The following is most of an essay posted at Tasty Infidelicacies by my dear sister in Christ, Jewel. She has described an aspect of the spirit of the age which I've never seen explained and demonstrated so well before. To read her complete post and visit her links and read the comments, find them at A New Fashion Statement: Grief Tats. Here's the part of her post that stands alone, even without reference to the incident that evoked it…Ostentatious vanity has been de rigueur in the last half of the 20th century, now going into the 21st. The age of circuses is here to stay for the time being and has found new venues to put up the tents. There is no modesty, nor is there privacy. There is no shame.
Only show.
From the moment a baby is born, it's a show. If you have lots of babies on the same day, it's a series on TLC. Divorcing? There's a show for that. Dysfunctional, abusive parents? A show. Maybe several on different channels. You want to glorify gluttony? Sloth? Greed? Malignant Narcissism? All of the Seven Deadlies! There are shows for each and every one of them, and watching them will teach you the only virtue that there is left: Tolerance.
Why, they'll send out talent scouts to look for new celebrities to be in shows dedicated to every form of excess and perversity! There is nothing that can't be feted, promoted, sold and bought by the drooling masses. Even Death has a show.
Consider Diana, Princess of Wales.
When Princess Diana died in 1997, grief as pornography came out. The handwritten letters, stuffed bears, photos and candles piled up outside of Buckingham Palace were tribute to a goddess who typified the ostentatious vanity and emptiness of our culture. The urgency of prayers uttered by the mob of hopeless worshipers to this sad and vacuous woman were obscene, and no matter where you turned your head to avert your gaze from the spectacle of Diana worship, there was no escaping it. In death she became a kind of Christ, slain for the redemption of our sin against fashion and beauty. Even after the funeral, which was quite a show, indeed, the obscenity of Diana Death pornography in the book shops continued, with endless amounts of over sized, badly written photo books on display. She was as lucrative in death as she had been in life. 
3 comments:
I like the enhancements you've made, brother. It brings it all back. I'd thought about posting the video of this poor woman whose children died in the fire, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. The option of seeing or not seeing is a valuable choice. As they say, what has been seen cannot be unseen.
I am reminded of what an exhibitionist I am. What a shame of mine (and even my admission of sin is self-exploitive)!
I recently told a friend that the only time I engage in silence is when I have too much to say. (This I echoed in a different way to my brother Romanos, in an email as well.)
O what a wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Mother Teresa died only a few days after Princess Diana, and very little was said about this saintly woman. This says much about our priorities.
That said, it is only by being steeped in trying to live Christian virtues and commandments, consistent attendance at DL, receiving the sacraments, prayer,the lives of the saints, the writings of the Church Fathers and following the liturgical calendar, can we even begin to see how wrong this prurient interest in this parade of sins is. Even then, it can still be hard to resist.
In Christ,
Mary
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