![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Jade Goody
Feb. 20th, 2009 07:03 amAs I was researching Trine Michelsen's life, I was vaguely aware that a similar public tragedy was taking place here in England. The best-known - or most notorious - personality thrown up by reality television, Jade Goody, had been diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer. In the last few days, the story has come to the forefront of national news, and one could practically hear the sound of hypocrisy at work. How would the British media ever function without it?
It is, of course, made easier for them by the fact that Jade Goody is a far less attractive - morally and physically - figure than Trine Michelsen; physically ill-built, uneducated, mouthy and rather charmless, she owes her notoriety to what might be called freak appeal. She has many better qualities - courage, good sense, and enough good judgment to be sincerely ashamed of the ignorant racism she threw at a fellow Big Brother contestant - but on the whole I think that her apparition on TV was significant because it revealed to a fascinated and appalled British public an underclass that had grown in place over decades without anyone paying attention. The matter of class is important, and, to make it plain, Trine was the daughter of a leading Danish intellectual with his own slot on TV, while Jade was the daughter of an unmarried drug addict.
Having said that, I think it is fair to say that in both cases, illness and being brought face to face with death has brought out the best of them. Jade had one good fortune that Trine was denied: she has had two children. And, knowing that she has only months, maybe weeks, to live, she intends to provide for them to the best of her ability. Specifically, she wants them privately educated: "I have been ignorant all my life, and I do not want that for them" - and that will cost a small fortune. (For the implicit comment about British state schools, I will say that it is by no means impossible to get a good education in a public-sector school, but evidently Jade wanted to be as certain as she could - and who can blame a dying woman who would not be there to make sure?) That is all, and only the British media could possibly manage to find what they call "controversy" about this.
What the "controversy" is about is this: in order to provide for her children after her death, Jade Goody has sold all the solemn moments of her remaining life - her marriage, the baptism of her children, and, it is said, even the moment of her death - to Living TV, a cable-and-satellite TV channel. Cue outrage about private moments and commercialization of death. What complete bullshit. The very media who had taught Jade to sell her life to the public for money now complain when she does so in the most tragic circumstances and for the best of reasons. One thing that does make me uneasy - and that I am sure the professional gripers have missed - is that Jade is having her children, four and five and thus far apparently unbaptized, baptized in church, apparently for no better reason than to have another saleable ceremony for TV; and if that is the only reason, then it amounts to taking a sacrament under false pretences. But I am personally willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Children need a mother and a father, and these children will have to grow up without a mother who clearly loved them. But they will know that she loved them, and that she did the best she could in her own world and in her own way to make their lives better than hers. That is an important thing to have - as much as a good education and sound prospects in life.
It is, of course, made easier for them by the fact that Jade Goody is a far less attractive - morally and physically - figure than Trine Michelsen; physically ill-built, uneducated, mouthy and rather charmless, she owes her notoriety to what might be called freak appeal. She has many better qualities - courage, good sense, and enough good judgment to be sincerely ashamed of the ignorant racism she threw at a fellow Big Brother contestant - but on the whole I think that her apparition on TV was significant because it revealed to a fascinated and appalled British public an underclass that had grown in place over decades without anyone paying attention. The matter of class is important, and, to make it plain, Trine was the daughter of a leading Danish intellectual with his own slot on TV, while Jade was the daughter of an unmarried drug addict.
Having said that, I think it is fair to say that in both cases, illness and being brought face to face with death has brought out the best of them. Jade had one good fortune that Trine was denied: she has had two children. And, knowing that she has only months, maybe weeks, to live, she intends to provide for them to the best of her ability. Specifically, she wants them privately educated: "I have been ignorant all my life, and I do not want that for them" - and that will cost a small fortune. (For the implicit comment about British state schools, I will say that it is by no means impossible to get a good education in a public-sector school, but evidently Jade wanted to be as certain as she could - and who can blame a dying woman who would not be there to make sure?) That is all, and only the British media could possibly manage to find what they call "controversy" about this.
What the "controversy" is about is this: in order to provide for her children after her death, Jade Goody has sold all the solemn moments of her remaining life - her marriage, the baptism of her children, and, it is said, even the moment of her death - to Living TV, a cable-and-satellite TV channel. Cue outrage about private moments and commercialization of death. What complete bullshit. The very media who had taught Jade to sell her life to the public for money now complain when she does so in the most tragic circumstances and for the best of reasons. One thing that does make me uneasy - and that I am sure the professional gripers have missed - is that Jade is having her children, four and five and thus far apparently unbaptized, baptized in church, apparently for no better reason than to have another saleable ceremony for TV; and if that is the only reason, then it amounts to taking a sacrament under false pretences. But I am personally willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Children need a mother and a father, and these children will have to grow up without a mother who clearly loved them. But they will know that she loved them, and that she did the best she could in her own world and in her own way to make their lives better than hers. That is an important thing to have - as much as a good education and sound prospects in life.
