Other people's nightmares

Article Abstract:

Human beings still have a desire to look at killings, either real or in dramatic presentations or in news stories, much as they once watched gladiators or flocked to public hangings, anxious to peek at others, dying others, while being the living, knowing that pleasure. Those who have been part of the real thing, survivors of horrible experiences in which others died, feel they have two selves, an inner self that knows the horrible world that no one else knows and an outer self that seems like everyone else, a phenomenon called "doubling." It is described by a survivor of the Holocaust. It is well to ask before death whether one's life has been all wrong, as Tolstoy's dying Ivan Ilyich asks.

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Dead stuff

Article Abstract:

Humans have an innate need to look at scenes of death, injury and violence. They need to see the fatal injury of another and to wonder how they will end and how they will protect themselves should the need arise. They feel compassion and grief, but also fear and curiosity. There was in this century until recently a taboo against looking at the deformed or dead and injured. It was considered morbid. That is changing to a degree as people have found that they can look at photographs of such things and still be socially approved. There is an explosive increase in images of the grotesque and of death, and photography has always recorded death.

Criticism and interpretation, Dead, Dead persons, Death in art

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Appalachia: the other side of the mountain

Article Abstract:

A funeral in Appalachia consists of regional customs. The embalmed corpse is returned to the home so that a wake can proceed for a few days. It is customary for friends and family members to have their pictures taken in the presence of the corpse. The house is effectively divided into formal and informal halves, with the coffin and mourners on one side and socializing visitors on the other side.

Funerals, Southern States, Southern United States, Mountain whites (Southern States), Appalachian people (Southern States)

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