From the Queen to Robin Williams, sentimental images abound to help us through grief and avoid staring death in the face
Churn Milk Joan, a Ted Hughes poem about a milkmaid, is not sweet. It ends, for example, with the lines: “Of her futile stumbling and screams/And awful death.” There is a bit in the middle about being torn apart by foxes. Yet here is how Hughes – the poet who could extract unsentimentality from such unpromising subjects as newborn calves and songbirds – is to be remembered in his birthplace: a twee, two-metre-high statue of a fat milk churn and two cute little foxes, in tribute to the poem. The cult of twee has come at last for Hughes.
It comes for us all at the end. Death, taxes and, shortly after death, twee. After we die we all end up alike: cute, innocently wise, like children are, spouting storybook platitudes. Our modern death rituals can grind even the spikiest character into twee little contours – a cartoon version. Condolence cards feature soft toys leading tottering old ladies off by the hand, social media leans on Disney and AA Milne to lead people through their grief. In death, twee ate the Queen: Paddington Bear grew to monstrous proportions and simply gobbled her up. Robin Williams, the actor who killed himself after being misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, was afterwards buried in twee. That week, an image of Aladdin’s genie, whom Williams voiced, hugging the titular character and captioned “Genie, you’re free”, was shared some 300,000 times.
