1.) the state or quality of being worthy of honour or respect
2.) a composed or serious manner of style
3.) a sense of pride in oneself
After leaving today's lecture, the notion of "dignified death" or "dying with dignity" struck me immediately. This of course extends beyond the tradition of burial, to our general conception of death and dead bodies as tranquil and peaceful. When coping with the death of a loved one, for instance, terms connoting peace are more favourable than those connoting violence. Suicide, often considered arguably (one of) the most violent and most tragic of deaths, is completely omitted in obituaries; people choose to ignore it. If the death is particularly brutal, like cancer for instance, the person is depicted as having attempted to "fight" the disease to the best of their abilities, thus the person maintains a sense of military pride in their last heroic actions.
The fact is there is no intrinsic dignity in death - dignity is an artificial, illusory creation that is imposed on the devastating instance of a person's death in order for the living to cope with the
horrifying intrusion of the Real - that is, decay, vulgarity, mortality, etc. I am not saying that dead bodies are not worthy of dignity or respect, but merely treating dead bodies in a dignified manner is a custom invented by humans in order to cope with and to understand death.This brings me to my next point, which is, that one of the most prevalent methods of coping with the notion of the body as fragile, vulnerable and mortal is the elevation of the importance of the mind over body, or interpretations of Cartesian Mind/Body dualism. Humans like to believe that the creative and spiritual capacity of the mind is evidence for a spiritually higher, less vulgar existence, either in this world or the next (e.g. heaven). However, ignoring our physical attributes leads us to only a partial understanding of ourselves, because our very raw physicality contributes so much to our existential condition - our physical interactions with the world, not just our rationalization of our interactions with the world, are just as significant as the latter (Young and Whitty 214). This is I think why images such as the one in this post of two skeletons from Pompeii seen in a kind of embrace gives us a sense of relief, because it suggests that "love" (considered a higher, spiritual experience and notion) continues on into death, even when our physical bodies have decayed. This very powerful image is a kind of triumph over death, or more accurately, triumph of mind over body.
*Random Tangent alert! - what follows is unorthodox cinematic treatments of death*
In keeping with our recent practice of examining the cinematic treatment of various theories explored in this course, I would like to bring up what I think is a very good example of how death is treated in a very "sacrilegious", unorthodox way through film. I am a big fan of Italian Cinema and have often observed in many instances that one of the reasons why many people find Italian films so jarring and vulgar, is due its common practice of juxtaposing the tragic with the comic in a very overt, unapologetic fashion. For instance, in "Roma, città aperta" immediately after a very disturbing scene in which a woman is tragically gunned down, the film continues to a very silly, slapstick scene in a which an old man is hit on the head with a frying pan. I saw this film in a class setting at UofT and many people thought that this was either just lazy film making due to the fact that there was no continuity between the two scenes in terms of mood or that it was just plain insensitive in ignoring the tragic death of the woman.
Examples of what a "respectable" cinematic treatment of death would be for scenes following the death depicted in the film to be coloured in some way by the tragic nature of the death. For example, the actions of the characters following the tragic scene would be without humour, or the mood of the scene would be slightly more sombre or serious, etc. Although this particular method of depicting death in cinema is perhaps more artistic in that there is a sense of continuity, it is not accurate. One of the most tragic aspects of dealing with the death of a loved one is the realization that life simply "goes on", as if the deceased individual had never existed. Traditionally, cinema thus functions as language to make sense or to make "proper" the problematic nature of death and dying; to prevent a full realization of the Real, whereas Italian Cinema often lets us view both the tragic and vulgar nature of death in its messy, unpredictable nature.
Sources:
Whitty, Monica T. and Garry Young. "In Search of the Cartesian Self: An Examination of Disembodiment within 21st-Communication." Theory & Psychology. 2010.
Roma, città aperta. 1945. Roberto Rossellini, dir.
I really like the points you raise here, particularly about the idea of how we cultural imagery deals with death. It strikes me that "dealing with death" is one of the functions that cultures provide for their members (if you want to take a functionalist view of culture). You mention that there is nothing inherently dignified in death. I would go a bit further and say that dignity is actually a social construct, and thus nothing can be inherently (that is, naturally) dignified. For instance, we may say that the lion is a "dignified" animal, but this is really just our imposition of our notion of "dignity" onto the animal. Thus, I think the really interesting questions (at least for me) lie not in considering whether or not death is inherently dignified, but rather looking at how and why different cultures attempt to dignify death. Also, I think it would be of some interest to consider whether or not the attempt to "preserve dignity" in death is a cross-cultural universal.
ReplyDelete