"Charming, but quickly decomposes": Why people are passionate about female corpses
Soon in the Russian hire will be released the film "In the Dark", where one of the main roles was played by Emily Ratakovski - a model that is often included in the ratings of "the most beautiful women in the world." Ratakovski plays the future murder victim, and later her dead body. Inviting an instagram star with cheerful photos in a bathing suit for the role of a dead man seems absurd only at first glance. We understand when admiration for dead bodies (especially female ones) has become a trend and how viewers from all over the world sexify corpses.
Excommunication from death
Today, we perceive death very differently than a couple of centuries ago. In the XIX and early XX centuries, it was part of everyday life. The processing of corpses at home, the independent organization of the funeral, the rituals of grief, reminiscent of the cyclical nature of time, made death understandable and close to everyone. Mortality was significantly higher, and it was almost impossible to avoid a direct collision with someone else’s passing away.
In the era of modernity, death has passed into the category of extraordinary events: the quality of medicine has improved, and the practices of death experience have changed. Today, we seem to be excommunicated from dying: the corpses are immediately taken to the morgue, third parties are involved in organizing the funeral, and the long mourning and mourning are outdated. Jacques Lynn Foltin, in his essay Popular Dead and Sexual Dead: Mass Culture, Forensic Examination, and the Uprising of the Dead, describes how the culture of denial of death strengthened. Corpses and real (and not aestheticized) death began to cause horror and rejection.
Today we are, as it were, excommunicated from dying: the corpses are immediately taken to the morgue, third parties are involved in the organization of the funeral, and the long mourning and mourning are outdated
Anthropologist Jeffrey Gorer in his essay "Pornography of Death" traces an interesting dynamic. He believes that when society was excommunicated from real death, and sex became less taboo - death took its place as a taboo and simultaneously disturbing topic. According to the researcher, it is the alienation of real death that led the audience to want to observe violent, unnatural dying. Gorer calls this phenomenon "death pornography" because of the cruelty and cynicism of such images, as well as the complete rejection of the practice of grief. Gorer compares today's fetishization of corpses and murders with attitudes toward death in the Victorian era: the time when modesty and virginity were most valued in women was marked by high demand for pornography and sex services.
Death has ceased to be visible, but has not disappeared anywhere: we continue to be afraid to die and are trying to cope with this fear in the space of pop culture, Elizabeth Emerick said. One of the most common tools is the rationalization of death with the help of medicine. Forensic scientists and forensic scientists conducting an autopsy are perhaps the most popular in TV shows (for example, in the “Marine Police”, “C.S.I.” or “Anatomy of Death”). This tendency goes back to the anatomical theaters of the 19th century, however, then the audience still saw a real corpse, and now we are confronted more with a parody of death.
Necrophilia pop
It is not for nothing that Gorer called this spectator hobby “death pornography”: in pop culture, the death of a person does not at all prohibit the desire for him. In the TV series “Marine Police”, one of the criminologists, working with another man’s corpse, collects sperm samples from his clothes and makes fun of his posthumous erection - further the dialogues of specialists continue to revolve around sex. The border between the living and the dead is becoming thinner, and the corpses on the TV screen are more attractive than the living heroes.
Ruth Penfold-Manus in her article “Dead bodies, popular culture and science of forensic examination: public obsession with death” suggests that we observe the corpse with a voyeuristic look, enjoying the violation of another person’s personal space. In this perspective, it is the dead body that is most compliant and defenseless - voyeurism, in fact, allows you to commit repeated violence on it.
Classic psychoanalysis recalls that birth, sex and death are ritually connected and inseparable from each other: Sigmund Freud insisted that man has two key instincts - eros and thanatos. Jacques Lacan believed that eros and aesthetics act as guides to death, turning it into something fascinating. This subtle connection, by the way, is ironically reflected in French: the orgasm is called in this language the “little death” (la petite mort).
Modern media researchers pay attention to how the corpses work out a request for "young and sexy bodies." Jacques Lynn Foltin reminds that the dead body also becomes a commodity, the "perfect" corpses are desacralised, and this leads the viewer too far away from a reflection on the nature of death.
Venus for autopsy
Passion for dead bodies, of course, is not limited to serials or movies. The real dead sometimes occupy the public even more than fictional. Suffice it to recall how Princess Diana and model Anna Nicole Smith died. Readers of the tabloids wanted to know all the details - from the degree of damage to the overall portrait - and, of course, they wanted to see photos from the morgue. Jacques Lynn Foltin notes that pathologists had to convince the public that the dead bodies of both heroines are “beautiful.” It was said about Diana that she remained "elegant and beautiful" and in general it seemed that she was sleeping. The body of the dead Smith was described as "charming, but quickly decomposing." Sex symbols are obliged to remain objects of desire even after death - for example, on forums it was very actively discussed whether it was ethical to masturbate, thinking about Anna Nicole Smith after her death.
By the way, the phrase that the dead body of Princess Diana looked like a sleeping one refers us to numerous variations of the myths about Snow White and Sleeping Beauty: women's corpses or almost corpses have been sung for a long time. Back in the 18th century, the Italian sculptor Clemente Susini invented the “Anatomical Venus” - a sculpture of a woman by which one can study the structure of the body. Now the "Anatomical Venus" seems frightening and seems to refer to necrophilia, because it corresponds to all the canons of the beauty of that time and looks deliberately attractive.
In the XIX century, Edgar Poe confessed his love for female dead bodies, believing that "the death of a beautiful woman is undoubtedly the most poetic thing in the world." And John Everett Millet created the most famous image of "Ophelia" in the world - it still does not lose its popularity and is copied by girls who take pictures of themselves in the bathroom, illustrating intimate confessions.
Fetish or sacrifice?
The aestheticization of female corpses remains a particular example of objectification. That is why the dead female bodies must look "attractive" - suffice it to recall the legendary corpse of Laura Palmer.
Her image is also important because it demonstrates the mechanics of how the female corpse becomes the space for the male fantasy. In “Twin Peaks,” Alice Bolin writes in his book “Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession,” we see how a woman’s life is told and conjectured by a man, she herself and her story remain just an object of male interpretation.
Laura Palmer is also an illustration of the classic myth of a victim who has lost control of her life. The image of the "broken girl", which can not resist the circumstances contributing to her death, is an absolute sexual lure. A minx and a princess who could not be saved from the castle - the audience can only admire its corpse decadently.
Dead women's bodies must look "attractive" - just remember the legendary corpse of Laura Palmer
Aesthetic female corpse can also be considered an ideal figure of submission, Alice Bolin believes. By becoming a beautiful dead body, a woman completely loses her subjectivity, will and ability to resist. Therefore, the female corpse in fashion photography is often likened to a doll, as, for example, in a W Magazine shooting in 2007, where models simultaneously depict the dead and look like dolls. Their postures and exposure in the frame also refer to the experience of sexual violence before death. And a similar metaphor is often used in photography or film. For example, in the filming of Guy Burden, where sexual violence, death and the image of a female fetish converge.
By the way, it is with the fetish that the artist Telma Van Rensberg suggests linking the passion for female corpses. The female body, deprived of subjectivity and will, ceases to be dangerous and mysterious for a man, in fact, the woman at this moment turns into a subject. Love for dead female bodies, of course, does not mean that necrophilia has become more popular or that pop culture propagandizes murder, but clearly fixes problems with experiencing death in the modern world.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Lynch / Frost Productions, A Contraluz Films
