Experts ponder public grief over Irwin
Anna Salleh
ABC Science Online
Friday, 8 September 2006

This week's mass grieving in response to the death of Australian crocodile hunter Steve Irwin is part of a fairly recent phenomenon dependent on the mass media, say experts.

But how do we make sense of this public grieving for the loss of someone most have never met?

We generally think of grief as being associated with the loss of people we're very close to, like a family member, says psychologist Grant Brecht, of the Australian Psychological Society.

But he says we can feel close to someone we have never met if we come to know and like them through their appearances in the media.

"We conjure up in our own mind feelings and thoughts about what that person would be like," says Brecht.

And when they die we respond as if we did in fact know them.

"We can experience grief almost at the same level as we may well do with a family member," says Brecht.

"People would have felt an affinity with Steve," he says. "He was a bit of an Australian icon, a bit of an Australian larrikin, someone who seemed to have quite an affinity with animals, which most of us would respect."

Brecht says the mourning is a healthy part of dealing with the feeling of loss.

While most of us will remember the spontaneous outpourings exhibited after the death of Princess Diana, grieving hasn't always been such a public affair.

A recent phenomenon

Australian National University historian Professor Pat Jalland says mass public grieving has really only taken off since the 1970s.

"Had the equivalent of Princess Diana died 40 years earlier I can guarantee it would not have resulted in anything like what happened," she says.

Jalland says the last period in history when grieving was an accepted activity was during the 19th century, before the advent of mass media.

At this time death claimed many infant lives and grieving occurred through religious rituals.

But between 1918 and the 1970s public grieving was suppressed, says Jalland.

In part this was helped by a decline in infant mortality, which meant death mainly happened in old age and behind closed doors at home and, eventually, in hospital.

Silence about death

The suppression of grief was also helped by a decline in religious ritual and by a period of major wars in which soldiers, and by implication all of us, were expected to bear death with stoicism, says Jalland.

"The two world wars created a massive overload of death and sorrow which induced what Freud and others call death denial - a silence about death," she says."The emotional responses were suppressed."

At this time media coverage of sudden and tragic deaths were very factual and lacked the personal stories that are common today, says Jalland.

But she says all that changed in the 1970s when there was a huge cultural shift towards more open displays of emotion.

This shift was encouraged by the women's and gay liberation movements, says Jalland, and by psychologists like Elisabeth Kubler-Ross who encouraged open discussion about death and dying.

And it was encouraged by the mass media, which showed grief as a normal response to tragedy by reporting the personal stories of those involved.

Secular spirituality

Dr David Ritchie of Deakin University, who has a special interest in grief education, says the good side of mass media facilitated grief is that it gives people permission to grieve.

He says this is important in a society where people seldom die at home, there are few rituals around death and people's main experience of death is through the media.

"The idea of death as part of the life cycle is really foreign," says Ritchie, who is also on the management committee of the Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement.

Ritchie says spontaneous outpourings of grief in the company of strangers helps people make sense of the shocking nature of sudden death.

Making shrines out of flowers, photos, artwork and poetry, lighting candles and sharing stories about the person who has died all helps to make people feel connected and empowered, says Ritchie. "It's part of a secular spirituality".

But Ritchie doesn't see mass public grieving as anything like the grief of a close family member.

"We can always see Steve Irwin by looking at the films," he says. "We can always press the rewind button or put the tape back in again because that's how we knew him."

It will be very different for his family, says Ritchie.

And he says each person experiences grief differently and the "one size fits all" version sanctioned by the mass media could lead to inauthentic experiences of grief.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2006/1736016.htm?health