ONE thing my mommy told me when I was a cub which I still remember was to never love someone or something so much you could not bear the thought of losing it.
At the time it did not make sense, but she was trying to warn me against obsessing about anything in life, because life has a tendency to strike where your heart is.
If you are ready to lose anything or anyone in your life, then you do not have a hard time dealing with it when it happens. This is not to say you must be cold-hearted, it simply means that you can care for some-thing or someone, but you must be ready to deal with losing it or them one day. The failure to do so usually has detrimental consequences.
Think of the many suicides we record annually that are related to poor matric exam results. Those kids have no one to tell them that failing matric is not the end of the world, so they just end their lives.
This blind fixation on loving or wanting something so much can also be seen on Fatal Attraction, where people who are in love are too blind to see that the person they live with is dangerous enough to kill them.
Think of the many murders we have read about in which love has gone sour and a fight has ensued, leading to the intentional or unintentional death of a partner.
Fatal Attraction looks at the psychology of the would-be killers and the tell-tale signs that people should look for.
Although the Oscar Pistorius case hasn’t been finalised, events leading up to Reeva Steenkamp’s death suggest that he frequently became angry and snapped at her. We saw some evidence of this in the WhatsApp messages the couple exchanged.
On the night Steenkamp died, there are witnesses who claim to have heard some verbal exchanges before the shots were fired.
What’s interesting is that if you google Pistorius, you get suggestions of other people to search for, including OJ Simpson. Sooner or later, Fatal Attraction may have to feature these two.
For now we will see people like a millionaire from Atlanta who was found dead in his home. His relationships with those close to him are investigated and soon it is discovered that this was a crime of passion.
Fatal Attraction uses first-person interviews, amazing photography and, where necessary, exclusive interrogation footage. To add to the narration, the show has believable re-enactments that pass as the real story, although they are only a glimpse of what really happened.
• Fatal Attraction premieres on Sony MAX (DStv channel 128) on August 13 at 10pm and continues every Tuesday to Thursday.