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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and

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Speaker 3: we're back with Part three in our series on personifications

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Speaker 3: of death. When we think of death not as an

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Speaker 3: abstract concept or process, but as a person, so I

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Speaker 3: thought we should start off by recapping the things we've

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Speaker 3: talked about in the past two episodes. We've already covered

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Speaker 3: a good bit of ground wide ranging, so in Part

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Speaker 3: one we mainly talked about common types of death and

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Speaker 3: categories of death characters. So one distinction we talked about

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Speaker 3: was the between the moment of death character who appears

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Speaker 3: to the still living person in their last moments and

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Speaker 3: then either signals that death is coming or somehow causes

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Speaker 3: the death directly. This would be your classic grim reaper figure.

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Speaker 3: And then the distinction between that and the figure known

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Speaker 3: as the psychopomp, which comes from the Greek for soul conductor.

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Speaker 3: This is the figure who shepherd's the souls of the

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Speaker 3: dead into the afterlife. After that, we talked about four

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Speaker 3: predominant categories of death figures that were proposed about fifty

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Speaker 3: years ago in an influential book called The Psychology of

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Speaker 3: Death by Castenbaum and Aisenberg, And these archetypes were the macabre,

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Speaker 3: the comforter, the deceiver, and the automaton, and we explained

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Speaker 3: in detail in those episodes what those mean. We also

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Speaker 3: talked about some psychology research on these categories, like what

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Speaker 3: contextual factors about a death might cause us to envision

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Speaker 3: deaths as one of these characters as a seductive trickster

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Speaker 3: versus a soothing helper and so forth. And then in

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Speaker 3: part two, we started off by talking about the cultural

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Speaker 3: evolution of death demon characters and aspects of these characters,

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Speaker 3: including everything from the tools they carry to the clothes

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Speaker 3: they wear and how those things could both reflect and

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Speaker 3: inform how we feel about death itself. So an interesting

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Speaker 3: example was does it change how you feel about death

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Speaker 3: if the character of death is a harvester with a

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Speaker 3: scythe versus a spinner with a pair of shears versus

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Speaker 3: a fissure with a net. And this discussion was based

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Speaker 3: on some Jungian ideas that rob you were reading in

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Speaker 3: a book by an author named Edgar Hertzog. And then

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Speaker 3: finally after that, we talked about some overlapping themes and

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Speaker 3: overlapping jurisdiction even in certain worldviews between death personifications and

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Speaker 3: personifications of fate, like you might see with the moirai

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Speaker 3: in Greek mythology or with the norns of Norse mythology.

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Speaker 3: And so we're back today to talk about more.

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Speaker 2: You mentioned how it changes the vibe of the death

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Speaker 2: figure depending on what tools they have with them. You

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Speaker 2: could really conduct an exercise by which any given person

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Speaker 2: out there, whatever your your trade is your trade or

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Speaker 2: or your you know, signifying hobby, whatever it happens to be,

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Speaker 2: what is what is one? What are one of the

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Speaker 2: tools of your trade or passion? Now imagine death holding

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Speaker 2: that like it ends up pushing it in some direction,

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Speaker 2: Like I don't know what it would mean if if

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Speaker 2: death had a podcasting microphone. Yeah, yeah, it I mean

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Speaker 2: it it implies something if death has a typewriter, or

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Speaker 2: it maybe implies that death is telling a story and

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Speaker 2: I guess you are the story and it's about to end.

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Speaker 2: So it basically writes itself.

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Speaker 3: Wait, isn't there a short story about that where there's

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Speaker 3: like somebody who has a magic typewriter and everything they

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Speaker 3: type comes true.

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Speaker 2: There's what the word processor of the Gods, the old

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Speaker 2: Stephen King short story that I think was made into

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Speaker 2: a Tales from the Dark Side episode. Yeah so yeah,

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Speaker 2: and it may have been explored in other places as well.

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Speaker 2: All Right, So at this point in the series, we're

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Speaker 2: gonna be getting a little more into the area of

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Speaker 2: discussion that actually inspired me to pitch this series to

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Speaker 2: begin with, and that's gender in the anthropomorphic personification of death,

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Speaker 2: especially as far as female personifications are concerned. The specific

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Speaker 2: inspiration for me occurred towards the end of last year.

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Speaker 2: I underwent a routine surgical procedure that required anesthesia, and

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Speaker 2: as I came out of anesthesia, I experienced a vivid

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Speaker 2: dream of a female death entity. The death entity was shadowy,

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Speaker 2: her face hidden, you know, as if there was a

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Speaker 2: veil or hood, you know, whatever the case may be,

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Speaker 2: and there was, you know, as I reflect on it,

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Speaker 2: and you know, with the important caveat that reflection changes

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Speaker 2: the memory or impression as I reflect on it, though,

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Speaker 2: it does seem like there was a complex aura here

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Speaker 2: that had, you know, elements of nurture during comfort, also

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Speaker 2: eroticism as well. And at the same time, the experience

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Speaker 2: was just rather overpowering as well, Like I came out

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Speaker 2: of anesthesia feeling like shaken by this vision that I

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Speaker 2: had just had vision slash dream, And I've thought about

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Speaker 2: it pretty much every day since. Oh, so to be clear,

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Speaker 2: just to go and get out of the way. I

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Speaker 2: absolutely know this entity was the product of my own

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Speaker 2: mind and fed by any number of experiences and cultural motifs.

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Speaker 2: I mean, for instance, I was attended to by a nurse,

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Speaker 2: my wife was there when I came to, My mother

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Speaker 2: had died very recently, and I'd also consumed media just

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Speaker 2: in the weeks prior that featured a female death incarnation.

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Speaker 2: And as previously noted, death personifications are just simply everywhere.

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Speaker 2: You can't avoid them. Even if they're not overt, they

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Speaker 2: are at least implied.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And as we discussed in the previous episodes, while

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Speaker 3: male personfations of death tend to be more common among

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Speaker 3: us subjects, I mean, there is always a mix of

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Speaker 3: gender representation of death. They're like, yeah, you get you

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Speaker 3: get male and female death figures throughout cultures.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I guess one thing that impressed me though, or

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Speaker 2: made me think a lot about it, was, you know,

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Speaker 2: I had never been asked hey, draw death, what does

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Speaker 2: death look like? I've been exposed to all these different ideas,

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Speaker 2: but I never had I never had to choose. No

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Speaker 2: one ever said pick one, and that's the one you

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Speaker 2: have to reflect on. So so yeah, we'll come back

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Speaker 2: to that here in a bit. But you know, it

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Speaker 2: goes without saying that dreams alone are fertile soil from

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Speaker 2: which things like this can rise. Of course, Hypnos, the

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Speaker 2: Greek personification of sleep, is the twin of Thanatos, the

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Speaker 2: personification of death. So these these things are closely linked

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Speaker 2: throughout human myth making. We also know that anesthetic induce

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Speaker 2: dreaming during surgery can produce vivid dreams, and in some

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Speaker 2: cases of reading some papers about this can be transformative

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Speaker 2: something we could potentially come back to in the future.

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Speaker 2: Though I would say that I wouldn't necessarily classify what

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Speaker 2: I experience or saw as truly profound. But it did

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Speaker 2: make a strong impression, and you know, to some extent,

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Speaker 2: I would say, maybe soothed some pre existing anxiety and

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Speaker 2: in reflection, helped with some later anxiety as well. But

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Speaker 2: it made me wonder, It's like, well, why this vision,

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Speaker 2: where does this? Where does this come from? In the

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Speaker 2: psyche in culture. You know all these things that I'm

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Speaker 2: feeding off of because at the heart of everything, like

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Speaker 2: my mind is said by the same basic symbols and

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Speaker 2: motifs as count countless others in the world around me

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Speaker 2: and throughout history, My core values and reflections on life

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Speaker 2: are not that different from anyone else's. So you know,

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Speaker 2: what did it and what does it mean to glimpse,

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Speaker 2: in Whitman's words, the dark Mother always gliding near. Now

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Speaker 2: we've already discussed some of the answers to these questions

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Speaker 2: in the broad psychological clim classifications that we've already discussed,

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Speaker 2: But in this episode we're going to be exploring it

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Speaker 2: from a few additional angles, and then we will get

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Speaker 2: into some specific examples of gender death entities and discuss

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Speaker 2: where they come from and what they seem to me.

