Funeral Directing: A Dramaturgical Approach

Introduction

• Life can be viewed as a theater where individuals act out roles for an audience
• This concept is not new however, it has been revived by social psychology through symbolic interactionism as a tool for analyzing behavior
• Kenneth Burke emphasized that all investigation uses metaphor, portraying human social life through drama (dramaturgy)
• Understanding the relationships of the American funeral through the dramaturgical metaphor is the object of the study
• The study used the scientific method, including observations from 15 mortuaries in three cities
• Funeral director interviews and content analyses of "in-house" manuals and advertising were preformed
• The study focused on funeral services in mortuary chapels, excluding memorial services with cremation, and the funerals observed were open-casket

Symbolic Interaction: Funeral Directing as Performance

• Funeral directors are actors who stage a performance aiming to convey competence, sincerity, dignity, respect, and concern to the grieving family and friends
• Funeral directors must focus on performative aspects to impress the audience because of the one-shot nature of the funeral service and the impossibility of redoing it if errors take place
• Funeral directors want to make sure that the "show" is successful, and use Erving Goffman's phrase, "the expressions given off must be arranged to create favorable images and impressions (impression management)"
• A funeral director cannot increase the amount of deaths in a community and must be careful with advertisement, so they have two options
  • Gain a larger share of existing deaths
  • Increase the average cost of a funeral through "merchandizing up"
• A funeral home's "reputation" is considered its most marketable quality

Role-Distance: The Sacred and the Profane

• A funeral director's work is made more difficult by another aspect, the amount of social distance between the director, clients, death (the object of their work), and the public
• Funeral directors handle "objects" that are both sacred and profane, loved and loathed, as a result they separate body work from directive work to create distance
• Role-distance is achieved by dressing differently for embalming or hiring employees to handle the bodywork
• Emotional detachment is desirable
• Separation of identity from the embalming task is seen in the language and non-verbal conduct in the preparation room, this demonstrates role-distance

Backstage Regions: Preparation and Rehearsal

• The goal of a funeral director is for a successful funeral to be seen as a respectful, appropriate tribute by the grieving
• Backstage areas and activities are hidden from the audience for the performance
• Back regions are the space and enclosed activities hidden from the audience
• Back regions are important for performances, if back regions are seen, they can contradict the impressions created frontstage
• Preparations for funerals will undercut the impressions created frontstage because people seem to have a limited capacity for seeing ritual as ritual
• Equipment and props are stored backstage, behavior is private, and scenes are protected by territorial imperatives like doors, curtains, locks, and "employees only" signs
• The preparation room is spatially segregated from the funeral chapel, visitation rooms, viewing rooms, offices, and other public areas
• The physical and social boundaries separating the preparation room from other areas are essential to the ceremonial performance
• The corpse is prepared in the preparation room

The Language Used Backstage

• The body is handled in the preparation room in ways that would appear disrespectful or inhuman
• The "human identity" conception supports the funeral profession, and becomes the basic separation which the mortician must balance
• Embalming, restoration, and other manual labor procedures could be viewed by the general public as repulsive, a violation of dignity, even to the dead
• Funeral directors seclude the backstage and use less suggestive language to maintain a legitimate professional image removing images of it being like an "undertaker"
• Backstage regions are protected not only by the funeral director, but also by others
• An embalming room wants to keep the "magic" a secret
• There is language used in the funeral business that is considered backstage language
• Frontstage and backstage have different behaviors
• The body becomes an object with which to perform restorative art, shifting from a "dearly beloved" person within the frontstage areas
• References to bodies backstage use terms like "floaters", "Mr. Crispy", "fresh", "warm", or "cold," while public information refers to "restorative art"
• Backstage, embalmers joke, sing, discuss political issues, and use other rhetoric inconsistent with frontstage regions to establish this separation
• Frontstage references to burial containers are referred to backstage as coffins, stuffing boxes, tin cans, containers, stove pipes, or brand names
• Joking, singing, and backstage rhetoric is a role-distance behavior that serve to relax those who work backstage
• The preparation room is set up to give the impression of a sterile medical atmosphere and they more often refer to themselves and their behavior in medical terms
• The medical atmosphere and terminology, white surgical garb, white walls, and the operating table are part of the ongoing role-distance
• Morticians have elevated their skill to a high art, like make-up artists, the preparation room serves as setting for this cosmetology
• "Restorative art" makes the deceased look natural and "alive" in the process
• Funeral directors want the deceased to look natural, at peace, younger than before, or asleep because his art is being validated
• Funeral directors see it seem as "art-for-art's sake” as a vital element in "grief therapy," this is to rationalize open-casket funerals because they usually generate a larger expenditure of money
• Viewing the remains is the confrontation of the emotional fact that one is so anxious to deny

Frontstage Performances & The Show

• The change of titles from "undertaker" to “funeral director" shows the dramaturgical functions
• Funeral directors are a "director," controlling a dramatic production, supported by elaborate backstage preparations, and the family is made aware of the schedule
• Funeral directors should show dignity, concern, and confidence
• The staged performance has a cast of characters
  • A well respected director
  • A star, the deceased, whose life and attributes comprise the plot
  • A supporting cast of the bereaved (one of whom usually takes charge of managing details)
  • Supporters of the bereaved
  • Ministers
  • Musicians
  • Pallbearers
  • The audience of friends and acquaintances
• The bereaved also act as supporting actors and actresses because their behavior is judged by others
• Cast members must also be controlled for instance, the minister should be carefully managed
• Historically, the undertaker was supervised by the minister, however, the minister has been increasingly shunted to the background because of the professional funeral director

The Funeral Home as Theater and Stage

• Funeral homes are usually traditional
• They are usually decorated with flowers, manicured walkways, and meticulously decorated interiors
• Such appearances establish other meanings besides the usual ones of death and morbidity
• Funeral chapels are a model of theatrical perfection, arranged with ample entrances and exits, and served by back doors
• Props set the stage for the performance and the stage area is often neutral
• Funeral directors control the definitions that arise because mourners face a highly problematic, tense, and relatively undefined situation

Establishing the Mood

• An important feature of all human affairs that also goes into a funeral is mood
• Music helps to give a funeral the right mood
• Musical selections set the mood for serenity, beauty, respect, or whatever values are desired
• Volume, tone, and timing of the music provide cues when selected appropriately
• Music cues the audience in sequence
• Mood management of different factors helps the director control the situation.

Frontstage Language and the Denial of Death

• The frontstage aims to make the family accept the death that has occurred, but the language of the frontstage setting often says the opposite
• The metaphors used are associated with sleep, transition to other worlds, and eternal life, rather than death
• Death is treated as a minor nuisance
• The dead is said that “he or she is still with us."

Conclusion

• The dramaturgical metaphor is an alternative way to view the interactions and relationships in American funerals
• Ritual and ceremony is involved in death and dying and give respect, character, and substance to the living
• Funerals are dramas of death and living with death and the performances given must be “in character"
• The dramaturgical metaphor offers an interpretive frame to illuminate what is often obscured by those perspectives that center on the structural apparatus of the society in which death occurs