Coping With Death

Note: This is in some ways a follow-up to my previous blog post, False Portrayals, and it might be helpful to read it, although it is not necessary.

This week on The Bachelorette the producers were faced with a really tough decision. One of the contestants, Eric Hill, died earlier this year in a freak para-gliding accident. He had already been kicked off the show, but he did go far into the show, thus they have a lot of footage of him on the dates. According to him his occupation was an explorer, and his goal was to go to every single country in 1200 days.

Although this is such a sad story and the way he died was very tragic, the producers have to deal with this in a different way. Do they show the footage of him, even though everyone knows that the person they are watching on TV is actually dead, or do they completely cut him from the show? I don't know what I would do in this situation. On the one hand, they can't completely cut him from the show because that could be viewed as rude, since he was a part of the show and it would feel incomplete without him. However, on the other hand, if they show his scenes in their entirety it could be viewed as insensitive, because all his friends and family have to cope with his death again and it would almost feel like his is living.


When he died, many people expressed their sadness, but there was an overwhelming amount of people who first thought, What are they going to do on the show? I think that this whole story is a good example of how jobs or other things, including media, can consume people's lives. There were so many people that didn't even think about how sad the situation once, but rather they thought about how it would affect their viewing experience. People in America go-go-go, and often their lives revolve around their work, while they don't stop and take moments to appreciate life and grieve when sad things happen. They have too much on their mind and are often concerned about the wrong things.