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Speaker 2: So I'm going to continue to draw from Edgar Herzog's

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Speaker 2: Psyche and Death as well as from The Gender of Death,

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Speaker 2: A Cultural History in Art and Literature by Karl S. Gutka,

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Speaker 2: a professor of German art in his and culture rather

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Speaker 2: at Harvard. His focus is on the quote Western self

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Speaker 2: in these matters, so on the whole he's generally dealing

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Speaker 2: with European motifs. So if you're listening to this podcast

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Speaker 2: in its original form, then you speak English or understand English,

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Speaker 2: and probably have some experience with other languages as well,

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Speaker 2: be it very little like myself, or perhaps you know,

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Speaker 2: maybe English isn't even your first language, you just understand

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Speaker 2: it well and there's another language that is closer to you.

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Speaker 3: But you love to hear that. By the way, people

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Speaker 3: who listen to us as for English as a second language,

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Speaker 3: learning that really does feel very special. So we love

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Speaker 3: to get those emails.

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Speaker 2: Yes, and definitely as you listen to what we're about

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Speaker 2: to talk about. If you have specific examples from either

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Speaker 2: your native language, your first language, or language you know

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Speaker 2: really well or even just know better than I do,

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Speaker 2: certainly write in We would love to hear from you

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Speaker 2: on your examples. But most of you are probably already

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Speaker 2: aware that grammatical gender systems exist and they vary. So,

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Speaker 2: for instance, thinking back to my own now long ago

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Speaker 2: German classes, I had to of course suddenly remember whether

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Speaker 2: a computer is masculine, feminine or newter Do I say

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Speaker 2: dere computer, d computer or dos computer? As an English

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Speaker 2: speaking student, though this of course meant trying to catalog

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Speaker 2: all of this in my head and thinking of things

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Speaker 2: like computers and fruits conforming to is gender stereotypes, like

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Speaker 2: imagining what kind of hat the computer is wearing or

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Speaker 2: something stupid like that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think this is a common experience, Like

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Speaker 3: coming from a language without grammatical gender, we end up,

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Speaker 3: I think, applying more associations of biological or social gender

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Speaker 3: roles on to grammatical gender than native speakers of those

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Speaker 3: languages usually would, though I think it's not necessarily the

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Speaker 3: case that none of those associations would ever exist, but

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Speaker 3: they're probably more pronounced to you if you are coming

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Speaker 3: from a language without grammatical gender, because you're not used

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Speaker 3: to just how automatic it is to classify words without

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Speaker 3: actually thinking about other connotations.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. So we'll get into

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Speaker 2: whatever degree this seems to matter, especially when it comes

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Speaker 2: to death personifications. But we'll go ahead and point out

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Speaker 2: that death as a concept is gendered in different ways

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Speaker 2: depending on the language. So in modern English, again, we

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Speaker 2: have no grammatical gender. Likewise, in Turkish, Finnish, and Japanese,

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Speaker 2: death as a concept has no grammatical gender. In the

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Speaker 2: Romance languages and Slavic languages, the concept of death is feminine,

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Speaker 2: and in Germanic, Semitic, and ancient Greek languages it's masculine.

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Speaker 2: So we'll get into to what extent this matters, while

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Speaker 2: also acknowledging that language itself is not the only factor

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Speaker 2: at work here. So, for instance, it's not like all

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Speaker 2: computer characters or artificial intelligence characters in German science fiction

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Speaker 2: are male because computer is masculine. In fact, a lot

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Speaker 2: of them seem to be female. So yeah, language is

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Speaker 2: not the only factor influencing any of these personifications. But

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Speaker 2: here is an interesting translation issue that I was reading about.

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Speaker 2: So in the last episode I mentioned the character Death

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Speaker 2: from Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. He's a major character and

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Speaker 2: a handful of books, and a minor character and a

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Speaker 2: bunch more. And these books are of course quite popular

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Speaker 2: and have been translated into various languages. And I've seen

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Speaker 2: numerous accounts online of international pratchet fans attesting to the

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Speaker 2: fact that, due seemingly to the gender of Death in

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Speaker 2: their own language, the male character of Death in some

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Speaker 2: of the novels was translated as a female character.

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Speaker 3: Oh okay, so am I understanding this right? It's like,

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Speaker 3: before there was any information given by the author about

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Speaker 3: the intended social or biological gender of this character, all

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Speaker 3: you had to go on was the word, and so

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Speaker 3: the word just kind of defaulted to a female character.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, or that was my main understanding, But then I

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Speaker 2: don't know. The more I read about it seems like

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Speaker 2: maybe I just don't know much about about major translations

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Speaker 2: of works, Like there's a fair amount of art to

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Speaker 2: it as well as just figuring out which word to

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Speaker 2: switch in. So it seems like maybe some of the

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Speaker 2: translators made this initial judgment call based on grammar, but

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Speaker 2: then also embellished it a little bit more in the tech.

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Speaker 2: But at first I thought, Okay, this must only concern

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Speaker 2: the books where death is a minor character as opposed

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Speaker 2: to a major one, But apparently it's the case with

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Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven's mort which is a major death book

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Speaker 2: in the series. According to fan forums, it seems like

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Speaker 2: it was an issue with this book and the overall.

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Speaker 2: The gender issue in the Discworld books is sometimes addressed

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Speaker 2: by the translators, and in fact there's a running gag

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Speaker 2: apparently in French translations of the Discworld books where they

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Speaker 2: have a footnote that's like, yes, Death is a male

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Speaker 2: character and so forth. So I found that interesting.

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Speaker 3: That does call to mind some of the psychology research

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Speaker 3: we were talking about in the first episode of this series,

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Speaker 3: where remember across the four archetypes, the macabre, the comforter,

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Speaker 3: the deceiver, and the automaton, all four of them were

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Speaker 3: male biased, and so visions of death among these US

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Speaker 3: participants were male biased overall, but the breakdown, the gender

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Speaker 3: breakdown in representations was very different by category. So like

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Speaker 3: you had the macabre and the automaton as overwhelmingly male

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Speaker 3: biased representations, whereas you had more of a mix with

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Speaker 3: the comforter and the deceiver. And I think that's interesting.

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Speaker 3: I mean one way it's just interesting is that clearly

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Speaker 3: like the two least likable of the of the or

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Speaker 3: I don't know, the deceiver, I guess is also supposed

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Speaker 3: to be bad but has a fun side. Yeah, And

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Speaker 3: so like the the only two that have anything good

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Speaker 3: about them are the ones that are more likely to

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Speaker 3: have a more mixed gender representation.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting.

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Speaker 3: So maybe people just don't like dudes, or you don't

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Speaker 3: want Death to be a man.

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Speaker 2: Now that that is an additional interesting question that I

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Speaker 2: don't know if I've seen anyone pull anybody on, like,

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Speaker 2: which do you want death to be?

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Speaker 3: Like if you had your your pick?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I guess a lot of that

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Speaker 2: it's going to come down to how you're already, Like,

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Speaker 2: if you're already inclined to think of death as a

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Speaker 2: seducer or as a nurturer than than you know, then

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Speaker 2: that's going to influence an individual's choices in that matter.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, depending on like sexual preferences or preferences about parents

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Speaker 3: and that kind of thing.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So coming back to this linguistic question, this grammatical question,

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Speaker 2: what does what does Gutka have to say about it? Well?

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Speaker 2: In gender of Death, this is actually his starting point.

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Speaker 2: He brings up how at one point he was looking

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Speaker 2: at a finish work by nineteenth century symbologist Hugo Simberg

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Speaker 2: titled Death Listens and Joe. Interestingly enough, you you pasted

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Speaker 2: this very work earlier on in our shared notes.

