Chapter 1 - The Last Dance

Herman Feifel - Research Death Anxiety

Fear of death is not a unitary or monolithic variable .... In the face of personal death, the human mind ostensibly operates simultaneously on various levels of reality, or finite provinces of meaning, each of which can be somewhat autonomous. We, therefore, need to be circumspect in accepting at face value the degree of fear death affirmed at the conscious level.

Over There - Patriot Song

Music used to recruit or enlist soldiers. George Cohen.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross "On Death and Dying"

On Death and Dying (1969) caught the public's imagination by offering a vision of natural death unburdened by technology.

Humor functions

Humor functions in several ways relative to death: First, it raises our consciousness about a taboo subject and gives us a way to talk about it. Second, it presents an opportunity to rise above sadness, providing a release from pain and promoting a sense of control over a traumatic situation, even if we cannot change it. Third, humor is a great leveler; it treats everyone alike and sends the message that there are no exemptions from the human predicament. Thus it binds us together and encourages a sense of intimacy, which helps us face what is unknown or distressing. Humor can be a social glue that helps us emphasize with others. A sense of humor can moderate the intensity of negative life events.

"cosmopolitan" society

In a cosmopolitan society, people are being forced to deal with three related social processes: globalization, accelerated individualization and consumer societies

Death Metal Music

Is partly defined by its lyrics, which convey images of homicide, catastrophic destruction, and suicide. Bands - Morbid Angel, Napalm Death, Carcass and Entombed.

Folk Ballads

Mayhem and misery have long been the staple of folk music. It describes premonitions of death, deathbed scenes, last wishes of the dying, the sorrow and grief of mourners, and the afterlife. Themes of suicide are also common, especially in tales of love and death. Ex: Where have all the flowers gone? (war), Long Black Veil (mourning), Casey Jones (accidental death), and John Henry (occupational hazards), The Ballad of Jesse James (outlaws)

DARK ELEGY - Suse Lowenstein - Sculptor

Dark Elegy will be "a reminder that life is fragile and that we can lose that which is most precious to us so easily and have to live with that loss for the remainder of our lives."

Humor

Defuses our anxiety about death. It puts fearful possibilities into manageable perspective. Death-related humor comes in many different forms, from funny epitaphs to so-called black or gallows humor. Incongruity is one of the components of humor. There are intimate connections between death and laughter.

Holocaust Literature

Devastating experiences of horror and mass death are dealt with in victim's diaries, as well as novels and psychological studies - Chaim Kaplan (WARSAW DIARY), Charlotte Delbo (NONE OF US WILL RETURN), Elie Wiesel (NIGHT), and Anne Frank (DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL).

Ernest Becker - Four Strands of Emphasis

Ernest Becker - initiator of terror management theory. His "four strands of emphasis" include" 1. The world is a terrifying place. 2. The basic motivation for human behavior is the need to control our basic anxiety, to deny the terror of death. 3. Because the terror of death is so overwhelming, we conspire to keep it unconscious. 4. Our heroic projects aimed at destroying evil have the paradoxical effect of bringing more evil into the world... We are able to focus on almost any perceived threat, whether of people, political or economic ideology, race, religion, and blow it up psychologically into a life and death struggle against ultimate evil....This is the dynamic of spiralizing violence that characterizes so much of human history.

Gospel Music

Expresses a wealth of images of loss and grief. Ex: Oh, Mary don't you weep (mourning), Known Only to him (facing one's own death), When the Saints go Marching in (afterlife), and If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again (a parent's death), Precious Memories (adjustment to loss and sustaining bonds with the deceased).

Subjunctive Voice

One way to continue to include the voice of the deceased in present circumstances. It has been described as the mode of "as if", of what "might be" or "could have been". It is a zone of possibility, rather than certainty. "He WOULD have been so proud of you", "She WOULD have enjoyed this gathering tonight"

Homemade Condolelences

Operation Gold Star Flag started during WWI, Marine Comfort Quilts, Operation Homemade Quilts ..... are examples of a homemade condolence.

Fixin to Die Rag - What are we fighting for? Song

Cast doubt on legitimacy of war - Vietnam War - Country Joe McDonald.

Research in Death Anxiety

Research into Death Anxiety has been characterized by Kastenbaum as "thanatology's own assembly line." Part of the appeal of death anxiety research, he says, lies in the fact that it "allows the researcher (and the readers, if they choose) to enjoy the illusion that death has really been studied."

