An NYC apartment listing was posted to Craigslist last week exploiting the vicinity of said 1BR to the site of Heath Ledger’s death. Obviously the posting has been removed, but the real-estate blog Curbed has a screenshot. While it seems like a sick thing to do, it’s clear the apartment’s owner (or broker) was simply conscious of the Ledger death cult and was merely targeting a certain demo. After all, as we learned from last week’s AP article, the people just want to pay tribute to a fallen actor. And what better way to do that than to pay $2750 a month for a place in that actor’s neighborhood? With new solid wood cabinetry in which to store your Joker action figures!

What, too soon? It’s okay to advertise hotels near Paul Revere’s house, just because he’s been dead for 190 years as opposed to two months? It’s not like the posting said it was were Ledger died. It says “used to live“. Remember last week when I differentiated between those people who recognize Ledger as being a dead guy and those who mean to honor his life? This is related to the latter, which is clearly the more sensitive and virtuous.

I know, I pay too much attention to the aftereffects of Heath Ledger’s death, which makes me just as implicit in the process as anyone or anything I’m highlighting and making fun of. But I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a member of the cult of celebrity death (I blog movie-related passings weekly, for goodness sake). And I’ll also agree with the first person who commented on Curbed, pointing out that it exacerbates the problem to “bite the bait” of such an ad and give it more exposure than it deserves. But if we ignore it, not only are we not doing our job as media, we’re also contributing by letting it go. In a lose-lose situation, I’ll gladly be the active loser than the passive.