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Speaker 3: Yes, I dug up an image of this painting because

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Speaker 3: I saw it. So I haven't read this book by

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Speaker 3: Guti that you have, but I was looking at the

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Speaker 3: first chapter from it because I found a pdf of

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Speaker 3: that online. So I was looking at that in the

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Speaker 3: reference to this painting, so I pulled it up, and

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Speaker 3: I thought it was very interesting because, yeah, so death

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Speaker 3: here is represented as a woman draped in black, but

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Speaker 3: she's I don't know, something about the posture of this

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Speaker 3: painting is very different and very interesting. I think we're

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Speaker 3: used to seeing images where somebody's maybe on their deathbed,

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Speaker 3: and then we see death hovering over them. In this

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Speaker 3: the person who appears to be on their deathbed. Correct

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Speaker 3: me if I'm interpreting this wrong. Is it way in

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Speaker 3: the background, they're off in the background, and then in

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Speaker 3: the foreground we have a younger person playing a violin,

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Speaker 3: and Death seemingly too, seeming to be in communion with

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Speaker 3: the younger person playing the violin, kind of just sitting

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Speaker 3: there listening to the music. It's like the death is

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Speaker 3: not even concerned with the dying person.

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Speaker 2: Without being super familiar with this work or you know,

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Speaker 2: traditions it might be playing upon, it is a fascinating one.

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Speaker 2: Like it almost feels like Death should be saying something

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Speaker 2: to the effect of, hmm, well, this is awkward, Like

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Speaker 2: maybe he's here to get the violinist and not the

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Speaker 2: sick person. He's like actually, yeah, I'm here for you,

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Speaker 2: not them, or it's something you know, or that's one

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Speaker 2: of the interesting things about death personifications. It gives you

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Speaker 2: an opportunity to think about death and all these death

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Speaker 2: does feel kind of awkward here. Death is waiting as

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Speaker 2: opposed to being a real active participant in the scenario,

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Speaker 2: like leaping at you with a scythe or something.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, but so is Gutka asking the question is there

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Speaker 3: anything about the particular cultural context in which this painting

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Speaker 3: was produced or something about the intentions of the artist

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Speaker 3: that caused them to depict death as a woman skeleton

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Speaker 3: rather than as a man.

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Speaker 2: Right right? And he writes that the prevailing explanation that

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Speaker 2: he was met with regarding such portrayals was well, it's

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Speaker 2: tied to grammatical gender, that it is grammatical determinism. But

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Speaker 2: he's very firm on this that this doesn't really First

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Speaker 2: of all, it doesn't make sense in particular cases such

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Speaker 2: as this one, because Death Listens is a work by

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Speaker 2: a Finnish artist, and again, the Finnish language has no

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Speaker 2: grammatical gender, so there's no like gender determinist specific argument

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Speaker 2: to be made here. And more importantly, he argues that

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Speaker 2: in general, this argument breaks down as a primary explanation

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Speaker 2: when you look at the different and many exceptions in

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Speaker 2: pretty much any Western culture, which again that's the area

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Speaker 2: he's looking at. Here to this supposed rule, they're just

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Speaker 2: too many exceptions and too many varied exceptions.

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Speaker 3: You mean that there are many cases where there's a

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Speaker 3: language where death, the word death has one grammatical gender,

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Speaker 3: but you see lots of representations of death as the

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Speaker 3: opposite gender in terms of embodied gender.

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Speaker 2: Exactly. Yes, So the evidence just doesn't really back it up.

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Speaker 2: So Guka argues that in addition to classical mythological traditions,

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Speaker 2: we just have this impactful interaction of images over the

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Speaker 2: course of our cultural history. So ideas influence the exact

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Speaker 2: form the death personification takes, and then these symbols are

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Speaker 2: then received by human minds anew reinterpreted, you know, oftentimes

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Speaker 2: across centuries, generating not only new ideas about the personification

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Speaker 2: of death, but also new ideas and interpretations of death

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Speaker 2: itself quote, creating new tensions and relationships between the grim

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Speaker 2: reaper figures and their victims. It kind of comes back to, jokingly,

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Speaker 2: we were talking about it. If you give what happens when

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Speaker 2: you give the image of the grim reaper a podcast microphone. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: it ends up, even on a lark, it ends up

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Speaker 2: changing the idea that's being presented to you and could

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Speaker 2: potentially change the idea in your head about that thing.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a two way exchange. It might make you

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Speaker 3: the tool or the contextual item that death has made

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Speaker 3: you think about death differently, but probably also makes you

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Speaker 3: think about the thing differently.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So in broad strokes, you know some of the

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Speaker 2: ways that this plays out. He mentions how in Christian traditions,

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Speaker 2: you know, we have death and sin associated with you know,

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Speaker 2: the fall of even with Adam and Eve. And depending

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Speaker 2: on who gets the most blame in that situation, and

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Speaker 2: it's never the snake, it's always Adam or Eve that

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Speaker 2: can influence how death ends up being gendered in one

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Speaker 2: way or another. So if it's Eve, then we may

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Speaker 2: have a tendency to feminize death. But then also when

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Speaker 2: Adam is given more of the blame, we we have

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Speaker 2: this like medieval motif of death as a male knight

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Speaker 2: or a king or a laborer the reaper for example,

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Speaker 2: after the fall, whereas with Eve we might have some

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Speaker 2: of these more seductive or destructive feminine figures of death.

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Speaker 3: Interesting, I've never thought about it that way. You know,

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Speaker 3: I've never done on like a deep historical dive on this,

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Speaker 3: but I've just assumed that the by far the majority

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Speaker 3: trend is to blame me if. I mean, there's kind

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Speaker 3: of a sexist bias in this that says, like the

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Speaker 3: woman she was deceived, it was not the man who

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Speaker 3: was deceived.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and again we're talking about many different factors

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Speaker 2: coming into play here and all this, and different trends

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Speaker 2: that get picked up at different points in history, different

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Speaker 2: literary and visual motifs. But the thing is like, once

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Speaker 2: you say, for one reason or another, you end up

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Speaker 2: depicting death as feminine, and then you have this feminine

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Speaker 2: image more of the masculine image that may then be

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Speaker 2: eroticized later on, and then that can change the import

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Speaker 2: of the symbol. And so this sort of basic cycle

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Speaker 2: can take place over the course of centuries, fueled by

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Speaker 2: human creative impulses and the general reception and reproduction of

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Speaker 2: images and ideas.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, interesting, this chain reaction. So if death has

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Speaker 3: a gender and if it becomes eroticized, that kind of

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Speaker 3: determines who death becomes erotic two.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So it's just one of the ways that

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Speaker 2: these images really almost seem to become alive in a fashion,

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Speaker 2: you know. Now, Guka stresses that these various images may

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Speaker 2: or may not actually reveal anything about the nature of death,

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Speaker 2: but they still quote open our eyes for aspects of

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Speaker 2: the world of interpretation, that is, for humans, individuals and

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Speaker 2: groups orienting themselves in their world by making such images

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Speaker 2: and thereby ultimately defining themselves. Now, I'm not sure if

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Speaker 2: this contradicts anything we've previously discussed, you know, I don't

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Speaker 2: think it does, really, But Guka states that some cultures Spanish, French,

390
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Speaker 2: Polish quote almost regularly unquote personified death as a woman,

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Speaker 2: though in all manner of directions and lining up with

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Speaker 2: you know, all of the four broad classifications that we discussed.

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Speaker 2: She may be old or young, she may be horrifying

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Speaker 2: or comforting, she might be a trickster or an automaton.

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Speaker 2: And then we see in English and German a tennis

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Speaker 2: towards the masculine death. But he stresses that in both

397
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Speaker 2: of these culture sets we just see significant exceptions, and

398
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Speaker 2: he ponders whether exceptions is even the right word, like

399
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Speaker 2: rather it's more of a twofold image and a point

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Speaker 2: of contemplation of not only death but also of life.

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Speaker 3: So even within like English and German speaking cultures, it's

402
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Speaker 3: not necessarily that masculine death is the rule and feminine

403
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Speaker 3: death is the exception. It's just more there is a

404
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Speaker 3: somewhat of a bias towards masculine depictions.

