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Desensitisation towards Skulls in fashion 

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Desensitisation towards Skulls in fashion 

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The changing role of fashion within death can be seen in ancient burials. Fashion, through aspects of grave goods and burial apparel was essentially used as a means of equipping the dead for the afterlife, serving as a reminder of a persons deeds or character. Whereas in contemporary culture death is ‘constant memento-mori’; by flirting with darker elements of life and mortality. However, ignoring death is equally as dangerous as allowing it to consume oneself. Death release via fashion has a beauty to it.

Carol Evans (2003) looks at 1990’s fashion and refers to it as ‘heroin chic’. Photographers produced landscapes peopled by wasted models. She looks at the darker side of fashion through photography paralleled a prevalence for real life disaster imagery in modern media.

Kearl (2015) argues that the repeated exposure to the skull symbol has resulted in society becoming desensitised towards an image which historically represented death. Fashion designers have used the image and this has contributed to the towards the acceptance of skulls in modern culture.

Subcultures created who ‘idolise’ death for example, goths. Infatuation with death, vampires and satan.

The role of fashion is changing with an example of the ‘Monster high doll’ they are aimed and addressed towards the younger generation and their interests. There are links towards the horror franchises such as Twilight and other death and ghoul related literature.

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Dead famous and dead sexy: Popular culture, forensics, and the rise of the corpseJacque Lynn Foltyn PhD 

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Dead famous and dead sexy: Popular culture, forensics, and the rise of the corpseJacque Lynn Foltyn PhD 

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The changing use of death imagery in fashion.
"instead of making the dead look beautiful, they now make the beautiful look dead." (Jacque Lynn Foltyn, 2008.) "Fashion magazines featue striking eroticized tableaux of 'cadavers' modelling clothing in what I term 'corpse chic.' (Foltyn, 2008.) Fashion has changed, it is more acceptable to wear corpse chic now. in the olden days fashion was more strict and colour of clothing symbolised different things. only really wore black for funerals and widows. Now there is a big business in the corpse chic fashion is an ever expanding business.

Mourning is a natural response to loss. In the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century, in England and France, the bereaved was expected to follow a complex set of rules, particularly among the upper classes, with women more bound to adhere to these customs than men. Such customs involved wearing heavy, concealing, black costume and the use of black crepe veils. Special black caps and bonnets were worn with these ensembles. Widows were expected to wear these clothes up to four years after their loss to show their grief. Jewelry often made of dark black jet or the hair of the deceased was used. To remove the costume earlier was thought disrespectful to the deceased. Formal mourning culminated during the reign of Queen Victoria.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/OM.57.1.c

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Notes on Stuart jewellery by Andrew Sharp (1923)
Shows how extravagant and graceful jewellery used to be to commemorate the dead, but now death has become materialised and we have become immune to its meaning.

THE DEAD STILL AMONG US: VICTORIAN SECULAR RELICS, HAIR JEWELRY, AND DEATH CULTURE Lutz (2011)

Explains how Victorian jewellery often contained the hair of loved ones as an extension of the body and to provide continued existence of the loved one. Talks of how now we would rather not be physically touched by death.

Jewellery Transition From Death to Life (2015)
Shows how people used articles from the dead such as lockers of hair and a combination of different stones such as amethysts, which had some sort of significance to the family were used and distributed around the family after a loved one passed, and were used to express their mourning

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The repeated exposure to skulls in fashion and popular cult

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Funerals: The end of the narratives of the dead, the continuing and reaffirming of the narratives of the living.

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Funerals: The end of the narratives of the dead, the continuing and reaffirming of the narratives of the living.

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Oestigaard and Goldhahn, argue that death is more important for the living than it is for the dead. When a person dies, his or her former social relations and alliances come to an end and must be reestablished from a societal point of view.
We therefore argue that whilst funerals are traditionally viewed as exclusively the end of the narrative of the deceased, it is in fact an important social occasion in which new narratives begin and are continued by the living.

Oestigaard, T. and Goldhahn, J. (2006). From the Dead to the Living: Death as Transactions and Re‐negotiations. Norwegian Archaeological Review, 39(1), pp.27-48.

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Argument: Has the online presence of death memorials replaced the need for Victorian death photos?

Cited: Doss, E. (2010) Death, art and memory in the public sphere: The visual and material culture of grief in contemporary America. Journal of Mortality, Routledge.

Are we more comfortable speaking about death, or does our lack of contact with the dead leave us searching for superficial comforts so we don’t have to think about the actual death? Are we so comfortable with the dead that we have a spectacle— or are we so uncomfortable with the actual death that we distract ourselves with a spectacle? “On the one hand, such attention to the visual and performative dimensions of mourning suggests new understandings of death in the public sphere. On the other, a superficial focus on psychic closure—on healing and surviving—skirts the causal, historical dimensions of these visibly public deaths” (p. 71).

We like to publicly show our symbolic sorrow or respect for the dead, even if we do not personally care, or even know the reason in which they died.

“While an aesthetic of naming is evident—with the chairs featuring the names of those who died—it is largely anaesthetic because the historical and political context of why these deaths occurred has been effaced” (p. 78).

Gibbs, Meese, Arnold & Carter (2015) #funerals and Instagram: Death, social media & platform vernacular.

—in contemporary cultures, death is addressed in online environments with recent popularity in online memorials and virtual cemeteries

—online memorials provide social support for those who are grieving through networking

—the deceased appear to living as still participating as social actors, possibly showing forms of denial and discomfort with death

—the dead are moved away from the living/society as they are not themselves, but are repositioned back into everyday life with social media memorialization, as to not disturb/upset those who miss them

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Funerals are a performance that have to be perfect as there are no second chances.

