A Funeralwise.com study counted dead bodies on television shows to measure the role of death in popular culture. The STARZ series Spartacus: Vengeance topped all shows with an average of 25 dead bodies per episode, followed by HBO’ Game of Thrones, with 14 dead bodies per episode. The 40 TV series analyzed averaged 132 dead bodies, in total, during a single week for an average of more than 3 dead bodies per episode.
The body count study was conceived by Funeralwise’s managing partner, Rick Paskin, when he noticed the large number of killings occurring weekly on a popular television crime show. Seeking to better understand the public’s acceptance of death as entertainment, he decided to commission the study. A network of “watchers” was assigned to count the number of dead bodies in 40 separate primetime programs on both broadcast and cable networks.
“We did not find a direct correlation between the body count and viewership, but these programs are definitely popular with the viewing audience,” Paskin said. “As a funeral resource, the role of death in modern society is an interesting subject to Funeralwise. We know how difficult it is to get people to proactively plan for their funeral. There is a clear disconnect between the acceptance of death in popular culture and the acceptance of it in reality.”
Key findings were:
- The deadliest show was the STARZ series Spartacus: Vengeance, with an average of 25 dead bodies per episode. HBO’s Game of Thrones was the next deadliest, with 14 dead bodies per episode.
- The deadliest broadcast network show was The CW’s Nikita, with 9 dead bodies per episode. The CBS series NCIS: Los Angeles was second deadliest, with an average of 6 dead bodies per episode.
- CBS was the deadliest network due to having 11 shows selected for the study, by far the most of any network. Five (5) CBS shows were among the top 10 deadliest.
- Deadliest shows for non-human creatures were The CW’s The Vampire Diaries, with 18 dead vampires per episode, and AMC’sThe Walking Dead, with 16 dead zombies per episode.
- The “safest” shows for humans and other creatures were ABC’s Revenge, TNT’s Leverage and USA’s White Collar, all of which had no dead bodies in the 8 episodes analyzed.
- Very few funerals were shown during the programs analyzed.
The body count study was conducted during the first 4 months of 2012 and included 8 recently aired episodes of each series selected for analysis. Funeralwise emphasizes that the study was not statistically based. The shows selected for the study were judged to have content that regularly included the presence of dead bodies. Accordingly, the number of shows in the study varied from network to network. A full report of the study results is available on the Funeralwise.com website at http://www.funeralwise.com/tv-body-count-study-results.
Funeralwise welcomes comments and thoughts on the role of death in popular culture and its impact on how people deal with death in real life. Comments can be posted on the Funeralwise Digital Dying blog at http://blogs.funeralwise.com/dying/2012/05/19/the-deathwashing-of-america-results-from-a-survey-on-tv-show-body-counts/ and the Funeralwise Facebook page at www.facebook.com/funeralwise.
Funeralwise.com offers free, do-it-yourself funeral planning via its website. Aiming to provide “Everything You Need to Know About Funerals,” the site also features extensive information on funeral customs, funeral etiquette and grief support.
The web site ShortList.com recently ran a post about films with funerals. They called it “Cinema’s Most Memorable Funerals.” It’s interesting, I use many different funeral films in my talks about funeral planning, and only one of them made this list.
You can see short YouTube videos from each film at ShortList.com. The films they list are:
To Die For
Wedding Crashers
Man on the Moon
Four Weddings and a Funeral (I’ve got this one)
The Royal Tenenbaums
The Dark Knight (a Batman film!)
Heathers
My Girl
I need to expand my funeral film library some more! What about Undertaking Betty and the Star Trek funeral there? Death at a Funeral? The Six Wives of Henry LeFay? Get Low?
This weekend, I’m screening Big Fish, which I know ends with a funeral that confirms the tall tales the father told throughout the film.
This video shows how eulogies at funerals can be both funny and touching. The eulogy and funeral provides a time and a place to say things in public that can help the family heal after their loss. The video was created by filmmaker Yasmin Ahmad (1958-2009).
