Bodies of Evidence: Criminalising the Celebrity Corpse

Abstract

This article examines the posthumous lives of celebrities who died suddenly and whose bodies subsequently were ‘criminalised,’ i.e. treated as crime scenes for careless, stupid, illegal, immoral or other ‘sinful’ behaviour. As fetishised bodies of evidence, the celebrity corpses discussed here became mass media and popular culture performance artists staged in forensics medical mystery tours and whodunit dramas that educated and titillated the public about the consequences of recklessly lived lives. Performers while alive, their corpses became star bodies of evidence, notorious objects of public scrutiny, speculation, voyeurism, desecration and ritual ‘execution,’ repeatedly reprimanded or ‘punished’ for their ‘sins’ in macabre spectacles featuring their actual or simulated corpses. Morality tales that blamed them for their own deaths shaped public engagement with their corpses. My subjects are Anna Nicole Smith, Tim Russert, Heath Ledger, Natasha Richardson, David Carradine and Michael Jackson. Theoretical frameworks address celebrity, death, the body and how representations of the celebrity corpse have joined the legions of the fictional ‘un-dead.’