Squirming, but Watching a Dying Reality Star

[babylonsister]

This just seems so bizarre to me. This is 'entertainment'?


Squirming, but Watching a Dying Reality Star

By SARAH LYALL
Published: February 19, 2009


LONDON — Before television shined its warped light on her, Jade Goody was surely destined for a life of hardship and obscurity. Crude-talking, hard-drinking, overweight, barely educated, in debt, the child of drug addicts, she appeared on the reality show “Big Brother” in 2002 as a kind of token lowlife.

But something about Ms. Goody, then 21, struck a chord — even if it was a patronizing one — in a restless nation searching for ways to allay its millennial boredom. She became a bona fide media star, a working-class Paris Hilton. Britons eagerly devoured every detail of her life, no matter how banal. They worked out to her exercise videos, bought her perfume, read her autobiography and, when she made racist remarks about an Indian actress on “Celebrity Big Brother” in 2007, angrily turned against her.

Now they are watching her die.

Ms. Goody, who has two young sons, learned she had cervical cancer last August, on camera, as she appeared in the Indian version of “Big Brother.”

The cancer has since spread to her liver, bowel and groin; on Friday, her doctors told her there was nothing more they could do.

And then she told the British public.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/world/europe/20britain.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

[tekisui]

1. I find it fascinating. I have always been intrigued at how people face death.

Some of the best books I have ever read were written by people dying. Seeing how people come to terms is a uniquely human experience. I don't know about how it will be done on a reality show. It will likely be edited and cheapened, but may be a net positive for viewers who may spend much of their time not considering the temporary aspect of life.

I don't watch reality shows, though. And, this is not enough to get me to watch.