Death, Remembering and Entertainment

Eamonn pointed me to press release on a rather jarring new TV channel offering in Germany. Etos TV Mourning Channel is a 24/7 broadcast of video obituaries, short videos of the deceased as well as documentaries on cemeteries and on funeral practise. My first reaction was one of amazement – one that a broadcaster would propose such a channel and two that anyone could be expected to tune in. Although, not something I would expect to find myself watching, on reflection, there is much more to this story.

The presentation of the proposal is very respectful. The channel is for commemoration of lives, accomplishments and contributions. There is an apparent trend in Germany for anonymous burial and although the producers admit the obvious commercial motivation, they suggest that this channel can fulfill a real social need. There is an avoidance of even talking about death, clearly something that the funeral industry has had to combat in many cultures.

The idea to combat a taboo by turning it into spectacle seems rather teutonic to me. Rather a black and white binary approach to things. What I am reminded of is that there are some huge cultural issues surrounding death, passing and remembrance. There’s a strange negotiation between those attempting to quietly fade away and those that think it right and proper to ‘force’ passing into the public eye.

This is not an inexpensive service. Simple placement of a picture and text on the network is in the region of 2000 euro, with video presentation for a higher fee. Nonetheless, this is probably commensurate with the magnitude of fees surrounding the funereal panoply.

Nonetheless, this may well be a rather academic approach to read too much into this. Maybe this is merely a publicity ploy. But I return to one of my original questions: who would tune in and watch this? It’s one thing to want to read the obits to see if there are known names showing up, quite another to watch without the intention of making connections. Do people want to make connections with people outside of life? This is an interesting form of ‘entertainment.’ – but then there are stranger ones – the ambulance chasing cameramen of Japan leap to mind.

It will be intriguing to see how this channel fares.