Heather,
> On 3/29/11 11:02 AM March 29, 2011, Jon Cox wrote:
>> This is a both a gross caricature and a sweeping generalization, but I
>> think there's more than just a seed of truth in it. While Protestants
>> usually go for closed caskets, Catholics go for open (unless the
>> person is really mangled beyond all recognition). Sometimes, people
>> people touch the face or hands of the deceased. I regard this as a
>> good thing. Death is hard to comprehend, so anything that makes it
>> less abstract is a helpful aid to accepting its reality. Aside: I'm
>> not a religious person myself.
>
>
> At the recent memorials I've been to, the remains of the deceased are
> not even present. There are photos of the dead person, at all stages of
> life, but no corpse and no ashes.
>
> When my grandfather died, it was very healing to see him in his casket.
> I didn't see my father's body before they took him to be cremated. His
> death (from brain cancer) took so long that I didn't feel a need to see
> his body after death. The long process of dying was closure enough.
I get that.
Sometimes it's tough to tell the difference between
your own culture and what's true of all people for
all time. That said, I know elephants touch the skulls
of their deceased relatives with their trunks for years,
and that Neanderthals had burial ceremonies involving
flowers. Ritual viewing/touching extends beyond humans,
so I'd say open casket definitely serves some real
psychological purpose that isn't easily replaced.
Growing up, I had a dog that was like a brother to me.
He vanished during a blizzard, and wondering what happened
to him was pure torture. We found his body in the spring.
To make a long story short, I carried his body in a trash can,
dug a hole near the garden, and covered him up with dirt
while my mom and brother watched. It was incredibly painful
and completely final. We stood around reminiscing about
good times we'd had, and then that was that. It was his
body, not him.
This may sound strange, but I think actually digging the
hole, putting his body in it, and tossing dirt on top
is something I wish I could do for my human relatives
when the time comes. The exertion gives you something
to do, and tames your emotions long enough for your
rational mind to accept what cannot be changed.
>> A more cynical interpretation is that by removing the face of the
>> victim, you remove some of the passion from those who would otherwise
>> voice strenuous, heart-felt objections to the war. Could you see a
>> peace rally inspired by the blurred image? I sure can't. So, is it a
>> conspiracy of corporate controlled mass media, plain old marketing to
>> your audience, or just thoughtless habit of our culture? Hard to tell.
>> Probably a bit of everything.
>
>
> I think that's not cynical at all. The Vietnam War was the first war to
> be televised. Look at all the trouble that caused! People were shocked
> by the images of death and suffering on the nightly news, and many of
> them expressed their distaste in the form of bumper stickers, signs,
> songs, peace marches, and even at the ballot box.
>
> The Bush wars have been very carefully managed to avoid the raw,
> visceral images of death and suffering that moved the American
> conscience in the Vietnam era. Journalists cannot, in general, publish
> the sorts of images that were commonplace in the Vietnam era. If what
> they publish displeases the military authorities, they will be denied
> all access to the war.
>
> As a result, the gap is being filled by images taken the soldiers
> themselves. The front line of journalism is now the common person with a
> cell phone. Professional journalists work in a wing of marketing,
> putting the correct spin on stories rather than attempting to dish us up
> an order of truth, hold the platitudes. This leaves the traditional
> field of muckraking journalism open to amateurs. As the muckrakers rise
> to the point where people take them seriously, they can either be
> co-opted or smeared.
>
> Co-option was one of the great lessons of the 1960s. Instead of cracking
> down on dissidents, the powers that be in the United States domesticate
> them. They are allowed to speak freely and slowly brought into the fold
> (if they are moderate enough). The Reagan/Bush era developed a great
> smear machine to handle those who could not easily be co-opted.
>
> One of the oddest aspects of current American journalism is the large
> number of people who trust Comedy Central's news coverage over that of
> any of the serious news networks. Co-option at its finest. You can't
> take them seriously, and their contracts prevent them from taking
> themselves too seriously.
Spot on.
>>> I am currently reading a gripping book about the psychology of men at war
>>> called "Acts of War" by Richard Holmes. For me it is a gold mine of
>>> information. The author writes of coping mecahnisms that soldiers use to
>>> come
>>> to grips with the randomness of death in war. One such coping mechanism is
>>> what appears like "disrespect" for the dead. The jocular "familarity" with a
>>> corpse - like taking a photograph for the family album is one way of coping
>>> with the idea that the corpse could be you next.
>
>
> The sanest character in Apocalypse Now was the hippie soldier who
> dropped LSD and performed a sort of water ballet/funeral rite for the
> corpses in the river, singing to them and decorating the water around
> them with flowers.
In some places in Indonesia, they file the teeth of the dead so that
the spirit won't be able to bite the living with ripping force.
It would be interesting to hear these soldiers explain themselves.
There's a lot going on there, I'm sure.
-Jon
