Celebrities are also like sports teams. They provide a mutual cultural touchstone for all of us, uniting us in our fandom or repulsion. Our celebrities bind together a lot of different people from different walks of life in the name of being entertained. They occupy a big space in cultural interactions.

I know it was almost instantly an overused cliche, but Matthew Perry was indeed a “Friend” in the most Hollywood sense of the word. He was in the background of so much life, particular for those of us in GenX. Losing him at such a young age indeed feels like losing a friend.

And I suppose that is why we take so hard the passing of celebrities we don’t know. Of course it is not the passing of someone we intimately knew and loved, but their departure does leave a hole in the cultural fabric. There’s a type of emptiness that becomes noticeable, or at least there’s an awareness of the emptiness that wasn’t there before. It is a reminder that the pieces of our lives will fall away bit by bit no matter how glamorous they may look.

[True enough, and that’s completely legitimate to mourn too. When we express grief over the passing of entertainers, it’s usually not celebrity we’re honoring but the ways in which their art touched our lives and brightened them in some fashion. That is also a legitimate reason to mourn and to note their passing. I don’t think it needs to be more complicated than that. — Ed]