IT was the year which began with the death of a music icon, ended with the loss of a Hollywood star and in between claimed a long list of famous faces. To many of us, there was the eerie feeling that Death had never been so busy. The almost weekly loss of a celebrity became something of a dark leitmotif for a year full of darkness.
When the news of David Bowie’s death broke on January 10, little did we know 2016 was to become notorious for seemingly constant announcements of the passing of giants from all walks of life. The world of entertainment was particularly hit: just some of the famous faces who died included Alan Rickman, Sir Terry Wogan, Paul Daniels, Ronnie Corbett, David Gest, Prince, Carla Lane, Caroline Aherne, Pete Burns, Andrew Sachs, Gene Wilder, Victoria Wood, Sir George Martin, Sir Jimmy Young, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Leonard Cohen. In sport, the list included the legends boxer Muhammad Ali, golfer Arnold Palmer and footballer Johan Cruyff, while the world of literature lost authors Harper Lee and Umberto Eco. In the political sphere, some of the giant figures of the 20th century who died in 2016 included Fidel Castro, Shimon Peres, Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Nancy Reagan.
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And just as it seemed as the year was coming to a thankfully quiet end, the deaths of Status Quo's Rick Parfitt, singer George Michael, actress Liz Smith, Watership Down author Richard Adams, Star Wars icon Carrie Fisher and her mother, Oscar-nominated actress Debbie Reynolds, happened in quick succession.
The impact of the death of a famous person can be genuinely felt by an individual, according to Professor Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a psychologist at University College London who specialises in personality assessment.
He said: “People have strong emotional connections with celebrities, often stronger than with people they actually know. These connections are obviously imaginary and they only go in one direction – the feeling is not mutual.
“However, they are felt as real relationships so when celebrities die it can affect us as if our close friends or relatives died. And we mourn them in the same way.”
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In the age of social media, each death was met with an outpouring of tributes and grief. There were RIP hashtags on social media and claims 2016 was a 'cursed' year. The mourning of famous figures – who most of the population will never have met in real life - is, of course, far from a new phenomenon. The example of Princess Diana, whose death in 1997 triggered mountains of floral tributes, people crying in the streets and queueing for hours to sign condolence books, is often pinpointed as the moment which ushered in a new era of public and ‘modern’ grieving. But there are many such instances littered throughout history – in 1796 thousands lined the streets of Dumfries for the funeral of Robert Burns, which was said to be an unprecedented attendance. In 1963, an estimated 175 million people tuned in to watch television coverage of the funeral of American president JFK.
What is new is the world of social media, which has brought with it the era of ‘virtual mourning’. Chamorro-Premuzic said social media had changed the way in which we grieve celebrity figures.
“We can share our grief with everybody else, including people we don’t know,” he said. “This can bring us closer to others, even if that closeness is imaginary.”
It has also led to debate over whether such grieving is 'appropriate'. Journalist Camilla Long questioned the sincerity of the posts about the death of David Bowie, calling it a “deathgasm of mawkish proportions including pixel tributes, moans, sighs and cries, memorial avatars and hashtags” - which led to a backlash and torrent of abuse.
Broadcaster Andy Kershaw also waded in following the death of George Michael by saying: "Here we go, again...brace yourselves for the now routine hysterical over-reaction".
However those who raised questions over whether endless #RIP tweets are necessary have been criticised for acting as the “grief police” by deciding which is the right or wrong way to mourn.
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Richard Harris, professor of psychological sciences at Kansas State University in the US, said one difficulty was society had few rituals for when people develop relationships with celebrities in a similar way to real life – known as ‘parasocial’ interaction.
“When real people close to us die, we have funerals, family gatherings and so on and people expect folk to be distraught,” he said. “When someone is distraught because of a celebrity or TV figure death, people laugh at them – which they would never in the case of a death of a family member.
“These deaths do involve real grieving experiences, though not typically as deep and long as for the loss of a close family member. Like any death, especially of a young person, it reminds us that this could happen to us or one of our loved ones and this also is distressing.”
Harris argued that social media had a role to play in providing a type of common ritual for this form of grieving and could be very meaningful.
“It lets people know they are not alone in this grief and it somewhat ‘normalises’ these feelings which others might laugh at – so that is helpful," he added.
Yet while it seems like 2016 was one endless visitation by the Grim Reaper on the famous, the statistics paint a slightly more complex story - while the year had seen an increase in famous deaths, it was not quite the endless cortege we imagined it to be. The BBC’s obituaries editor Nick Serpell carried out the task of checking out whether there has been an increase in the number of well-known people dying by counting the number of pre-prepared obituaries which ran. He found that in the first three months of the 2016, twice as many notable people died compared to the same period in 2015 – and five times as many as in 2012.
By the middle of December there was 30% increase in the use of the obituaries compared with the previous year – at 42 compared to 32 in 2015.
"Well over half those deaths occurred in the first four months of the year,” Serpell noted. "Then the rest of the year went back to a figure we considered normal over the past four or five years."
One of the explanations for the increase is quite simply, there are more ageing figures who are – or once were - in the public eye than ever before. Out of 128 prominent figures who have died this year most – 57 – were in the 80s or 90s age category, with 53 deaths among those in their 60s or 70s. Nine were in the 50s age group and nine were under the age of 50.
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As television sets became an ever increasing presence in homes from the 1950s and 1960s, the actors, musicians, athletes and politicians which regularly featured on the small screen began to provide the background to growing up, falling in love and all the life events along the way. As one tweet noted after Carrie Fisher’s death: “It is like our whole childhood is disappearing”.
It is not just the celebrities we are mourning, but the passage of time itself.
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