405
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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he says that. Yeah, it would be

406
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Speaker 2: incorrect perhaps to think of it as saying like, okay,

407
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Speaker 2: well death is mostly male in this culture, and then

408
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Speaker 2: some people think it's female. Like. It seems a lot

409
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Speaker 2: more complicated than that, And much of it comes down

410
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Speaker 2: to the power of images. Again, humans are just image makers,

411
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Speaker 2: and our image shapes our world and helps us define ourselves.

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Speaker 2: And one image is never enough. We have to have

413
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Speaker 2: multiple images, especially when we're and this is something that

414
00:24:01,720 --> 00:24:03,320
Speaker 2: you know, both of the main authors I was looking

415
00:24:03,320 --> 00:24:06,439
Speaker 2: at really drive home is that death is such a

416
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Speaker 2: huge concept that we can't really fit in our head

417
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Speaker 2: all at once. And what we can do, though, is

418
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Speaker 2: lean on these different symbols that enable us to contemplate

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Speaker 2: it in different ways and on different levels.

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Speaker 3: One thing this is all raising for me is just

421
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Speaker 3: the question of how, you know, in certain contexts, you

422
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Speaker 3: could have a canonical representation of death that would essentially

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Speaker 3: govern how you are supposed to think about death, and thus,

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Speaker 3: you know, and if that governing image had a gender,

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Speaker 3: then you would conform to that image. But a lot

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Speaker 3: of times you're not going to have a canonical representation

427
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Speaker 3: of death, so you can just actually think of it

428
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Speaker 3: quite easily in multiple different ways with different characteristics, and

429
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Speaker 3: it's not really hard to switch between them.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean this is kind of a

431
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Speaker 2: dumb example, but like in Farside cartoons, I feel like

432
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Speaker 2: death is generally a masculine leaning grim reaper figure. But

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Speaker 2: then in Marvel comics, death is feminine, and we don't

434
00:25:10,040 --> 00:25:12,840
Speaker 2: feel like these two ideas are in conflict with each

435
00:25:12,840 --> 00:25:14,240
Speaker 2: other and we need to go to war for which

436
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:15,040
Speaker 2: one is correct.

437
00:25:15,600 --> 00:25:18,200
Speaker 3: Right, It's totally easy to recognize both, and I think

438
00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:20,800
Speaker 3: that's probably because we live in a cultural context where

439
00:25:20,840 --> 00:25:24,480
Speaker 3: there's not any canonical source that people recognize as having

440
00:25:24,600 --> 00:25:27,480
Speaker 3: much authority that says death is one way or another.

441
00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:30,280
Speaker 2: Right, And you know, we're generally dealing also again with

442
00:25:30,359 --> 00:25:35,520
Speaker 2: an abstraction that is not so hard canonized within a religion, Like,

443
00:25:35,560 --> 00:25:37,639
Speaker 2: it's not arguing. It's not like if when we're to

444
00:25:37,640 --> 00:25:41,000
Speaker 2: suddenly start asking people about the gender of like the

445
00:25:41,080 --> 00:25:43,120
Speaker 2: Christian God, that would.

446
00:25:42,960 --> 00:25:44,280
Speaker 3: Be a more strong opinions.

447
00:25:44,840 --> 00:25:48,240
Speaker 2: They have strong opinions about that, but you're not going

448
00:25:48,280 --> 00:25:52,960
Speaker 2: to see that with the idea of personified death unless

449
00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:55,679
Speaker 2: you get very particular to a given religion and say, Okay,

450
00:25:55,760 --> 00:25:58,439
Speaker 2: what gender do you think the death angel is and

451
00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:00,800
Speaker 2: so forth, and then yeah, they have that. There's a

452
00:26:00,840 --> 00:26:01,720
Speaker 2: case to be made there.

453
00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:04,520
Speaker 3: But I think because of that freedom and looseness, like

454
00:26:04,560 --> 00:26:07,560
Speaker 3: because there's nothing that's forcing people to have a strong

455
00:26:07,600 --> 00:26:09,520
Speaker 3: opinion about it one way or an. I mean, for

456
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:11,399
Speaker 3: the most part, there might be some self cultures in

457
00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:14,800
Speaker 3: which there is, but mostly there's not. In American culture.

458
00:26:15,359 --> 00:26:18,480
Speaker 3: I think that makes it especially interesting to study because

459
00:26:18,520 --> 00:26:22,399
Speaker 3: you can instead see the gendering of death is a

460
00:26:22,480 --> 00:26:27,680
Speaker 3: kind of free expression of tendencies and something that's not

461
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:30,119
Speaker 3: just constrained by somebody telling you how it is.

462
00:26:30,600 --> 00:26:32,400
Speaker 2: That's right, and that's one of the things that Goodcud

463
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:35,920
Speaker 2: drives home is that, yeah, you have these different images

464
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:39,200
Speaker 2: that emerge via a number of different influences across time

465
00:26:39,720 --> 00:26:42,880
Speaker 2: that speak to each other and they're varied. They say

466
00:26:42,880 --> 00:26:45,400
Speaker 2: different things, things that maybe need to be said at

467
00:26:45,400 --> 00:26:48,120
Speaker 2: a certain point in time or within a given culture.

468
00:26:48,840 --> 00:26:52,240
Speaker 2: And you know, these are going to mirror the shifting cultural,

469
00:26:52,240 --> 00:26:56,720
Speaker 2: theological and psychological anxieties of different eras, and one will

470
00:26:56,720 --> 00:26:59,040
Speaker 2: go away, then it will be rediscovered later, you know,

471
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:03,240
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just need and culture. So in his book,

472
00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:06,040
Speaker 2: he spends a fair amount of time, for instance, charting

473
00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:10,320
Speaker 2: the change in the predominant gender of death as he

474
00:27:10,400 --> 00:27:13,199
Speaker 2: identifies it in Europe out of the Middle Ages, with

475
00:27:13,280 --> 00:27:17,240
Speaker 2: a mostly masculine death a reaper and a night giving

476
00:27:17,280 --> 00:27:20,960
Speaker 2: way to a mixed diabolical death associated with the devil,

477
00:27:21,600 --> 00:27:25,320
Speaker 2: then a masculine youth death during the age of Romanticism

478
00:27:25,640 --> 00:27:28,080
Speaker 2: that is like a gentle friend will come back to

479
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:31,960
Speaker 2: that idea, and then more of a seductive, eroticized feminine

480
00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:38,840
Speaker 2: death of decadence and modernity. So definitely a book worth

481
00:27:38,880 --> 00:27:41,640
Speaker 2: picking up, and you know, very readable and absorbing if

482
00:27:41,800 --> 00:27:43,280
Speaker 2: you really want to dive into that.

483
00:27:44,200 --> 00:27:46,920
Speaker 3: I wonder if the idea of death as a as

484
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:50,760
Speaker 3: a male youth in the Romantic period in Europe is

485
00:27:50,880 --> 00:27:54,000
Speaker 3: at all coming from the Greek influence, is because you know,

486
00:27:54,720 --> 00:27:58,480
Speaker 3: thanatose is often represented as like a winged male youth.

487
00:27:58,640 --> 00:28:02,439
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, definitely, yeah, that is something that he discusses.

488
00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:06,080
Speaker 2: But one thing that this made me think about, and

489
00:28:06,119 --> 00:28:07,960
Speaker 2: actually I was thinking about this a little bit in

490
00:28:08,160 --> 00:28:11,080
Speaker 2: one of our previous episodes, is we're talking about the

491
00:28:11,119 --> 00:28:14,800
Speaker 2: four basic death figure tropes and about how they serve

492
00:28:14,840 --> 00:28:17,720
Speaker 2: different purposes and they cast death in a different light.

