Performers died during performances
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Darkside Of Showbusiness: Performers Died During Performances

Last updated on September 8th, 2023 at 04:22 pm

Many performers died during performances in various forms of professions like music, dance, different sports, climbing, live shows and acting. For ages, performers or entertainers have been providing us with entertainment. Along with the growing demand for fame by people in the entertainment industry, the number of entertainment-related deaths is also increasing. Regardless of the risks and threats to life that entertainment or performance involves the profession of amusing people is getting desired and costly. It comes to us at the price of death. The death of entertainers. It is a rivalry between entertainment and death.

The idea that death is the only mediator between survival servitude and lifeless freedom is debatable due to people’s varied faith and belief. But the recreational or entertainment-related death that many celebrities, sports persons and entertainers have endured so far during or after their performances is beyond debate and an established fact. People’s beliefs regarding death and life may vary but the taste of death is identical and inevitable.

Egyptians believe that when the body dies parts of its soul would go to the kingdom of the Dead. Christianity, Judaism and Islam dictate a level of comfort and discomfort while in the afterlife depending on one’s actions and level of faith in Creator. Buddhism has no basis on heaven or hell while it puts emphasis on Nirvana, freeing oneself from earthly pain in enlightenment, which may be achieved in numerous births or incarnations. To die as a human after being borne as a human is just one step forward to Nirvana.

Baha’ism states that the nature of life after death is beyond the contemplation of those living beings. Like Hinduism, Jainism confers that, after death, the soul takes on a body depending on one’s Karmas or actions of the former life. Leaving the physical world in death is to step into a spiritual one where one is free of any form of sorrow, in Christianity.

Japanese make merry and cheer when people die because the deceased are believed to be free from pain and enter into a blissful world. Whatever people believe or whatever imaginations of deaths prompt people to believe, death is still unacceptable, and undesired for the deceased and loved ones.

Although depending on the context, some deaths are expected, some are caused, while some others are yet desired not by the deceased but by one’s antagonists. Death, thereby, is a profitable prospect to them because of the fortunes that are created by the deaths there. In Greek Mythology, Oedipus killed his father to marry his mother. While people outside the entertainment world get killed by their opponents or enemies, the people in the entertainment world die from entertainment, during entertainment and in entertaining others.

American novelist Kurt Vonnegut once said, “One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.” The cruelty of the entertaining world is that the death of an entertainer or performer to the full view of the onlooker brings amusement. Their death often remains as a part of the entertainment as well!

Having said that some deaths are yet beautiful, and worth mourning. In the film Brave Heart (1995) the protagonist Mel Gibson as William Wallace of Scotland glorifies death as he cries out, “Everyone dies, none truly lives”. In 300 (2006) Leonidas calls on his fellow compatriots to die and fight as free men of Sparta. If war has to be a form of entertainment, then the warriors had to die to entertain the rivals. Some deaths free us while others captivate. For some, it’s a solution.

Performers died during performances

Over the ages, entertainment has entered the arena of the killer squad and had become one of the means of death as well in the entertainment amphitheatre. Civilisations thought us to kill or get killed in the power game of powerful people where the victors killed the vanquished to the amusement of their supporters. In spite of the unexpected and sudden death and possible injury, the entertaining and entertainment professions are one of the most expected, sought after, and desired professions for all ages for the people. In the process of the power game, only the fittest who have outlived by outperformance can outmanoeuvre their competitors to gain control of their audience.

Because it brings one not only fame but glory, luxury, and a lavish lifestyle. But there are also those celebrities who have not succumbed to entertainment-related death, penniless they embraced natural deaths. One’s way of being entertained is beyond imagination. Entertainers are loved, desired, idolised, and idealised.

The forms of entertainment such as music, stage magic, sports, films, dance, religious festivals, cooking, reading, writing, telling a story, drawing, circus, climbing, talk show and debate shows create recreation. With people’s growing taste for multiple forms and mediums of entertainment, the entertainers and the entertainment industry keep growing rapidly. The US entertainment industry alone will cross its net worth to 2 plus trillion dollars in 2020.

Technological innovation and uninterrupted wireless connectivity have caused of many emerging social media celebrities or entertainers, so to speak. 259 people have been the victim of ‘selfie death’ and 33,000 others are reported to be injured. TikTok and Facebook most of the time cause social violence.

The photography obsession of Netizen throws a new challenge every day in the fashion industry. Cultural diversification taking a new dimension with the constantly changing trends of fashion across the globe. People are divulged among Subscribers and Entertainers. The insatiable race for gaining ‘followers’, ‘subscribers’, ‘fans’ is a crude reality.

In the entertainment arena while some are victims of s*exual assault, and inhuman treatment, high-profiled perpetrators are also numerous. While it is a tough job for celebrities to
maintain their heyday, they many times have to embrace their own deaths in recreating others. Of hundreds of such incidences, we are going to meet with some such tragic deaths during a performance or right after. Entertainment-related death has always been there.

