we only see them as the character they portray and each time they portray that character we become more and more attached to them and we begin to see them as that character and not as the person they are. This happens more often when the celebrity is portraying a character in a series of movies that haven't completed filming. We've seen this happen more times than we would like and each time it happens it is difficult for the celebrity that follows them to step into their role. It is also difficult for the people who have become attached to the original celebrity to accept that someone else has to fill that role and that they will most likely fill it in a different way, or they may not meet the criteria for perfection that the first celebrity met for us. For some people the loss of a celebrity actually becomes the loss of a character they have become attached to so they mourn that loss.

               In my opinion the thing I think that we need to remember when a celebrity dies is that we did not know them, not truly. We have social media, news stories, articles in magazines, etc. but we don't really know them. When a celebrity dies it doesn't really effect all of us out here in la-la land but it actually does effect their families and the people who knew them as actual human beings and loved them for the people they were not for the persona they hid behind, the character they portrayed or the person we thought they were. People need to remember that celebrities are people, they come from somewhere, they have their own circle and they do not belong to us. when a celebrity dies we should feel for their people and then we should swiftly move on and give the next celebrity a chance.