Funeral Directing: A Symbolic Interaction Study

Introduction

• Life is similar to a theater, where individuals play roles for audiences, sometimes adhering to those roles and sometimes distancing themselves.
• This metaphor is used by symbolic interactionists to analyze behavior.
• Kenneth Burke suggests investigation uses metaphor, human social life is understood through drama.
• Funerals in America use the dramaturgical metaphor to understand relationships and interactions.
• The study observed fifteen mortuaries across three cities, interviewing funeral directors and analyzing manuals and advertising.
• The study focused on funeral services in mortuary chapels.
• The study excluded memorial services where the deceased were cremated, and only focused on open-casket funerals.

Symbolic Interaction: The Performative Nature of Funeral Directing

• Funeral directors act to ensure grieving family and friends see competence, sincerity, dignity, respect, and concern.
• Funeral directors focus on performance to positively impress the audience due to the service being unrepeatable.
• Funeral directors ensure impressions are favorable to avoid the "show" failing.
• Funeral directors must be careful in advertising, the goal is to get more of the business from deaths occurring or raise the average cost of a funeral.
• A funeral home's reputation is the most marketable quality because the money made depends on the performative ability to stage meaningful dramas for the audience.

Role-Distance: The Sacred and the Profane

• The necessity to perform makes the work difficult due to the social distance between funeral directors, clients, death, and the public.
• Funeral directors manage objects both sacred and profane, separating body work from directive tasks.
• Funeral directors achieve separation by dressing differently for embalming, or hiring employees for bodywork.
• Funeral directors and staff distance identity from embalming by using specific language and non-verbal conduct in the preparation room.

Backstage Regions: Preparation and Rehearsal

• Funeral directors and staff conduct a successful funeral as a respectful tribute seen by grieving individuals.
• It involves backstage preparations that are hidden from the audience, similar to restaurants keeping kitchen activities away from customers.
• Back regions include the space and activities hidden from the audience, which can be physical or interpersonal.
• The necessity of back regions prevents preparations from contradicting the impressions fostered frontstage.
• Backstage stores equipment, props, and private behavior and is protected from public view with doors, curtains and "employees only" signs.
• Backstage in the funeral home is spatially separated from public areas like the chapel, visitation rooms, viewing rooms, and offices.
• The preparation room is essential for the performances as a space for corpse washing, shaving, embalming, restoration, and dressing.
• During embalming, blood is drained and replaced with fluid, and chemicals are used to soften, stretch, shrink, restore, color, and replace the flesh.
• These procedures would shock nonprofessionals and contradict the frontstage impression of the deceased in "deep and tranquil sleep."
• Preparation includes handling the body in ways that may seem disrespectful, balancing the "human identity" conception.
• Embalming and restoration can appear morbid and undignified to the public, violating amenities given to the living.
• Funeral directors maintain a professional image by using less suggestive language about what happens behind closed doors.
• Backstage regions are protected by funeral directors and others, with most people voluntarily avoiding these areas.
• The audience chooses ignorance to avoid trespassing, managing their behavior to suggest they know nothing and want to keep it that way.

The Language Used Backstage

• A backstage language exists in the funeral business, contrasting the frontstage language presented to the public.
• Frontstage language is exemplified by a sign on the embalming room door emphasizing reverence.
• Morticians develop different behaviors backstage, treating the body as an object for restorative art.
• Backstage references to bodies use terms like "floaters," "Mr. Crispy," "fresh," or "cold."
• "Pickling" or "curing a ham" are terms for restorative art in the preparation room.
• Using "bod" for "body," especially with young female corpses, is common, combined with joking, political discussions, and profanity.
• Frontstage references to burial containers are replaced backstage with terms like coffins, stuffing boxes, tin cans, or stove pipes.
• Role-distance behavior relaxes the backstage workers and avoids anxiety and tension.
• The preparation room is made to seems like a sterile, medical setting.
• The backstage crew refers to themselves using medical rhetoric, borrowing legitimacy from the medical profession.
• Medical attire helps funeral directors to be seen as quasi-medical rather than just handlers of corpses.
• Morticians can restore major disfigurement, and pride exists in restorative art.
• Funeral directors see validation when remarks are that the deceased looked natural, at peace, younger, etc.
• Funeral directors justify restorative art as "grief therapy" and believe it is a necessary step in accepting death.
• Open-casket funerals can generate more money due to casket designation impacting purchase decisions.
• The viewing of remains confronts emotional facts.

Frontstage Performances & The Show

• The change from "undertaker" to "funeral director" reflects the industry's dramaturgical functions.
• The funeral director controls a dramatic production, directing and staging funerals with backstage support.
• Funeral director's demeanor should convey dignity, concern, and confidence, with subdued voice and movements.
• Funeral directors ensure floral tributes are in place before the family arrives.

Controlling the Situation: The Cast of Characters

• Funerals involve a director, a star (the deceased), a supporting cast (bereaved), supporters, ministers, musicians, pallbearers, and an audience.
• The bereaved are supporting actors, judged by how well they "held up."
• Mourners construct their performances, with directors sometimes coaching them.
• Ministers can challenge the funeral's reality, potentially ruining the show.
• Funeral directors manage ministers and have been pushed to the background as ministers may think rituals over bodies smacks if paganism etc...
• Trade journals offer advice on controlling defiant ministers.

The Funeral Home as Theater and Stage

• Funeral homes embody traditional or colonial styles, are decorated with flowers, and manicured to avoid a sense of death.
• Funeral chapels are perfect theatrical stages, with entrances, exits, back doors, and passageways.
• Equipment and props set the stage, which is neutral to accommodate various religious symbols.
• Funeral directors control the definitions arising during the funeral as mourners may have had little rehearsals, monitoring a director's cues assists with this

Establishing the Mood

• Mood is crucial to human affairs, and music is the most effective way to set the tone, with selections creating serenity, beauty, or respect.
• Music cues the audience through the service, with selection, volume, tone, and timing guiding the sequence of events and acts.
• Printed programs help the audience keep in sequence for cues like respectfully quiet, choir singing, prayers, the eulogy, processional view, etc.

Frontstage Language and the Denial of Death

• Although funerals should support family acceptance of death, the frontstage language and setting contradict acceptance and deny death.
• Funeral metaphors still use sleep, transition to other worlds, and eternal life, from religious traditions.
• Language does not outright discuss the concept of death

Conclusion

• The dramaturgical metaphor provides a different interpretation of American funerals.
• Ritual and ceremony in funerals ensure respect.
• Performances need to be "in character" and are affected by appearances.
• The dramaturgical metaphor illuminates perspectives on structural and psychological aspects.
• Dramas can be expressions of determinants and must be brought off with attendant opportunities.