RELIGST 2N03 Lecture Notes - Anthony Giddens, Purgatory, Mass Media
Document Summary
Aries article, badone, taylor, excerpts from shepherd hughes book, simone chapter. In western society death is often characterized as taboo. Images of death rarely add to understanding of death. Lack of themes in entertainment media= an impoverishment of death symbolism: lack of talking about death in positive ways. Cartoon depictions of death: daffy duck squished, but pops up later, roadrunner and wylie coyote, dies over and over again. Death always seems to happen to people elsewhere: in north america, in photos don"t show bodies. Graphic images usually of the other: death of the other is in the public eye, photographs of dead people less common in western, period in victorian era people would take pictures of the dead. Death of the self: very private, process of death and dying in western society is increasingly privatized, people die in medical institutions in the care of medical professionals.