Surprise documentary, Testament book, playlist, choice of guests … Thierry Ardisson, animator-star on the small screen, seems to have meticulously orchestrated his death for many months. An astonishing staging, which speaks volumes about the character, according to Amélie Boukhobza, clinical psychologist.
The host had expressed very precise wishes for his funeral
The famous “man in black” succumbed, Monday, July 14, of liver cancer. And if he knew himself condemned, the host and television producer had anticipated everything: the way in which his death would be announced, the unfolding of his funeral or the relatives present on D -Day.
“The day I feel the end approaching, I will decide all the details for my burial”he had entrusted to the Parisian, during the release of his testament book. “I want incense, choir children … The total! I already have all the playlist in mind”he added.
A more precise (and serious) speech, which has hardly surprised his loved ones.
“They were not words in the air”, “He left instructions”confirmed his entourage yesterday to AFP.
Thierry Ardisson had also decided to engage in a documentary produced by his wife, entitled “The hidden side of the man in black “broadcast Wednesday at 10:50 p.m. on TF1.
Keep hand
Unsurprisingly, Amélie Boukhobza, a clinical psychologist, confirms that the producer was obsessed with the need to control everything.
“He has planned everything: the coffin, the music, the images, the words. Even a posthumous documentary. Like a last TV set, of which he would be both the guest and the master of ceremonies”, admits the expert. “Now, this is not only a taste for staging. It is rather a need to keep your hand, until the end. On his image, on his story, on the way in which we talk about him when he will no longer be able to answer.”
However, preparing your death as you write a script is not trivial. This can be a way “to refuse erasure, to prevent others from seizing the story, from mastering the course of your own story until the end “, specifies the psychologist. In other words: “not to leave room for improvisation”, underlines the practitioner.
Ardisson had even limited the number of people allowed to talk about him. “As if death could be controlled as precisely as a talk show driver. It’s dizzying”, Confess Amélie Boukhobza. But behind this apparent control, there is obviously something else.
“A fear of disappearing without trace. An anxiety of emptiness, forgetting, what death represents more unthinkable: no longer being there to see what will remain …”
Thierry Ardisson, an image man, therefore offered himself a last sequence, which is not just the ego: “This is probably an attempt – almost touching – to make death something understandable, controllable”, reveals the expert.
“But despite everything, he did not completely control him. His death was announced before the time and his wife attacks the one who allowed this …”, “, concludes Amélie Boukhobza.