Dramaturgy and Mortuary Chapel Funeral Services

Introduction

• Life is like to a theater, with social psychology using symbolic interaction to analyze behavior.
• Kenneth Burke's work is where the dramaturgical view is more precisely traced.
• All investigation uses metaphor, so human social life is viewed through the metaphor of drama (dramaturgy).
• The study uses said dramaturgical metaphor to understand the relationships of an American funeral.
• The study strictly adhered to the scientific method, with observations from fifteen mortuaries from three cities.
• Interviews were conducted with funeral directors.
• Content-analysis of manuals on funeral performance and advertising material was studied.
• Focus on funeral services in mortuary chapels (growing trend), techniques used are applicable to services held in churches of various denominations.
• Open-casket funerals were observed and memorial services where the deceased was cremated were not included.

Symbolic Interaction: The Performative Nature of Funeral Directing

• Funeral directors and their team perform in a way where grieving family and friends attribute competence, sincerity, dignity, respect, and concern to their actions.
• One-shot nature of the funeral service means the director must worry about performative aspects to impress favorably.
• Concern is whether the "show" comes off or falls flat while arranging expressions given off with favorable images and impressions.
• Funeral directors draw their living from a community's death rate, and cannot increase business by increasing the number of deaths.
• Choices to increase money are limited: getting more business or merchandising up for the average cost of funeral rises.
• Money stems from performative ability to stage meaningful dramas that leave a favorable impression and contribute to a marketable reputation.

Role-Distance: The Sacred and the Profane

• Performative necessities of work are made difficult by the social distance between the funeral director and audience and between death and the public.
• Funeral directors deal with sacred and profane "objects" that are loved and loathed.
• Funeral directors often attempt to separate body work from directive work, putting distance between themselves and is traditionally assigned role.
• This is done by dressing differently for embalming or hiring more employees to do the bodywork so they can concentrate on staging without being "contaminated".
• Emotional detachment is desirable, so funeral directors separate their identity from embalming bodies.
• The language and non-verbal conduct in the preparation room demonstrates role-distance that communicates detachment from the work.

Backstage Regions: Preparation and Rehearsal

• Successful funerals are a sequence of activities performed by the director and staff that is respectful and appropriate to the life and memory of the deceased.
• Requires preparations backstage, or behind the scenes that will be used for the performance.
• Back region or backstage is space and the enclosed activities hidden from the audience physically or by masking the information.
• Back regions are necessary because preparations, if seen, may contradict impressions.
• People have a limited capacity for seeing ritual as ritual, so the viewing of preparations may undercut impressions.
• In the backstage, equipment and props are stored and the behavior is "private" and protected: doors, curtains, locks, and "employees only" signs.

The Setting Backstage

• Backstage regions are applicable to the dramas of American funerals.
• The preparation room is spatially segregated from the funeral chapel, visitation rooms, viewing rooms, offices, and other regions the public frequents.
• Social and physical boundaries separate the preparation room from other parts of the home for ceremonial performances.
• The corpse is washed, shaved, sprayed with disinfectant, sliced, pierced, creamed, powdered, waxed, stitched, painted, manicured, dressed, and positioned in a casket.
• Embalming drains blood via the major arteries while refilling them through an injection point in the neck or armpit with fluid. The flesh is softened, stretched, shrunk, restored, colored, or replaced with other chemicals.
• These procedures shock "nonprofessionals" and would contradict impressions.
• If mourning the loved one is to appear in a deep and tranquil sleep, they will have to be kept away from where the corpse is drained, stuffed, and painted for its final performance.
• Casketed bodies are not touched in the presence of family/friends and they honor a two to three feet distance of the body.
• However, backstage is characterized by handling of the body in ways that would appear disrespectful and inhuman.
• "Human identity" supports the funeral profession and the separation between which the mortician must balance his act.
• Embalming, restoration, and procedures requiring manual labor may appear morbidly repulsive and a violation of dignity to the public.
• Amenities persons accord to each other in everyday life are violated by the attendants who prepare a corpse for the service.
• Directors must seclude the backstage by using language less suggestive of what transpires behind closed doors to maintain their image.
• The audience actively participates in the distinctions drawn, wanting to be put on by the show.

