The never-dying ones

Thanks to the power and enthusiasm of the media, celebrities passing away have been brought back to life.

With the explosion of information, the life of people with a certain level of public recognition can be prolonged. Not to mention the global names like Ronald Reagan, Pope Paul II and Princess Diana, Chinese national leader and Hong Kong tycoon Henry Fok, and local pop superstars Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui. The citations of their names and images, after their departure, grew exponentially in all forms of the mass media.

It would not be surprising if youngsters in the Western world can tell lot more about Reagan who left two years ago than JF Kennedy and Winston Churchill who reigned in the post-war world. How many Chinese would know that Wang Guangmei (王光美), wife of former PRC president Liu Shaoqi (劉少奇), could have been the first Chinese winner of Nobel Prize for Physics if this piece of history were not digged out and widely published by media?

The fact that these celebrities' deaths gave a "story" to the media has made them "more real" than ever. The stories were no doubt front-page and cross-page news drawing out for days. The more legendary their lives were, the more lasting their newsworthiness was. Sometimes, a glamorous story could be translated into a special brochure or a dedicated website that backdated three generations before the life of the celebrity was profiled.

Most of the public had little knowledge about the past and personality of these celebrities when they were alive. Neither did they bother to seek to know more as, they thought, "the time had yet to come" and they did not have to time to check either.

While friends and relatives of the dead may be so much saddened by the loss of their celebrity beloved, the public probably don't feel as painful. They seldom have arm's length contact with the well-know dead person. Moreover, they tend to be forgetful and scatter-brained.

Therefore, not only can posthumous news reporting help re-present the celebrities to the ordinary people, but also rebuild, round up and enrich their images, an exercise almost equivalent to putting the deceased into a state of immortality.

Next time (touch wood), when you feel confused about who a public figure is, don't worry. You will surely obtain great details provided you will live longer than he or she will. It is not a curse and I am just quoting the others – as many celebrities put, we will all die.

Next time (touch wood again!), consider gaining fame from TV programme American Idol and asking the media to preserve you in the loving memory of the others, if a hospital surgeon cannot protect you physically.