Caitlin, Angeline, and the rest of the Order of the Good Death are pleased to present the second installment of the Ecstasy of Decay video series: The American Corpse.
This second video is about the steady march of the dead human body out of American society. It has happened slowly. So slowly we hardly noticed our corpses are missing. When capitalism tiptoed in, families realized that there were people (i.e. “funeral professionals”) who could magically take away the literally and emotionally messy task of taking care of their dead bodies.
In its first incarnation, this second video was a sort of random, rambling voiceover with funeral pictures from specific time periods. Unfortunately, it was reading more “amateur Ken Burns death parody” than “next level deathinfo.” So Angeline, the filmmaker, had the fantastic idea of creating a series of fauxtographs (filmed pictures) representing different time periods. Thus, the video as you currently see it here was born.
Let’s just say it involved a lot of time and free labor from people who were willing to have leeches glued to their face and nutella & cold cream smeared on them and terrifying BoPeep wigs put a’top their heads. Thanks also to Carl Sondrol who re-recorded my narration on fancy sound equipment.