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Acknowledgements
This paper represents a section of a chapter in my doctoral dissertation entitled ‘The Gender of Suicide’ (Jaworski Citation2007). I would like to thank Dr Vicki Crowley and Dr Jackie Cook for the generous and attentive ways in which they responded to my thinking and writing on suicide. I would also like to thank my friend and colleague, Dr Cassandra Loeser, for her insightful commentary in relation to the deaths of Hutchence and Yates, and who always thought that Hutchence was stunningly attractive and Yates far more than ‘passably pretty’. Furthermore, I would like to thank my reviewers for their thought-provoking comments and suggestions.
Notes
1. In his quantitative review, Steven Stack (Citation2000, 958) reports that some studies indicate that while there may not be an increase in suicide rates after a story is publicized, individuals who would consider suicide regardless may simply copy the method used.
2. In reviewing the publication of suicide stories in the media, Pirkis et al. (Citation2002, 190–5) conclude that while the nature of reporting suicide in the Australian media (newspapers, radio, television) does vary, certain themes can be identified. Firstly, most stories tend to be on completed suicides only. Secondly, the content often relates to individual life experiences including mental illness, different policy initiatives and general statistics about the rate of suicide. Thirdly, explicit use of language is generally avoided in the headlines, graphic photographs are omitted and items in newspapers are not found on the front page. Fourthly, a significant number of stories discuss the method used by the individual in some detail. Fifthly, men, young people, people living in rural areas, psychiatric patients and those held in custody tend to feature the most as these groups are considered to be seriously at risk.
3. My use of race in this article needs clarification. First and foremost, I address race in suicide as a further condition of articulating gender. Thus, the article does do justice to the significance of race in suicide as it does with gender. I pay more attention to race in my doctoral dissertation. Secondly, I do not see race to be precisely like gender. My approach to understanding race as a condition of articulation for gender in suicide is influenced by Butler's (1993, 117; original emphasis) insistence that what might appear as separable categories in the production of knowledge can also be seen as ‘… the conditions of articulation for each other …’
4. The analysis of the selected textual examples does not differentiate between the kinds of reportage offered by the Australian press. For instance, differences between news and feature articles would undoubtedly enrich the analysis of spectacles; and the manner by which Hutchence and Yates are captured and rendered as celebrities. Unfortunately, this is not possible in a short journal article.
5. While concentrated and diffused forms of power appear to be separate, in later commentary Debord (Citation1988) admits that the two are mutually dependent.
6. Althusser (Citation1971, 163) identifies the concept of interpellation or hailing through an example of being addressed by a police officer on the street: ‘Hey, you there!’ Althusser (Citation1971, 163; original emphasis) explains this example as follows: ‘Assuming that the theoretical scene I have imagined takes place in the street, the hailed individual will turn around. By this mere one-hundred-and-eighty-degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject. Why? Because he has recognized that the hail was “really” addressed to him, and that “it was really him who was hailed” (and not someone else)’.
7. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (Citation2004, 3), for instance, defines suicide as a ‘… deliberate taking of one's life’.
8. As the latest report produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (Citation2004, 3) indicates, between 1993 and 2003 the male death rate by suicide was approximately four times higher than the female rate.
9. In Australia, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (Citation2004, 13) data demonstrate males as preferring hanging, followed by poisoning via motor vehicle exhaust, firearms, drug overdoses, drowning, jumping and lying before moving objects. Females also choose hanging, followed very closely by drug overdoses, drowning, jumping, poisoning by car exhaust fumes and finally firearms.
10. Michael Hutchence gained his national and international celebrity status as a lead singer and main lyricist of the Australian band INXS during the late 1980s and early 1990s (Sawyer Citation1997).
11. This is best described in the words of the maid said to have discovered Hutchence's body:
[t]he body of a man was lying in a heap … he was naked except for a belt around his neck. He looked really skinny and I didn't recognise him as Hutchence. There was a stench of booze and smoke and the bed sheets had been ripped off the bed and strewn across the floor. Empty glasses and pills littered the carpet and I noticed photos lying around him. They were pictures of Paula Yates. (Quigley Citation1997, 21)
12. Paula Yates made her name as a presenter of the UK pop music show The Tube during the early 1980s and as a co-presenter of the early 1990s Channel 4 show The Big Breakfast, where she interviewed the famed and the famous on the bed, including Michael Hutchence (Levy Citation2000; Sawyer Citation1997). Yates' celebrity status was also associated with her marriage to Sir Bob Geldof, the lead singer of Boomtown Rats and the organizer of the infamous 1984 Live Aid charity concert (Herd Citation1997).
13. As one example of many, Sawyer's (Citation1997) article highlights the intensification of stories about Hutchence's life prior to his death and very little about his ‘work’ as a musician and performer.
14. It is important to highlight that while Hutchence may have been just an ordinary man to his mother, in the media he was rendered as extraordinary, possessing ‘something special’, framed around his charisma, talent and success, publicly made available in the media (Dyer Citation2004; Geraghty Citation2007; Redmond Citation2007).
15. The reference to borderline personality with an infantile need for attention came from a clinical psychologist who worked with Yates on a TV show (Herd Citation1997, 29).
16. Given the cultural location of Hutchence as an Australian rock star, the representation of his suicide through the Australian press offers the expected hagiography of a celebrated local hero. As an outsider to Australia, this is far less effective in the case of Yates in relation to how she is written about in the Australian press. How Yates is written about appears to be configured by cultural mistrust and a sense that she was an out-of-control woman who dominated Hutchence's life. Yates' death received wider coverage in the UK press, accompanied with more detailed explanations of her death (see Gordon Citation2000; McCann Citation2000; McCann, Urquhart, and Whittaker Citation2000; Reid Citation2000; The Times Citation2000, 27).
17. This is something the coroner's inquiry sought to investigate to ensure suspicious circumstances were eliminated. The circumstances included the possibility of another person being present at the time of Hutchence's death (The Coroner's Report Citation1998).
18. In his earlier analysis of celebrity suicides, Steven Stack (Citation1987, 403) suggests that there is a class-related pattern in representing such deaths. That is, although this may not always be the case, most celebrities tend to belong to upper or elite classes. Put simply, these are no ordinary individuals, although as Richard Dyer (Citation1979, 49–50) argues, their status is precisely the celebration of the ordinary in popular culture.
19. Fiske (1994, 43, cited in Gabriel Citation1998, 13) identifies this lack of need to be named as exnomination, a discursive technique embedded in power relations, which work together with naturalization ‘… through which whiteness establishes itself as the norm by defining “others” and not itself …’
20. In a sense, Yates is represented through a series of already gendered dichotomies rendered coherent through what is inscribed on and through bodies of female celebrities (see Redmond Citation2008).
21. In an article entitled ‘Elegantly Wasted’, the ‘elegance’ associated with Hutchence's death is captured as follows: ‘He was truly one of Australia's great rock'n'roll icons. As the sexy frontman to INXS, Michael Hutchence seemingly had it all. Sadly, his amazing life has been tragically wasted’ (The Advertiser, Citation24 November 1997, 19).