Funeral Home: Backstage Prep and Ritual

Backstage Regions: Preparation and Rehearsal

• A successful funeral is a sequence of actions by the funeral director and staff.
• The actions are seen by the grieving as a respectful tribute to the deceased.
• Extensive preparations are required backstage, hidden from the audience.
• A back region is a space or activities strategically hidden.
• It can be a place or the masking of information in an interpersonal situation.
• Back regions are necessary because preparations, if seen, may contradict the impressions fostered frontstage.
• People have a limited capacity for seeing ritual as ritual and preparations may undercut impressions.
• Those who work in the back regions may have difficulty seeing the frontstage performances in the same way again.
• Equipment and props are stored backstage.
• Behavior within the area is considered "private".
• Backstage scenes are protected by doors, curtains, locks, and "employees only" signs.

The Setting Backstage

• Backstage regions apply broadly to American funerals.
• The preparation room is spatially segregated from public areas like the chapel and offices.
• Social and physical boundaries separating the preparation room are essential 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 involves draining blood and refilling arteries with fluid.
• Chemicals soften, stretch, shrink, restore, color, and replace the flesh.
• These procedures would be likely to shock friends and family.
• Viewing the procedures would contradict the frontstage impression.
• The casketed body is never touched by mortuary personnel in front of family and friends.
• Handling of the naked body in the preparation room might appear disrespectful.
• Embalming and restoration might appear morbidly repulsive to the general public.
• Amenities typically accorded to individuals are violated when preparing a corpse.
• Funeral directors seclude the backstage to maintain their professional image.
• Language is used to shield what happens behind closed doors.
• Backstage regions are protected by the funeral director and by others.
• Most people voluntarily avoid uninvited areas.
• The audience actively participates in these distinctions.
• People seem to recognize that too much knowledge dilutes the performance's meaning.

The Language Used Backstage

• A backstage language exists in the funeral business.
• An example of frontstage language is a sign on the embalming room door which says "This preparation room becomes sacred when a family entrusts us with one of its most precious possessions. Keep faith with them by conducting yourself as though the family were present. The body is dear to them... Treat it reverently."
• Backstage behaviors differ, with the body seen as an object for restorative art.
• The deceased is referred to as Mr. Doe, during frontstage encounters with the bereaved family.
• Backstage conversations include references to bodies as "floaters," "Mr. Crispy," "fresh," "warm," or "cold."
• Restorative art is referred to as "pickling" or "curing a ham."
• "Bod" instead of "body", is used especially with younger female corpses.
• Joking, singing, political discussions, sexual remarks, racial slurs, complaints, profanity, and other rhetoric are used to distance the embalmer from their role.
• Frontstage references to burial containers as "casket," are referred backstage as "coffins, stuffing boxes, tin cans, containers, stove pipes".
• Expression of distance relaxes those working backstage.
• It's "just another job" to relax tension.
• Role-distance behavior includes singing, joking, and backstage rhetoric while preparing the body.
• The preparation room is constructed to appear as a sterile medical environment.
• The backstage crew refers to themselves as a "bod squad" humorously.
• They also refer to their behavior in medical rhetoric, borrowing legitimacy from the medical profession.
• Medical atmosphere and terminology are part of ongoing role-distance.
• White surgical garb, white walls, and the operating table help the practitioner to be seen as a quasi-medical professional.
• The preparation room is a setting for cosmetology, turning the corpse into the "star" of the show.
• Morticians have elevated their skill to a high art.
• "restorative art" is designed to make the deceased look natural and "alive."
• Cosmetics can cover wounds, bruises, disease, discoloration, and disfigurement.
• Funeral directors take pride in reconstructing those who had traumatic injuries.
• Successful "restorative art" results in an unblemished "star" for a final performance.
• Morticians are not supposed to appear "made up"; makeup is applied to convey "natural" impressions.
• Funeral directors take compliments when the deceased looked natural, at peace, younger, asleep, etc.
• Viewing the body is considered a vital element in "grief therapy".
• A set of rationales holds that viewing the body by the bereaved is a necessary step in the acceptance of death.
• Economic vocabulary of motives might also apply (open-casket funerals usually generate a larger expenditure of money because the interior designations of the casket become significant to the buyer).
• Instead of economic motives, the following rationale from a handbook on successful funeral practice is presented: Perhaps the most important function of the art of viewing the remains is the confrontation of the emotional fact that one is so anxious to deny. Seeing the dead body seems to break through the defenses more effectively and more completely than any other part of the funeral process.