Speaking ill of the dead

Australia has been rocked over the past couple of weeks with the deaths of two well known identities. Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray, on the 4th of September, while shooting a documentary off the coast of Australia.

Peter Brock may have been less well known overseas but was still an Aussie legend. He died four days later on the 8th of September in a motor racing accident close to Perth. He was arguably the greatest driver in Australian motorsport history.

Their deaths and the subsequent media attention has had me wondering about the whole concept of ‘speaking ill of the dead’. Both Irwin and Brock contributed greatly to the world in their chosen fields but of course neither of them were saints.

The day after Steve Irwin passed away, Germaine Greer wrote an article in the Guardian newspaper criticising Irwin and basically said that he got what he deserved. She said that he manhandled and provoked animals for the sake of entertainment. Greer was later interviewed on Australian television where she got stuck into Irwin once again and labeled his fans as idiots.

Peter Brock was a hero to many Australians. There was a huge outpouring of grief after his death and it seemed that the nation was once again in mourning for one of its heroes.

Since his death, Brock’s partner of 28 years, Bev Brock, has spoken about what a wonderful man he was but also about his philandering ways. In her biography about Peter, Bev said she had tired of his relationships with, “one too many secretaries”. He had already been married twice before they met and when he started his relationship with Bev she was married to one of Brock’s team mates. Peter Brock left Bev in May last year and then began a relationship with her best friend. (Although the couple never married, Peter always called Bev his ‘wife’, and she took his surname. They had three children together: James, Robert and Alexandra.) A high profile media personality has since made other unsubstantiated claims against Peter Brock which I won’t dignify by repeating here.

In both cases we need to decide how to remember these men. While I disagree with the way Germaine Greer conducted her character assassination of Irwin, I’ve got to admit that I did cringe a bit at the way that Steve poked and prodded some wild animals. If Greer had written an article criticising the Crocodile Hunter’s actions before his death she wouldn’t have received anywhere near the attention she did. Some would have agreed, others disagreed and there would have been room for dialogue. However, attacking Irwin after his death seems to have been an unpardonable sin. Is that because he’s not around to defend himself? Is it because we want to protect his family and loved ones from more pain? Or is it because we want to remember Steve Irwin as a hero whether the facts support that or not? Maybe it’s a mixture of all those things and more.

What about Brocky? Should we just gloss over the fact that he was unfaithful? Now that he’s dead do we choose to ignore those parts of his life that we didn’t like? The guy really was a legend and a master at his chosen profession. He thrilled hundreds of thousands of fans over many years and I think it would be wrong to smear his reputation now but can we just ignore a large part of his life?

I wonder if there’s a scoring system we use when we decide how we remember a person once they die. If it’s a person like Steve Irwin or Peter Brock we can choose to remember and focus on the very best. On the other hand you can guarantee that no one was rushing to gloss over any part of Hitler’s life when he died. We didn’t overlook his transgressions to avoid speaking ill of the dead. Why do the rules about speaking ill of the dead not apply for some people? Where do we draw the line? How do we decide?

Of course the decision of whether we ‘speak ill of the dead’ isn’t reserved to public figures is it? We need to consider how we remember a range of people after they’re gone. When people close to us pass away we can turn them into a saint or sinner depending on how we choose to remember them.

I can assure you that when I go I don’t want people to make me out to be something I’m not but I’m also sure that I don’t want people to pick my life to pieces. I know better than anyone that I’ve failed to measure up in so many ways and I don’t want my failures highlighted. I hope that people will remember me as someone who tried to do his best and sometimes managed to achieve it.

In the end I think that it’s wise not to highlight the worst in a person once they’re gone. We all fail to measure up and I think there’s room to overlook some flaws when remembering people that have meant a lot to us as long as we don’t fool ourselves into thinking that they were perfect. We need the balance to let the hurts go while we celebrate the good times.

I suppose that the whole subject raises another issue. Maybe as well as being cautious about speaking ill of the dead, we need to be cautious about speaking ill of the living. I wonder how much better this world would be if we showed the living the same respect we give the dead.

Posted by Rodney Olsen

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About the author

Rodney Olsen

Rodney is a husband, father, cyclist, blogger and podcaster from Perth Western Australia.

He has worked in radio at Perth's media ministry Sonshine for over 25 years and has previously worked at ministries such as Compassion Australia and Bible Society.

The views he expresses here are his own.

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6 Comments

  • Wow, that’s definitely some food for thought.

    I guess, like you said, we just need to remember that everyone had good things about them and everyone has bad things about them. We all make mistakes and who is to say that one person’s mistake is worse than another’s?

    Interesting line of thinking.

  • You probably wouldn’t have enjoyed my post about Sir Joke last year in that case. 🙂

    Seriously though, I don’t see making accurate comments about someone’s behaviour as a problem — regardless of whether they are dead of alive. If Peter Brock had extra-marital affairs, then that’s just a fact of his character, and simply ignoring it because he is now deceased is not going to change that.

  • I want to thank you for visiting Live Love and Ponder. I will think on your ideas. I haven’t been writing comments there because I haven’t quite known what to say. By the way, I tend to be very honest and personal in my writing, sometimes to my own detriment.

  • Hello,
    Yeah- u r right! Hm…Definitely speaking ill of someone after they are Dead is rather cruel!! How bad would his family would be feeling when they hear bad of Steve… I wish people grow up & not be critics…
    I dont know much about him- but know that he has done many good things for the animal world & has created awareness..(For more, do visit my link for a post on Steve..)

    May his soul rest in peace…
    paddyfieldprincess.blogspot.com

    Regards,
    Marutham.

  • Speaking ill of some dead are simply ways that society can avoid their particular madness happening again….like Hitler, the example you cited. As to pecadillos and chasing women? No, that deserves no remembrance after a person dies, if that’s the worst they did. No reason to drag that about!

  • Hey Rodney and all,

    When I die, I would like to be remembered as being real. I’d like to live a life of transparency now so that when I die, there are no ‘big hidden secrets’, so that who I am is who you see.

    We like to think of deceased persons in the best possibly way (or the worst).. whatever makes us feel happy. But is it about us, or them? I think it’s important that we humanise the deceased. If we don’t, we begin to think they they aren’t like us, that we’ll never be like them.

    Will I ever be as great as Steve Irwin? I don’t know, maybe if I put as much passion into something as he did to animals, perhaps I could.

    Will I ever be as racist as Hitler? Probably not since my upbringing and culture has shaped me that way. But were they different, who knows.

    I think we need to see that everyone is human and in the end, we are all the same, made in the same Image, perverted by the same world.

    kezza

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