493
00:28:18,320 --> 00:28:20,240
Speaker 2: I imagine most of you out there familiar with the

494
00:28:20,640 --> 00:28:24,800
Speaker 2: idea of the stages of grief, the Koobler Ross model

495
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:28,879
Speaker 2: of you know, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. If

496
00:28:28,960 --> 00:28:31,520
Speaker 2: nothing else, you've probably there's a great Simpsons moment where

497
00:28:31,560 --> 00:28:34,119
Speaker 2: Homer goes through all of the stages in a manner

498
00:28:34,119 --> 00:28:39,880
Speaker 2: of seconds. I think it's season two episode, and it's

499
00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:43,800
Speaker 2: great fun and and and so forth. But that little

500
00:28:43,800 --> 00:28:46,200
Speaker 2: moment on the Simpsons also implies something that I think

501
00:28:46,200 --> 00:28:48,240
Speaker 2: a lot of us kind of take for granted and

502
00:28:48,280 --> 00:28:50,960
Speaker 2: assume is maybe the case, and that is that the

503
00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:55,080
Speaker 2: stages of grief are a sequential process that you begin

504
00:28:55,160 --> 00:28:57,400
Speaker 2: with denial, then you cycle through anger, then you do

505
00:28:57,440 --> 00:28:59,680
Speaker 2: a little bargaining, then you get depressed, but then you

506
00:29:00,120 --> 00:29:02,440
Speaker 2: accept everything and it's over and you can move on.

507
00:29:03,200 --> 00:29:06,000
Speaker 2: But as many of you know from personal experience or

508
00:29:06,080 --> 00:29:10,640
Speaker 2: therapeutic guidance, you don't necessarily experience all of these stages,

509
00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:14,400
Speaker 2: and you don't necessarily experience them in this order, and

510
00:29:14,520 --> 00:29:17,800
Speaker 2: you don't necessarily experience each one of them only once

511
00:29:18,040 --> 00:29:22,080
Speaker 2: it can. It's more like a roller coaster that maybe

512
00:29:22,120 --> 00:29:25,640
Speaker 2: never stops. So in grieving the passing of a loved

513
00:29:25,640 --> 00:29:28,640
Speaker 2: one or struggling with your own mortality, you might feel

514
00:29:28,720 --> 00:29:30,960
Speaker 2: anger one day, and then the next day you feel

515
00:29:31,000 --> 00:29:33,960
Speaker 2: acceptance on some level, but then you're angry the day

516
00:29:33,960 --> 00:29:36,360
Speaker 2: after that, and it's you know, that's that's normal, that

517
00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:40,600
Speaker 2: there's nothing there's nothing. You know again, you don't have

518
00:29:40,640 --> 00:29:43,080
Speaker 2: to go through these stages in order. We can feel

519
00:29:43,120 --> 00:29:45,560
Speaker 2: a lot of different ways about death, and therefore it

520
00:29:45,600 --> 00:29:48,680
Speaker 2: makes sense that we might need more than one death

521
00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:53,560
Speaker 2: personification to sort of understand everything, even if this understanding

522
00:29:53,680 --> 00:29:56,440
Speaker 2: is again taking place kind of in the background of

523
00:29:56,480 --> 00:29:59,880
Speaker 2: consciousness and not as a, you know, a focal point

524
00:30:00,040 --> 00:30:00,920
Speaker 2: of our contemplation.

525
00:30:01,400 --> 00:30:04,000
Speaker 3: That's a good point. I think this should have been

526
00:30:04,240 --> 00:30:06,200
Speaker 3: somewhat obvious, but I don't know if we ever said

527
00:30:06,240 --> 00:30:09,320
Speaker 3: this explicitly. I don't think any of the research on

528
00:30:09,640 --> 00:30:13,040
Speaker 3: on like the prevalence of the you know, the cast

529
00:30:13,120 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 3: Enbaum and Aisenberg for archetypes of death was suggesting that

530
00:30:17,880 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 3: individual people consistently think of the same image. I think

531
00:30:21,840 --> 00:30:24,800
Speaker 3: it was more like asking people at a particular time

532
00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:29,320
Speaker 3: to test the relative abundance of different types of death imagery.

533
00:30:29,520 --> 00:30:31,920
Speaker 3: So you can get some general ideas of how people

534
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:34,680
Speaker 3: often think about death by asking them, but you wouldn't

535
00:30:34,680 --> 00:30:36,960
Speaker 3: necessarily expect the same person to give you the same

536
00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:38,160
Speaker 3: answer a year later.

537
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:40,640
Speaker 2: Right, right, And we also mentioned how it may shift

538
00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:42,880
Speaker 2: if they're thinking about their own death versus the death

539
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:46,960
Speaker 2: of another, so exactly. Yeah, So there's there's no consistency there,

540
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:54,560
Speaker 2: so yeah. Via various gender stereotypes and gender roles in

541
00:30:54,600 --> 00:30:58,000
Speaker 2: a given culture, differently gender deaths may serve different purposes.

542
00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:01,120
Speaker 2: The masco and death might work or with views of

543
00:31:01,200 --> 00:31:05,600
Speaker 2: a hunter or a judge, or with an automaton or

544
00:31:05,680 --> 00:31:09,600
Speaker 2: the macabre, while the feminine might work better with the

545
00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:12,720
Speaker 2: idea of a lover or bride, the gentle comforter, or

546
00:31:12,760 --> 00:31:16,440
Speaker 2: the gay receiver. And none of this is firmly set.

547
00:31:16,960 --> 00:31:21,080
Speaker 2: Gutka also stresses that we might personify different types of

548
00:31:21,120 --> 00:31:24,720
Speaker 2: death based on scale. So again, he's looking at Western

549
00:31:24,760 --> 00:31:27,440
Speaker 2: traditions like medieval art and so forth. But you might

550
00:31:27,480 --> 00:31:33,440
Speaker 2: have individual deaths leaning more male in the personification of

551
00:31:33,480 --> 00:31:37,640
Speaker 2: a grim reaper figure, while there would be a tendency

552
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:40,200
Speaker 2: for it to be more often feminine if you're dealing

553
00:31:40,240 --> 00:31:42,840
Speaker 2: with mass deaths such as deaths from the plague.

554
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:46,440
Speaker 3: Interesting, that's almost the exact opposite of what I would expect.

555
00:31:46,920 --> 00:31:50,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it stirred something in my mind

556
00:31:50,840 --> 00:31:54,640
Speaker 2: and I was like, oh, a mass death and modern understanding,

557
00:31:54,680 --> 00:31:57,160
Speaker 2: that's kind of like a mega death, right, you know,

558
00:31:57,200 --> 00:31:59,200
Speaker 2: the idea of like if you have a million deaths

559
00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:03,479
Speaker 2: which hers during say a nuclear war, that would be

560
00:32:03,560 --> 00:32:06,480
Speaker 2: you would be talking about how many mega deaths resulted.

561
00:32:07,080 --> 00:32:10,120
Speaker 2: Mega death, of course, is also the name of a

562
00:32:10,320 --> 00:32:13,440
Speaker 2: popular metal band. It's been around for a long time,

563
00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:16,760
Speaker 2: and they have a mascot. I didn't know this mascot's name.

564
00:32:16,800 --> 00:32:20,960
Speaker 2: I've seen him before in imagery named vic Rattlehead, and

565
00:32:21,040 --> 00:32:25,960
Speaker 2: he is exclusively a male, skeletal reaper figure. This is

566
00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:27,800
Speaker 2: kind of a terrible example because I mean you can

567
00:32:27,840 --> 00:32:30,480
Speaker 2: also throw in well, okay, thrash metal is a very

568
00:32:30,520 --> 00:32:35,400
Speaker 2: masculine world, and you know this is maybe pointless and

569
00:32:35,440 --> 00:32:37,760
Speaker 2: senseless and there's no real meaning to draw from any

570
00:32:37,800 --> 00:32:40,240
Speaker 2: of it, but I can't help but bring it up.