According to The Telegraph, the Indonesian pop star, Irma Bule, died after being bitten by a cobra during a performance in July 2016. The tragic death of Irma Bule has made it to the list of performers who have died during their live performances to 32 in the 21st century. With the highest death causalities of 80 the 20th century tops in listing the incidences starting from the 17th century with a single death. From 1673 nearly 200 media entertainers, related to films, dance, music and showbiz died till 2022. Sensational YouTuber Christina Grimmie was shot dead on stage in 2016.

Irma Bule's death on stage
Entertainment death: Irma Bule died of a snake bite on stage during a performance.

Up to February 16, 2018, with the death of Kathakalimaestro Madavoor Vasudevan Nair, the number has reached over 200. For all of the eight 1912’s Titanic disaster victims, who had perished and were playing music to calm the frantic people at the fateful moment, death was the most deplorable one. The eight were playing music until the ship disappeared to the bottom of the Atlantic. They died in helping others forget the death that was destined for the passengers and for themselves, as well.

A 23 years old and talented Nigerian footballer, Ekundayo Ebenezer Mawoyeka, died of a heart attack during the match in Turkey. Of Wikipedia’s record of 168 incidences from January 1889 to November 6, 2018, 60 deaths are related to heart disease along with pneumonia, tetanus, head injury, tuberculosis, diabetes and so.

Nigerian footballer Ekundayo Ebenezer
Nigerian footballer Ekundayo Ebenezer

The 49-year-old Italian boxer Christian Daghio, a former champion in Muay Thai, died in the hospital on November 4, 2018, after he was put in a coma due to injuries sustained during the WBC title match against Don Parueang on 26 October. The drama film A Prayer Before Dawn (2018) depicts Muay Thai or Thai Boxing.

Based on the book A Prayer Before Dawn: My Nightmare In Thai Prison by boxer Billy Moore, the film portrays Bill’s freedom from imprisonment, earned through fierce fights. Whether it is Billy Moore or Christian Daghio or the deaths of gladiators in the sports arena of the Roman Empire, all the entertainers fight or perform either to earn freedom or to make fortune by entertaining us. Of the 67 fatalities up to 24 June 2022, from December 1894 almost 500 boxers died in the ring.

Any idea about cycling? From 21 August 1894 with the very first victim of death Pierre Froget, the professional cyclist at Velodrome of Vichy in French to the very latest fatality in the professional cyclist world, 123 deaths are recorded, up to November 2021. From 1958 to 2020 668 people dies in sports auto racing.

Christian Daghio died after his performance
Christian Daghio died after his performance

Expedition and climbing Mount Everest claimed 310 lives of climbers. Starting from 1922 with Dorje, and after the death of first mountaineer George Mallory in 1924, to May 2022. However, in the 14 mountains, known as eight-thousanders, including Mount Everest, 1018 climbers died up to 2022. The name, fame, and glory related to winning Everest remain as majestic as ever. Beyond all odds, difficulties, and life-threatening expeditions what we all expect is a ‘hero’, an entertainer.

Till January 17, 2016, from July 27, 1951, World Wrestling Entertainment lost 64 wrestlers. While the sporting entertainment of the cricket world claimed the lives of 12 cricketers. A cricket umpire died after a month-long coma who was hit by a ball during a local match in the UK. 38 marathon runners died, died 46 basketball players.

In the TV series 1000 Ways To Die, the narrator narrates, “death is everywhere. Most of us try to avoid it, others cannot get out of its ways. Every day we fight a new war against germs, toxic, injury, illness, and catastrophe. There are a lot of ways to wind up deaths. In fact, we survived it all is a miracle. Because every day we live we face 1000 ways to die”.

Veteran stand-up comedian Ian Cognito died after his performance dies on stage during a performance in April this year. Most of the men or women who died during the performance are from heart attacks. A 52-year-old Ethiopian woman marathon runner, Bizuneh Melaku Belachew, died in Hong Kong after collapsing on the finishing line in February 2022. Entertainers are growing, entertainment spending is increasing, and so are deaths from it. Is too much of it killing us?

In the USA 200,000 athletes die every year due to cardiac arrest. The victims are usually males associated with soccer, basketball, and American football.

The performers or sportsmen who died during performance
Entertainment death: the performers or sportsmen who died during a performance

Celebrity deaths: Athletes and performers who died during their performance

Nevertheless, Bollywood’s controversial movie Jism-2 starts with a message from the Bible that, “life on earth is a warfare”. Indeed life, living, and the struggle for survival get even tougher every day passes. Darwin’s ‘Survival of the fittest’ doe no longer bears any significance in real life, as life and living have become a matter of ‘Survival of the luckiest.’ That constant struggle for survival, adaptation, peer pressure, and coping with demand are increasing becoming costlier as the prospect of luxury multiplies every day.

Instead of being numbed by the multiples forms of entertainment and encouraging rougher, the tougher form of it, let’s find the real value in humanity itself. In social interaction and human activity. Human value should not and must not be deemed in what a person is capable of or what a man is worth.

If humanity still advocates medieval forms of amusement at the cost of human life then progressivity, development, and moderation are far from having it achieved. Death is coming to all of us, let’s make it an exemplary one with the highest consideration of humanity.

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