A modern tragedy

Fans blame the press. The press blames social media. Social media blames the press. Everyone is blaming everyone else for Caroline Flack’s suicide. It’s an unholy mess. And, yet, at the centre of it all is a life expended prematurely and voluntarily at the age of just 40. A life that, viewed through the television camera, the paparazzo’s lens and even her own Instagram account, was full of fun, laughter and vivacity, the very traits that made her career.

While there is, inevitably, now a lot of whataboutery over what went on when the laughter stopped, you don’t, either, have to be an amateur Freud to suspect that demons lurked beneath Flack's “bubbly” exterior. Posthumous accounts now suggest that all was never perfect in her world. We shall probably never know, however, and nor should we need to or want to. A public figure who contributed to the viewing pleasure of millions is no longer with us. 

Whatever edge it was that she was pushed over on Saturday, we can’t tell. You can’t tell. Suicide might be contemplated as one of a number of solutions to whatever the predicament might be, but I can’t begin to imagine what that final, ultimate decision must have been like to take. And none of us should. All we’ll ever know about Flack’s final hours - even her final minutes - can only ever be circumstantial. We can speculate all we like about the Crown Prosecution Service’s notification of its pursuit of a trial for the alleged assault of her 27-year-old boyfriend, Lewis Burton; or of his Valentine’s Day message, sent in defiance of legal restrictions on contact between the two. We can speculate on Flack’s underlying mental health, or on what triggered the alleged incident. We can speculate, too, on whether the 'tragic clown' syndrome had struck again - an infectious personality masking deep-seated issues. The bottom line is we don’t know. 

It doesn’t matter whether we knew Caroline Flack intimately, whether we knew her only as that giggly presenter of Love Island and The X Factor, or whether our knowledge of her came simply from images of a glamourous woman. I’m not going there myself, and I would strongly recommend no one else does, either, but I dare say coverage of her death in the tabloids, and especially the Mail’s website, is a fetid cesspit of the ignorant, illiterate trollery that could potentially have contributed to her state of mind. I only hope that those around her steered her away from it. The same with social media, a platform she regularly used as a means of connecting with her fans. But this has proven to be a double-edged sword, and even raising the role of social media in her life, especially the ending of it, sends me down the same path as all the finger-pointing at the top of this post. To that apparent Mexican Standoff, the bottom line is that everyone and no one can be blamed for Caroline Flack’s death, even if revelations of bullying and even death threats posted to her on social media will have weighed heavily.

Here, though, is the struggle point. I'm not doubting that Flack was a victim of unwarranted and unsolicited public commentary. That, sadly, is par for the course these days. In this digital age, the public eye is all-seeing, like the giant Eye of Sauron in The Lord Of The Rings. I don’t mean to be flippant by suggesting that. My point is that there is a malevolence to the delicate relationship between celebrities and the public. While, I'm sure, most of those who followed Flack on social media did so with good intentions, social media doesn't legislate for the vile, the stupid and those who simply have no empathy or sympathy for those they troll. Keyboard warriors fire off offensive tweets without any thought for where they land. The issue, though, is whether the famous will now pull back from social platforms: before Twitter and Instagram they were protected by their PR people, agents and managers. When I worked as a showbiz journalist, everything was strictly controlled. Now, a celebrity - should they choose to do so - can control what people see and know about them, and when, simply by apps they carry around on their phones. But that also means those who follow and comment on them have nothing to rein them in. Even Donald Trump seems undeterred by his own Attorney General strongly advising abstinence from Twitter all the while legal proceedings are ongoing for fear of - said politely - making his job harder.

But here I am veering down the very path we should avoid when considering Caroline Flack’s tragic death. Nothing can and would be admissible as a cause. Not even a note, should one ever be found. No one can ever be sure of exactly what was her state of mind or her decision making process at the moment she decided to take her own life. Even if she left a note, it might not even be a reflection of where she stood on the final precipice. Premature celebrity deaths affect us differently to those of people we actually knew and loved. Largely because we’re detached from them. They are mostly abstract in our lives because they exist on a screen or in our ears. I still grieve for the pop stars whose work brought (and brings still) the most pleasure to my life. People like Bowie and John Martyn. Even John Lennon and George Harrison. You can think of Jimi Hendrix or Amy Winehouse, nominally victims of their own weaknesses and taken too young through misadventure. Their legacies live longer than their often fleeting lives. Dying at 40 meant that Caroline Flack wouldn’t be admitted into the ‘27 Club’, but her life in the public eye was just as short as the Morrisons and Joplins of this world, which adds to the overwhelming sense of the tragedy of what happened at the weekend. 

I’ll admit, as I near the end of this post, that I’d never really watched anything Flack presented. I was abroad in the first few years of her TV career, and not being a fan of reality shows, didn’t watch her in Strictly or The X Factor. And I’m firmly not Love Island demographic. So why should I care? I care simply because someone whose life was rapidly born out in public, indeed, whose life was building to a tumult thanks to sudden and very public collapse in her fortunes, ended suddenly and deeply tragically on Saturday. And, full disclosure, it’s a life I only know through the very tabloid press now under scrutiny, who studiously reported on her personal and professional life. Without wishing to be cruel, she courted publicity, to a degree. I’ve been around enough celebrities to know that even when engaging the press through gritted teeth, it’s still a professional necessity, albeit a necessary evil for some. So whether I like it or not, I could be very well part of the blame now being appointed for Caroline’s death. I’m a “media type” - my background in journalism means reading newspapers I might find abhorrent as much as those I like, simply because there’s a need to be ‘across’ the news. But that doesn’t make those papers right - or, indeed, me right for reading them - when it comes to the factors that led to Caroline Flack’s death. Then again, all these circumstances that appeared to have conspired may just be that - circumstances but not necessarily contributing causes. At the end, Caroline Flack’s death may just be a horrendous, ghoulish tragedy, the blame for which could - and, perhaps, should - remain unattributable. And that, sadly, is where it should be left. There are family members, friends and colleagues who now need to grieve and, hopefully, out of the spotlight.