In the past week we have all grieved in our own particular way over something lost. For some it was trivial: a train ticket, phone number, or perhaps a bet on the big race. For the more unfortunate it was something significantly worse: a job, a house, a friend or loved one.
But for much of Australia, it seems, as millions gather to attend tonight’s funeral, it has been the loss of Melissa Rafter.
The something I’m currently concerned with losing is our collective plot.
It seemed to disappear for good last week, when Wednesday’s biggest news story was about the writers of Packed to the Rafters putting down their pens for a popular character because the actress who plays her—the admittedly lovely Zoe Ventoura—is off to seek work in the USA.
‘Mel’s Death a Shock!’ headlines grasped for our attention, while on the same page a smaller caption and photo announced that the body discovered on a Central Coast beach was indeed that of missing teenager Matthew Appleby. Then further down the page, even smaller, was the story about the cold-blooded execution of another teenager in western Sydney.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of television. I may not watch Packed to the Rafters, but can appreciate how the fans are feeling—I’m happy to admit I cried like a girl during the Lost finale, partly because of the bittersweet end to Jack’s story, partly because after six years of dedication I still had no idea what the bloody island was.
But last week it struck me how very strange and unsettling it is that TV death (in media terms, at least) can be more important than the deaths of very real, and in the cases mentioned above, very young Australian people.
So why do we feel such attachment to fictional people? We know they have been written with us, the audience, in mind. We know that every event in their lives is carefully predetermined by writers, hidden away in a room somewhere, playing God with a select cast of genetically-blessed actors.
Yet time and again we fall for their troubled stories, while potentially dismissing some equally troubled lives in the real world.
It’s true that we let these fictional people into our houses on a daily or weekly basis. Sometimes we know more about their lives than perhaps we do our own friends. Through the magic of television we can get inside their heads and journey with them, sharing the ups and the downs, empathising, sympathising, hoping and dreaming along with them as they strive for whatever goals the writers have conjured up this particular episode.
If we are lucky, we do not know those who have met untimely, tragic deaths in reality. They are only a small picture on our computer screen, TV or newspaper, while a reporter tells us of their passing.
Yet is it simply that we care more for plot over people, or is it that we have become so desensitised to the horrors of real life that we are just more susceptible to fantasy? If so, you can understand it. In this day and age of news at your fingertips, we are confronted almost 24/7 with death, murder and injustice in the world. Who can blame us for getting caught up in an alternate reality?
Perhaps the media got it right last week and tapped into exactly what the public wanted and indeed needed. Mel’s death, after all, was written in such as way as to highlight a particularly relevant problem that has killed and injured many in real life. With the story continuing tonight, the coverage surely can’t hurt the cause.
But I can’t help thinking our need for such fictional news has been misjudged. I don’t think we’re there yet. I certainly hope we’re not there yet. Reaction to the storyline may have been strong, but at a time when others in the real world were grieving for actual loss, would it not have been more appropriate to limit the news coverage of what in the end was just entertainment?
Once upon a time I’d be able to appreciate the logic of caring more about the passing of a fictional person you thought you knew than that of someone in real life you did not.
But as a recent father, all I can think about now is how the parents of those poor boys felt last week, when, at an already difficult time, their sons’ stories were overshadowed by a television plot.
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