Grief was once considered a very private affair—something that happened behind closed doors, discussed in hushed tones if at all. In recent years, however, there has been a significant cultural shift: death and mourning are increasingly visible in popular culture and mediaforbes.com. From tear-jerking TV drama storylines, to memoirs about loss topping bestseller lists, to the outpouring of emotion on social media when a public figure dies, our collective conversation about grief is opening up. Pop culture doesn’t just reflect our attitudes; it actively shapes them. The way loss is portrayed in movies, television, music, and online can influence how people understand their own grieving process and what they feel permitted (or forbidden) to express.
One clear example is the ubiquity of the “five stages of grief” in media. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s theory—originally describing how terminally ill patients come to terms with death—has been widely misread by the public as a template for bereavementnewyorker.com. It’s hard to find a TV show or movie about loss that doesn’t at least reference denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The Kübler-Ross model shows up in everything from sitcom punchlines to serious drama monologuesekrfoundation.org. This pervasiveness has pros and cons. On one hand, it offers a vocabulary for grief, signaling that it’s normal to have a range of feelings. On the other, it can create false expectations that grief is a neat, linear progression culminating in “closure.” Psychologists have criticized this notion of closure as largely a myth: “there is no prescription for how to grieve, much less for how to neatly overcome a loss”, as researcher Pauline Boss notesnewyorker.com. Yet, because pop culture often shows characters rather quickly moving through stages to a resolved endpoint, real mourners sometimes feel pressure to do the same or worry they’re grieving “wrong” if they don’t follow the script. The influence is so strong that the Kübler-Ross estate itself tracks references in media, noting that the concept is “used on a daily basis throughout television, feature films... and more.”ekrfoundation.org. In 2024, they even reported a surge in songs and albums explicitly inspired by the five stages, underscoring how deeply this framework has penetrated creative expressionekrfoundation.orgekrfoundation.org.
Fortunately, recent years have seen pop culture taking a more nuanced and realistic approach to grief. Critics and grief experts have applauded shows like This Is Us (NBC) for its portrayal of a family’s long-term grieving process, and films like Disney/Pixar’s Coco for celebrating the idea of remembrance and continuing bonds with loved ones who have diedeterneva.cometerneva.com. Such depictions are a departure from older Hollywood tendencies to either sidestep the subject or resolve it too tidily. In fact, it used to be noted that “too often, Hollywood has avoided, sugar-coated and sanitized death and grief. Characters die in one episode and are buried, grieved and forgotten by the next.”eterneva.com. That’s no longer always the case. In the past few years, an influx of content—from the tearful comedy-drama Dead to Me, to the memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy, to documentaries like Alternate Endings: Six New Ways to Die in America—suggests that death and mourning are becoming mainstream topics rather than tabooforbes.cometerneva.com. Media depictions now more often acknowledge that grief is not over in a week, that it can last years or a lifetime (as seen in Facebook’s series Sorry for Your Loss, about a young widow’s journey)eterneva.cometerneva.com. This increased representation can be validating for people in mourning: seeing a character struggle with waves of grief at unexpected moments, or keep an altar for their late father (as in Coco), tells viewers that they are not alone and that their own ways of coping are not weird or shameful.
Experts emphasize that when pop culture “portrays grief in ways that challenge the cultural norm of ‘three days off work and then put it behind you,’” it can model a healthier understanding of losseterneva.com. Dr. Alan Wolfelt, a prominent grief counselor, advocates for media to show that mourning requires time and care—essentially giving permission to society to grant mourners that timeeterneva.com. It’s a counter to the prevailing Western cultural expectation of speedy recovery that the New Yorker dubbed “the appeal of closure” in American lifenewyorker.com. In many non-Western cultures, traditions like Mexico’s Día de los Muertos or Japan’s Bon festival inherently acknowledge that grief is carried forward, not abruptly concludednewyorker.com. Through documentaries and global cinema, these ideas have also entered Western awareness, nudging public opinion toward accepting practices of ongoing remembrance (like celebrating death anniversaries or keeping personal memorials).
Social media, meanwhile, has become a new kind of pop culture platform that both reflects and transforms how we mourn. When a beloved celebrity dies, collective grieving online is now routine. Millions might tweet condolences or share personal anecdotes of what that celebrity meant to them. This phenomenon creates a sense of communal loss, almost like a digital vigil or wake. For example, after the passing of David Bowie, Prince, and Alan Rickman in 2016, “grieving fans flocked to public comment threads on social media to pay their respects in what has been likened to a virtual wake.”colorado.edu. These shared online experiences can be cathartic; strangers bond over mutual admiration for the departed and even organize real-life memorial meetups via social platformscolorado.educolorado.edu. Psychologists describe this as a form of parasocial grief—we didn’t personally know the celebrity, yet we feel a genuine sense of loss because of the emotional connection formed through their art or public personacolorado.edu. Public mourning for public figures has become widely accepted (consider the global mourning of Princess Diana, or more recently, widespread tributes to actors like Chadwick Boseman). Pop culture coverage of these events often encourages people to share their grief stories, implicitly normalizing mourning in the public sphere.
However, social media has also exposed rifts in how people think grief should be displayed. The University of Colorado study on “grief policing” found that in those same comment threads honoring celebrities, many users also encountered a toxic backlash—with some posters mocking others for being upset over “a stranger” or accusing them of performative sadnesscolorado.educolorado.edu. Comments like “You didn’t know him, move on” or “You’re just posting this to get likes” reveal a resentment or misunderstanding some have toward public mourningcolorado.edu. This illustrates a clash between an older view (grief belongs to close family, and public displays are unseemly) and the newer one (grief can be communal and publicly shared). The fact that even on mourning posts, people were “fighting in what was essentially an online wake” shows that society is still negotiating the etiquette of grief in the digital agecolorado.edu. As our lives become more intertwined with social media, there’s a push to make these platforms more compassionate spaces. Researchers suggest design tweaks (for example, algorithms that don’t sensationalize argumentative comments on memorial posts) to reduce conflict and encourage supportive interactions when people share grief onlinecolorado.educolorado.edu.
In sum, pop culture and media have a powerful dual influence on grieving. They can propagate myths – such as the quick “closure” narrative or the five-stage roadmap – but they can also break down taboos and provide new models for understanding loss. The increasing willingness of popular media to tackle grief openly is helping to educate the public that grief is a journey, not a flaw to be fixed. It validates that mourning can be complex and prolonged, and that remembering loved ones (even celebrities we never met) is part of what it means to be human. At the same time, the media’s portrayal of grief continues to evolve, mirroring society’s own struggle with balancing private sorrow and public expression. As one grief specialist noted, authentic depictions are still “few and far between” but growingourhouse-grief.org, and each honest story—be it in a Netflix series or a viral Facebook post—contributes to a cultural environment where those who mourn feel seen and less alone. Pop culture is teaching us that it’s okay to talk about grief, to cry together (even if behind a screen), and to carry our loved ones’ memories with us openly. And that lesson is perhaps one of the most healing gifts media can give.