A Large Display of Grief

As a further mark of respect to the memory of Gerald R. Ford, the thirty-eighth President of the United States, NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, in honor and tribute to the memory of Gerald R. Ford, and as an expression of public sorrow, do appoint Tuesday, January 2, 2007, as a National Day of Mourning throughout the United States. I call on the American people to assemble on that day in their respective places of worship, there to pay homage to the memory of President Ford. I invite the people of the world who share our grief to join us in this solemn observance. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty eighth day of December in the year of our Lord two thousand six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-first.

GEORGE W. BUSH

So, it is quite institutionalized and stately; post offices and other federal offices are to be closed, as people flock to church services to honor the ex president, listening to prepared memorials. For days, people have been filing past his flag-draped coffin in the rotunda, as they did for Reagan not long ago. That sounds about right. It seems the advent of projected bereavement matches the deceased celebrity perfectly, its mourning display an odd little hologram of the life that was lost. But modern mourning of mass proportions is dependent not merely on a public figure's status, also the tools of its engagement.

President Kennedy, so charmed, saw a much larger display, not merely in instituted form, but in drastic personal displays as well; for the first time, television brought the entire process of grief up close, and in no small dose. The nation was transfixed in its mourning, prompted in part by the new hope that Kennedy stood for, but also greatly influenced by a new type of expression that came with it, which was television, and which refers back to itself, in that the legend of Camelot, of Kennedy, was inseperable from that medium.

The death and public mourning of Princess Diana in 1997 was arguably the largest ever seen in modern times, and also arguably the first major mourning to be recorded in real time on a huge scale on the internet, with the mourning as an event, complete with webshrines, and chatrooms and webpages filled with grief-stricken fans lamenting the beloved figure's tragic death. The recent deaths of Pope John Paul II, and even, though to a lesser extent, Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, have seen similarly constructed web mournings taking place.

In an article by Richard Ingham, sociologist Tony Walter asserts, "The bigger the institution and the more popular the leader, the bigger and more elaborate the funeral rites, which helps to instil [sic] a sense of history to which many people want to belong" With the ease of the blogging and otherwise subscribing to grief and mourning rites of public figures on the internet, it is becoming easier to fulfil that need to belong to history, but 'history' has proven to be and will likely continue to prove to be governed and judged by its systems of recording. So, while it may be questionable that participation in mass mourning via the web is lasting and permanent as far as history is concerned, a more important question may be how the idea of history or belonging has been changed or even negated, for better or for worse, when watching is surpassed by telling.