Dead stars shine thte brightest

Philip Seymour Hoffman, possibly the greatest and most underrated actor of this generation, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment Sunday.

He was a remarkable talent that absolutely shined as every character he ever played, whether that be his Oscar-winning performance as eccentric 20th century writer Truman Capote in “Capote” or loveable pervert Allen in Todd Solondz’s “Happiness.”

But the awful truth is it’s the same thing with every celebrity death. Nobody thinks about the celebrity outside of said celebrity’s core fans until he or she dies, then everyone from your best friend’s mom to Perez Hilton posts a Facebook status about it.

We don’t really care that much about others until they die.

This phenomenon I’m going to go ahead and call “celebrity death bandwagoning” doesn’t just happen with celebrities, despite the misleading name I just gave it. It happens with non-celebrities too, we just realize this even less.

The argument can be made that celebrity death bandwagoning is actually a good thing. The press about said celebrity’s death will actually inspire others that wouldn’t have normally known about him or her to look him or her up, thus exposing the formerly naïve to new art — provided the celebrity actually produced art like Hoffman or, say, Kurt Cobain.

An example of this would be the influx of Michael Jackson fans, many of them Millennials, following his death in 2009. These new fans probably would have never listened to Michael Jackson for any number of reasons — the most common one likely being their age — if he would not have died.

There’s a large demographic that never would have listened to his music if he were still alive today. By this logic, celebrity death bandwagoning is a positive phenomenon.
I took to Twitter like many others and expressed my sadness about the passing of the great PSH in at least a half dozen sentiments that were quite sincere. But my
followers can’t tell if these tweets were, in fact, sincere.

I could easily have been one of those celebrity death bandwagoners just tweeting for the heck of it, trying to convey to others halfheartedly how “deeply saddened” I am by the much-too-early passing of this Hollywood great.

I know that I wasn’t doing this. But everyone else, save for a couple of my cinephiliac friends who know me well, didn’t know this.

There’s no sure way to decide if celebrity death bandwagoning is good or bad.
But a decision doesn’t need to be made about celebrity death bandwagoning because the underlying message here is this — we take for granted the lives of others.

It’s disgustingly cliché, but life is precious whether the life in question is of your favorite actor or your 90-year-old grandma.

So take some time and call your grandma every once in a while, because you never know when she’ll die from a heroin overdose.

­— zipperr@indiana.edu
Follow columnist
Riley Zipper on Twitter
@rileyezipper.