Life Expectancy since 1900

Since 1900, average life expectancy in the United States has increased from forty-seven to nearly seventy-nine years. (Japan has the highest at 83 years). These figures reflect what demographers call "cohort life expectancy," meaning the average number of years a specified group of infants would live if they were to experience throughout their lives the age-specific death rates prevailing in their birth year.

Country Music

Six categories of death in country music. 1 - the pervasiveness of death, 2 - violent and tragic death, 3 - songs of love and death, 4 - death and the family, 5 - celebrity death and 6 - religious influences on death. Ex: Will the Circle Be Unbroken - both gospel and country - describes a mother's death and a child's grief in precise imagery.

American Blues

Themes of loss, separation, tribulation and death are commonly heard. Disasters have inspired blues lyrics, as with the sinking of the Titanic and the 1927 Mississippi River Flood. The blues express a deep stoic grief and despair, a dark mood of lamentation, but also a wry and ribald humor.

Hibakusha - Japanese

Today's global population has been described as Hibakusha, a Japanese word meaning "explosion affected." Initially used to describe survivors of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the term now connotes pervasive anxiety about the threat of annihilation in a cosmopolitan era.

Mele Kanikau

Traditional Hawaiian chants were used as laments for commemorating a person's death. Some Kanikau were carefully composed; others were chanted spontaneously during the funeral procession. Imagery of the natural world is called upon to portray the writer's experience of loss. Memories of shared experiences amid natural surroundings are mentioned. Chants recall the things that bind together the deceased and his survivors. "These are the things are cherish about you (message)." Ex: My companion in the chill of Manoa, My companion in the forest of Makiki.

Opera (musical expression associated with death)

Tragedy and death are common in opera. This art form, which combines drama with music, has been characterized as obsessed with death, or at least a romanticized view of death prevalent in Western culture during the time frame of such classic compositions as Aida, Carmen, La Boheme, Madame Butterfly, Tosca and La Traviata.

Laments (musical expression associated with death)

are an expression of stylized or ritualized leave-taking found in many cultural settings. Ex: Scottish clan funerals, where bagpipes are played. Vocally, the typical lament is an expression of mourning called KEENING, an emotional expression of loss and longing that is reminiscent of crying. Ex: Greek laments were intended to both praise the deceased and provide emotional release for the bereaved.

George Gerbner - Mean World Syndrome

depictions of death in the mass media are often embedded in a structure of violence that conveys "a heightened sense of danger, insecurity, and mistrust." Such depictions reflect what Gerbner and his colleagues call a "mean world syndrome," in which the symbolic use of death contributes to an irrational dread of dying and thus to diminished vitality and self-direction in life."

Elegy - Literature

refers to a song or poem memorializing the dead. It is usually pensive, reflective, or plaintive, an expression of suffering or woe. Describe feelings of sorrow, sadness, mournfulness, melancholy, nostalgia, lamentation, or some blending of these qualities. A way to say goodbye while celebrating who or what is gone.

Elegies (musical expression associated with death)

related to dirges - musical settings for poems commemorating a person's death. Are emotional acknowledgements that a "all things are impermanent, which is itself a profound spiritual understanding."

Literature

the meaning of death is often explored as it relates to society as well as the individual. Novels about war depict how individuals and societies search for meaning in shattering experiences of trauma and loss - All Quiet on the Western Front - WWI, Hiroshima - WWII, Dispatches - Vietnam, Going after Cacciato - Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thanatology theory

took shape as death studies and research.

Heartbreak Hotel - Song

lyrics were inspired by a suicide note that contained the phrase "I walk the lonely street.' Elvis Presley.

Thanatology practice

manifests primarily as formal death education, end-of-life care, and bereavement counseling.

Hannelore Wass

observes that thanatology can help individuals and societies transcend self-interest in favor of concern for others. Death studies is about love, care and compassion .... about helping and healing.

Eulogy - Literature

oratory or praise in honor of the deceased.

Indicative Voice

"She WAS a leader", He WAS fond of music. Using this form of speech is a way of acknowledging the reality of death while distancing us from the dead.

Strange Fruit - Song

16 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus. Lyrics describe horrific imagery of the lynching of African Americans. Billie Holiday.

