July 25, 2025 • 7 mins
Robert Thompson talks with Mendte in the Morning about the recent pop culture deaths and how those deaths can impact people who grew up idolizing these stars.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
That's it a short span and these are people that
did leave an imprint on pop culture. And with that,
I want to bring in Robert Thompson. He's a professor
of TV and popular culture at Syracuse University. Hey, Bob,
thanks for joining us again. I appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
I want to play for you a talkback we got,
I think, which sums up the feelings of a lot
of people when they hear about these celebrity deaths. Malcolm
Jamal Warner, Connie Francis, Chuck Mangione, Haulk Hogan, Ozzy Osbourne, Larry.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I don't know how old you are, but my youth
seems to be a figure in the far distance that
grows banker every day.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
How wonderful was that, Bob?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, And you know, I know what that feels like,
because however old you are, you grow up with the
people who were you know, when you're a kid. The
people who are famous for singing in sports and TV
are what ten twenty years older than you. I'm sixty five,
so I'm getting to that period where everybody that was
big and stars and performing when I was ten years
(01:11):
old are reaching the end of their lives. One way
or another, before.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
We run through the people that died recently to talk
about what you believe the impact of those people have
on pop culture. Talk about what you just said, the
fact that all of these people that were a big
part of your lives, especially when you were younger, when
they pass what does that mean to a person? Can
(01:36):
that have a profound effect or is it just the
passing of time?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, I mean, I think it canon. It depends on
how deep ones relationship were with any of these people.
And of course there are a lot of people who
developed very very strong relationships with people they've never met,
and it's not surprising. I remember how a bunch of
my students were really seemed like on the verge of
(02:02):
having some serious emotional issues when Matthew Perry died, And
I think part of it is that they grew up
long after that show had been off the air, but
they watched it all the time. First it was on
all the time on cable, and then they were watching
it and streaming. So there's a sense that some of
these people a musician you listen to all the time
(02:23):
or a TV show you watch a lot, you actually
spend more time with them than you do with many
of the people that you love deeply, and I think
there is a sense then when they go that there's
some sort of loss. However, there is a silver lining
to all of these celebrity passings is that they've all
lived in the electronic age and the performances they did
(02:48):
and that's how we experienced them were recorded. So it
was very sad when Michael Jackson died, when Elvis Presley died,
but we still have enormous bodies of work, can still
listen to it. There are many people that were gone.
Most of the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers were
(03:09):
long gone before many people discovered them, and they can
still watch all their movies and all of that. So,
you know, when we talk about famous people from the
nineteenth century, when they died, only memories were left of
their performances. Now, you know, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, we
(03:30):
can still listen to them right now if we want.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
To, yeah, or see interview. Now it's pervasive of the internet.
Now we can see, you know, interviews with them about
their lives.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Coincidence, just two days before Malcolm Jamal Warner died, I
was teaching my TV history class, my summer class, and
we had gotten to the eighties, and I had played
that very first episode of The Cosby Show where Doctor
Huxtable teaches the kid the value of money using a
(04:03):
monopoly game, one of the most exquisitely executed scenes in
all of sitcom history. And of course, as we watched that,
Malcolm Jamal Warner was thirteen years old all over again.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
What about people like Ozzy Osbourne and people like Hulk
Hogan that were really, you know, fringe celebrities because they
weren't always in the mainstream, but then they forced them
way their way into the mainstream. Do they have the
same profound effects?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah, Well, of course some people before they forced themselves.
I mean, some people were enormous fans when they were fringe,
the Black Sabbath fan, the Ozzy Osbourne fan. While there
were many radio stations still refusing to play these guys
and critics were saying it's noise and all of that
kind of thing, there was a dedicated fan base that
(04:56):
had emerged by that time. But it is interesting. So, yes,
I think the answer to that to your question is yes.
In the case of Ozzy Osbourne, he did have this.
He was an enormously famous person, had been recording stuff
and people had known about him since the nineteen sixties.
But it is interesting how that MTV show, which debuts
(05:20):
almost exactly at the six months anniversary of nine to
eleven March of two thousand and two, and that did
bring Ozzy Osbourne to an entirely new population of people.
They'd heard about them, and they'd heard the story of
their bat biting and Prince of Darkness and all of that.
But that MTV show The Osbourne's, which is kind of
(05:42):
designed to evoke Ozzy and Harriet a suburban sitcom, completely
repackaged Ozzy Osbourne as this kind of baffled but really
lovable kind of a guy, the huggable Ozzie, even though
every other word had to be beated. It sounded like
listening to a telegraph message when you watched that show,
(06:03):
which was actually kind of hilarious, but he was totally repositioned.
It was as though we took heavy metal, which was
dangerous and bloody and all of that kind of stuff
and completely domesticated it. For all of the weirdness of
the relationships on that show, it seemed like every bit
as loving a family as leave it to Beaver or
(06:26):
Ozzie and aarian.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
That's exactly right. That was extremely well said. Ozzy Osbourne
became a character. He wasn't just the character that dressed
like the devil on stage and had that incredible voice
singings music that your parents hated. He became a dad.
I mean sort of like Overnight. That was a It
(06:49):
was an extremely powerful reality show and gave gave birth
to so many many Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
You're absolutely right, and it was practically every night Overnight
that show hit big. That brought flocks of people back
to MTV who had not watched MTV since flocks of
seagulls were on the playlist and just watching I mean,
of course we knew him as this heavy metal all
(07:16):
that stands for and he spent most of the episodes
stepping in the piles left by the multiple dogs that
were there and trying to figure out how to make
the remote control work.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Robert Thompson enjoyed talking to you, Professor of TV and
Popular Culture at Syracuse University. Thanks for spending some time
with us this morning and making us laugh. Appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
It was my pleasure. Thank you.
