Suicide on stage: making a spectacle of death in Florida

On Sept. 29, the St. Petersburg, Fla., city council held an emergency meeting. The council… On Sept. 29, the St. Petersburg, Fla., city council held an emergency meeting. The council unanimously voted to outlaw suicide conducted for “entertainment purposes,” spurred to action by the industrial band Hell On Earth, whose controversial plan to conduct an onstage suicide provoked community outrage.

“While I still think it’s a publicity stunt, we still couldn’t sit idly by and let someone lose their life,” said Bill Foster, a council member quoted in Associated Press reports. For right-to-die advocates, of course, Foster used the wrong verb, implying the man committing suicide would be losing his life, rather than choosing to take it.

Hell On Earth, whose principled stands for artistic freedom have included sodomizing skinned calves and putting dead rats in a blender, vowed to continue the show as promised.

“This is about standing up for what you believe in, and I am a strong supporter of physician-assisted suicide,” says front man Billy Tourtelot on the band’s Web page. There’s no explanation as to why skinned calves are better for sodomizing.

The planned suicide, a terminally ill member of the Euthanasia Society, wants to raise awareness about dying with dignity. To do so, he will die on stage with a heavy metal band. It’s unknown how he will kill himself or what song the band might be playing, but I would suggest he request “Vampire Christ.” Then again, I might be biased, because all of their songs make me wish for death.

Said the would-be suicide, “I thank the Lord that Hell On Earth is giving me this opportunity to end my suffering.” He doesn’t mention that the band coincidentally has a new album out, called “All Things Disturbingly Sassy.” I suppose he thought that would be crass.

Hold on a second. Hasn’t this been done before?

In 1998, during November sweeps, 60 Minutes showed a videotape of Dr. Jack Kevorkian killing terminally ill Thomas Youk by lethal injection. The same wave of revulsion-slash-fascination swept through the media-pundit world. When someone dies on TV, they moaned, isn’t it just death as entertainment, the ultimate spectacle?

Actually, no. Suspend the peripheral question of whether 60 Minutes had pandered to a Jerry Springer audience, and you’re left with the question of whether it was right to let it happen. That’s a more difficult question to answer, especially after watching Youk suffer daily with Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Hell On Earth may be pandering to a certain segment of their audience – perhaps a large one, actually – that is endlessly fascinated by snuff films and Faces of Death videos showing ordinary – “real” – people suffering horrible deaths. Certainly, death can be entertainment: our national love of ultraviolent action movies is a testament to that.

Behind all that fascination is the deeper question, as New York Times columnist Frank Rick put it, “about the boundaries of life.” That’s the question never answered – or even posed – by action movies or those grainy “real-life” death videos found on the Internet. They are divorced from reality, without the moral dimension of the Youk video. Even though the people in them are not actors, they aren’t real in the sense of having an emotional connection to the audience; they’re just blips on a screen.

My roommate used to watch the Faces of Death video constantly, eating his Chinese food and laughing at a woman getting hit by a train.

I could never understand the appeal. He seemed oblivious, unable to connect the pictures on the screen with the questions they pose in reality.

That’s the definition of spectacle. To be entertainment, it has to be unreal.

While I’d never pay to see Hell On Earth’s planned suicide, I would pay to watch the audience as it happens.

Billy Tourtelot was Florida’s Rivot Rag’s Best Local Frontman in this month’s Best Of… issue. Jack Rudzinski praised him as a master showman, whose band plays “the soundtrack of hell.” Billy can “entertain, shock and offend as well as anyone out there.”

I don’t doubt Hell on Earth’s peerless use of pyrotechnics and demonic facial hair. But when it comes time for the Big Event, when an actual person chooses to take their life on stage, will Billy and company be able to compete? Can they compete with Death?

Somehow, I’m naive enough to imagine a stunned silence afterwards. In that moment, the audience will be confronted with reality. A real death, something bigger than everyone present. I hope there will be silence. And then the questions will start.

Jesse Hicks is a columnist for The Pitt News. He can be reached at jhicks@pittnews.com.