Here’s a video about Yasmin Ahmad’s life and contributions to film making and reporting on social issues in Malaysia.
Why did she die so young? She suffered a stroke. Rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery to removed the blood clot, she died the next day from massive bleeding in the brain. She was 51 years old.
Filed under: Film and Video Reviews | Tags: burial, cremation, funeral planning
One of the biggest funeral planning problems people face is fear: of looking foolish or ignorant about cremation or burial, of being taken advantage of financially, or of causing or hastening a death just by talking about it.
There’s a great educational DVD that can help you maintain your dignity and gain consumer confidence called Making Sense of Final Arrangements and Funeral Costs.
One Woman’s Campaign
This DVD project by Kristen Lord, a funeral director intern and hospice volunteer, illustrates the simple steps it takes to make smart funeral planning choices and become an informed consumer of funeral services. She set out to help one family, and with the help of her husband Ken, created this DVD to help many more families.
The first question a funeral director may ask you is, “Do you know what kind of arrangements you’d like to make?” If you’ve never thought about it or made funeral arrangements before, it can quickly become an overwhelming adventure – and not a fun one, especially if you’ve got a dead body on your hands.
Collecting financial facts are surprisingly easy when you’ve been given the right questions to ask, and shown how to ask them. This 30-minute DVD gives you the tools you need to reduce stress at a time of grief, save money, and avoid family conflicts over arrangements.
Why Get Educated?
Hospice organizations and health care facilities do not endorse or refer business to funeral homes. If a loved one dies in a hospital or nursing home and you have not already made arrangements, you will most likely be given a phone book when you ask about what to do next.
Do you really want to make funeral planning telephone calls under duress with your loved one dead beside you? Of course not!
Kristen Lord takes viewers on a quick and easy journey that demystifies the death care industry. In this video, she teaches the basics about what you need to know before you call a funeral home, arming you with the knowledge to make an informed decision about burial or cremation.
You watch as she calls a funeral home and asks questions about arrangements for both a direct cremation and a graveside funeral. You also tag along as she visits a cemetery to make arrangements for a burial plot and learn about those associated costs as well. The DVD includes planning forms, a list of questions to ask, and other helpful information.
Tips & Tricks
Kristen offers these tips to gather information without feeling embarrassed or vulnerable:
- Comparison shop to become a better informed consumer
- Call at least three funeral homes and request a General Price List
- Access your local Funeral Consumers Alliance affiliate for more information
- Don’t wait for the death to occur before shopping around for funeral arrangements
- If you are nervous about making calls, ask family or a friend to call on your behalf
- Or, call yourself and act as if you are calling for a neighbor or other family member
- Expand your area of consideration – many funeral homes operate in a 30 to 50 mile radius without charging extra, and you may save hundreds, even thousands of dollars.
Making Sense of Final Arrangements and Funeral Costs is available for only $10, and that includes shipping and handling within the U.S. CLICK HERE to learn more and order your copy today!
If you love watching prime time TV shows on broadcast and cable, Funeralwise.com wants you for their “TV to Die For” project. Get paid to watch TV!
Funeralwise.com, everything you need to know about funerals, is launching a TV dead body count study. You heard me right. They’re going to count the dead bodies that appear on TV shows and then put out a list ranking TV shows by dead body count. We’re not talking about reality shows, just dramas like CSI, Law & Order, House, etc. So they’re not really dead, just pretending to be.
This Funeralwise.com study will examine the role of death in popular culture. The objective is to create a dialogue contrasting our acceptance of death in the abstract, such as in entertainment programs, vs. how we deal with the reality of our mortality, such as our willingness to make funeral plans in advance.
How the Study will be Conducted
For purposes of this study, Funeralwise has chosen to focus on television because of its popularity with all age groups. The study will determine the presence of death in TV shows by counting dead bodies appearing in the shows.
