Thesis
How has science, the media and contemporary culture
influenced our perception of death and in turn how has this been reflected in
contemporary art?
Advancements
in science mean the human within western society seems to be moving
further away from nature and the natural bodily functions. It is then
no surprise that the one thing which still eludes science is the one
thing we fear most, death. Day by day we are further removed from death
as if removing ours selves from it will prevent our own eventual
demise, it of course will not. Care homes and hospitals seem to even
remove the ones that maybe close to death so as not to remind us.
So
for the everyday person a dead body is something that is alien and
becomes a point of morbid fascination for the unknown and something
that horror movies are made of. The divide between the everyday person
and death is something that can be seen to have created a general
feeling of anxiety, this seems to have brought about a rejection of our
own death, old age and all that this brings with it. With the constant
pressure of the media and advertising telling us that aging is
something to fear, with drastic consequences not just those that old
age has always brought with it but other more subtle dangers. Most of
these fears relate sex and the loss of sexual appeal that the
advertiser threaten us with. if we do not buy into their world.
Products like hair dye, teeth whitening treatments and anti aging cream
are all advertised in ways which make us fear our seemingly decaying
bodies.
The
message seems to be reaching us; plastic surgery is becoming more
popular with the use of treatments like botox becoming common place.
This seems to almost echo the thoughts of medieval times, in which
death was seen as a figure that had a taste for children and could be
easily fooled by disguising children as adults, accept now 'modern
death' has a taste for the old...
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