At different moments in time, Western popular culture has become fascinated with different representations of death.
The huge popularity of novels such as Twilight and television shows such as True Blood tells of popular culture’s current love affair with vampires.
Andre Loiselle, a film professor at Carleton University, says Western culture is obsessed with the undead because it allows us to put a face on death.
“The appeal of the undead is that it allows us to deal with the most horrifying thing on earth: death,” Loiselle said.
He said the goal of these films and books is to make death more manageable.
In these fictional places, the audience knows it is not real blood and nobody was killed while the film was taking place.
So, it is reassuring to watch something where we face death, but know we managed to survive the battle.
Loiselle said because films have a narrative, the audience knows when they are going to die which makes “the notion of death more palatable.”
Other forms of the personifications of death include zombies, vampires and ghosts.
Zombies are the least alluring form of death.
They are presented as unattractive creatures who want to kill the living.
They are not very intelligent beings, and easily controllable. Since zombies are portrayed as unintelligent creatures they are always defeated and “generally in the end there is a sense that the living can control the dead,” Loiselle said.
They are the least complex form of monsters.
Vampires present us with a romantic image of death.
Vampires symbolize a “world of eternal passion that people long for in ordinary life,” Loiselle said.
These blood-sucking creatures not only exchange kisses, but exchange blood, representing the deepest of romantic love because it is a vow connected in all of eternity.
In a world filled with divorce and separation, vampires offer a positive image of life, with an eternal connection that binds them to another person, Loiselle said.
Vampires make death a somewhat positive escape from the living.
Ghosts are figures that are stuck in spiritual pain because their life on earth was not resolved and “cannot move on because they are stuck in limbo,” Loiselle said.
These ghosts remain because there is an issue that is still lingering that they need to resolve.
For example, in the movie American Ghost Story, the ghost of an abused child haunts her family because she has not resolved her issue.
In the end the father is killed for having killed his daughter and finally the ghost can be freed.
Ghosts give the message that “if things are made right on earth then death will be okay,” Loiselle said.
The grim reaper personifies death.
By embodying death, he creates the illusion that death can be escaped.
In Family Guy, Peter Griffin makes fun of the grim reaper by getting into a fist fight with him, defying death.
In movies and television shows, the undead are not really dead at all, as we can still connect with them and they can still connect with us.
Loiselle said the fixation with death in popular culture results from the knowledge that death is unavoidable.
These movies are a “metaphor of a desire as to how we can handle death,” Loiselle said.
Although people will never be fully comfortable with death, stories can reassure and comfort us temporarily about our feelings toward death.
“Horror stories are for an adult what fairy tales are for children,” Loiselle said.
This story appeared in the January 2011 edition of the Charlatan magazine. For more stories from this issue, please see: