Categories
Death + Art / Architecture Death + Popular Culture Death + Technology

Day 29: Full Listing of Events for Death Ref John’s Morbid Anatomy Museum Residency

Morbid Anatomy Museum
424A 3rd Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11215

During the month of August, I will be the Scholar in Residence at the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn.

My residency includes a series of films about death that I specifically selected for the MAM. It also features illustrated lectures about my research on death, dying, and the dead body.

Quick clue for Death Ref’s close personal friends: the films and the talks complement each other.

More than anything, I’m really excited to spend August at the Museum.

The complete listing of films and talks is below.

You can also click here to see August’s calendar on the Morbid Anatomy Museum website.

Tales from the Celluloid Coffin: A Death-themed Series of Film Screenings
Mondays 8:00 pm – 11:00 pm $5

 

August 4: Death, Dystopia and Technology Circa 1970

 

August 11: Death, Color and Memory

 

August 18: Necrophilia

 

August 25: Future Death Circa 1990

 

Illustrated Lectures on Death, Dying, and the Dead Body
Wednesdays 8:00 pm – 11:00 pm $8

 

August 6: Future Dead Body Technology

 

August 13: Morbid Ink: The Permanence of Memorial Tattoos

 

August 20: Abusing the Corpse: Understanding Necrophilia Laws in the USA

 

August 27: The Future is Death and Death is the Future: Technology, Politics, and the Dead Body

Categories
Afterlife Death + Popular Culture Defying Death

Day 24: How Praying Really Hard and Grave Sucking Might Help Raise the Dead

Deadraiser
Directed by Johnny Clark (October 04, 2013)

 

Evangelical Christians want access to more corpses … to hone their ‘raising the dead’ skills

Barry Duke, The Freethinker (March 10, 2014)

 

The people who believe in medical miracles
BBC News Magazine (March 10, 2014)

 

What is Grave Sucking?
Michael Boehm, Youth Apologetics Training (February 12, 2014)
Helping teens understand and defend Christianity. Helping parents train up their young in the faith.

Last February and March I started collecting information on Evangelical Christian groups that believe in the power of prayer to resurrect the dead. It’s not an entirely new idea for Christianity (e.g. Jesus) but its supporters have ebbed and flowed over the centuries.

One of the new groups that’s involved is called the Dead Raising Team.

Filmmaker Johnny Clark made a documentary about the Dead Raising Team and you can watch the doc’s trailer at the top of the page.

Slightly before I came across the Dead Raising Team, I encountered a somewhat connected but different practice called Grave Sucking. Michael Boehm, writing for the pro-Christian Youth Apologetics blog, explains that:

Grave sucking or mantle grabbing is the belief and practice of pulling the supposed Holy Spirit powers from the dead bones of a previously empowered believer.

Not much else to say, really.

It’s worth noting, I think, that Boehm doesn’t support Grave Sucking and thinks that it’s, um, impractical.

Then again, ‘miracles’ do happen. Just last February a man was declared dead in Mississippi only to wake up inside a body bag. This could also be a case of a less-than-rigorous end of life medical exam.

http://vimeo.com/63016718

Categories
Death + Architecture Death + Popular Culture Death + Technology Monuments + Memorials

Day 22: People Taking Selfies at the 9/11 Memorial, because #America

Selfies from the 9/11 Memorial
Leah Finnegan, The Awl (July 21, 2014)

Let us begin Day 22 of the 31 Days of Death posts with an immediate thought: Of course people are taking Selfies at the 9/11 Memorial. Even if photography was banned at the site, people would still sneak Selfies. Why? Because the expression ‘photos or it didn’t happen’ is both a joke and a serious sentiment. How does a person document, not just a visit to a place, but actually show that he or she was really, truly in that specific spot? Answer: with a Selfie; the kind of photo that an individual can autonomously take without having to ask a complete stranger (since that would be weird) to snap a picture.

You want proof that I personally experienced this amazing unforgettable Memorial space? Then here you go– a Selfie of me #standingstrong.

The entire reason that this is a story, and analysed extremely well by Leah Finnegan on The Awl, is the 9/11 Memorial’s inclusion. But for the events of September 11, 2001 and the ensuing struggle to actually build a memorial in lower Manhattan, these Selfies could be in almost any major city’s downtown landscape featuring enormous urban waterfalls.

I have a hunch that the 9/11 Memorial Selfies story is going to unleash a fury of responses, not unlike last year’s Selfies at Funerals brouhaha (which Death Ref covered in-depth).