571
00:32:40,600 --> 00:32:44,080
Speaker 3: I think, actually this is incredibly culturally apt to mention

572
00:32:44,200 --> 00:32:49,840
Speaker 3: because we really so far haven't discussed the irony inherent

573
00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:54,280
Speaker 3: in a lot of personifications of death, Like a huge

574
00:32:54,400 --> 00:32:59,959
Speaker 3: number of visual representations of death and personifications are suppose

575
00:33:00,080 --> 00:33:03,719
Speaker 3: used to be a little funny, often wikidly funny, or

576
00:33:04,160 --> 00:33:06,640
Speaker 3: there's something I don't know if I don't know if

577
00:33:06,680 --> 00:33:08,760
Speaker 3: you say it's supposed to be mainly funny, but there's

578
00:33:08,800 --> 00:33:13,400
Speaker 3: something other than just serious meaning implied by it. It's

579
00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:17,760
Speaker 3: a way of playing Like it's imagery that people are

580
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:22,680
Speaker 3: using because it feels dangerous in a way that's fun,

581
00:33:22,840 --> 00:33:25,200
Speaker 3: and they're doing it with a smart with a smirk.

582
00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:30,240
Speaker 3: So like, what is what's going on with death personification there?

583
00:33:30,320 --> 00:33:33,320
Speaker 3: When you know the embodiment in a in a character

584
00:33:33,840 --> 00:33:36,920
Speaker 3: allows you to play with that character and have fun

585
00:33:36,960 --> 00:33:37,240
Speaker 3: with it.

586
00:33:37,760 --> 00:33:40,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we mentioned Farside earlier. You know, the

587
00:33:40,640 --> 00:33:43,440
Speaker 2: usages like that for the Grim Reaper are fairly common,

588
00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:46,600
Speaker 2: you know, pops up in all sorts of cartoons and

589
00:33:46,720 --> 00:33:50,200
Speaker 2: children's media, and yeah, and in this specific example, Vic

590
00:33:50,320 --> 00:33:54,000
Speaker 2: Rattlehead is seemingly an ironic character. I'm not sure how

591
00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 2: great the comedy necessarily is, but you know, like one

592
00:33:58,120 --> 00:33:59,680
Speaker 2: of the images I pulled out, like I think in

593
00:33:59,720 --> 00:34:04,320
Speaker 2: general generally, there's this motif that he is blinded and

594
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:07,360
Speaker 2: deathened and also can't speak, so he can see no

595
00:34:07,440 --> 00:34:10,520
Speaker 2: evil here, no evil speak, no evil, and he's also

596
00:34:10,560 --> 00:34:13,759
Speaker 2: a skeleton. Maybe it's kind of a muff metaphor going

597
00:34:13,800 --> 00:34:16,400
Speaker 2: on here, but yeah, it does seem to be played

598
00:34:16,440 --> 00:34:18,920
Speaker 2: for sort of edgy whimsey.

599
00:34:19,040 --> 00:34:23,719
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. So I said in

600
00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:28,839
Speaker 3: a previous episode that you can sort the different death

601
00:34:28,920 --> 00:34:33,319
Speaker 3: archetypes depending on where they come from emotionally, and the

602
00:34:33,400 --> 00:34:36,440
Speaker 3: example I gave was that you're probably more likely to

603
00:34:36,440 --> 00:34:40,440
Speaker 3: think of the gentle comforter type figure as a coping mechanism.

604
00:34:40,480 --> 00:34:44,960
Speaker 3: If you're embodying death personifying death that way, it helps

605
00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:49,040
Speaker 3: you soothe your fears about death, whereas thinking of death

606
00:34:49,440 --> 00:34:52,879
Speaker 3: as the macabre figure is probably more a raw expression

607
00:34:53,000 --> 00:34:55,319
Speaker 3: of the fears rather than a way of soothing or

608
00:34:55,360 --> 00:34:58,160
Speaker 3: coping with them. But this is causing me to rethink

609
00:34:58,200 --> 00:35:02,480
Speaker 3: that I think maybe a lot of macabre representations of

610
00:35:02,560 --> 00:35:06,520
Speaker 3: death are coping mechanisms because they allow you to play

611
00:35:06,560 --> 00:35:09,080
Speaker 3: with the image and have fun with it, which is

612
00:35:09,120 --> 00:35:10,600
Speaker 3: a way of whistling through the graveyard.

613
00:35:10,840 --> 00:35:11,160
Speaker 2: It is.

614
00:35:11,600 --> 00:35:14,960
Speaker 3: It does actually help you cope. It says, I'm not

615
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:17,040
Speaker 3: afraid because I'm making a joke out of this.

616
00:35:17,920 --> 00:35:21,799
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And it is interesting how many depictions of

617
00:35:21,800 --> 00:35:27,240
Speaker 2: the Grim Reaper, especially when I've seen him in various films.

618
00:35:27,600 --> 00:35:29,879
Speaker 2: The depictions can kind of have a leg in both

619
00:35:31,200 --> 00:35:33,720
Speaker 2: in both buckets, you know, you can have a depiction

620
00:35:33,800 --> 00:35:35,600
Speaker 2: that is a little bit goofy but also a little

621
00:35:35,640 --> 00:35:40,360
Speaker 2: bit scary. Cinematic depictions of death from Pratchett's novels I

622
00:35:40,400 --> 00:35:42,480
Speaker 2: think line up with this. I'd say the same about

623
00:35:43,360 --> 00:35:47,560
Speaker 2: the musical Scrooge. I'd say the same about the work

624
00:35:47,600 --> 00:35:52,359
Speaker 2: of Terry Gilliam as well. Which which show which one

625
00:35:52,400 --> 00:35:53,360
Speaker 2: does see show.

626
00:35:53,239 --> 00:35:55,440
Speaker 3: Up in it is the Time Bandits.

627
00:35:56,120 --> 00:35:57,959
Speaker 2: He might death might show up in that, but also

628
00:35:58,480 --> 00:36:02,200
Speaker 2: Baron Munchausen. Yeah, yeah, death shows up in that. And

629
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:05,120
Speaker 2: while and part of that is like the puppetry, I

630
00:36:05,120 --> 00:36:07,799
Speaker 2: guess of the thing, like puppetry can also be at

631
00:36:07,840 --> 00:36:24,239
Speaker 2: once frightening and also humorous. Yeah, symbology is complex. Now

632
00:36:24,280 --> 00:36:28,160
Speaker 2: getting into another area with a lot of ins and outs. Here,

633
00:36:28,280 --> 00:36:31,720
Speaker 2: some very large concepts are tied up in death personifications

634
00:36:31,719 --> 00:36:35,040
Speaker 2: that to take on the gendered form of a mother

635
00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:39,640
Speaker 2: or a lover, with the mother personification generally taking on

636
00:36:39,719 --> 00:36:44,359
Speaker 2: an air of gentle comforter with with some caveats, while

637
00:36:44,360 --> 00:36:47,879
Speaker 2: the lover may be either gentle or or it might

638
00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:52,879
Speaker 2: be the gay deceiver. So Gutka, going back to his work,

639
00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:55,600
Speaker 2: he has a lot to say about the romantic period,

640
00:36:55,960 --> 00:36:59,120
Speaker 2: in which death is frequently cast as a dear friend.

641
00:36:59,239 --> 00:37:03,879
Speaker 2: We alluded to the earlier. A couple of examples from

642
00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:06,239
Speaker 2: this period. One of is from John Keats o to

643
00:37:06,280 --> 00:37:10,479
Speaker 2: a Nightingale. Famous example, he writes, I have been half

644
00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:14,000
Speaker 2: in love with easeful Death, called him soft names, and

645
00:37:14,080 --> 00:37:20,359
Speaker 2: many amused rhyme to take into the air my quiet breath. Yeah.

646
00:37:20,400 --> 00:37:25,040
Speaker 2: Another example was found in Shelley's poem Queen Mab which begins,

647
00:37:25,640 --> 00:37:28,880
Speaker 2: and I'm going to try and express the exclamation points

648
00:37:28,880 --> 00:37:35,560
Speaker 2: here begin to tears. How wonderful is death? Death and

649
00:37:35,640 --> 00:37:39,400
Speaker 2: his brother's sleep, one pale as yonder waning moon, with

650
00:37:39,560 --> 00:37:42,680
Speaker 2: lips of lurid blue, the other rosy as the morn.