Brissett, D. and Edgley, C. (2005). Life as theater. Transaction Publishers.

- Funeral directors and their teams are seen as 'actors' and 'crew' who ensure that they stage a performance to show dignity and respect for the family at loss.
- Backstage preparation (embalming) to ensure the body looks nice for it's 'final performance'.

Ceri Watkins (2005) Representations of Space, Spatial Practices and Spaces
of Representation: An Application of Lefebvre’s Spatial Triad, Culture and Organization, 11:3,
209-220
- Representation of space- dominant space in society
- Spacial practices- production and reproduction of locations and spacial sets
- Spaces of Representations - spaces of lived experiences lived through images and symbols

Durkin, K., 2003. Death, dying and the dead in popular culture. Handbook of death and dying, 2, pp.43-49.
- Popular Culture
- Obsessive fascination with death and death-related phenomena.
- According to the National Institute of Mental Health, by the time the average American reaches age 16, he or she has seen 18,000 murders on television.
- Dramatise death through the whole the process.

Karoline Gritzner (2010)  Eroticism and Death in Theatre and Performance

- Catharsis in theatre harnesses dangerous emotions, tragedy has always gives a glimpse of the unknowable and unrepresentable world of human desire, passion, love, violence, pain and death.

- Kantor (1976) = Theatre of death= theatre of impossible presence in which space and time are haunted by ghosts and memories and the human figure often modelled on, replaced by wax figures- suspended in-between life and death

- It is possible to express life in art only through the absence of life through an appeal to death through appearances, emptiness and a lack of message

- THEATRE IS THE SPACE which actors and spectators perform their ritual of transformation… ‘as if they were to embark on a dangerous expedition’

-Theatre= transformation and the last transformation is death… dying… theatre is not the presence of the living actor or the living spectator but the person who has the potential to die

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Changing use of death imagery in fashion:

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Changing use of death imagery in fashion:

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Victorian ideas - Mourning dresses a status symbol - outfits became plainer. The death industry influenced jewelry in the form of lockets etc. and also influenced literature heavily.
"Death becomes her: On the progressive potential of Victorian mourning" (Mitchell 2013).

Sugar skulls - a popular element of 20th century fashion. Originating from the 'Day of The Dead', a 16th century celebration of the death which came from Ancient Aztecs. The celebration sees mourning as 'disrespectful' - the dead are still members of society. The skulls were originally called Calaveras - tombstones made to mock the living - 'sarcastic tombstones.'

Nowadays, the day of the dead and death in general has been adopted as a fashion trend. Fast fashion puts death imagery (skulls etc.) on items of clothing and is less associated with death.

www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/

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"Instead of making the dead look beautiful, they now make the beautiful look dead"- Corpse Chic (Jacque Lynn Foltyn, 2008).
Celebrations like 'Day of the Dead' have symbols such as the Calavera is more of a fashion icon rather than celebrating passed loved ones.

Vasalou, A., Khaled, R., Gooch, D. and Benton, L., 2014, October. Problematizing cultural appropriation. In Proceedings of the first ACM SIGCHI annual symposium on Computer-human interaction in play (pp. 267-276). ACM.
-uses day of the dead as an example of cultural appropriation
-Calavera skulls used as a means of uniqueness when it actually symbolises the celebration of loved ones.

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The move from Memento-Mori in Victorian Era to 'Corpse-Chic' in modern day fashion.

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The move from Memento-Mori in Victorian Era to 'Corpse-Chic' in modern day fashion.

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The contrast of looking alive in Victorian death photography and looking dead in the modern day fashion industry.

'Corpse Chic: Dead models and living corpses in fashion photography' - Foltyn, 2011
- Models being styled in a death like pose
- "Making the beautiful look dead for aesthetic enjoyment to sell fashion in mainstream venues has other cultural meanings"

'Corpses, Popular Culture and Forensic Science' - Penfold-Mounce, 2016
- Representing death and corpses in popular culture forms creates a morbid space in which to engage with wider issues and understandings of death and life. Although it would appear that society remains uncomfortable with viewing the death and the dead it is the popular culture context and also the type of death and corpse that is portrayed that truly challenges social norms of mortality.

'Beauty to die for:  Skull style and corpse chic in fashion design' -
Foltyn, 2016
-In the contemporary world of style, death is worn as a prop in the performance of fashion.

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Death photojournalism: how has it changed over time?

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Death photojournalism: how has it changed over time?

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Does documentary photography still matter?  Kim newton 2006
- The way in which we receive news has altered over the years, making looking at death imagery more accessible to people. Despite the censorship of media companies.
Sensationalizing death? Graphic disaster images in the tabloid and broadsheet press
By Fokker Hanusch
Tabloids are more likely to sensationalize death imagery.
War on Instagram: Framing conflict photojournalism with mobile photography apps
By Meryl Alper
Civilians are at risk of mimicking the soldiers behaviour as a consequence of soxlciql media posts
Photojournalism
By David Finkelstein
Photojournalism is driven by the idea of being different from the rest.

“The Great War photographs: constructing myths of history and photojournalism” by Michael Griffin
- during ww1 soldiers documented their experiences, before this the concept of photojournalism was largely unknown (p.123)
- as a result after this period picture magazines became popular
- however, photography of actual battle field events was forbidden which shows how the censoring of death has existed since the beginning of photojournalism.