Caleb Booker

My first time shooting video so be kind here…

Death is a hard fact of life to deal with under any circumstances. It’s not surprising, then, that a great deal of effort has been put toward death art and ritual. For those curious about that type of thing I highly recommend the book “Phantasmagoria” by Marina Warner. It’s a fantastic analysis of the various forms of self-expression and artifact preservation people the world over engage in to gain an understanding of death.

Of course, most of us have been to a funeral and, occasionally, witnessed death in the form of a corpse in an open casket. My first such experience was at my grandfather’s funeral. We packed into the small funeral parlor and my grandmother made polite, smiling conversation with guests while standing next to … well … a body. For the most part I just found it strange; my proper and conservative grandmother socializing next to something that, no matter how it was dressed up and made-up, was something you most certainly wouldn’t want hanging around your living room. The dichotomy drove home how powerful a healing experience the whole thing must be to a great many people.

I was recently sent a press release about “Our Lady of The Angels Church”. It’s a cathedral in Second Life, and they’ve recently announced full funeral services. The notice included an open invitation to the funeral of the father of Christopher Whippet (his SL name). It felt a little odd to me that they would be inviting press to a funeral, especially considering it didn’t seem like they were planing some kind of goth-tastic spectacular. It was just a straight-up “we gather to mourn the loss… press welcome”.

When I arrived at the sim I hesitated outside for awhile. I considered staying at a distance from the proceedings and taking pictures from afar, but I was spotted by the funeral director, Leah Corleone, and invited inside.

When I asked her if it was really alright, she told me that it was the bereaved’s idea to call members of the media and that he was putting aside time after the ceremony to talk to us. When I asked Christopher why he wanted attention drawn to his dad’s v-funeral, he said: “because i loved my dad so and want everyone to know what a son would do for his father he loved so much.”

I still felt a little funny about it but I decided to take him at his word. Whether or not you take Christopher’s intentions at face value, “Stanley W.” was a real person in the real world (as seen in the hospital and casket photos). These people had gathered here, in the virtual world, to support their friend. The ritual was being performed.

So in I went.

The elements were all here, but with that v-world twist to them. The nuns were knockouts with ruby-red lips, the priest was a barrel-chested stud, and there were members of the congregation that most certainly weren’t human. In Second Life you tend not to think twice about these things from day to day, but this was a ceremony about a real-world death and so I couldn’t help but take notice.

Otherwise the ceremony was pretty standard. It was a regular Roman Catholic Church approved latin mass, people said “Amen” at the appropriate times (well, typed it into chat), we gathered around the coffin with the 2D flowers on top and the priest anointed it. Friends said kind words. People hugged.

It went very smoothly, due in no small part to the funeral director’s efforts. Her real-world family are in the business, apparently, and she consulted with them heavily in preparation. It paid off.

Is this a sign of things to come? Will the grass next to “Our Lady of The Angels Church” soon become filled with graves and monuments to people who have passed on in the real world?

There’s a good possibility. People have been erecting memorials and having loose remembrance ceremonies in Second Life for a long time now, so this is the next logical step. The v-wedding industry is huge already, so why not v-funerals?

The thing is, something real came out of this as well. Christopher doesn’t leave his home much (long story), and most of his friends are online. If a funeral is how one gains closure, how can he do so when those who might support him are all miles away? Religious ceremonies are symbols of transition from an old way of life to a new one. If that’s the case, this funeral becomes no less legitimate by being held in a virtual world. It makes its mark in the hearts and minds of the participants as potently as it might have had it been held in the real world, carrying the same messages and helping those who need to move on.

Posted on January 13th, 2008 under art, new media, passion. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.