In his latest podcast at The Memory Palace, Nate DiMeo tells the story of the Fox Sisters in mid-nineteenth century America. These girls spooked their parents and neighbors with tales of communing with the dead. Naturally, this turned into a sell-out show in New York City, where the teenager sisters wowed the rich and famous with their necromantic talents.
While there were plenty of skeptics, believers abounded. Why? Says DiMeo:
They wanted to believe. This was the 1850s — people just died all the time from diseases, minor flu and infections. Things that don’t kill us now. Their family members, their friends, their kids would die in childbirth, in accidents at work and at home, why wouldn’t they want to believe they weren’t gone? That those they lost could be found.
Soon people were holding séances like we hold dinner parties. They were putting their faith in tarot readers and mystics. Some were just scam artists, others were just wrong. They were just seeing things that weren’t there. But all of them together were changing America, in the way its people thought about death and life. And this modern spiritualism… stayed at the center of American life for decades to come.
Etsy.com, the DIY/craft juggernaut, is the go-to place to buy and sell all things handmade. If you are familiar with this phenomenon, you would know that if it’s vintage button earrings and owl-themed stationary you desire, then Etsy has it locked down.
The Etsy craze is so hot right now that it was recently featured in a NY Times story. Online since 2005, Etsy employs 74 people — and one dog named Dottie — according to the “About” section of their website. And, you really know you’ve made it when another site pops up mocking yours — see Regretsy.com.
Since I am interested in craft and DIY culture, and I like to troll Etsy from time to time, I decided to do a little searching on some death-related terms and see what comes up. I figured I’d see some skeleton-themed, Halloween-y stuff and sure enough, I wasn’t disappointed. But digging a bit deeper, one comes across a most interesting array of death/dead/dying oriented items that are available for purchase for that special someone in your life.
I compiled a list of search terms and their corresponding hits below. But alas, there are some false hits. For example, in searching the term “dying,” Etsy doesn’t make the distinction between a seller writing that you may be “dying” to get your hands on her vintage fabric scrap neck gator vs. actual items that somehow are related to the actual act of dying. The “Advanced Search” supposedly allows you to narrow your search by adding the minus (-) sign, but it doesn’t always work. So, to use the “dying” example again, if you search on that term, you will also be given items that are tie-died and die-cut. As you can imagine, this annoys this here librarian. The date of this search was Sunday, February 21, 2010.
We found 11,675 results for dead.
We found 3,470 results for death.
We found 16,098 results for dying.
We found 549 results for coffin.
We found 337 results for funeral.
We found 11 results for morgue.
We found 62 results for burial.
We found 161 results for suicide.
Peering further into these categories, here now are but a few of the handmade goodies on offer (click the photos to see the items in Etsy). I’ll let you explore some of the more “shock and awe” items on your own.
A short article out of New Orleans caught my mock funeral adoring attention: on Saturday at four, a jazz funeral procession will commence for the no longer relevant nickname, “the Aints.” Saints once more, the NFL team rocked the Superbowl a couple weeks ago. After those celebrations, the homecoming parade proper and of course Mardi Gras, N’awlins is addicted to fun.
Fans are encouraged to bring their old Aints paper bags and place them in a coffin.
…The paper bags being what fans used to wear over their heads at games during particularly dismal seasons. Nice.
For $25 a client, the Coffin Academy in Daejeon, South Korea, will help you experience what it’s like to be a corpse, including penning your own epitaph, writing final letters to loved ones and attending your own funeral — supine in the darkness of a closed coffin.
In a country with an exorbitant suicide rate, these kinds of death seminars are viewed as a means to “appreciate life by simulating death” and are particularly popular with large firms hoping to boost worker productivity. But they’ve also been criticized as “how-to manuals” for suicide, or apt to lead to suicide ideation–the opposite of the intended effect.
Interestingly, advocates aren’t only selling it as an effective vehicle for life reassessment and renewal, but as a morbid “scared straight” encounter. That’s right — don’t kill yourself, because it’s dark and scary in a confining coffin, which your employer has just required you to experience. Proponents of unsavory future lives may argue otherwise, but I’m pretty sure death is a cure for claustrophobia.