Forty television series have been selected for analysis. The study will be conducted in the first quarter of 2012 and will analyze the most recent eight original episodes of each series.
The television series selected for the study are those that regularly include portrayals of death in their story lines. This is a subjective selection by the organizers of the study and may not encompass every series that includes portrayals of death.
Funeralwise will retain the assistance of “watchers” to view the most recent eight episodes of each television series. If a series is not running original episodes during the first quarter of 2012, then the most recent eight episodes from 2011 will be included in the study.
Watchers will record the following for each episode viewed:
- Series Name
- Season # / Episode #
- Episode Name
- Dead Body Count
- Funeral Count
To ensure accuracy of the counts, each episode will be viewed by two watchers and the counts will be compared. When there is a discrepancy in the count, a third watcher will view the show and determine the correct count.
Interested in Participating in the Study?
Funeralwise is looking for “watchers” to help view the TV shows and record the body counts. Since some of the episodes have already aired, you’ll need access to the prior original episodes either online or through your television provider. They are paying $60 per TV series watched (8 episodes @ $7.50 per episode).
If you would like to participate in the study as a “watcher,” email tvbodycounts@funeralwise.com. Send your name, age and occupation, and indicate the TV series that you would like to watch from the list at http://www.funeralwise.com/tv-body-count-study.
Funeralwise needs your commitment to watch the most recent eight episodes of the series assigned to you. To participate, you must commit to watching all eight episodes of at least two TV series. They will assign a maximum of five series to a watcher.
Tell them how many series that you will commit to watching (two to five) and list them in order of preference. Since your preferred series may already be taken, you should list more than the number that you are committing to watch.
For more details about this exciting project, visit this page at the Funeralwise.com website: http://www.funeralwise.com/tv-body-count-study
You might also find this Washington Post story to be of interest: Killings in line of duty haunt police officers. Cops shooting bad guys are a mainstay of police television dramas. But in real life, that moment of confrontation is extraordinarily rare. When it does come, the emotional toll can last forever.
Filed under: Film and Video Reviews | Tags: estate planning, funeral planning
By Gail Rubin
The Six Wives of Henry Lefay (2009) is a comedic cautionary tale for those who don’t make funeral plans, or for those who make plans but get married way too many times. One of the tag lines is: He loves women – Lots of women.
Tim Allen plays Henry Lefay, a guy who really loves women
As a funny funeral film, it’s a great tool to start funeral planning conversations. It’s also a great way for estate planning attorneys to help their clients get serious about their wills, trusts and other estate planning issues.
Audio-video salesman Henry Lefay (Tim Allen) disappears while para-sailing in Mexico and is presumed dead. His daughter Barbie (Elisha Cuthbert) returns to her Upstate New York hometown for the funeral. Tensions mount into comedic explosions when Henry’s current wife, his five exes, and a mistress wage a fierce power struggle over the final arrangements.
Wife #1 is Kate (Andie MacDowell), Barbie’s mother. Ophelia (Jenna Elfman), Wife #2 and #4 (he married her twice), is an intensely passionate and often drunk woman who Henry continues to “date” on a regular basis. Wife #3, Veronica (Paz Vega), owns and operates half of Henry’s successful business. Wife #5, Autumn (Lindsay Sloane), who’s Barbie’s age, thinks she’s in charge and will inherit everything since she’s the current wife.
L to R - Daughter Barbie (Elisha Cuthbert), Wife #5 (Lindsay Sloane), Wife #1 (Angie MacDowell), Grandma (Barbara Barrie), and Wife #3 (Paz Vega)
None of them knows there was yet another wife before Kate, and the mistress Henry was with in Mexico expects to become wife #7. Things really get crazy at the funeral home visitations after the body is returned to the U.S.
The disagreements fly: Should the casket be open or closed? What cemetery is he supposed to be buried in? And what about cremation?
