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Roxie
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Roxie
Post Number: 642
Registered: 06-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 - 08:05 am: | 
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Does anyone else come from a southern family?
And if so, does your family practice the funeral tradition of photographing the deceased as they lie in state? |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 4172
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 - 09:51 am: |
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That's a practice?
WOW!!! I didn't know you'd call it that.
I just thought that that was something strange foks do. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 1822
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 - 12:33 pm: |
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It is disgusting. Members of my family have photographed a corpse and displayed the photos where folks could see it coming in the house.
The whole idea of stuffing a corpse full of formaldehyde and baying and crying around it is barbaric in the extreme. |
Renata
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 678
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 - 12:39 pm: |
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I'm with you, Chris.
I'm from a southern family, and there's always the same 2 at every funeral screaming, yelling, etc......interestingly, these same 2 treat all of their family members like crap...and then act like they're really going to miss them.
I don't get the point of going to funerals at all. If you haven't seen me 20 years BEFORE I died and didn't even have my address/phone number, don't rush over to see me now.
'Funerals' should be limited to a wake for the close family/friends who actually cared enough to keep in touch with you during your life. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 3710
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 - 12:58 pm: |
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Funerals and their accompanying rituals are for the living, not the dead. These ceremonies bring closure. Everybody deals with death in a different way. To each his own. I understand that, just like weddings, funerals are now being videotaped. I'm impressed with Masonic funerals, and riveted by the gang rituals at the funerals of young murder victims. A few years ago, I took a picture of the newly-laid headstone of my sister with a polaroid camera and when it was developed there was a ray of light emanating from her engraved date of birth. This was comforting to me. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 4185
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 - 01:07 pm: |
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Yawl tripping.
Funerals are a very interesting sociological phenomenon. They're often, unintentionally for sure, amongst the FUNNIEST experiences one can have.
Well, I guess they wouldn't be such for whomever is being put in a pine box or a crematorium. |
Renata
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 681
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 - 01:21 pm: |
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Yeah, funerals are for the living. I guess I just wrote that based on my own feelings. If I haven't been wanting to see someone alive, I'm not going to want to see them dead. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 1643
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 - 01:41 pm: |
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Y'all ever notice how some people look better dead than they did alive? You be like, "damn! This nigga was ugly as shit! Now he all smooth and whatnot. How the fuck did that happen?".... That ever happen to y'all? |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 4187
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 - 01:43 pm: |
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Tonya,
They might look better to you when you hate'em and are glad those sonsofb*tches are dead. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 1644
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 - 01:45 pm: |
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That could be it too. |
Doberman23
Regular Poster
Username: Doberman23
Post Number: 48
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 - 01:47 pm: |
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this may be a little off the path, but if you watch the spanish channel they show people when their freshly dead, for example when left eye died in hundaris they showed her body flopping around on the strecther and when people where hopping from the nuildings during 911 they where showing them from the building until the people hit the deck. ok... back to your funeral stuff |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 3713
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 - 01:55 pm: |
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I am very morbid and am really fascinated with this type of stuff. I watch all of the shows dealing with forensic science on the A&E and Court TV crime documentaries. |
Doberman23
Veteran Poster
Username: Doberman23
Post Number: 51
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 - 01:58 pm: |
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i think everybody should be creamated (sp?)...that spanish channel also showed an aligator/crocidile with a body in it's mouth swimming down the street when hurricane katrina went through n.o. |
Babygirl
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Babygirl
Post Number: 244
Registered: 04-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 - 04:46 pm: |
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The husband has a family member who is notorious for photographing the dead and will then frame the images. She has them memorialized down the wall of her stairwell.
I remember viewing a collection of photographs by renowned black photographer James VanDerZee who was frequently hired to photograph dead folks. He'd do these "artistic" images where he would overlay images of the family or photos from when they were alive. My appreciation for his "art" was lost when I came upon an image of a father holding his dead toddler while the mother looked on from the background, her hand resting on the casket with an image of the child alive standing beside her. It was just too creepy. |
Roxie
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Roxie
Post Number: 644
Registered: 06-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 - 05:25 pm: |
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--My appreciation for his "art" was lost when I came upon an image of a father holding his dead toddler while the mother looked on from the background, her hand resting on the casket with an image of the child alive standing beside her. It was just too creepy."--
Baby girl,
I have that picture in a collection book too. You gotta view his "art" in context of the times he lived in. Photography was just beggining to be reckognized as an legitimate art and people were experimenting in subect matter.Even DEATH was treated very differently than it is now, considering the high mortality rates back then.People even held wakes (with the open casket) in their own living rooms.
Back then being photographed with your dead kid was not viewed as being so creepy as it is now. People ( both black and white) photographed their dead children all the time, Van Der Zee's not the only one. I guess for that couple being photographed with the child was THEIR way of preserving the memory of their lost child.
That's why Van DerZee's an artist, he never judged his clients. |
Roxie
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Roxie
Post Number: 645
Registered: 06-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 - 05:44 pm: |
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My family never hung them up on a wall but they always have photoraphed the corses in state. Last year My mother and I attended her uncle's wake. And as she stood out in he hallway she told me to take a camera and snap a few picures for my grandmother (who couldn't show up).
Lucky for me *I* never knew the guy or else that would have been a bit difficult. But when my grandmother goes , I'm sure to be the designated photographer.
