(Originally for my "Breaking the Waves" column over at Amplify Your Voice)
Probably because I’m a former documentary film subject, I’m fascinated by the ethics of voyeurism – how much is too much to show to the world? What’s privacy worth compared to the potential costs and gains of fame? And, once it’s happened, how can you know what’s innately you and what’s a result of being filmed and put out there for the world to see? Is there a difference?
Probably because I’m a former documentary film subject, I’m fascinated by the ethics of voyeurism – how much is too much to show to the world? What’s privacy worth compared to the potential costs and gains of fame? And, once it’s happened, how can you know what’s innately you and what’s a result of being filmed and put out there for the world to see? Is there a difference?
Enter Jade Goody, a 27 year-old Briton whose rough, drug-heavy background and foul mouth landed her on the UK’s Big Brother six years ago. Following the show, she became something of a national sensation, selling books, perfumes, and drawing international scorn after making racist remarks about a fellow reality show contestant.
Now bald from chemo and weakened by her losing battle with cervical cancer, Goody is playing out her death where she got her start: in prime time. “I’ve lived in front of the cameras, Goody said, and maybe I’ll die in front of them.”
The mother of two young sons, she claims the large sums she’s received from various British production companies and magazines are the only way to ensure their livelihood after she’s gone. She also claims she wants to raise awareness about getting tested for cervical cancer and indeed she has; doctors across the EU have reported a 20% increase in young women requesting the screening.
Not surprisingly, her decision to make what many consider the most private moment a public spectacle and her openness about exploiting the media frenzy for financial gain have raised some eyebrows – and even drawn some classist and sexist criticism from a right-wing British politico.
I think Jade Goody has every right, as we all do, to die the way she pleases. I also think it’s savvy and perfectly in line with today’s culture to milk every red cent out of those willing to pay to watch so that her children will lead more comfortable lives – what mother doesn’t want that?
As for her two boys, they’ll likely one day be grateful that their mother was a reality star – along with stories and pictures from their father and grandparents, they’ll have hours of video of their mother’s mannerisms, thoughts and personality once they no longer remember her.
But there’s another reason that Jade is choosing to live her last days in the spotlight: she wouldn’t know anymore how to do it any other way.
Jade has no doubt realized that her life has been ‘made’ on television – certainly she’s wondered over and over what her life might have become had she not been chosen for the Big Brother show in the first place.
No matter who she was before, her life over the past six years has become inhabiting, creating, and manipulating the persona of ‘Jade Goody’ for the British public. To stop now would be the equivalent of giving up her identity and all that she’s worked to become. She has to die on TV because she only exists, even in death, to be observed by others.
Perhaps the legacy of reality television is this group that Jade Goody exemplifies, human examples of the principle that to observe something is to change it. And maybe all of us who’ve grown up in the era of instantaneous confessions and status updates are, to some degree or another, dependent on being observed to feel like we exist.
I guess that’s why we’re so in love with the instant fame reality TV promises. I just can’t stop wondering what would have become of Jade Goody had the cameras never found her, had she not become a persona to be consumed by the public. How many people have noted or cared if she died then?
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It does raise interesting questions about death, privacy and voyeurism... and about the myriad of "what if"s that exist in each individual life.