Wives #2 through #5 each have handwritten letters from Henry with different funeral arrangements. Veronica has side-by-side plots for her and Henry in Pleasant Meadows cemetery. Autumn has side-by-side plots for her and Henry in Shady Glen cemetery. And Ophelia has a letter saying he wants to be cremated and his ashes scattered in the ocean off a catamaran near the Bahamas.
Ophelia, Wife #2 and #4 (Jenna Elfman) mourns over Henry's casket
This being a comedy, there are several surprise twists and a happy ending. It’s not a deep film by any means. No spoiler alerts, you’ll just have to see the movie.
Most folks probably don’t have a complicated love life like Henry Lefay’s. Still, the film raises important questions that all families need to answer before someone dies.
The Six Wives of Henry Lefay provides a light-hearted lesson in the serious business of funeral planning, wills, trusts and estate planning. It can open the door to discussions of funeral plans, inheritance, business succession, trusts, and pre-nup agreements.
A few points to ponder (and act upon):
- When changing spouses, update the details of any funeral plans or advance directives in place.
- Review and update all wills, advance directives, trusts, and other important papers whenever there’s a change in marital status and any additions to (or subtractions from) the family.
- A personal letter of instruction that lays out your wishes is very helpful for your loved ones – just don’t make different ones for different spouses like Henry Lefay did.
The Six Wives of Henry Lefay can be rented on DVD through Netflix and purchased (as available) from Amazon.com. It is rated PG-13 for sexual content, nudity and some language.
Gail Rubin is the author of the award-winning book, A Good Goodbye: Funeral Planning for Those Who Don’t Plan to Die (http://AGoodGoodbye.com), and The Family Plot Blog, http://TheFamilyPlot.wordpress.com. She’s “knocking them dead” with her Funny Films to Start Serious Conversations talks.
Filed under: Film and Video Reviews | Tags: Funeral Films, funeral planning, funerals
I’m starting a series of periodic articles about movies, mostly comedies, that I call “funeral films.” Theses films have elements related to funerals that can be instructive and helpful for starting a conversation about funeral planning. This first film, The Loved One, is all about the funeral industry.
Funeral Films: The Loved One
By Gail Rubin
The Loved One satirizes the funeral business, including pet funerals, as well as the movie industry and the military-industrial complex. It debuted in 1965, two years after Jessica Mitford’s exposé book The American Way of Death rocked the funeral industry. Despite its black-and-white vintage, The Loved One does show funeral trends that have continued to this day.
Critics at the time skewered the movie, although others have come to regard it as a very funny comedy. Its tag line is “The motion picture with something to offend everyone.” It’s not terribly offensive by twenty-first century standards, however, the story gets rather confusing toward the end and most of the characters are unlikeable.
Robert Morse (R) as Dennis Barlow and Anjanette Comer as Aimee Thanatogenous
The exception is Sir Francis Hinsley (John Gielgud) who hangs himself because he’s summarily laid off after 31 years of working for a Hollywood studio. He becomes “The Loved One” for whom nephew Dennis Barlow (played by a young Robert Morse) sets out to arrange a funeral.
British ex-pat Sir Ambrose Ambercrombie (Robert Morley) directs Barlow to sell his uncle’s house to pay for a sufficiently impressive funeral.
At the Whispering Glades mortuary and cemetery, Barlow encounters discrimination against blacks and Jews, faces a huge array of choices to make in caskets, interment options and burial clothing (gleefully presented by Liberace), and gets a tour of the Whispering Glades cemetery grounds (Forest Lawn gets its close-up).
Barlow, an unemployed “poet” from England, is attracted to Aimee Thanatogenous (Anjanette Comer), a young lady who does the make-up on the corpses at Whispering Glades. Once Uncle Francis is dispatched with a high level of pomp, Barlow pursues Thanatogenous, who is also pursued by co-worker Mr. Joyboy (Rod Steiger), an embalmer. He brings Miss Thanatogenous home to have dinner with him and his obese mother in a bizarre food orgy.