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--"The whole idea of stuffing a corpse full of formaldehyde and baying and crying around it is barbaric in the extreme."--
Chris,
Do you realize you just refered to the practices of nearly every culture in the world that have been around since the beggining of humankind as "Barbaric"?
If something so basic as having a ceremony to acknowledge one's paasing is so barbaric what the hell are we supposed to do then ? Toss 'em out to the coroner like a broken toaster to the dumpster and go back to work? THAT would seem more barbaric. @_@
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Babygirl
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Babygirl
Post Number: 245
Registered: 04-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 - 09:16 pm: |
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Roxie, I actually love MOST of VanDerZee's work and I can appreciate how he translated that period on paper. I adore the vibrancy of his images and how regal people are presented. And I can even see the value in his "death" work but there was just something about that one image that cut through me. It was just too haunting.
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Aglae
Newbie Poster
Username: Aglae
Post Number: 7
Registered: 09-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 - 10:36 pm: |
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this is not an old custom. i call it one of those 'new jack' customs. I would say it started in the 70s or 80s. As a child I don't ever remember someone taking pictures of the deceased. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 3733
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, February 04, 2006 - 01:19 am: |
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This was, indeed, an old practice, dating back to the 1800s. It was not restricted to the South or to black people. I have seen pictures of dead babies laid out in their baptism gowns as well as adults that were taken waaaaay back when. James Vander Zee's career took off during the 1920s and he became a photographer of note during the Harlem Renaissance. |
Roxie
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Roxie
Post Number: 648
Registered: 06-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, February 04, 2006 - 12:27 pm: |
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"It was just too haunting."
I can understand that. Sometimes I can't help but want to cry knowing the child in that couple's arms is dead.
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Generally speaking:
All the pictures my family has are of older relatives, that is, all the relatives that have lived full lives and have achieved almost everything. It's kind of like honoring their legacy by showing how old they were able to get before their life ended.
HOWEVER, we never photgraphed a child or anyone under 50 yrs old. THAT would bring unwanted drama. ^^' |
Nels
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Nels
Post Number: 272
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, February 04, 2006 - 09:08 pm: |
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Cremation!
Ditto. |
Rustang
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Rustang
Post Number: 249
Registered: 04-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 06:12 pm: |
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Personally,I would prefer to have an Irish style wake when I die.Everybody is eating and drinking, well, mostly drinking, and generally having a good time.Laughing, singing stupid songs, couple of fistfights,etc, etc,..Clearly a better way of doing things.Come to think of it, I need to go and pre-pay Chris Hayden's plane ticket.I'm pretty sure that this would be an event he would not want to miss out on. |
Roxie
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Roxie
Post Number: 657
Registered: 06-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, February 06, 2006 - 08:12 am: |
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--Laughing, singing stupid songs, couple of fistfights,etc, etc,..Clearly a better way of doing things.--
What makes you think black people aren't doing the same thing? Funerals (in most cases)are for celebrating a life completed, not a life lost.
Why is everyone poo-pooing a clearly african funeral tradition and praising the frikin' IRISH?! Is this some after affect of the great migration? This is sad and pompous. |
Rustang
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Rustang
Post Number: 250
Registered: 04-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, February 06, 2006 - 08:51 am: |
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Everyone isn't 'poo-pooing a clearly african funeral tradition and praising the frikin' Irish', Roxie.As far as I can tell, I'm the only one.I've been to more than a couple of funerals and they could be described in many ways, but 'celebrating a lfe completed' is not one of them.One of the problems with traditions is that they don't allow a lot of flexibility for different types of situations.The leading cause of death among young brothers is other young brothers.That is not something that calls for celebration of any sort, since that was a life cut short, not completed.I was merely expressing a preference for one particular case.Mine.One old man that actually did manage to dodge the hand of grim death and live a long, full life until the day, hopefully not in immediate future, he just didn't wake up one morning.On that day I don't want a bunch of old women bawling and wailing over something that is merely the final step in the most natural progression there is.But that's just me.Death is about as personal as it gets.I think that we can allow a little bit of latitude for preference on something like that. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 3753
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, February 06, 2006 - 09:56 am: |
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I hear ya, Rustang. I've always had a secret desire to have a wax figure made of myself so that I could stage my own funeral, with the replica of me laid out in the casket, resting in peace. And then after a service wherein I would be praised to high heaven for being the sterling individual that I am, I would appear in the doorway of the chapel and walk down the aisle, shouting, "I'm baaaaaack", shocking the shit out of everybody who hadn't fainted. |
Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 848
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, February 06, 2006 - 04:09 pm: |
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Has anyone heard of the "home burial movement"? I saw a piece on it a while back (PBS?) Supposedly, in many places it is not expressly *against* the law to prepare your own dead, fashion your own burial materials, and bury them.
Don't know how I feel about that.
I have heard of people with terminal illnesses throwing their own memorial services prior to death. That I could get with--eulogize (spl?) me while I am still alive, thank you.
My maternal grandmother's funeral was probably the closest to the "celebration" you all were discussing. Probably because she was originally from New Orleans and her service was conducted in that style.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 3767
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, February 06, 2006 - 08:52 pm: |
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When I was a little girl, occasionally black folks in my community had wakes and funerals at home in their parlors. I guess that's how the phrase "funeral parlor" came into usage. The bereaved family would hang a floral wreath on their front door and neighbors would come by to pay their respects. I'm thinkin about being cremated and having my ashes buried in a flower bed so I can bloom every spring in my back yard. LOL. |
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