Advanced Medical Technolgoy

Advanced medical technology that seems to one person a godsend, extending life, may seem to another a curse that only prolong dying. Dignity can be devalued amid technology focused solely on the biological organism. What are the trade-offs in applying medical technologies to the end stage of life? The conventional definition of death as "the cessation of life, the total and permanent cessation of all vital functions" may be superseded by a medicolegal definition, which acknowledges the fact that life can be sustained artificially. In short, the definition of death is not always straight forward as the simple statement "When you're dead, you're dead." Thus medical technology is another factor lessening our familiarity with dying and death. It tends to distance family and friends from the patient who is dying. Technology promotes a view of death as an event that can be deferred indefinitely rather than as a normal, natural part of life. Death = radically unnatural occurrence. The medicalization of death is a significant manifestation of the disappearance of death from the public domain.

19th Century Funeral Rites

People died at home, surrounded by extended family that spanned several generations. As death got closer, relatives and friends gathered to maintain a vigil at the bedside. After death, they washed the body and prepared it for burial. A home built coffin was put in the parlor of the house where friends and relatives participated in the wake and shared in mourning the deceased. Death was a domestic experience. In some communities bells tolled the age of the deceased. Children helped with the activities and sometimes slept in the same room with the corpse. Deceased was buried in a family plot at the homeplace or at a nearby church. The coffin was lowered into the grave and those closest to the deceased shoveled dirt over the coffin to fill in the grave.

First Conference - Hamline University

The first conference on death education was held at Hamline University in Minnesota in 1970.

First Formal Course in Death Education - University of Minnesota

The first formal course in death education at an American university was initiated by Robert Fulton at the University of Minnesota in the spring of 1963.

Epidemiologic Transition

The historical shift in patterns of disease and causes of death .... a shift that demographers call epidemiologic transition - is characterized by a redistribution of deaths from the young to the old. Epidemiology is the study of the patterns of health and disease. With a reduced risk of dying at a young age from infectious diseases, more people survive into older ages, where they tend to die from degenerative diseases. This results in a growing proportion of aged people in the population. In 1900, people 65 and older made up 4% of the population in the United States, now they constitute just over 13%. The population of aged people has tripled since 1900. In short, people are living longer and dying at older ages. One result is that we tend to associate death with the elderly when, in fact, it is not confined to any particular segment of the life span.

Death Anxiety

The largest area of empirical research in thanatology is concerned with the measurement of attitudes toward death, and, more particularly, death anxiety. Death anxiety may be understood as "a shorthand designation for a cluster of death attitudes characterized by fear, threat, unease, discomfort, and similar negative emotional reactions, as well as anxiety in the psychodynamic sense as a kind of diffuse fear that has no clear object." Higher among females than males, higher among blacks than whites and higher among youth and middle-aged adults than among older people.

Factors that affect our familiarity with death

The past hundred years have seen dramatic change in the size, shape, and distribution of the American population - that is , its demographics. These changes, most notably involves the increased life expectancy and lower mortality rates - significantly affect our expectations about death. Families are smaller and less people live together. The consequence? We have fewer opportunities to experience our relatives' deaths firsthand. Our familiarity with death has also been powerfully influenced by sophisticated medical technologies, which have affected both the place where death most often occurs and the manner in which most people die. Earlier generations cared for their dying and dead. Today, we rely on professionals .... doctors, coroner, and cremator. The net result is that, for most of us, death is unfamiliar.

Dimensions of Thanatology

The study of death... the study of life with death left in. Thus the field of study, Thanatology encompasses a variety of disciplines and areas of concern: Philosophical and Ethical, Psychological, Sociological, Anthropological, Clinical, Political and Educational. Table - Pg 27

Epitaph - Literature

a brief statement commemorating the deceased, often inscribed as a memorial on a tomb.

Death Notice

a brief, standardized statement printed in small type and listed alphabetically in a column of vital statistics "as uniform as a row of tiny grave plots."

Dirge (musical expression associated with death)

a hymn of grief - is a musical form associated with funeral processions and burials. Ex: the jazz funeral of New Orleans is a popular interpretation of the dirge. Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Strauss, Brahms, Mahler and Stravinsky all wrote dirges.

Requiem (musical expression associated with death)

a musical composition played at a mass for the dead is related to the elegy. Attracted Mozart, Berlioz and Verdi. One section of the Requiem Mass, the Dies Irae, (Day of Wrath), is a musical symbol for death in works by many composers.

Terror Management Theory (TMT)

states that human behavior is mostly motivated by an unconscious fear of mortality. In other words, awareness of one's own death affects the decision making of individuals and groups, a concept known as mortality salience.

Euphemisms

substitutions of indirect or vague words and phrases for ones considered harsh or blunt - tend to suggest a well choreographed production surrounding the dead.