Caroline Flack — Trauma & Media
On the 13th of December 2019, Caroline Flack was charged with assaulting her boyfriend. On the 15th of February 2020, she was found dead in her East London flat. She had killed herself. The spectacle continued.
The assault itself didn’t have much sway at first, as far as these narratives go. Being a woman, Caroline Flack didn’t fit the traditional mould of celebrity domestic abuse perpetrators. This meant that it would only be consumed as a story by those with a particular taste. There were resentful men happy to see a woman accused of such a crime out of resentment. Some saw it as a way to vent their own experiences with domestic abuse, or their strong feelings of rightful justice about such matters. Most importantly, some now saw her as a defective commodity. Individuals were attached to her figure as a celebrity and felt betrayed by the fact she had allegedly done something unconscionable. It had some success in the media during this part of the cycle. The basic level of ritual humiliation, inconclusive probing and stalking went on. A C-List celebrity without a strong resonance didn’t fully draw viewers, she didn’t receive the full treatment. As far as the media was concerned, it was a gentle torture. Caroline Flack’s scandals were few, her social reach as a celebrity relatively limited. She wasn’t worth much to them as she was. Over a month later, Caroline Flack died. She became valuable again.
At first, the news trickled in that she was dead. No report was yet made about suicide. Everyone already knew it was suicide anyway. We all knew the script. The final act was just being played out now. An inquisitorial moral fervour hit the internet. Had you said something cruel about Caroline Flack? Had you inferred her guilt? Did you, god forbid, buy the Sun Newspaper? Yesterday, she was an alleged abuser, a disgrace and unredeemable. Upon dying, Caroline Flack became an angel. This was the uniqueness of this particular commodified trauma narrative. The original story didn’t have much public sway. She didn’t fit the characteristics which allowed for the previously repeated trauma narratives to hold. Then, she died. Naturally, the media couldn’t refuse a new method of commodification, even if it came at the expense of attacking itself. Some parts of the defended themselves in the knowledge that the defence would offer up even more content. Others distanced themselves from their previous reporting, attacking the media as a whole and promoting the occasional moralising tweet at Pier’s Morganesque figures. Regardless, we all got a piece of her corpse. No one was left hungry.
A simulacrum of Caroline Flack still exists among us. She’s become an ephemeral icon and cultural symbol ready to be attached to one of many causes. The prevailing ones now are about mental health and press regulation. However, it could just as easily move towards rights for defendants or sexism. It’s yet to settle, but mental health is the most attractive to the world right now. Mental health is very much in vogue. It’s got a sex appeal and simplicity that criminal justice reform doesn’t. Now, her body is picked at by vultures seeking to get what energy they can for their specific cause. All of this will be recycled right back into the media-trauma industry that fueled it in the first place. Even in death, her dehumanisation continues. She’s a flag, a prospective law an object to be related to in blogposts, think pieces and articles. I’m also guilty. There’s no innocence to be found.
Her final upload to Instagram was paraded around with the gaudy purpose of re-establishing the new narrative that had took hold. Her image transformed from the suspect in life to an angel in death.
Caroline Flack was brought into a ritual by those that conjure up the supposed spirits of our time and made into something much greater, but also much lesser than herself. The few people who have genuine memories of her will only be able to speak through the corrupted mediums that harried along her demise. Her friends, her loves, her families and even her enemies will only be able to speak through mechanisms that will twist every word toward profitability. Every moment of the consumption of these words, whether positive, forgiving, accusatory or purely negative can only be listened to among screaming sea of voice belong to people who never knew her. The crowds reactions to the individuals who will be made heroes or villains will lead to yet further consumption.
There are already all the well-merited calls for kindness and empathy echoing around social media. There are the less meritorious desires to seek revenge. We won’t know the names of most of the poor teenager girls who are told to kill themselves because they said something cruel about Caroline Flack before death. Yet, we also know this will happen. Tweets are placed to announce that, like sniffer dogs, you are guilty for her death. You are the snowflake that didn’t care to know you were part of an avalanche. You will be hunted down. Of course, this will solve nothing. Yet, the calls for kindness and empathy will change nothing as well. In that sense, they are both same. Nothing in this discourse will ultimately come to mean anything. The wounds from the media’s autocannibalism will heal well before the next cycle of hate. The trauma-media complex is profitable and isn’t going to end because of one foul meal. Even this complication of typical trauma narratives was sold, and it was sold well. Even now it continues to do well, battles between her legacy as a hero or victim. Some fellows found themselves outraged too early. In getting into the narrative before her suicide, they have made themselves become victims of the trauma-media complex they were previously engaging in. Now, it’s weaponised against them.
Now, the cycle is beginning to come to its end. Already, her death is losing steam in the media. What’s she’s left behind is being raided for any remaining value. It’s possible more will trickle in, her name wielded in new cultural moments as an intertextual reference in the next true-crime style trauma story to be told to us all. A change in the value of trauma or a change in media structure, only these two things will lead to change. Neither change seems likely in the short term.