After a while, then, the shouting (or really really really self-righteously indignant tweeting) will cease and people will continue taking Selfies at the 9/11 Memorial. Until people stop visiting the Memorial and even forget why it’s there. This won’t occur in my lifetime, but it will most certainly happen. #nofilter

The Memorial and Museum have both come under criticism for many different reasons. I visited the 9/11 Memorial site in April 2014 (alas, no Selfies…) and it’s a memorial, yes, but a memorial surrounded by a police state. The metal detectors, the armed police officers watching the crowds hustled through entrance areas surrounded by barbed wire, and the high metal fences that encase the entire site in an unwelcoming embrace are my strongest memories.

When the 9/11 Museum opened this spring it generated immediate criticism for daring to have a giftshop. Again, of course the 9/11 Museum has a giftshop. And even a Cafe.

In fact, I bet people take Selfies at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum Giftshop and Cafe. #NomNom!

New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik’s essay on the Memorial and Museum is one of the best pieces that I’ve read about the site’s complicated politics. I highly recommend it.

Adrian Tomine created the cover for that particular New Yorker issue (July 7 & 14, 2014) and calls it “Memorial Plaza.” The cover is at the top of the page and I think that I’m violating several copyright laws by using it, but Tomine truly captures the visual human experience of the 9/11 Memorial.

Indeed, a couple is taking a Selfie front and center. #NeverForget

Categories
Death + Popular Culture Death + the Law Death + the Web

Day 20: Patrick Stewart Campaigns with Assisted Dying Supporters

Actor Patrick Stewart joins campaign for ‘assisted dying’
BBC News (July 18, 2014)

Somehow, and I don’t entirely know the reasons, I completely missed these interviews with actor Patrick Stewart on the recent House of Lords assisted dying debate.

He’s got clearly articulated personal reasons for supporting Lord Falconer’s bill and understands how the proposed legislation would work. I also give him credit for supporting a cause that I can imagine some talent agents might suggest you avoid.

That said, he’s the kind of actor (and big name movie star) who doesn’t flinch when it comes to supporting causes he believes in.

Good interviews to watch.

Categories
Death + Popular Culture Death + the Law

Day 12: Posthumous US Citizenship Granted to Dead People

The Art of Getting American Citizenship After You’re Dead
Only seven people ever have.
Jim Festante, Slate (July 12, 2014)

Chalk this one up to Only in America:

Florida Republicans want to show they’re serious about immigration reform by giving honorary citizenship to a Spanish-speaking patriot … who’s been dead for some 200 years.

I’m not exactly sure how the logic works here but it is interesting to learn that Winston Churchill, Mother Teresa, and the Marquis de Lafayette are some of the other dead people awarded posthumous US citizenship.

WHO KNEW.

The whole situation reminded me of a 2009 Death Ref post on posthumous marriages in France.

Roll video.

Categories
Death + Popular Culture Grief + Mourning

Day 11: Planet of the Apes Grieving for Their Ape Kind Dead

Want to Understand Mortality? Look to the Chimps
Maggie Koerth-Baker, New York Times Magazine (June 25, 2013)

Today is the release date for the new Planet of the Apes movie, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

We’ll set aside all the timeline problems and alternative universes this specific reboot created. And no one should ever speak again of Tim Burton’s terrible remake.

What everyone should be discussing is how apes grieve for their dead. The New York Times Magazine ran an article in June 2013 on this topic. The Death Reference Desk has also written about Chimpanzees and grief before, in 2010 and 2009.

You can also read more generally about animals and death here.

Whenever we Humans start discussing our primate cousins and grieving, we run the risk of going on an anthropomorphising rampage. That said, it’s clear that our Great Ape relatives could teach us a few things about understanding mortality and the finality of time.

Categories
Death + Humor Death + Popular Culture

Day 8: Hot Dog Eating Contests Can Kill You (in South Dakota)

South Dakota man dies after choking during hot-dog eating contest
Walter Eagle Tail, 47, died at a hospital on Thursday after attempts to save him at the scene failed, police said
Associated Press (July 8, 2014)

I was writing a verbose and longish post about radical life extension today but then this story about a man dying during a hot dog eating contest popped up and, well, living to 500 can wait.

I’m inclined to say that this is a mid-year entry into the annual Darwin Awards but it sounds like the gentleman who died was a decent guy. He just had some bad luck.

Out of curiosity, I started poking around the internet to see what kind of safety warnings accompanied eating contests and, lo, I was not disappointed. This WebMD article, helpfully titled Competitive Eating: How Safe Is It?, covers all the bases. Then this Time article called Here’s What Competitive Eating Does to Your Body really goes in-depth on what these contests do to your innards and made me never want to eat food again.

