"I'm just a product of my parents and my environment."
Steve Irwin, 2003
 
Steve Irwin, at 44 years of age, has been killed on the set of his latest marine wildlife documentary. Irwin was struck in the chest by a stingray, and leaves behind wife, Terri, and two children (including the child he so infamously dangled before a crocodile). Terri is currently on location in Tasmania, and is to be the last notified of her husband's death.
 
Of course, Irwin's popularity - once enough to garner funding for a feature film - had waned in recent years, after the baby incident (pictured here). But culture is a funny thing - death erases all moral judgements and misgivings. Whilst one may wonder how "insulting" it is to someone who is, after all, dead, we feel a strange pressure to talk fondly of the deceased. So far, of the initial 10 reports on Google news, only two have even mentioned the incident, with only one of those making mention of any question as to Irwin's diminished financial value, after he was accused of being a bad father. Most instead place over-emphasis on his recent appearance in quarantining adverts (quite disproportionately, considering what a minor part of his large career this was), in an effort to maintain the collective quo, and present the man with a halo, now that he is gone.

 
Irwin wasn't an evil man, as such. Certainly, his efforts to buy habitat to protect various wildlife, was admirable. But there was always something wrong for me, with Steve. The intention was there, but it was skewered, somewhere in the mix. I'm going to break the (silly) tabboo and, since everyone is about to talk about Irwin over the watercooler for a couple of days, be honest. As a nature-lover, I found Irwin's persona quite absurd. Sold as a real life Crocodile Dundee, I never quite saw the man as doing the good for the Crocodile "profile" (whatever that is), that so many people seemed to see. "Man tames the wild beast, wrestles with it for no apparent reason", just didn't communicate terribly much to me. If you loved something so, why go into it's natural habitiat and annoy it? Even the children interviewed by the news, were today remembering him as "brave", and "not afraid of animals". "He helped save wildlife" wasn't amongst it, and that wasn't really his thing - he was the guy who annoyed animals you wouldn't particularly want to annoy. I can't help but think of South Park's parody... "I'm going to stick my finger in the crocodile's bum, and it's going to get really, really pissed off with me!" We'll never see the footage of the death (presuming it was being filmed, after all), but one wonders what exactly he was doing with (or "to", more to the point) the stingray. Marine experts have already crawled out to announce that what happened was extrenely rare, and that stingrays only do as they did to Irwin, if they are extremeley agitated, and that it is a threatened, defending response - not an attack. The mind boggles. From what we know of Steve Irwin, it just has to. And yet, this has led to a lot of people scratching their heads, and declaring the incident as somehow a freak "accident", without an explanation. Is it really so hard to believe that Irwin was agitating and threatening the stingray? This is the guy who loves crocodiles so much, he jumps on them, ties them up, and flattens them on the ground. Funnily enough, the animals probably don't feel the love in this behaviour.
 
And the baby dangling? Sort of beats Michael Jackson hands down, doesn't it? I was never quite sure if he was using it as a publicity stunt, desensitising the child at birth to crocodiles to prepare him for his future inherited life (like throwing a child in water, except really, really unnecessarily stupid), or if poor Steve had projected upon his beloved wildlife so much, he'd forgotten that in fact crocodiles are simplistic, cold-blooded killers, who live only to eat living things like... say... a baby. Whatever the case, it was wrong. On Denton's Enough Rope, he declared how proud he was that his two year old daughter had just taken her first venomous snake bite ("there was blood pouring out... I was very proud of her"). There was a seriously adequate case, as to whether Irwin's obsessive love for dangerous animals had led him to compromise his fathering responsibility. Regardless of whether you want to teach your children to be around and respect animals - which is great - surely there is a responsibility not to send toddlers after venomous snakes, or dangle babies in front of feeding crocodiles. But now, we'll all have it put to us as the endearing eccentricity of a great Aussie icon. It's a tres unpopular thing to remember and say today, but I'm sorry, Irwin's popularity declined for good reason.
 
And for the politically minded of us, there's an even better reason. A staunch Howard and Bush supporter (he called Howard "the greatest leader ever to have lived"), Irwin's self-confessed proudest moment was his personal invitation to parliament. While there (for Bush's Australian visit), Greens leader Bob Brown infamously had the guts to call out to Bush of his tyranny. After, Irwin told press, "Bob Brown needed to be taken out the back, and belted."
 
Funnily enough, in Nine's glowing memory lane of "moments that tell us about the man" (including the voice-over, "Steve Irwin was just a bloke - but crikey, what a bloke!"), such material was left out.

It seems both sad and ironic that Irwin should meet his end, at such a young age, to the wildlife he devoted his life to. But if you spend your life harassing wild, dangerous animals, then the maths are fairly simple, and the probability is quite obvious. Irwin told Denton that he believed he had an unexplainable "gift" with wildlife, and that he was unable to be harmed. He recalled his father declaring he had this gift when he was just two years old (a fantastical story about a brown snake that, quite fittingly, let Steve violently restrain him without biting him) - and there it is, I'd imagine. In another news memory lane today, we heard Steve say, "All I ever wanted to do was please my Dad, and be him." A dark irony, that Irwin's lack of fear was attributed to an impacting moment of intimacy between a small child and his beloved father he only longed to emulate - an early implanted, subjective (irrational) belief that would eventually take his life. The cruel fact of the matter is that it was effectively a delusion, and today, the reality caught up with Steve Irwin, in the most horrible way. Steve Irwin wrestled with the most dangerous animals on Earth, jumped them, aggrivated them, all under the sincere belief he was invincible to them. When he was just a toddler, his Daddy told him he couldn't be harmed by animals, and with a hint of a strange animal messianism, he believed him. He was wrong. Now, he's dead. One must be careful what childhood beliefs we carry with us, in a blinded love for our parents.
 
And I have no doubt he believed he was doing "good" for the animals. But there's a strange line with nature docos, and Irwin did walk on the less desirable side of it. Irwin's kind has never sat well with me. He once admitted he thought he was more successful than Attenborough, because "I have a bigger demographic" (smart business talk, mind you, from someone perceived as quite opposite to an entertainer who thinks consciously about demographics). But Attenborough respects his subject, by logically standing back and merely observing. He's still alive, by the way. Man harassing animals, and filming it as if there is something to be "learned" from it (there isn't, really, it's just a simple entertainment of watching the danger for most Irwin fans, after all), is another game, altogether. In the end, it can actually compound our fears, capitalising on Man's perceived feud with the beasts he longs to tame and protect himself from. Crocodiles don't seem any less frightening, once you've watched brave Steve wrestle one to the ground.
 
Is it a shame Steve Irwin died? Of course. He leaves behind a wife and two children, and our hearts go out to them. But I can't help but shake my head at the fanfare that follows the death of a celebrity. While thousands of innocent humans are tortured and murdered in Iraq, Lebanese orphans wait for an uncertain future to unfold, and another aboriginal child dies in the outback from petrol-induced brain damage, the nation will become frenzied over a sentimental - and theatrical - remembrance of the guy who dangled his baby in front of the wild animals he used to wrestle for fun. Even Alexander Downer has been called on to comment - and that's just the beginning. I imagine by tomorrow, as more troops are deployed to the Middle East, Howard will be remembering this great Australian hero. Lest we forget.

 

The following video material is taken from the same networks and shows now crucifying Greer for putting a bad word against the man. Let's jog our memory, shall we?