651
00:37:42,760 --> 00:37:46,440
Speaker 2: When throned on ocean's wave. It blushes over the world

652
00:37:46,840 --> 00:37:52,440
Speaker 2: yet both so passing wonderful. Okay, calm down, Percy. You

653
00:37:52,480 --> 00:37:56,040
Speaker 2: know that's what Percy's all about. You do get the sense,

654
00:37:56,120 --> 00:38:00,880
Speaker 2: not just there, that he was really excited about death. Yeah,

655
00:38:00,920 --> 00:38:03,560
Speaker 2: and again you know, the closest between sleep and death.

656
00:38:03,560 --> 00:38:07,040
Speaker 2: This again goes way back between rest and eternal rest,

657
00:38:07,520 --> 00:38:09,399
Speaker 2: both in their own way or return to the well

658
00:38:09,440 --> 00:38:14,640
Speaker 2: of unbeing which came before us. As Edgar Herzog explores

659
00:38:14,680 --> 00:38:18,520
Speaker 2: in the book Psyche and Death, this is, you know, all,

660
00:38:18,680 --> 00:38:22,719
Speaker 2: one of the main openings that occurs when we give

661
00:38:22,920 --> 00:38:25,920
Speaker 2: the concept of death a human form, because you know,

662
00:38:26,000 --> 00:38:29,480
Speaker 2: more powerful than tool, weapon or clothing metaphors. The human

663
00:38:29,560 --> 00:38:33,880
Speaker 2: form allows the figure of death to replicate important, actual

664
00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:37,879
Speaker 2: human beings in our own lifespan. So it gives us

665
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:39,480
Speaker 2: a relational context.

666
00:38:39,480 --> 00:38:43,240
Speaker 3: As they say, that is interesting, and that also connects

667
00:38:43,280 --> 00:38:46,239
Speaker 3: to remember when we talked about the four archetypes, the

668
00:38:46,280 --> 00:38:49,840
Speaker 3: finding from the psychologists that people felt different levels of

669
00:38:49,880 --> 00:38:56,600
Speaker 3: emotional closeness to the characters. So like the macabre figure,

670
00:38:56,680 --> 00:38:59,840
Speaker 3: the monster and the comforter were both actually thought of

671
00:38:59,880 --> 00:39:03,359
Speaker 3: as close to the dying person, but in good and

672
00:39:03,400 --> 00:39:08,120
Speaker 3: bad ways or bad and good ways respectively. Yeah, whereas

673
00:39:08,120 --> 00:39:10,920
Speaker 3: you had the automaton figure, the one that is un

674
00:39:11,040 --> 00:39:13,719
Speaker 3: you know, sort of expressionless and unfeeling, and that's the

675
00:39:13,719 --> 00:39:16,800
Speaker 3: one that's thought of as emotionally distant. So I wonder

676
00:39:16,800 --> 00:39:20,440
Speaker 3: if maybe that one is less informed by relationship to

677
00:39:20,520 --> 00:39:23,200
Speaker 3: people you have known in your life. Maybe that that

678
00:39:23,320 --> 00:39:26,560
Speaker 3: is an expression in some ways of not knowing how

679
00:39:26,600 --> 00:39:29,960
Speaker 3: to fill in the personal details of the the embodied

680
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:33,640
Speaker 3: death you imagine. But yeah, yeah, I definitely think about like,

681
00:39:33,760 --> 00:39:36,600
Speaker 3: do you identify death with an enemy you have had,

682
00:39:36,680 --> 00:39:39,480
Speaker 3: or someone you're afraid of who means you harm, or

683
00:39:39,480 --> 00:39:40,640
Speaker 3: with someone you have loved.

684
00:39:41,280 --> 00:39:44,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, it comes back to again the realization that death

685
00:39:44,800 --> 00:39:48,799
Speaker 2: is too big of a concept for humans to really understand,

686
00:39:49,120 --> 00:39:52,719
Speaker 2: and we we didn't evolve to understand it. We did

687
00:39:52,760 --> 00:39:56,080
Speaker 2: evolve to be social animals with theory of mind to

688
00:39:56,239 --> 00:40:00,359
Speaker 2: understand people in our community, to under to have a

689
00:40:00,360 --> 00:40:03,320
Speaker 2: a theory of mind, a simulated model of the mindset

690
00:40:03,400 --> 00:40:09,280
Speaker 2: of someone we love, someone we fear, but someone And therefore,

691
00:40:09,480 --> 00:40:13,600
Speaker 2: if we take this sort of mold that pre exists,

692
00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:16,239
Speaker 2: like a social mold of an individual human being, and

693
00:40:16,280 --> 00:40:19,960
Speaker 2: we pour death into it, then we have some way

694
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:22,800
Speaker 2: to interact with it and make sense of it, ultimately

695
00:40:23,080 --> 00:40:26,560
Speaker 2: an incomplete way, but one a way that may best

696
00:40:26,640 --> 00:40:30,200
Speaker 2: fit our individual needs at a given time. Like I

697
00:40:30,200 --> 00:40:32,080
Speaker 2: don't know how to think about death, but I know

698
00:40:32,120 --> 00:40:33,560
Speaker 2: how to think about a friend, I know how to

699
00:40:33,600 --> 00:40:35,640
Speaker 2: think about a lover, or I know how to think

700
00:40:35,640 --> 00:40:38,920
Speaker 2: about a loving parent or an enemy. And if I

701
00:40:38,920 --> 00:40:41,279
Speaker 2: pour death into that mold, well then now I have

702
00:40:41,360 --> 00:40:43,440
Speaker 2: something to work with at least I can. You know,

703
00:40:43,480 --> 00:40:45,080
Speaker 2: It's like I can at least work out some of

704
00:40:45,080 --> 00:40:50,040
Speaker 2: these feelings via this context. Yeah, and so so. In

705
00:40:50,040 --> 00:40:53,440
Speaker 2: the book Hertzog you know gets into this. He points

706
00:40:53,480 --> 00:40:56,239
Speaker 2: out that of relationships you can have, some of the

707
00:40:56,280 --> 00:40:58,880
Speaker 2: most potent are going to be mother, father, and bride

708
00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:01,840
Speaker 2: or bridegroom. And naturally this sort of thing applies to

709
00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:06,600
Speaker 2: various forms of anthropomorphic personification and the generation of various

710
00:41:06,600 --> 00:41:10,880
Speaker 2: gods and even monotheistic gods, but he pays more attention

711
00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:15,440
Speaker 2: here to the mother and bride or bridegroom examples. He

712
00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:18,520
Speaker 2: does point out that like Odin could be considered kind

713
00:41:18,520 --> 00:41:22,520
Speaker 2: of a death father, but he links the death mother

714
00:41:22,640 --> 00:41:26,600
Speaker 2: not only to like womb to tomb dualities, but also

715
00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:30,120
Speaker 2: to Mother Earth, to the devouring ground, and he argues

716
00:41:30,160 --> 00:41:32,960
Speaker 2: that in this the death Mother can be quite frightening

717
00:41:33,719 --> 00:41:39,320
Speaker 2: and also numinous and mysterious and strange, but also ultimately affirming,

718
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:42,839
Speaker 2: robbing death of some of its more senseless attributes. Again

719
00:41:42,920 --> 00:41:45,920
Speaker 2: the gentle comforter. So that's an interesting thing to think

720
00:41:45,960 --> 00:41:48,040
Speaker 2: about too, Like the gentle comforter can also I guess,

721
00:41:48,040 --> 00:41:51,360
Speaker 2: be terrifying or mysterious as well. Like it's it doesn't

722
00:41:51,400 --> 00:41:53,399
Speaker 2: have to be completely purely this one thing.

723
00:41:53,719 --> 00:41:56,080
Speaker 3: Well, and that actually is there in the original research.

