On the Many Deaths of Amanda Palmer (2 page)

It is in the publishing end of the industry that this sudden surge of popular interest can most easily be observed. From worthy tomes of serious scholarly depth to cynical popularist attempts to “cash in on the fad”, our bookshelves have not been so weighted down with eulogies of one form or another since the early 17th century. It has even been postulated by Prof. Alasdair Remington that more Americans now own a copy of Walter McArthur's
How Did They Die?
than own a passport, and the extraordinary success of P. Jerich's
Dead American Icons
which has so far won 4 major awards including both the fiction and non-fiction categories of the Melville Prize, is entirely unprecedented. It seems we are currently a culture in the grip of an obsession with Memento Mori, and in particular post-mortem speculations of the spiritual, biographical, analytical, and conspiratorial varieties. And yet, however interesting the question of why such an obsession with memorialising has developed may be, most scholars of
doxithanotology believe that the key to that answer, and indeed many others, lies not with why, but who we are eulogising.

It has of course been much commented upon that as a culture we are effectively canonising an ever-increasing number and variety of “celebrity” icons, but it is largely thanks to the ground-breaking work of statistician Louis le Grenier, that what had for many years been little more than a passing concern of occasional columnists was developed into a complex system of analysis capable of generating useful and enlightening data. This was not le Grenier's intention. His real interest lay with Medieval Christian martyrs. In the introduction to his ground-breaking work
A Statistical Study of Martyrdom through the Ages
le Grenier explains that as a child he had been brought up a fervent Catholic, and had read about the lives of the martyrs obsessively. When he was around 14 he began devising charts on which he plotted the dates and impacts of every martyr he knew of. Although, by his own admission, these charts were very primitive and naïve he soon began to notice certain patterns. Years later, when invited to study for a PhD in statistical analysis at the Université de Picardie Jules Verne, he decided to revisit this subject, somewhat against his professor's advice, making it the subject for his thesis. Twelve years later, and having travelled a total of almost 87,000 miles around the world in search of evidence of the impact of martyrs upon various societies, he finally handed in his 163,000 word thesis to considerable acclaim from the academic establishment. It was this thesis that was to form the initial basis of
A Statistical Study of Martyrdom through the Ages,
however, it wasn't until he met renowned Dutch popular culture philosopher Dedrick Bose that the final pieces fell into place. Until that meeting le Grenier had only concerned himself with religious martyrs. It was Bose who suggested that he should broaden his research to include secular martyrs – individuals whose deaths resulted either directly or indirectly from the determined maintenance or execution of their beliefs - and further suggested he should look at artists, scientists, and celebrity symbols of consumerism. It was only when these additional
elements were factored in that the full social implications of his work became apparent.

To grasp the essence le Grenier's works, which have now become the foundation texts of Doxithanotology it is important to first understand le Grenier's four foundation precepts, as initially presented in
A Statistical Study of Martyrdom in Post-Medieval Western Civilisation
:

1. The concept of
the Transferable Vessel
: this is the long established notion that the human need for “God” is so deeply ingrained that any attempt to abandon it in the hope of escaping the vagaries of superstition merely leads to the displacement of our instinct for faith, love and absolute answers onto other symbols. Hence God was replaced by Art in the early 18th century, Art by Science in the 19th century, and Science by Celebrity Consumerism in the late 20th century. There is, of course nothing new in this thought, but le Grenier was the first to offer a formal statistical proof.

2. The Macro-Social Martyrdom Reflex
: this more contentious theory claims to be demonstrated beyond doubt in le Grenier's paper
A Statistical Survey of Martyrdom through the Ages
, however to complete a wide ranging pan-historic test of the proof is impossible as each calculation demands the accurate knowledge of at least 224 variables calculated from details of the subject's life, death and influence, which are rarely available in practice. This problem was later addressed and a more elegant, yet still controversial, proof presented in
A Statistical Survey of Martyrdom in Post-Medieval Western Civilisation.

Put in simple terms the theory postulates that society, and in particular the belief systems it generates, operate as a self-regulating organism. In essence this means that society requires the regular martyrdom of those who come to symbolise the spirit of their age, in order to evolve. Thus, le Grenier states, by tracing the movement of high Martyrdom Quotients across social strata
and professions you can get an accurate and specific account of the spiritual aspirations and general belief systems of any given period. When an idea, or series of ideas, evolves that has the potential to dangerously destabilise the “status quo” this poisonous idea is essentially pushed out like a pimple. The mechanism by which this is achieved is the Martyrdom Reflex: amongst that strata of society infected a consensus is established by which a person or group of persons particularly enthused by the dangerous new idea come to represent it in symbolic form, thus the idea becomes contained in a mortal vessel, or icon. Often this is all that is required to undermine or limit the idea as the inherent human weaknesses of the icon will usually inspire enough disillusionment to defuse the situation. Good examples of this effect might include
Posh Spice
symbolising
Girl Power
; Gary Glitter symbolising the freedom of self expression; Bruce Willis symbolising the
New Gay,
or Tom Cruise becoming the internationally accepted symbol for Scientology. However, upon occasion, the person or persons chosen actually understand the nature of the social role thrust upon them and attempt to make use of it. This is potentially very precarious for the stability of an organised society and so society's antibodies step in (in today's Western World they would most likely be the reactionary ultra-right). Le Grenier calls these the anti-icons, and claims to have calculated that for every icon generated there are approximately 10.073
ⁿ
potential anti-icons where
n
is the Martyrdom Coefficient for the given society at the given time. This basically means that “something's gotta give”, and in the majority of cases the result is the effective sacrificing of the icon, either by their own or others' hands. In most cases, and despite an inevitable momentary increase in popular concern, this will usually have the effect of dissipating the dangerous idea through lack of a unified concerted direction and the general disillusionment that follows. Examples of this phenomena might be: the death of Marilyn Monroe resulting in the steep decline of a certain brand of smouldering female sexuality – le Grenier shows how this led
to a decrease in the birth-rate of 37.6% over the following five years; the death of Jimi Hendrix resulting in the end of the naive dream of “sex and drugs and rock'n'roll”, a dream whose more cynical branch finally dissolved after the deaths of Keith Moon and John Bonham nearly ten years later; the death of John Lennon which finally concluded the “we can change the world through love” movement in 1980; and in addition many more such examples may be observed over the last fifty years. As will be shown, the ever-increasing number of “mini-martyrs” over the last few decades is the direct result of the low Martyrdom Quotients involved.

