The Line Between Fictional Characters and Real People Has Been Crossed — And Not in a Good Way

The April 4th blog post here discussed the questions raised by novelist Alexander McCall Smith about people believing fictional characters are real.

And on tonight’s episode of the Fox tv show HOUSE I saw that line crossed in a way that it never, ever should have been crossed.  (SPOILER ALERT:  If you’ve a fan of the show and haven’t yet seen the April 6th episode, you’ve been warned about a spoiler ahead.)

In my February 3rd post “Popular TV Show HOUSE Uses Its Star Power to Support Mental Health” on my blog PZ the Do-Gooder Scrooge, I applauded that the tv show HOUSE has been raising a great deal of money to support the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Tonight the show dealt with suicide and a search for the cause of that suicide. At the end of the show there was a public service announcement about what to do if you are in crisis. And then there was another announcement:

If viewers wanted to leave a message for the person who had killed himself — they could go to www.fox.com/kutner/ and leave a message.

Having just written the blog post here about fictional characters, my immediate reaction to the Fox.com web page to leave messages for “Dr. Kutner” is that this blurring of what is fiction and what is reality has gone too far.

Yes, I cried during the show, but I was crying for the fictional character. No, I don’t want to demean the death of real suicides by leaving messages for a fictional tv character.

What are your thoughts about this?

— Phyllis Zimbler Miller