In our discussion of Waugh's The Loved One, someone posed the question along the lines of, "Do you think our generation has a special fascination with death, particularly in the media?" Men have always been fascinated with death; it's the end of one lifetime and, to many, the beginning of another, hence the many representations of the afterlife in mythologies across many cultures. I don't think our perceptions of death have changed either, though The Loved One presents a more modern perspective on commercialized grief. I see that economic value as what our era has brought to the table in the treatment of death. Not only in the actual ritual itself, where you can shop for how you want to bury your dead, but in general attitudes as well.
I refer to how our generation has spawned the goth movement, a social scene that fetishizes morbidity, or at least that's how it's marketed. It's cool to think about death and dress like it! Brand yourself with dreariness! While the movement draws from many other movements (i.e. roots in post-punk, focuses on individualism, aesthetic associations with the Victorian era), the watered down version targeting the more gullible prepubescents at Hot Topic focuses on the mainstream associations of which death is a part of. There's nothing wrong with a curiosity/interest towards death--it's just weird to think about an actual consumer market for this interest.
Anyway, while I do appreciate some aspects of the gothic aesthetic (damn Ms. McPherson, you make pretty shit), there's only so much I can take of the bleak attitude in regards to death. I mean, I'm a big fan of Kerry's Irish wake, the more celebratory and joyous mindset. In his comic classic The Sandman, Neil Gaiman wrote my favorite personification of Death (pictured and quoted in the subject line), depicted as a seemingly young woman with high energy and always ready with a smile. Never malicious or wicked, she's instead presented as someone you'd probably wanna hang with if she didn't, y'know, accompany everyone to the afterlife. That's not to say she takes her job lightly, and speaks of herself with gravity but without melodrama: "I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes; in hospitals and forests and abbatoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them." Gaiman's is a delightful treatment of death without trivializing or dramatizing it, but makes you feel like when it's your time to go, whether you were ready or not, you're in good hands.
Other death-related media worth mentioning:
- "Six Feet Under" - A six season HBO dramedy about a dysfunctional family that runs a funeral home in Los Angeles. It also deals with the commercialization of grief in a similar manner as The Loved One, when the family business is almost bought out by a funeral service conglomerate. Though really, you should watch it for the most upbeat embalmer you'll ever encounter.
- "The Frogs" - One of the first black comedies? By Aristophanes, the god Dionysus
thinks good tragedy's gone to hell, so he goes to retrieve it ... in the form of Euripides. - "Dead Like Me" - An HBO comedy about grim reapers.
- "Stranger Than Fiction" - Metafiction is sweeeet, especially in the film medium where the genre has only a small presence. A man starts hearing a voice narrating his life and learns of his imminent death. The moral about life in the face of death is pretty generic, but the storytelling is smart in all other aspects.
- "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" - Not mentioning this as a rec, per say, but with the popularity of all these forensics shows, I wonder whether the appeal is in the mystery scenarios that crime scenes provide or in the victim's death.