And while this specific story is certainly tragic, it did remind me of the hot dog eating scene in the movie Meatballs.

Categories
Death + Popular Culture Death + the Web

Day 7: Death by BuzzFeed Drowning

794 Ways in Which BuzzFeed Reminds Us of Impending Death
The dark side of all those LOLs and fails, and how John Updike saw it coming all along.
Heather Havrilesky, The New York Times (July 03, 2014)

I don’t click on the various quizzes and lists and general monkey-business that BuzzFeed produces. It’s not my thing.

Heather Havrilesky’s take on how BuzzFeed’s content might actually remind people (or, at least, her) of death’s inescapable touch is intriguing. The hook with John Updike and his Rabbit books makes her essay all the more eclectic for the New York Times.

I still won’t click on any of Buzzfeed’s listicles but at least now I find their impending death reminders more interesting.

Categories
Death + Popular Culture Death + Technology

Day 5: Choosing a Sci-Fi or Fantasy Book Reading for Your Funeral

Which Science Fiction Or Fantasy Book Do You Want Read At Your Funeral?
Charlie Jane Anders, io9 (July 4, 2014)

The io9 blog and news site (motto: We Come from the Future) is a reliable and entertaining source for science fiction, fantasy, technology, and scientific research information.

Every once in a while, a death related question or story pops up. A lot of the articles focus on radical life extension, which is to be expected.

The most recent death listing was different enough that I decided to feature it today on Death Ref.

Charlie Jane Anders asks a straight-forward but really intriguing question: Which Science Fiction or Fantasy book do you want read at your funeral? I’ll add in Memorial Service in case you don’t have a standard funeral.

Since my early teen years, the introduction to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams was something I wanted read at my funeral. In case you’re wondering, I really did think about these kinds of questions when I 13. I was a walking Judy Blume character.

After thinking more about different options, I came back to a perennial death soliloquy favourite. The problem, however, is that it’s in a film. I’m cheating. I admit it.

The final monologue by Rutger Hauer’s character Roy Batty in Blade Runner always lingers in my brain whenever I think about dying with dignity and grace. Blade Runner is of course based on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? but Roy Batty’s final bit of dialogue was improvised by Rutger Hauer.

Talk about sticking the landing.

You can post your responses on the io9 page or, actually, here in the Death Ref comments section. I will send the requests over to io9.

Categories
Death + Popular Culture Death + Technology Death + the Web

Day 2: Only 5 Days Left to Help Andreia Start Her Death Studies Ph.D.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rmlk74Iiqfg

 

I’m kicking off Day 2 of Death Ref’s 31 Days of Death project with a fundraising appeal.

A really smart Brazilian journalist and Anthropologist named Andreia De Sousa Martins needs your help to start her Ph.D. on Virtual Wakes and Digital Death at the University of Bath’s Centre for Death and Society.

I would be Andreia’s Ph.D. Supervisor in Bath and I really want to work with her.

Here’s the rub and hence the fundraising campaign: Andreia received a scholarship from the University of Bath but it doesn’t cover everything. She needs to raise £8,000 (which is just under $14,000) in order to cover some University fees and, most importantly, afford her Visa to study in the UK.

As a non-UK citizen who works in England, I can tell you that Visas are extremely expensive to procure. I’ve spent thousands of both pounds and dollars over the years on Visas. And hours filling out forms.

Andreia isn’t letting the need for additional funding dissuade her from starting her studies. Indeed, her resolve to begin the Ph.D. seems to only get stronger with each passing day.

One of the only ways Andreia has been able to raise the necessary funds is through a crowdfunding website called Student Funder. It’s a legit company and I think her campaign is worth supporting.

Andreia has FIVE DAYS left to raise the £8,000. She’s currently at £3,455.

So anyone and everyone– think about making a donation. It’s a worthwhile cause. I will also make sure that Andreia periodically updates the Death Reference Deask on her studies.

If you click here you will go directly to Andreia’s fundraising page.

I have also added in Andreia’s own appeal for funding and a video of support that I created.

The future of Death Studies is now in your hands!

Andreia De Sousa Martins Death on the Internet: my PhD on Virtual Wakes

Hello and thanks for checking out my campaign!

 

My name is Andreia and I’m a 28 year old journalist and anthropologist from Brazil and since 2008 I have been studying the ways social networks and social media help us deal with death and dying. I have presented a research project and have been accepted for a PhD at the Social and Policy Sciences Department at the University of Bath. My research is about Virtual Wakes.

 

What is that?

