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**Impact of Celebrity Deaths ** When a member of a family is lost, that family comes together to mourn and celebrate the life of that loved one. Same occurs with celebrities but on a much larger scale. Because of overwhelming popularity and being in the eye of the public, celebrity deaths reach across millions of people. It becomes less about the lost life and more of a public event or a national tragedy. media type="youtube" key="mHvFbXic4dA" width="560" height="315" 1 Scenes from Michael Jackson's funeral on CNN **Memorabilia ** Money plays a bigger role than considered. 2 “Glaringly obvious in the media frenzy is the commercial gains to be made by celebrity deaths” explains Margaret Gibson, Professor at Griffith University in Australia. Gibson goes in depth on how celebrity deaths are less personal and looked at from a financial point of view. Memorabilia goes up for sale when a pop culture icon is lost. Instead of mourning, people turn to Google to upload their Prince album for a high price. These celebrities become looked as investments and not as humans who just lost their lives.

Prince memorabilia for sale on eBay

**Benefiting From Death ** As crazy as it sounds, some celebrities gain more from dying. This occurs more with musicians than any other type of celebrity. When a musician passes, their songs are virtually everywhere. Radio stations and news channels everywhere are playing music from the deceased artist. This spreads their music to new audiences and popularity grows overnight for these established artists. Since Michael Jackson passed, he’s earned more than $200 million and sold more than 9 million albums.

**Nostalgia ** Nostalgia reminds people of their past and memories help trigger that nostalgic feeling. Music can be an important factor in creating nostalgic moments. After a musician passes away, their music still lives on forever. The nostalgic feeling that music gives is special because it directly triggers happiness for some people. Celebrates create these nostalgic moments and with their passing, it feels like a part of someone’s past died as well. These memories are held on to and often tried to be replicated to bring back a time of happiness. A lost life is hard to comprehend but a lost life that was also young it’s even harder. So many people die young as it is and it can be harder to loose someone in the public eye. Young celebrities are very impressionable on people. They have much to offer and youth is sometimes associated with innocence. Celebrities who die at a young age are forever stuck in time as a young person and fans who get older wonder what could have been if that person lived on. 3 Biggie Smalls And Tupac Shakur. Both rappers were killed in their early 20s


 * References **

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">YouTube. "Michael Jackson Funeral casket enters staples center" YouTube. Video

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Gibson, Margaret. "Some Thoughts on Celebrity Deaths: Steve Irwin and the Issue of Public Mourning." Mortality, vol. 12, no. 1, Feb. 2007, pp. 1-3. EBSCOhost, Article

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">“Biggie & Tupac.” Medium, Los Angles, 19 June 2016 <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Picture