The Happy Phantom?

Last week I went with my good friend to see the Hollywood version of a book she had read and loved, Perfume. In it, the main character murders several women in an attempt to create the ultimate fragrance. I found myself laughing with the audience at the brief, short scenes of "snatch and grab" that occurred despite the best efforts of the villagers to protect their daughters.

I had to wonder afterwards why death is so often humorous to us. Awhile ago I attended an amazingly brilliant performance called the Gorey Stories, based on the macabre Gashlycrumb Tinies written by Edward Gorey. In this production, Death was personified as an ambivalent character that slowly stalked unsuspecting children in order of the alphabet. There were gasps of horror but also laughs from the audience at some of the more outlandish deaths (dying of ennui , sucked dry by leeches or run through by an awl, for example). The quote on the playbill proclaimed"Death is hilarious."

This lead me to ask if death is indeed hilarious and if so why?

One of our favourite dramas (we are now looking for seasons 2-5 with Korean subtitles!) is Allan Ball's Six Feet Under which chronicles the life of a family who runs a mortuary. It often pokes fun at death in all its different forms. At the beginning of every segment for example, a future client of Fisher and Sons dies in a surprising way. Characters also discuss the use of unusual products such as superglue and dog food cans to make the dead look alive. Billy, one of the characters, points out that the word funeral also spells real fun.

As a child I always loved the shows The Addams Family and The Munsters. Even today I find these families darkly funny and the issue of death plays a large part of their humor. I especially like Wednesday Adams, who carries a headless Marie Antoinette doll and is forever trying to kill or torture her little brother in creatively gruesome ways.

In Mexico, the people celebrate the Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) by staying up the night with the deceased in the cemetaries, drinking, eating, singing and telling jokes. There are decorations of paper mache skeletons dressed in outrageous clothes. The mood is intentionally light and joyous. And of course in our culture we have Halloween which also humorously deals with death. We have spook houses where we get scared and then laugh. We dress up in silly costumes and laugh at each other. We (well not me but some people) watch "slasher" movies and then laugh at how stupid and over the top they are.

It seems that as humans, we have a choice whether to laugh or cry when reminded of the constant presence of mortality in our lives. Both responses, I am told, have equally beneficial healing qualities emotionally and probably, when given a choice, most of us would rather laugh. After the Challenger accident, I remember lots of terrible jokes (Example: What colour were Christa_McAuliffe's eyes? Blue. One blew this way and one blew that way!) and I still remember sick and twisted jokes about unfortunate people with no appendages named Matt, Doug (dug), Pete (peat), Bob, Art, etc. Often people complain about tacky and tasteless jokes at serious times like these but it seems that people often need to deal with grim reality with a bit of levity.

Even in my own family, we often would rather laugh than cry. Riding in the hearse on the way to the burial of my maternal grandfather, my mother asked "Why on earth did we pick that horrible suit for Daddy?" to which her brother quipped" How else were we going to get rid of it?" (drum cue here)

So I suppose the answer to my question is that Life (which Death is an integral part of) is often gruesome and scary. We often worry or cry about death and dying but sometimes it feels good to just laugh at the illogical, random, meaningless of it all. Is Death our friend or foe? In reality it is neither one but as Don Corleone (quoting the Chinese general Sun Tzu) advised, "keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer." Perhaps by being better acquainted with death and dying, we will be better equipped to handle it when it causes us pain and suffering.