724
00:41:56,080 --> 00:41:58,279
Speaker 3: You remember there was that passage in Casten Belm where

725
00:41:58,239 --> 00:42:01,520
Speaker 3: he's talking about the He includes i think actually the

726
00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:05,799
Speaker 3: words of one of their survey respondents originally who was

727
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:10,239
Speaker 3: describing this comforter figure and says that you know, yeah,

728
00:42:10,320 --> 00:42:12,560
Speaker 3: they are there to soothe you. They're there to be

729
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:17,080
Speaker 3: kind and to help you. But also there's a mysteriousness

730
00:42:17,360 --> 00:42:20,960
Speaker 3: and a firmness. There's something about them that isn't going

731
00:42:21,040 --> 00:42:25,040
Speaker 3: to be persuaded. You know, it's unyielding, and it's working

732
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:27,920
Speaker 3: at purposes that are sort of beyond your understanding, and

733
00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:31,480
Speaker 3: yet it is kind, it is there to help. Very

734
00:42:31,520 --> 00:42:35,480
Speaker 3: interesting duality in fact, probably the way a lot of

735
00:42:35,560 --> 00:42:39,520
Speaker 3: especially very young children relate to their parents. When you're

736
00:42:39,640 --> 00:42:42,720
Speaker 3: very young, when you don't understand the reasons why you're

737
00:42:42,920 --> 00:42:45,640
Speaker 3: being told you can't do something that seems very important

738
00:42:45,640 --> 00:42:49,200
Speaker 3: to you. You might understand that your parents love you

739
00:42:49,239 --> 00:42:52,400
Speaker 3: and want to help you, but they have purposes beyond

740
00:42:52,400 --> 00:42:55,839
Speaker 3: your comprehension and they cannot be plied or persuaded.

741
00:42:56,200 --> 00:42:58,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I think that's definitely one of the

742
00:42:59,120 --> 00:43:02,360
Speaker 2: many things that factors into this particular idea, in this

743
00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:05,799
Speaker 2: particular symbol of death, you know, in addition, like the

744
00:43:05,840 --> 00:43:09,840
Speaker 2: mother who puts us to sleep or in this case death,

745
00:43:10,000 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 2: but with comfort security at the beginning of life and

746
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:15,600
Speaker 2: at its end, the need of a caretaker on both

747
00:43:15,719 --> 00:43:19,520
Speaker 2: ends of things, Andrew return to the source, be it

748
00:43:19,560 --> 00:43:21,920
Speaker 2: to the mother or to the earth, or just to

749
00:43:22,120 --> 00:43:27,120
Speaker 2: unbeing in general. Hertzog argues that death as bride or

750
00:43:27,160 --> 00:43:30,200
Speaker 2: bridegroom is closely linked to the idea of like the

751
00:43:30,200 --> 00:43:33,680
Speaker 2: death mother, the death bride is also an ancient motif,

752
00:43:33,719 --> 00:43:36,880
Speaker 2: and he makes an argument that Ishtar and the epic

753
00:43:36,920 --> 00:43:41,319
Speaker 2: of Gilgamesh is ultimately an example of this. The death

754
00:43:41,360 --> 00:43:46,319
Speaker 2: bride embodies the passion mystery and even longing wound up

755
00:43:46,360 --> 00:43:50,640
Speaker 2: in death as well as seduction, there is a union

756
00:43:50,719 --> 00:43:53,840
Speaker 2: between such a death figure and the dying. Death in

757
00:43:53,880 --> 00:43:56,680
Speaker 2: the Maiden is a popular Renaissance treatment that he mentions,

758
00:43:57,239 --> 00:44:01,120
Speaker 2: focusing on the death bridegroom luring away a mortal woman

759
00:44:01,280 --> 00:44:03,439
Speaker 2: to her death, but not you know, not killing her,

760
00:44:03,680 --> 00:44:06,200
Speaker 2: but luring her away. It is a matter of seduction.

761
00:44:07,719 --> 00:44:10,520
Speaker 2: We've already touched on gay decy of for motifs involving

762
00:44:10,560 --> 00:44:15,160
Speaker 2: death is an alluring but secretly monstrous female figure. But

763
00:44:15,239 --> 00:44:17,920
Speaker 2: the other side of that is also again the notion

764
00:44:18,040 --> 00:44:22,839
Speaker 2: that it's this thing that will claim us in a

765
00:44:22,920 --> 00:44:26,160
Speaker 2: loving or erotic matter, you know, envisioning death as the

766
00:44:26,320 --> 00:44:30,600
Speaker 2: ultimate intimate union between entities, between death and the dying,

767
00:44:31,080 --> 00:44:35,520
Speaker 2: and this leads to leads to or feeds into eroticisms

768
00:44:35,520 --> 00:44:38,560
Speaker 2: of the figure of death and euroticisms of death in general,

769
00:44:38,560 --> 00:44:40,759
Speaker 2: you know, perhaps playing into you know, if we're to

770
00:44:41,400 --> 00:44:45,320
Speaker 2: discuss Freud's death drive argument, you know, like it lines

771
00:44:45,400 --> 00:44:48,839
Speaker 2: up pretty well with all of that. So again they're

772
00:44:48,920 --> 00:44:52,240
Speaker 2: just there are many compelling examples, and they reveal different things.

773
00:44:52,320 --> 00:44:54,719
Speaker 2: And again I think that's largely the point. Death is

774
00:44:54,760 --> 00:44:57,960
Speaker 2: too big for us to understand. We're not hardwired to

775
00:44:58,040 --> 00:45:02,359
Speaker 2: understand it. We're hardwired to understand individuals or create an

776
00:45:02,440 --> 00:45:07,560
Speaker 2: understanding of individuals in our minds. And by imagining death

777
00:45:07,600 --> 00:45:11,360
Speaker 2: as a person, it gives us social animals something that

778
00:45:11,400 --> 00:45:13,919
Speaker 2: we can work with, something we can do well.

779
00:45:14,280 --> 00:45:17,279
Speaker 3: So we were remaining in today's episode to end up

780
00:45:17,320 --> 00:45:22,960
Speaker 3: talking about a very interesting feminine death personification, especially in

781
00:45:23,040 --> 00:45:26,520
Speaker 3: Latin American culture, is known as Santa Marte. But I

782
00:45:26,600 --> 00:45:29,160
Speaker 3: think we're out of time for today, so we don't

783
00:45:29,160 --> 00:45:30,719
Speaker 3: have time to do this. We're going to have to

784
00:45:30,760 --> 00:45:32,440
Speaker 3: move this to part four, aren't.

785
00:45:32,160 --> 00:45:35,680
Speaker 2: We, Yeah, I think so. But this will be great

786
00:45:35,680 --> 00:45:39,400
Speaker 2: because we'll get to discuss this particular example of a

787
00:45:39,440 --> 00:45:42,520
Speaker 2: feminine death figure and we can either come back to

788
00:45:43,280 --> 00:45:44,640
Speaker 2: maybe I'll come back to one of the ones I

789
00:45:44,719 --> 00:45:47,960
Speaker 2: mentioned more in passing in this episode and give it

790
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:51,160
Speaker 2: a little more treatment, or pick out something entirely new.

791
00:45:51,600 --> 00:45:54,719
Speaker 2: So in either event, we'll have much more to talk

792
00:45:54,719 --> 00:45:56,960
Speaker 2: about in the next episode of our Death series. Here

793
00:45:57,680 --> 00:46:00,440
Speaker 2: in the meantime, just a reminder to every one out

794
00:46:00,440 --> 00:46:02,560
Speaker 2: there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a

795
00:46:02,600 --> 00:46:06,640
Speaker 2: science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

796
00:46:06,920 --> 00:46:09,319
Speaker 2: We have a little short form episode on Wednesdays, and

797
00:46:09,360 --> 00:46:12,120
Speaker 2: then on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to

798
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:15,279
Speaker 2: just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.

799
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:19,280
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

800
00:46:19,600 --> 00:46:21,239
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

801
00:46:21,239 --> 00:46:23,720
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

802
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:25,960
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

803
00:46:26,080 --> 00:46:28,719
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

804
00:46:28,760 --> 00:46:37,520
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

805
00:46:37,640 --> 00:46:40,600
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

806
00:46:40,680 --> 00:46:43,439
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

807
00:46:43,600 --> 00:47:02,200
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

808
00:47:02,239 --> 00:47:03,839
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