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Death is sometimes thought to be the ultimate source of religious inspiration
for humankind and it is always a topic I cover in my comparative religion
course. Oddly, death has been out of fashion in anthropology although
that is beginning to change as ethnographies on the topic appear. So too
with visual anthropology; two new videos develop themes of death and its
consequences for survivors in interesting ways.
Calaveras is a 1997 AAA award winning video about
contemporary Day of the Dead celebrations in San Francisco. Through the
losses of several Latino families, their grief and their efforts to literally
keep alive a relationship with the deceased are presented. The deaths,
from AIDS, a murder, old age, are remembered on the Day of the Dead when
spirits make their annual return and visit the altars set up by family
members for them. Each altar is unique and contains items used and liked
by the deceased. There are shoes, coffee cups, chocolate, liquor, favorite
foods, photographs, books, newspaper clippings, and of course religious
icons, candles, and the hundreds of little plastic and sugar skeletons
and grinning skulls (the calaveras) which are the key symbols of the event.
Three themes emerge in these family stories and each is useful as a point
for class discussion. Remembering and the presence of the dead is central
to this event. There is no "closure," as American pop-psychology would
have it, but rather an on-going relationship with the dead whose presence
is still felt. This ritual emphasis on continuity is an important point
because newer research on grief, particularly by social constructionists,
makes good use of themes of memory and tradition to develop new understandings
of grief and how it operates long after the funeral is over. A second
theme, the historical authenticity of the ritual and how it should be
experienced, is developed in an interesting way. One Latino participant
says that Day of the Dead ceremonies should be "inclusive." They belong
to everyone, he says, because everyone dies. But another has her doubts.
She argues that the ceremony is not about ethnicity but a tradition and
it would be fine for "others" (meaning whites and, one suspects, younger
Latinos with their own agendas) to participate if they troubled themselves
to learn something of what it is all about. It cannot really be "inclusive"
if there is no understanding and she objects to new themes and new issues
being injected into the ceremonies by those who don't have an educated
sensibility about the history of the event. That, she says, does not honor
anyone's dead. Her concern is dramatized when the camera shifts to a young
gay man who is white and who has prepared a different kind of altar for
the Day of the Dead, one that is quite abstract and not part of any particular
tradition. He and his friends have glued upright thousands of paper matches
on a large panel, one for each person who has died of AIDS in San Francisco,
and the panel will be ignited to honor their memory. As the matches burn,
this striking scene asks to wonder, and debate, how and why this might
be inclusive, authentic, or deserving of a place within Day of the Dead
ceremonials.
The third theme, very sensitively developed by the film maker, is the
ambiguity that always surrounds our relations with the dead. Moving beyond
the affirming tone of the earlier part of the film where the spirits are
pleasantly invited to join the living, two individuals talk about their
difficult relationship with their deceased parents and how that is reflected
in the choice of objects they provide for the welcoming altar. For them
the Day of the Dead is not a quaint and colorful musical event to "celebrate"
a life that was once among us. It is a time of painful and difficult reflection
on people who were important in their lives and who were also hard to
be with and hard to love. Maybe, the video suggests, that kind of rumination
is what rituals like the Day of the Dead are supposed to inspire. "Closure"
is not what grief is really about.
Professor James Green, University of Washington
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