<<<Back to page 1

It Is Done

Some (including other bloggers here) might say, death is a part of life that you must look at up close. Stare into the eyes of the dying to understand something about humanity itself. To me, though, that specific reality – the lights going out – is really only for the dead. We as survivors, as observers, can walk away and learn something. What are you actually learning by seeing the cold image, the beheading, the time of death? The face you look into in crime scene documents is rotting matter, not necessarily death and all that implies for the living. It feels hopeless. It is done.The only thing I take from it is fear.

Purely violent graphic images make me want to experience life less. That multiple studies have shown that adults (and children) who watch violent images can experience PTSD like symptoms makes me feel like I’m not being oversensitive. That fact also doesn’t necessarily mean seeing violence will lead to more violence, but a damage might already be done to the viewer in terms of higher anxiety, aggression, and fear.

Gruesome images grab an audience in the same way I imagine a rat in addiction experiments goes for the treat button. It’s an adrenaline or dopamine rush, an immediate reaction to a craving, not some higher knowledge. It’s that little voice that says “Look at it, it’s gross and nasty. C’mon watch it, I dare you.” You look, you get scared, you get your fix. And in the case of the murder scene photographs at the museum, I feel like a voyeur in the worst of ways, I am stripping the victim of their dignity and right to privacy because their abuser, the attacker, decided to photograph it, all for a quick fix.

Obviously, using my own moral compass, judgments, and things that I “let slide” are how I choose to participate in the viewing, listening or creating of violent material. For me then, the argument of why consume or create art about death, keeps coming back to how did it change me (or the world at large)? Did it enrage me to fight for social justice (something I find important)? Or did it only raise my cockles to fight or flee from an immediate predator?

Here is an example of a song that doesn’t get into the bloody details, in terms of imagery, but grips me in very violent way. Her words place you in the experience in a way that looking at pictures of a domestic murder scene wouldn’t.

Chapman’s a cappella voice is intimate and alone. She is singing from the perspective of the bystander, a neighbor who feels powerless to help the victim. It almost has the same effect as a graphic image, the pit in my stomach, the despair. When I heard “then a silence that chilled my soul” I wanted to scream and cry to the skies, but I also felt that a silence was being broken. Someone was singing about an all too common violence, and that if she can speak about it, so can others. I’m willing to bet a good percentage of people have wondered if the bumps and sounds they heard next door were domestic abuse. Perhaps this song made them move to action.

“It’s a Story That’s As Old and as Boring As Violence” – Cynthia Hopkins, “Cover Me With Your Darkness”

The scare, grit, and nasty details of murder ballads definitely intrigue me. I cannot deny a curiosity in the ugly; that I feel the dopamine treat-grabber. I want to ask about the details. Additionally, as a creator of songs or as a writer or as a performer, I feel the desire to push buttons, push boundaries, break convention, and scare people. That is only an initial goal, a jumping off point. As you sit with the material, you expand and discover what you want to say (at that moment anyway). The art of the song brings me hope, even if, as Dan Dutton explains to Pat in a previous post:

Scary stories are a tricky game these days.

The challenge for me in learning the murder ballads came in taking a real look at why I was drawn to sing them, and what they are really about. It’s one thing to let your tongue trip through the sequence of poetic rhymes describing a murder, another thing entirely to slow down and dream the images in depth until you feel that you really know them.

Don’t spit on me and tell me its raining! 

One ticket. Submitted as evidence. Photo by Becky Poole

I think my fiancé put it well: the Museum of Death’s only goal is to separate idiots from $15. I didn’t like the implication that I was an idiot, but I felt like one, so touché. I paid for what felt like a celebration of violence, not a reflection on death. The images themselves made me angry and fearful. Maybe if their promotional material didn’t suggest some sort of respect for death I wouldn’t have felt duped. In all fairness, I should’ve expected more what I was walking into. The website pretty accurately represents what it offers. I was just disappointed not to find something more, because I believe there is a way to talk about death in a creepy, yet artful and illuminating way.

As we left the museum, a man at the front said with a smirk, “How was it?” I wanted to jump across the desk, grab him around the neck and scream, “Are you f—ing kidding me?!” Instead I stuttered something like, ”It was nice…alright…thank you.”  Then I stumbled out to stare into space. My friends and I continued on our way to the next stop, the strip club up the street, and opened a whole new can of societal maggots.