Check out the full article linked above. While unfortunately slim on follow-up — just how productive, happy, readjusted or suicidal anyway are the participants the next week, month or year? — it does provide a good overview of the seminar and descriptions of the emotional impact on participants along the way. Just a teaser… many of them are freaked the heck out.
If the South Koreans are too dour and psychologically wounded for you, perhaps an account of a three-day “death rehearsal” workshop in California will be of interest. Here they don’t just lie in their coffins, they paint them pretty colors, plus share a potluck dinner of “food that one would bring to a family in mourning.”
I don’t really know a lot about Santa Muerte or Saint Death. After I read this article, I remembered seeing the various Santa Muerte statues in Mexican stores but never really thought twice about it.
This Washington Post piece (linked above) brings a whole new angle to worshiping (some use the word “cult”) Saint Death. The article also includes an amazing photo montage of the monthly Saint Death festivities in Mexico City.
And, as always, YouTube has something to contribute…
The euthanasia of unwanted cats and dogs is a regular occurrence the world over. However, in Japan, it takes on epic proportions. The voracious appetite of the Japanese for all things cute, fluffy and designer has spawned one of the worst adoption/destruction ratios anywhere. Whereas, in the United States about half of the animals in shelters are euthanized; in Japan, that number climbs to a staggering 90%.
The preferred method in Japan is to euthanize the animals by dumping them in an airtight metal box—as many as eight at a time—and pumping in carbon monoxide. This CNN video features one Japanese shelter on a typical day as they round up the animals for disposition. The reporter introduces the story by warning that some viewers may find the content “objectionable.” Yes, but not in the assumed way—not for having to see dogs and cats on “death row” (a misnomer of course since they did nothing wrong to land there, other than to be born). No, it’s objectionable because of the callous disregard for life that put them there in the first place.
This Asahi Shimbun newspaper article describes the ways in which workers at an animal protection center in one Japanese prefecture are doing outreach to school children to sensitize them and teach them about animal cruelty. “Now you understand that dogs and cats also have feelings, don’t you?” a worker at the Mie animal protection center asked students at Ominato Elementary School in Ise, Mie Prefecture, in early September.
The way in which we treat animals is reflective upon how we, as a society, understand life and death. The attendant value we assign to different living things is a sad commentary on the priorities of consumer-driven cultures (USA included) willing to sacrifice innocent life forms in the name of feeding faddish, acquisitive tendencies.
While specific rites and rituals vary across cultures and time, anyone who has been to a few memorial services or even seen them on TV understands funerals. We may not know how to feel about death or the deceased, but we do know how we’re supposed to act.
A funeral, after all, is a performance — and I don’t mean that snidely. There are common and expected settings, props and costumes, with overlapping scenes but well-defined acts. We have roles to play and lines to say and even when we screw up (can’t stop crying! ack, can’t start!), we don’t. Funerals are flexible. Flubs are forgiven. Things mean Stuff, and if all goes as planned, including the unplanned, people walk away changed.
Because we all “get” funerals and know what we’re supposed to get out of them, it’s no small wonder the funeral performance has been subverted and co-opted as a means of social commentary and to express and influence public opinion. Mock funerals have been used throughout history as vehicles for satire, issue awareness, protest and social change.
On November 14, the citizens of Venice held a mock funeral for their city and its dying population, currently below 60,000. The 1993 total was a healthier 74,000; in 1971, the city topped 108,300. The mock funeral on Saturday was an effort to promote awareness of the problem and invigorate Venetian pride.
Take it away, Al Jazeera!
The day before, copping the same culturally understood form, students at Florida State University held a funeral for gay rights and marriage equality complete with a eulogy, funeral procession and mock burial with opening and closing remarks. The demonstration was in reaction to the recent overturn of gay marriage rights in Maine.
Lastly, just before Halloween, a sports bar in Green Bay, Wisconsin, working with a radio station, erected a coffin containing a Brett Favre effigy, encapsulating the “he’s dead to us” emotion Packer fans have felt after quarterback Favre temporarily quit the NFL then signed on with the neighboring arch nemesis, the Vikings. The initial spectacle attracted 500 mourners for the procession, including hearses and pall-bearers, while others came to view the “corpse” over the next couple of days, on display in the corner of the bar.
