In Which I Mistrust Clichés

[moon_custafer]

Andrew started rewatching the first season of Castle last night, and one of the grimmer episodes reminded me of the case of Joyce Vincent, though it did not resemble it that closely. Vincent was a UK woman in her late thirties who died in her London flat and lay there undiscovered for what is usually described as three years, though it was really just over two (Dec 2003-Jan 2006). Her story is usually held up as a cautionary tale about Not Keeping In Touch With Your Loved Ones, or The Shallowness of Modern Life, or something. Even the documentary released earlier this year treats her, by the sound of it, as a Tragedy We Will Never Really Understand. Some of the more detailed reviews, however, point out that the filmmaker tracked down many of Vincent’s friends and family, but only some agreed to be interviewed on film, and since she didn’t want to report the other ones’ stories at second hand, there were a lot of details she mentions in Q&As but didn’t include in the movie.

One key detail that seems to get skimmed over is that the flat was subsidized through a program to help former clients of domestic violence shelters – which seems to explain pretty handily why (a) it took so long for the landlord to break down the door (say one year for Vincent’s bank account to run dry, if the rent was subsidized and no other money was going out; and another year for all the warning letters and red tape before they could finally try to repossess the flat) and (b) why she had severed so many social connections without “anybody noticing.” I had a co-worker who used to volunteer at a DV shelter and apparently it’s like going into the witness protection program. Likely anyone who knew her well figured she was maintaining radio silence for good reason. So it could be a tale of measures designed to protect Vincent backfiring – but then, depending on how suddenly she died (it was hard to do an autopsy but there was no reason to suspect anything but natural causes), it’s possible a different system couldn’t have saved her, just delivered the bad news more quickly; being an adult means no one’s supervising you 24-7 (unless you’re in a prison or a hospital). It’s not simply a question of lives alone/lives with others, or big social network/small social network/no social network.

My father’s cousin, who lives alone, had a stroke earlier this year. Fortunately it was not only a minor one but it happened during daylight hours while she was crossing a busy parking lot; passers-by noticed her, called an ambulance right away and she recovered with little or no permanent damage. Another acquaintance of mine, a man who lived with several housemates, died in his sleep of a massive stroke; no idea if it could have been caught in time, but in any case I doubt anyone was awake when it happened, and if they were, there was no reason to enter the room of an apparently healthy man at 3am to check if he’s breathing (they began worrying in late morning when they realized none of them had seen him come down to breakfast). It's possible, with sufficiently bad luck, to fall through even a strong social network.

Comments

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

Where is the distrust? In the idea that someone could, conceivably, be helped?

My friend's elderly mother who was a fierce fierce woman fell while changing a lightbulb. My friend checked in with his mother every Sunday evening by telephone. She actually did die a prolonged broken miserable crawling-about death on the floor of her apartment over the course of a week's time.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Not the idea that someone could be helped, but -- it bothers me that someone's problems could be reduced to a moral fable; and to be fair it sounds as though the intent of the documentary was to counter that.

Several times in my life I've been the one to call the ambulance, and then the one to second-guess my actions afterwards. In one case I should have called it several days earlier; in another I perhaps shouldn't have called it at all.

I may also have a gut-level hatred of moral fables and cautionary tales, having spent my childhood under a constant barrage of warnings from school, tv and my parents to not take drugs or get into cars with strangers, when I had absolutely no intention of doing either. It's left me with a belief that guilt and worry usually attach themselves to those who don't need more of them.

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

Oh, no question, although moral fables define our storytelling evolution and have long been teaching tools - when a current events story is stripped of its very real humanity to become fable, that's not good.

You know, of course, Saki's brilliant "The Storyteller"?

http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/Storyteller.html