Milton Berle and Margaret Leighton as a distraught pet parent
Things just get weirder as The Loved One progresses.
Barlow goes to work for a pet cemetery and cremation service. On his first call, he encounters a highly distraught dog owner (Margaret Leighton) and her husband (Milton Berle) who can’t wait to get rid of the carcass and go out to a dinner party.
(Spoiler Alert! Skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to know the ending.)
Miss Thanatogenous commits suicide by self-embalming. Air Force officers have a wild party in the Whispering Glades casket room. A rocket launch is supposed to carry the remains of a war hero into space, and Barlow manages to switch bodies and launches Miss Thanatogenous instead.
Terry Southern, known for satirical outrageous fiction, wrote the screenplay based on the Evelyn Waugh novel. Southern’s other screenplay credits include Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Easy Rider, Barbarella, and The Magic Christian.
These elements in The Loved One endure and provide lessons for today’s funeral consumer:
- Weddings and funerals are similar. The Whispering Glades chapel and minister do double duty. There’s a quick-change scene where a newly married couple is hustled out and the black crepe drops from the ceiling for Uncle Francis’ funeral. Some funeral homes and cemeteries offer their facilities for both life cycle events. Whether the event is a wedding or a funeral, plan ahead if you want to reduce stress and save money.
- There is always a mind-boggling array of choices to make. While casket rooms are disappearing from funeral homes, the array of caskets from which to choose, and sources to get them, have only proliferated. Shop around before someone dies to make an informed decision without pressure.
- Funerals are expensive. Barlow has to resort to selling his uncle’s Hollywood home to pay for a traditional funeral. How will your household manage to pay for a funeral with costs that can range from $8,000 to $20,000?
- Pets are part of the family and their loss is keenly felt. People love their pets and often experience intense grief when they die. The pet cemetery and cremation operation in The Loved One showed less-than-respectful treatment of dead animals. As with people funerals, shop around before you need such services to ensure you work with an ethical provider.
The Loved One can be rented on DVD from Netflix and can be purchased (as available) on Amazon.com. This film is not rated.
Gail Rubin, “The Doyenne of Death,” is author of the award-winning book, A Good Goodbye: Funeral Planning for Those Who Don’t Plan to Die. She speaks to groups using clips from funny films to illustrate funeral planning issues and help start serious conversations. Her website is http://AGoodGoodbye.com.
Liberace as a gleeful casket salesman
Consider the Conversation: a documentary on a taboo subject presents an insightful look at the American struggle with communication about and preparation for end-of-life issues. This film provides a warm way to open the door to those conversations, with interviews featuring leaders in hospice care, religious leaders, medical professionals, and people who faced the ends of their lives on their own terms.
The documentary opens with “man on the street” comments by a wide range of men and women, young and old. The question must have been, “Where would you rather die, at home or in a hospital?” Every single person said they’d want to die in comfortable surroundings, preferably at home with loved ones. They don’t want to die in a hospital or nursing home surrounded by strangers.
And yet, how many of us have a conversation about what we would want at the end-of-life? It’s a hard conversation to start. Consider the Conversation provides a gentle, intriguing way to enter that conversation. This is not a film about death, but about living life to its fullest up to the very end.
It opens with a short history of death – a high infant mortality rate and adults died young — an average age of 48. Most died at home surrounded by family. Now families are scattered, people live into their 80s or 90s with increasing medical issues, and the hospital has become the place to die. Yet kids, and even patients, are protected from the reality of death.
Talking about death and dying doesn’t cause death. “There’s this thought that if we do talk about it, we’re going to somehow jinx the powers in the heavens and we’re going to bring it about sooner,” said Rev. Dale Susan Edmonds with Talk-Early-Talk-Often.com.