Mean spirited? Um… yes? The radio station allegedly received death threats for the incident. But satire-too-far aside, as well as the abiding silliness of the whole thing, devoted Packer fans have felt genuine sadness, loss and betrayal about Favre’s defection. Some mourners brought pictures, football cards, and other mementos to place inside the coffin. It’s all part of the gag, but it’s also a familiar way to deal with grief and work through the frustration and pain of someone who is dead — or someone who you wished was, or who feels dead to you anyway.
These three examples are just within the last few weeks; numerous other instances exist, such as mock funerals for the First Amendment or symbolic funerals for aborted fetuses (this latter being slightly different in tone, though still enacted as a form of protest and demonstration). Though varying in intention, mock funerals invariably capture attention, sometimes shockingly. Death as metaphor is one thing; to see it enacted and performed can be moving, disturbing or even infuriating — and because of our cultural familiarity, it works. It’s easy to know what’s going on and how we’re supposed to feel about it — even if we disagree with the issue of contention.
I hoped to do more research on this, to get some historical context and cultural studies input. I found next to nothing on this topic, which surprises me. “Mock funeral” doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia page (gasp!). Please comment if you know of any books or articles about this — or give me a grant or book advance and I’ll get right on it.
Over the weekend, I posted an article about how the Governor of Rhode Island vetoed a bill that would have granted same-sex partners legal claims for final disposition of a dead body. This is only an issue because same-sex marriage isn’t legal. Once two people are married, they have next of kin rights, which significantly includes legal claims for a dead body.
Then I saw this article about posthumous marriage in France and I had an epiphany. Same-sex marriage needs to be extended and recognized for dead partners. It is the least America can do once same-sex marriage becomes universal across the United States.
This is the best section from the article:
Under French law posthumous marriages are possible as long as evidence exists that the deceased person had the intention while alive of wedding their partner. According to Christophe Caput, the mayor who married Jaskiewicz, her request was “rock solid”.
At the very least, posthumous same-sex marriage acknowledges that even though two people who loved each other in life could not get married, death does not mean the dream will be forever denied.
On the holiday known as the Day of the Dead, a Brazilian bricklayer walked into his own funeral.
It sounds like the beginning of a joke: So a guy walks into his own funeral… but apparently it wasn’t so funny for the friends and relatives of Ademir Jorge Goncalves. You see, Mr. Goncalves had been presumed and identified as dead. As it turns out, it was all just a case of mistaken identity. Ha ha!
This isn’t the first time the deceased will attend his or her own funeral—nor will it probably be the last. Take the case of the late Leonard Shlain. After Mr. Shlain’s green burial in northern California earlier this year, a film was shown, featuring himself in a white suit saying that he’d always wanted to attend his own funeral. Filmed a few months before his death, it gave him a platform to set the tone for the affair—surprising and humorous, but also deeply touching as he reassured his loved ones that he was happy, that he missed them, and felt blessed.
This all got me to thinking—just how many ways are there to attend your own funeral? I found these two flakey chicks doing a video tutorial of sorts on attending your own funeral. The message here seems to be about taking stock of your life and thinking about how you want to be remembered before you die. I really didn’t find this very helpful or uplifting, but perhaps Sarah and Suzi will convince you otherwise.
And then there are tales like this one that involve a massive lie in order to “spare everyone’s feelings.” It seems there are easier ways to ditch your friends, no?
Finally, what about the poor folks who have been interred and buried alive? Also known as premature burial, tales of being buried alive have been found across cultures and time. Some of my favorite stories growing up were Poe’s The Telltale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado. O.K., technically, you are not actually attending your own funeral—just your own burial. But this seems like the worst of all possible ways to go. If anyone has any other ideas about how one can attend his or her own funeral (or burial) let us know via our comments feature. We’d love to hear from you—dead or alive.
Nice Opinion piece in today’s NY Times laying out some fundamental philosophical underpinnings of life and death. It is titled “Happy Ending” and is written by Todd May, a professor of philosophy at Clemson University. May is the author of 10 books including The Philosophy of Foucault and Death.
This is the last in a series of essays written for the Times titled Happy Days: The Pursuit of What Matters in Troubled Times. I’ve been reading and enjoying the series. I recommend taking a look as several are on the theme of death and dying.