That's it a short span and these are people that
did leave an imprint on pop culture. And with that,
I want to bring in Robert Thompson. He's a professor
of TV and popular culture at Syracuse University. Hey, Bob,
thanks for joining us again. I appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
I want to play for you a talkback we got,
I think, which sums up the feelings of a lot
of people when they hear about these celebrity deaths. Malcolm
Jamal Warner, Connie Francis, Chuck Mangione, Haulk Hogan, Ozzy Osbourne, Larry.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I don't know how old you are, but my youth
seems to be a figure in the far distance that
grows banker every day.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
How wonderful was that, Bob?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, And you know, I know what that feels like,
because however old you are, you grow up with the
people who were you know, when you're a kid. The
people who are famous for singing in sports and TV
are what ten twenty years older than you. I'm sixty five,
so I'm getting to that period where everybody that was
big and stars and performing when I was ten years
(01:11):
old are reaching the end of their lives. One way
or another, before.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
We run through the people that died recently to talk
about what you believe the impact of those people have
on pop culture. Talk about what you just said, the
fact that all of these people that were a big
part of your lives, especially when you were younger, when
they pass what does that mean to a person? Can
(01:36):
that have a profound effect or is it just the
passing of time?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, I mean, I think it canon. It depends on
how deep ones relationship were with any of these people.
And of course there are a lot of people who
developed very very strong relationships with people they've never met,
and it's not surprising. I remember how a bunch of
my students were really seemed like on the verge of
(02:02):
having some serious emotional issues when Matthew Perry died, And
I think part of it is that they grew up
long after that show had been off the air, but
they watched it all the time. First it was on
all the time on cable, and then they were watching
it and streaming. So there's a sense that some of
these people a musician you listen to all the time
(02:23):
or a TV show you watch a lot, you actually
spend more time with them than you do with many
of the people that you love deeply, and I think
there is a sense then when they go that there's
some sort of loss. However, there is a silver lining
to all of these celebrity passings is that they've all
lived in the electronic age and the performances they did
(02:48):
and that's how we experienced them were recorded. So it
was very sad when Michael Jackson died, when Elvis Presley died,
but we still have enormous bodies of work, can still
listen to it. There are many people that were gone.
Most of the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers were
(03:09):
long gone before many people discovered them, and they can
still watch all their movies and all of that. So,
you know, when we talk about famous people from the
nineteenth century, when they died, only memories were left of
their performances. Now, you know, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, we
(03:30):
can still listen to them right now if we want.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
To, yeah, or see interview. Now it's pervasive of the internet.
Now we can see, you know, interviews with them about
their lives.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Coincidence, just two days before Malcolm Jamal Warner died, I
was teaching my TV history class, my summer class, and
we had gotten to the eighties, and I had played
that very first episode of The Cosby Show where Doctor
Huxtable teaches the kid the value of money using a
(04:03):
monopoly game, one of the most exquisitely executed scenes in
all of sitcom history. And of course, as we watched that,
Malcolm Jamal Warner was thirteen years old all over again.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
What about people like Ozzy Osbourne and people like Hulk
Hogan that were really, you know, fringe celebrities because they
weren't always in the mainstream, but then they forced them
way their way into the mainstream. Do they have the
same profound effects?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah, Well, of course some people before they forced themselves.
I mean, some people were enormous fans when they were fringe,
the Black Sabbath fan, the Ozzy Osbourne fan. While there
were many radio stations still refusing to play these guys
and critics were saying it's noise and all of that
kind of thing, there was a dedicated fan base that
(04:56):
had emerged by that time. But it is interesting. So, yes,
I think the answer to that to your question is yes.
In the case of Ozzy Osbourne, he did have this.
He was an enormously famous person, had been recording stuff
and people had known about him since the nineteen sixties.
But it is interesting how that MTV show, which debuts
(05:20):
almost exactly at the six months anniversary of nine to
eleven March of two thousand and two, and that did
bring Ozzy Osbourne to an entirely new population of people.
They'd heard about them, and they'd heard the story of
their bat biting and Prince of Darkness and all of that.
But that MTV show The Osbourne's, which is kind of
(05:42):
designed to evoke Ozzy and Harriet a suburban sitcom, completely
repackaged Ozzy Osbourne as this kind of baffled but really
lovable kind of a guy, the huggable Ozzie, even though
every other word had to be beated. It sounded like
listening to a telegraph message when you watched that show,
(06:03):
which was actually kind of hilarious, but he was totally repositioned.
It was as though we took heavy metal, which was
dangerous and bloody and all of that kind of stuff
and completely domesticated it. For all of the weirdness of
the relationships on that show, it seemed like every bit
as loving a family as leave it to Beaver or
(06:26):
Ozzie and aarian.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
That's exactly right. That was extremely well said. Ozzy Osbourne
became a character. He wasn't just the character that dressed
like the devil on stage and had that incredible voice
singings music that your parents hated. He became a dad.
I mean sort of like Overnight. That was a It
(06:49):
was an extremely powerful reality show and gave gave birth
to so many many Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
You're absolutely right, and it was practically every night Overnight
that show hit big. That brought flocks of people back
to MTV who had not watched MTV since flocks of
seagulls were on the playlist and just watching I mean,
of course we knew him as this heavy metal all
(07:16):
that stands for and he spent most of the episodes
stepping in the piles left by the multiple dogs that
were there and trying to figure out how to make
the remote control work.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Robert Thompson enjoyed talking to you, Professor of TV and
Popular Culture at Syracuse University. Thanks for spending some time
with us this morning and making us laugh. Appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
It was my pleasure. Thank you.
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