Princess Leia is dead. A heart attack on Christmas Eve, a day of worry buoyed by a hope she would recover when we heard she was out of critical, then she passed. A day later, Debbie Reynolds, Fisher’s mum and actress from the golden age of Hollywood, passed on suffering a stroke. I knew it was from a broken heart. Her last words were, “I want to be with Carrie.” It choked me up and the crying started again.
It’s been a rough year, a rough year for a lot of reasons. The number of celebrities passing on, but two of them are tragically linked. Maths will tell you it’s no more than years past, something about this year feels different. If you have a look, we’ve lost a host of celebrities and the people that make the films, TV and books we all cherish. I’m a nerd and a geek, (they are different, look it up) and the last time I saw my Facebook feed this full of one subject it was the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special. Now it’s Leia and Kathy from Singing In The Rain.
Why did the deaths of Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds hurt me so much?
Celebrity death and its impact is not something you can predict. I got into an argument with a friend over this. Looking back at this, I misread him, and it led to him being defensive and so it snowballed. He was wondering why this death, (he was just wondering about Fisher) was so important, why people were getting DEPRESSED (yes, he bold capped the word). Somewhere in there I told him he’d know when a celebrity died that was as important to him as she was to us he would understand.
Fisher did a lot of characters, wrote books, wrote movies, talked about mental illness and drug addiction, and through it all was a living embodiment of women’s rights and equality. There are no When Harry Met Sally action dolls though. It always winds back to Leia.
Carrie Fisher was our princess, yes, but more than just a generation, she also belongs to all those that come after (who are old enough to know who she was). I should explain that, and the easiest way is to tell you what another friend had to tell his daughter.
“I had to tell my six-year-old daughter Leia was dead, she teared up.”
With that statement I realised why Fisher and her character of Princess Leia had and would continue to go on impacting us all.
Star Wars was a huge movie franchise and the first toy franchise that went big. With Disney bringing out a movie between now and the end of time, both Fisher and her character will be with us for all of that time (as long as they are not all crap, so far they seem pretty good). Star Wars and its toys will go on well after us too.
If you walk down the toy aisle at Kmart and see a 40-year-old crying in front of a rack of Star Wars merchandise, pat them on the back and hand them a tissue. Don’t ignore them. Every toy store and department may turn into a wake at any moment.
Debbie Reynolds passing on a day after her daughter’s death was just trauma stacked on trauma.
We’re missing Fisher for her body of work and talent, but Debbie’s pain is in the passing of her child. She died of a stroke brought on by a broken heart. They say no parent should outlive their child. She was planning her daughter’s funeral and died. Is there a parent who can’t appreciate that level of pain?
Even if you’ve never seen Star Wars, but you have a child you’d have to be as cold as The Emperor to not feel anything. It’s like a Greek tragedy or a Shakespearian play, both of which Star Wars leans on, mind you. There are no toys of Reynolds’ characters, but there won’t be a DVD store around that won’t be selling her movies.
I won’t hold anything against anyone buying a toy or a movie. It’s how some of us cope; some of us make jokes too. Carrie Fisher made a lot of jokes, swore and was inappropriate at the drop of a lightsaber, in a way we all thought was incredibly cool.
Wanting ‘Drowned in Moonlight, Strangled by Her Own Bra’ on her tomb stone is not just about inappropriateness and jokes, it’s about the style you deliver it and style is about who you are.
Even in death we’re shown something to aim for. If you need the quote explained, to Google with you. In 2017, we will see Carrie Fisher, our Princess and now our General, in Episode VIII and during 2017 into 2018, her ghost will be with us.
There is a GIF going round of her appearing alongside Obi-Wan and Yoda and that is the exact idea and feeling I had when she died. We say, “May The Force be with you”. Carrie Fisher’s Force will be with us forever.
