The wall-to-wall media coverage of the death of Anna Nicole Smith would have surprised even Andy Warhol. This media moment assumes its place alongside the O.J. car chase and the Long Island Lolita as an "event" surely to inspire multiple made-for-tv movies, a tabloid moment that seems to have some longevity.
So I'm wondering, what other women in the public eye would inspire this much media attention if they died? Assuming the details were relatively similar (dead in a hotel room, mysterious circumstances, etc.), would the death of, say, Pamela Anderson be as big an event? How about Gwyneth Paltrow? Lyndsay Lohan? Hillary Clinton? Condaleeza Rice? Madonna?
I'm not talking about cultural significance, or integrity, or any such abstraction. I'm strictly thinking of which of these figures could attract the same volume of media coverage.
2 comments:
None of the above. The obsession is, in some ways, a class obsession. The women you list are largely static in a way that Anna Nicole Smith is not. She was tawdry, trashy, a stripper who married an aging billionaire and got sued for it when he died, and then continued to work her camp image on her reality TV show, playing it to the hilt: she's quite remarkable, I think, in that she knew how to be trashy, and embraced it, despite what it cost her. People can identify with Anna Nicole Smith in a way they can't with the women you list. She's a big woman, not in the cultural stratosphere in the way those others are. She's approachable. Flawed. Real.
I'll go with the popular media on this one: she had a fucked up life and a seriously hard time. I'm not at all surprised by the coverage, because for once, it's founded in a sense of shared affect that goes beyond the tabloid moments you indict.
Mike: Thanks for the response, and for the interesting thoughts. The whole Amy Fisher saga also involved a kind of class gaze, wouldn't you say? And a lot of reality tv stars find that working-class mojo that they embrace. How many "American Idol" constestants used to strip, or speak with southern accents, etc, etc? In that respect, I'm not sure what separates Anna Nicole Smith. In fact, I think we're surrounded by shared affect...and that includes tabloid moments. Even the popular media stories, tabloid or otherwise, that do little more than rehearse familiar class narratives (to garner "pity," to celebrate mobility, or what have you) create those kinds of identifications.
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