 

A wake is a ritual where the family and friends of a deceased accompanies the body before it’s buried or cremated. The virtual wake is a live broadcasting of that very moment, and was created so that the ones who could not attend the wake itself can be present with the helping of new communications technology. That moment can be shared with those who never knew the deceased, so my research will be a qualitative study of how the Virtual Wakes can help us deal with death and dying, deepening work I started in 2011.

 

I am deeply in love with my research area, which only continues to fascinate me every day. In addition, I desire to become a professor in the future and this PhD has been my priority since 2012. Death is a fascinating topic and I am extremely interested in learning how we have been dealing with it in different aspects and eras – and what ways we will come up with in the future.

 

In 2011 I was awarded a scholarship to complete my masters in Brazil and I have attended, chaired and coordinated sessions in several death-related academic conferences in Argentina, Romania, Austria, England, Chile and Brazil. My master’s thesis was awarded with Praise and Distinction. Bath has awarded me a 75% discount scholarship on the tuition fees but, despite
this generous help, I am still lacking the final £8,000 to pay my fees and gain my visa.

 

That’s why I have set up this StudentFunder campaign and ask sincerely for your kind support.

 

Please do take me up on the perks outlined to the right so I can show my appreciation to you, my supporters.

Categories
Death + Popular Culture

Morbid Anatomy Anthology Released. Like the Kraken.

And lo, the Morbid Anatomy Anthology is now available for one and all to read. Death Ref John brings up the Anthology’s rear with an essay entitled On the Non-Denial Denial of Death.

More to come later this week on the 2014 Congress of Curious Peoples at the Coney Island Museum.

Yours in Death and Culture,

— The Death Reference Desk.

Categories
Death + Popular Culture Death + Technology Death + the Web

Everything Oldish is New Again: Generation Y Re-discovers the World Wide Web of Death

An Online Generation Redefines Mourning
Expressions of grief take on many public forms in the digital age.
By Hannah Seligson, New York Times (March 21, 2014)

It was inevitable, I suppose. At a certain point early 21st-century humans would begin doing things with computer technology that their long lost late 20th-century cousins did roughly twenty years earlier.

And lo, it has come to pass with death and the internet.

The New York Times has a Fashion & Style feature on how the kids are using the world wide web to discuss death, loss, the end-of-life, grieving, etc.

Three observations:

  1. Anytime the Grey Lady describes something as fashionable then it’s almost certainly dead. Irony of ironies, given the article’s subject.
  2. Death Ref’s good friend Caitlin Doughty from Ask a Mortician and the Order of the Good Death is quoted in the article and that’s always good to see.
  3. Using the internet, the web, computers, digital technology, communication technology writ large to discuss death, loss, the end-of-life, grieving, etc. is not new. Indeed, humans have been using the interweb to discuss death since the early days of html and Netscape.

…Dramatic Pause…

We need to go back in time now, to a long-forgotten-about age when people still said Information Superhighway without irony or smirking. That’s right, we’re headed back to the mid-1990s.

As soon as the ‘web’ became a viable entity, largely because of the browsers Mosaic and then Netscape, individual users began creating websites about death.

It is also important to point out that everything happening in the late 20th-century also built on technology used during the 19th-century (e.g., telegraph communication, photography, rail transport, etc.) but I’ll stick with the 1990’s for now.

In 1996, a television show called the Internet Cafe began a run on American Public Television. The programme was later re-named the Net Cafe and it lasted until 2002. Think of it as the paleo-YouTube.

Two years into the Internet Cafe’s existence, on June 26, 1998 (historical aside: Bill Clinton wouldn’t be impeached until December 19, 1998 but most television footage was about the Starr Report), it aired a programme called Grim Reaper Web Sites.

As the title suggests, the entire show examines how people are using the world wide web to discuss a long list of death topics and issues. My particular favourite is the guy who creates a memorial website for Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia.

The moral of our time-traveling tale is this: We humans began using the internet and web as soon as we could to discuss death. Why? Because that’s what we do with all communication technology. The technology will always change but death itself remains predictably guaranteed and discussed.

But don’t take my word for it, you can WATCH this episode of the Internet Cafe because of the always wonderful Internet Archive.

Here is a direct link to the Grim Reaper programme.

I also embedded the show at the bottom of the page.

The 1990’s live dude.

And if you’re interested in the history (both old and new) of death and technology then check out Death Ref’s Death + Technology page.

I’ll be giving a talk on these death technology issues (and other things) at the upcoming UK Death Salon.

One final point. In another twenty or thirty years I firmly believe that an intrepid reporter for the New York Times will write an article about whatever technology exists at that time (our computer overlords, most likely) and how the kids are using it to discuss death.

The rest will be silence.