How does somebody's death alter your opinion of that person (if at all)?

I think ppl can be turned into saints (metaphorically speaking) when they die. I guess it's about not wanting to think ill of the dead.

In terms of recent prominent deaths - Lynda Lee Potter and John Peel - my opinion of either has not changed. I am more than happy to continue thinking ill of the former.

In terms of that latter thread, that was me with my Professional Contrarian hat on. Pay no mind.

I've always been a fan of JP and it would take something big to make me change my mind I think.

But I've changed my mind about Christopher Reeve since he died. Since his accident I just figured he was impotently railing against his shitty luck and was understandably becoming a single-issue personality, which was a bit of a turn-off. I didn't feel this strongly, I didn't hate him or anything, he just didn't really register on my radar. Since he died I've seen/heard/read so much about him in the media that now I think he was much more important and successful than I realised.

I dunno. But someones trying to sell newspapers with his death on the front of them, on ebay. So maybe they've changed their opinion that he was just a DJ, into now he's a money-spinner.

peel is a special case, i think: so many people remember listening to him in their teens and being guided around startling new music. most eventually parted ways with him and ended up seeing him as an irrelevance or slightly irritating, perhaps cos they weren't still living those golden years of discovery with him. then he died and with that closure people look back on their 'golden years' as the end of an era with nostalgia and fondness.

i think a lot of the criticisms on the elijah wood thread did stand, but that doesn't stop me feeling a bit wistful about his passing, he was such an institution, love him or loathe him.

jaques derrida, on the other hand, began a project that's still going on, something that still has vital proofs to be made and arguments to be won. therefore people aren't getting quite as dewy eyed about him.

i mean, unlike derrida, there almost certainly won't be anyone to expand or refine peel's work: that reithian era of broadcasting is in its death throes and maybe people are in mourning for that as much as anything.

Gareth, on that other thread:

the gate that peel stands by, well, the wall around it is now gone

And now Peel is gone too. So there's just... a gate, swinging on rusty hinges.

In front of a desolate scrapheap stretching out to every horizon.

From a different RIP thread (Greg Shaw) I can say that his death didn't affect my opinion of his life at all. That could be because I knew him and so he wasn't a distant public figure. Maybe the question needs to be qualified for public figures vs. people you know because it might make the answer different.

Did John Peel's death change my opinion of John Peel? No. I didn't know him except as a name on the promo list and for his legacy of Radio Sessions; I thought he was a major music figure then and I think so now--no rose colored glasses there.

When you throw rock critics into the mix, I think there is a tendency to immediately historicize (rose colored glasses, then) and the unauthorized bios come out later (criticism).

Or, in Peel's case, the sex and drugs revelations which will doubtless take pride of place in next Sunday's News of the World.