3.
The Martyrdom Quotient (MQ)
: among the most important contributions of le Grenier's
A Statistical Study of Martyrdom in Post-Medieval Western Civilisation
is the development, through a series of complex and wide-ranging statistical analyses, of the now standard Martyrdom Index, by which, given the relevant data, the specific martyrdom quotient of any individual can be calculated to three decimal places on a scale of 0-27. The devising of this scale had the additional intention of demonstrating his own theory of the macro-social-martyrdom-reflex (see above). The Martyrdom Index itself can be somewhat unforgiving, though it is generally considered to be accurate. As might be expected the highest MQ is achieved by Jesus, who reaches 26.476. It is impossible, or at least very improbable, to achieve a score much closer to 27 as to do so one would have to die for one's beliefs whilst under the age of eighteen months and yet have had a lasting and emotionally evolutionary impact upon your society. More recently, and in the era of the Artist as spiritual vessel, Christopher Marlowe reaches 18.674, Keats and Shelley both come in at precisely 17.532, with Byron at a staggering 23.689, largely due to his reputation in Greece as a political revolutionary. In the 20th century Elvis Presley scores 17.117, Sid Vicious reaches 22.673, Kurt Cobain makes it to 23.001 and John Lennon surprisingly only achieves
9.548 as the fact that his death resurrected his career, and not the other way around, is factored into the equation. Amongst the more notable surprises: Coco the Clown (in his most famous incarnation portrayed by Nikolai Poliakov) reaches a most unexpected 18.573, whilst virtually forgotten 1950s children's TV presenter Rory Robertson, who died in an unfortunate incident involving choking and a number of the cuddly toys used in the programme, scores an extraordinary 20.673. This work is generally considered to be the most important foundation text for the student of Doxithanotology.

4.
The Martyrdom Constant
: Le Grenier postulates, in another much remarked-upon work entitled
A Statistical Demonstration of the Matyrdom Constant
, that the total sum of martyrdom quotients in any given society remains constant and is directly proportional to the number of individuals within that society, divided by the number of citizens who live below the Standardised Metric Poverty Line (SMPL). It is worth noting that far from
being a constant, the
Martyrdom Constant
is in fact a variable. In today's Western civilisation, with an ever-growing population and an unusually high proportion of people living above the SMPL there is a continually increasing social demand for martyrdom, hence the level of attainment required to become an icon, and therefore eligible for the role of martyr, must by necessity fall. This is often cited as an explanation for the obsession with low-brow celebrity culture currently exhibited ad nauseam across both Europe and America. According to the theory this situation is unfortunately self-perpetuating, for as the number of martyrs required by society increases, the easier it must be, by necessity, to attain such a level, thus the average martyrdom quotient falls even lower requiring a greater number of potentials . . . etc., etc. . . . By le Grenier's own admission, the theory ceases to work in any useful way once more than 50% of the given society has become iconic.

Among other of the more interesting volumes to have appeared in recent years there are a number worthy of brief mention here to give a fair impression of the current breadth of the field, and indeed also offered as an general reading list for those interested.

R.S.Kepple's
Contemporary Sin-Eaters
is a serious scholarly study that argues that our consumption of celebrity-death material and
willingness to suspend disbelief in the context of celebrity-death scenarios (
Elvis spotted in Bruges . . .
the
Prince Philip-Diana death conspiracy
. . . etc. . . .) is a psychological displacement for the sacrificial instinct, as transposed through the act of communion. In addition it is rich in colourful illustrations and comes with a free CD.

On the more cynical popularist side there is Peter “Soufflé” Merchant's
Cooking with Dead Celebs
which claimed to contain the favourite recipes of many iconically deceased figures. This book makes for a fascinating example of source material. It is basic exploitation literature at its most extreme. After sitting comfortably at no. 2 on the non-fiction bestsellers list for six weeks it was suddenly withdrawn from sale pending litigation by the Estate of Keith Moon over a family recipe for mushroom canapés, quickly followed by a second suit from Hank Marvin arguing that his inclusion in the book was essentially libellous as he was not yet dead. At the time of publication neither case has yet come to court thus no comment can be made here with regard to the outcome.