ABSTRACT
Contemporary culture is defined by mediated spectacles making it unsurprising, and even predictable, that death itself has become spectacularised. Drawing upon Michael Hviid Jacobsen’s (2016) notion of ‘spectacular death’ we provide an examination of how high-profile celebrity death encapsulates the visibility and commercial value of mediated death as a spectacle. For many dead celebrities, death is not the end of their career but the beginning of a posthumous career as ‘the productive dead’, making them an exemplar of spectacular death. We expand Beverley Skeggs’s (2011) concepts of ‘bodies of value’ and ‘traces’ by applying them to dead celebrities’ posthumous careers to examine the value of being productive, despite being dead. Dead celebrities, as examples of spectacular death, have significant potential to be financially lucrative for those who commodify and control their posthumous careers. An analysis of Marilyn Monroe’s posthumous career is used as a representative example of spectacular death and the productive celebrity dead through performance after death. Finally, we address the conflict and challenges surrounding the productive celebrity dead who resist the grave and work amongst the living, contributing to contemporary culture as an age underpinned by the spectacle of death and the dead.
