Oscar, celebrity and crowd sourced litigation

This was the week that Oscar Pistorius went on trial by media.   Forget about the lawyers -  this was ‘crowd sourced’  litigation at its finest;   fed by a torrent of tweets,  Tumblr images,  TV clips and banks of cameras that overwhelmed the tiny South African courtroom.   Opinions,  some informed, but mostly not,  spewed forth on social media proffering words of support and damnation in equal volume.    

The tragic story of the horrific death of a beautiful young woman in her prime, the horror of an overcrowded courtroom and the legal sparring  (and this just the bail hearing!)  reveals the extent of modern society’s  collective voyeurism and pornographic  fascination with courtroom - celebrity mash up.    

Oscar was a global icon after stepping off the Olympic podium last August in London.  This tragedy of death and fall from grace is one which has captivated the world.   The harsh exposure of his private life, the minute by minute account of the court proceedings, the global media’s suspension of all other news while waiting for the magistrates laborious arguments for bail,  reflect our own lives which are exposed to the world through the windows of our virtual glass houses.  

If you live in a city, and over half of the worlds population does, then your personal information, your bank account details, your medical records,  your Internet surfing habits,  your emails,  your telephone conversations – everything that you deem private,  is out there accessible to those who are interested and determined enough to get it.  'Privacy is dead'  Mark Zuckerberg contends.  Your route into work, your relationships at work, where you shop, where you eat – what you do every day – all this information is being gathered and stored away, invariably by your Government or one of its agencies, for retrieval at a future date.   New data centres are being built around the world to house this massive volume of data,  much of it produced by you and me with our smart-phones and our tablets.  

The Orwellian big brother has come true and we have submitted ourselves to its curse.   We think we are in control of our lives – but are we?    Who is in control  when a car rams yours while you are waiting innocently at a traffic light?  Or when a taxi turns in front of you while your are cycling to work and you get badly injured or even killed.  The world changes for both the victim and the protagonist – in an instant.    How much worse for a celebrity ?  Like Oscar.  

A meteoric rise to fame where his global recognition is second only to that of Usain Bolt,  the fastest man in the world.  How does a simple Afrikaans boy from Pretoria deal with it?   Blessed with a good up-bringing,  he displays incredible modesty and humility to all who meet him;  he is lauded by his fellow athletes for being an inspiration and support to them and their careers.   South Africa is a violent society and if you have lived there you will know what it is like to be unconsciously and perpetually cogniscant about that worst case scenario – an armed intruder intent upon violating you and your loved ones.   It has never happened to me, but it has to my loved ones and I can’t imagine what it must be like as a rising panic grips you when faced with such an awful situation.   No one can know how they would react in such a situation until faced with it.   The courts will decide whether in fact it was a crime of passion or a genuine mistake.   

Let us wait for justice to take its course.   We should celebrate Reeva Steenkamp’s life, as do her loved ones - including Oscar.  We should respect their opportunity to grieve and not jump upon them for ‘a  story’  the way we have with Oscars’ trial.  This is a human story, a tragedy that was etched into the face of Oscar who remained horrified by what he had done,  even when bail was granted.    

Our obsession with celebrity, the unpicking of the lives of those who live in the public eye (Kate Middleton), the media’s egregious appetite for the shocking,  their determination for the story at all costs ( NewsCorp hacking) reveal a society that is hooked on the highs of instant gratification from the shock story,  the bizarre, the crude and the perverse.    If the media is our lens into society we have exposed our collective failings to mediate our lives.   We seem incapable of living beyond the moment, to plan for the longer term,  to postpone gratification, to make provision for our old age and to ensure the integrity of our modern society.    The price and the ways we are paying for it are manifold;  excessive debt and financial crises, high unemployment, poor economic performance, extreme weather conditions (Hurricane Sandy/ global warming) and political instability (Syria/Middle East). 

The global financial crisis of 2009 seemed to put the brakes on conspicuous consumption for a while but the brakes are off again and we charge ahead again like there is no tomorrow.   What train wreck do we need have happen,  to jolt us out of this manic greed-filled feeding frenzy prevalent in society today where the human frailties of our celebrities like Oscar and Reeva become all consuming?    We need to take time out, to pause and consider our own place in the World,  to realize how fragile we really are and to start to treat each other with respect once more.