Throughout Consider the Conversation, old home movies are interspersed between the interviews, adding a beautiful shade of nostalgia to the visual aspect of the documentary. Besides all the great commentary by experts, the stories told by those facing end-of-life provide deeply compelling reasons to start talking.
Pete Kaldhusdal, a computer programmer with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, spoke about how throughout our whole life, we always know what’s next and look forward to it – going through grammar school, junior high, high school, college, and on into adulthood.
Pete Kaldhusdal
“But you always know what’s next because you can see everyone else that’s ahead of you. You can see the people that have done this before you,” Kaldhusdal said. “So then suddenly someone tells you have terminal cancer… There is a what’s next, but it’s not a guaranteed what’s next.”
“Suddenly none of those things are working and then you’re sitting by yourself in the what’s next chair, and you’re saying, well, I don’t know what’s next now. I have no idea what’s going to happen to me. If what’s next ends tomorrow, where am I going to be?”
Ira Byock, MD, a leading proponent of hospice and palliative care commented, “On the one hand, we have people who want to die with their boots and their lipstick on, and on the other hand, we have people who accuse those of us who work in ICUs and in hospitals and in hospice and palliative care of somehow promoting a culture of death, because we allow people to die gently, not forcing them to have CPR or feeding tubes or undergo dialysis before they die.”
Ira Byok, MD
“And I would submit that the only thing that connects those two very opposite, if you will, poles of passionately held belief is a distrust of the healthcare system and the doctors and nurses who work in it. People are worried about having their lives under-valued or being somehow caught up in a medical-industrial complex that isn’t attentive to their personal needs. “
Martin Welsh, MD, a 55-year old retired doctor who had ALS, spoke about working with his patients on end-of-life issues and preparing for what he himself will face. He has made it very clear that he wants no therapy that will prolong his life and suffering when he can no longer eat, drink or breathe for himself.
Martin Welsh, third from L with golf club
“As much as I have stayed focused on what I am still able to do, it has become harder to ignore the things I am losing,” the narrator spoke Welsh’s written words. “Today I find myself facing the kinds of quality of life issues I discussed innumerable times with my patients.”
“The fundamental question is always this: At what point is the quality of life no longer worth the emotional and physical costs of maintaining it? I am not afraid of dying or death – that is a wonderfully comforting thing for me right now. I have seen so many good deaths in my time as a physician that I know that this passage can be peaceful, spiritual, and even comforting for those left behind. I hope for such a death.”
Welsh suggested a way of knowing when one is ready. He suggests the List of 100 Things – a listing of every day activities that one does, from getting out of bed and walking to the bathroom, answering the phone, playing golf, brushing teeth, writing and mailing a letter, hugging a child, and so many more. Taking away one, or two or seven or 23, life is still worth living.
When you’ve got to the point you’ve lost 90 things and bad things are added, life is still worth living, but you’re getting tired. When it gets to the point that the burdens of living outweighs the joys of being alive, this would be the stage when he as a doctor would assure his patients and their families that they had fought the good fight and it was okay to accept moving to the next phase.
He worries about keeping people alive with feeding tubes and medical technology beyond any quality of life. “I like to know where a road leads before I set out on a journey. Right now, one path I could take leads to a place I don’t want to go,” Welsh said.
“I am determined not to start down that path, even if others think I am being premature in my decision. In short, I may well be ready to die before my family and friends are ready to say goodbye. But they know that as I face my diminishing list of 100 things that make life worth living, the choice of quality over quantity has to be mine to make.”
Consider the Conversation was produced by Mike Bernhagen, a long-time educator on hospice care, and Terry Kalhusdal, a State Teacher of the Year and filmmaker. Motivated by their personal experiences with loss, they joined forces to create this inspirational documentary on a difficult subject. For links to resources, a discussion guide, and other articles regarding end-of-life care, visit www.ConsidertheConversation.org.
Watch this very moving documentary and have a conversation today.