The Language Used Backstage

• Backstage language exists in the funeral business.
• Frontstage language is a sign on the embalming room stating it becomes sacred, to keep faith with the family, and to treat the body reverently.
• Morticians develop a different view of their activities and the body becomes an object upon which one performs restorative art.
• Backstage references are to "floaters", "Mr. Crispy", and warm and cold bodies.
• Backstage language: "pickling" or "curing a ham", bod instead of body."
• Joking, political issues, sexual remarks, racial slurs, the size of some bodies, and profanity are used to distance role he is performing.
• Frontstage references to burial containers such as casket, are referred backstage as coffins, stuffing boxes, tin cans, containers, stove pipes.
• Distance serves to relax those who work backstage "just another job."
• Role-distance can be noted in instances where the actor does "two things at once," like singing, joking, while preparing bodies.
• The preparation room establishes a sterile, medical atmosphere by using medical rhetoric to borrow credence and legitimacy from the medical doctor.
• The white surgical garb, white walls, and the operating table help the practitioner to see and present himself a quasi-medical professional rather than simply a handler of corpses.
• Cosmetics in the hands of a skilled mortician can cover a multitude of wounds, bruises, ravages of long-term disease and discoloration, and even major forms of disfigurement and make the deceased look alive.
• An unblemished star is born for a magnificent final performance.
• Funeral directors take as a compliment remarks art is being validated by the very audience at which it is directed.
• Viewing of the body by the bereaved is a necessary step in the acceptance of death.

Frontstage Performances & The Show

• The change of titles from "undertaker" to “funeral director" has been perhaps the largest single clue to the dramaturgical functions the industry now sees itself as performing.
• He is a "director" and the staged performance is supported by backstage preparations of the body, equipment, and props.
• The funeral director should show dignity, concern, and confidence...He should speak in a subdued voice and not snap his fingers or hiss to get attention.
• Must check floral pieces for placement, fallen petals, and water leakage.

Controlling the Situation: The Cast of Characters

• The funeral as a staged performance: a well respected director, the deceased, the bereaved supporters of the bereaved, ministers; musicians; and pallbearers; and, of course, the audience of friends and acquaintances.
• The bereaved are supporting actors and actresses, "on-stage" in that their behavior is reviewed by others.
• The bereaved who show too little emotion show too much are judged negatively.
• Mourners are aware of this, and may construct their performances and may be coached on how to act.
• Cast members must also be controlled: the minister and if not carefully managed, act in such a way as to construct a counter-reality that can cast doubt on the entire show.
• The minister may establish the idea that all this funeral business is really nonsense because the body is a shell and the "soul" has departed.
• Trade journals devote occasional space to giving helpful advice on how to control the cast.

The Funeral Home as Theater and Stage

• Funeral homes present themselves with traditional white columns, Colonial style, or even older structures.
• Decorated with flowers, the walkways are carefully landscaped and the interiors are decorated.
• Brightly colored drapes, curtains, and fixtures seem to breathe life; black hues are out.
• The funeral chapel is usually arranged with ample entrances and exits, and may be served by back doors, halls, tunnels, and passageways that lead from the preparation room without ever trespassing frontstage areas.
• Equipment and props such as flower holders, religious symbols, and decorative roping are used to set the stage for the performance.
• The basic stage area is neutral so that appropriate props can be used to establish symbols for the various religious types of funerals.
• The funeral director is in a position to control the kind of definitions that arise in the situation.
• Monitoring the funeral director's cues become a way of figuring out what the situation calls for.

Establishing the Mood

• A crucial feature of virtually all human affairs is mood.
• The single most effective way of establishing the right mood is the sensible use of music.
• The atmosphere of the funeral is created with counsel with the family, musical selections planned to set the mood for serenity, beauty, respect, or values that are desired.
• With the aid of a printed program, music cues the audience in sequence: be respectfully quiet; the service is beginning; the choir is about to sing; a prayer is forthcoming; a minister is about to speak; the eulogy is being delivered; it is time for the processional view of the deceased; the service is over-you may leave.
• Mood management, then, is a major means by which the director controls the situation.

Frontstage Language and the Denial of Death

• One of the objectives is acceptance of death by the family, the language of the frontstage as well as the social and physical setting of the funeral service itself tends to contradict claims.
• The metaphors used continue to be those of sleep, transition to other worlds, and eternal life, rather than death.
• There is little in the funeral to contradict such ideas: “Mr. Jones” rests in a “slumber room” words of songs Death is only a Dream," "Asleep in Jesus," "It is not Death to Die" but rather “he or she is still with us."

Conclusion

• The dramaturgical metaphor offers an alternative way of viewing funerals.
• Ritual in theatre is an assured way of communicating significations.
• Take care as much of it is of a hidden nature: performances be "in character."
• Dramaturgical metaphor offers an interpretive frame work that serves to illuminate what is often obscured by those perspectives.
• Dramas can be viewed as expressions of either psychological or social determinants.
• Each drama must be brought off on its own with all the attendant opportunities for error.