The Death Reference Desk’s good friend Joanna Ebenstein at the Morbid Anatomy Library in Brooklyn is into the hipper, cooler, creepier side of dead stuff. That’s why Death Ref likes her so much.
So when Joanna invited me to give a talk on Monday, October 26 at the Morbid Anatomy Library I said YES YES YES.
But the whole story gets even better. I know. Who knew it was possible?
Instead of my usual death…death…dead bodies…bla bla bla action I am giving a talk on the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY. The talk is full of hot human on dinosaur action and I have photos and video to boot.
Come on down to the Morbid Anatomy Library and be SAVED!!!!
“Humans riding on the backs of Dinosaurs: A walk through the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky USA.”
by John Erik Troyer, Ph.D., Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath
Date: Monday October 26th Time: 7:30 PM (doors at 7:00 PM) *please note earlier than usual start time* Admission: $5
In May 2007, the twenty-seven million dollar Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky. The museum is dedicated to representing a “young earth,” Christian explanation of the planet, which makes the known universe roughly 6-10,000 years old. Within the museum, visitors can view a large-scale Garden of Eden diorama, a fully loaded planetarium, and animatronic dinosaurs. Since opening, well over 835,000 people have visited the museum. The Creation Museum is a key player in what Troyer calls the American Science War and is part of an ongoing battle between advocates of Evolutionary Biology, Intelligent Design, and Creationism.
This presentation closely (and humorously) examines the relationships between Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution in America by giving a pictorial tour of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. There will also be artifacts from the museum for your perusal.
Biography:
Dr. John Troyer is the Death and Dying Practices Associate and RCUK Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. He received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society in May 2006. From 2007-2008 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University teaching the cultural studies of science and technology. Within the field of Death Studies, he analyzes the global history of science and technology and its effects on the dead body. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website and his first book, Technologies of the Human Corpse, will appear in late 2010.
DIRECTIONS TO OBSERVATORY: ***PLEASE USE NEVINS ST./PROTEUS GOWANUS ENTRANCE***
Observatory is located at 543 Union Street at Nevins St., in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn. The entrance is currently through Proteus Gowanus gallery, in the alley off Nevins St (see below for full details).
R or M train to Union Street in Brooklyn:
Walk two long blocks on Union (towards the Gowanus Canal) to Nevins Street. 543 Union Street is the large red brick building on right. Go right on Nevins and left down alley through large black gates. Proteus Gowanus is the second door on the left.
F or G train to Carroll Street:
Walk one block to Union. Turn right, walk two long blocks on Union towards the Gowanus Canal, cross the bridge, take left on Nevins, go down the alley to Proteus Gowanus, the second door on the left.
Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program
Death Ref’s own John Troyer and artist Roxanne Jackson in Dialogue
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
2400 Third Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN
Thursday, October 15, 2009 7pm (FREE)
I love my job. I will be giving a talk at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts on all dead creatures great and small. And preserved. It is a conversation with artist Roxanne Jackson about her newest solo exhibition at the MIA. Here is the official announcement:
On October 15, we are excited to announce that Dr. John Troyer, Death and Dying Practices Associate at the Centre for Death & Society, University of Bath, will be talking about Roxanne Jackson’s work in relation to taxidermy and technologies of preservation.
An ambitious new Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP) solo exhibition by local artist Roxanne Jackson explores the complex nuances between animals and humans. The show, “We Believe in Some Thing,” on view through November 1 in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts’ two MAEP galleries. Jackson’s ceramic sculptures, wall installations, and video explore human and animal interaction but also critique the assumed polarized differences between humans and animals. She asks, among other questions, “Are we more alike than different?”
It is a free talk, open to the public and I promise highly entertaining. I know from dead animals.
I might even bring my own private taxidermy collection to the talk. I know. I really have a private taxidermy collection.
In his latest podcast at The Memory Palace, Nate DiMeo tells the story of the Fox Sisters in mid-nineteenth century America. These girls spooked their parents and neighbors with tales of communing with the dead. Naturally, this turned into a sell-out show in New York City, where the teenager sisters wowed the rich and famous with their necromantic talents.
