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Speaking ill of the dead

17:59 / 13.04.05

A spin-off from the 'Pope' thread, this, but also a common feature of discussions online and in Real Life, following the death of any major cultural figure: there seems to be an unspoken expectation that, in the immediate aftermath, it is unfair, rude and even offensive to criticise the deceased.

Aside from John Paul II, the most memorable recent example, for me, is Ronald Reagan's death. Inevitably, there seemed to be US/rest of the world differences in terms of looking back over the man's life - but even so, I was slightly unprepared for the relative savagery in response to any suggestion that Reagan had been anything less than a Shining Beacon of Global Benevolence. Of course, I was going through a major Cross+Flame phase at the time...

It seems to me that one element of this is an abrupt (if selective) identification with the deceased's mortality. While we're prepared to applaud anything which might conceivably be seen as positive, negative deeds or character traits are generally ascribed to their being "just a man" or "a human being, with human flaws" - or glossed over altogether.

I'm wondering about the origins of 'don't speak ill of the dead': I assume that, in times past, it stemmed from the idea that death might be 'contagious', or that the recently-deceased might somehow be present and watchful, ready to wreak bloody revenge on anyone not being nice about them.

Can anyone shed light on how the concept arose?

18:56 / 13.04.05

I wonder if the modern practice of eulogizing the dead (not just in the specific sense of the funeral oration, but also the general sense of public eulogy) is a modern form of ritual weeping. My thinking on this is based on Van Gennep's model for rites of passage, especially on the idea that such rituals often serve to reinforce the status quo within a society. Everyone repeats "Reagan/Pope was a great man" and some kind of renewal of social order takes place. Particularly in the case of the Pope, whose death creates a wake of chaos and fear ("who will take over?" "is it the End of Days?"), this ritual eulogizing is useful in a certain sense, or at any rate understandable - it's reassuring, it maintains consensus, it blots out the chaos. Look to the death of Arafat for a similar phenomenon - who knew so many in the West would suddenly laud the man? But as a message to the people, "He was a great and revolutionary leader" has a stabilizing effect and sublimates worry over what's going to happen to Middle East peace.

Tryphena Absent

19:41 / 13.04.05

I think it's a recognition, not of the dead, but respect for the living who cared about the dead and the reminder of mortality to those people. It's just rude to insult someone who was close to the people around you when they've died. It shows a lack of caring and when a cultural figurehead dies you have to process that, even though it's not as personal, people are still attached to the things that these figures represent. This is heightened by the fact that our death rituals are very repressed, we don't even wear black armbands anymore so there's no outward sign of grief. It's all utterly vocal.

20:15 / 13.04.05

It's just rude to insult someone who was close to the people around you when they've died.

I can see that it's unpleasant to be rude about someone in the company of those who knew them well - but in the situations I'm talking about, I'd take issue with this on two grounds: firstly, I'm not sure that acknowledging someone's misdeeds - when those misdeeds were considerable - is necessarily "rude"; secondly, the phrase "was close to" needs qualification here. Post-Diana, the concept seems to have widened to encompass rather one-sided feelings of closeness toward individuals one may not even have met - and I'd argue that this pseudo-closeness is less deserving of respect.

I think that, in the case of very powerful cultural figures, the 'don't speak ill of the dead' tradition is countered - or, at least, partially offset - by the ways in which the deceased related to the 'criticiser'. For example, one would expect survivors of the carpet-bombing of Cambodia not to 'speak ill' of Nixon, on his death?

Tryphena Absent

22:33 / 13.04.05

Ganesh, when George V died the whole of London donned black armbands. The fact that you apply the notion of mass-grief to a 'Post Diana' world surprises me slightly because people have always displayed some recognition of mortality when respected figures and particularly their Heads of State die (especially while in a position of power). I'm not sure it's a pseudo-closeness, I think that the population expected Diana to become their Queen and felt she was more representative of them then the actual reigning monarch. To me the type of death ritual that we engage in when public figures die is very much to do with belonging to a nation. If anything Diana's funeral harked back to days when you couldn't watch or listen to these things through the media.

And people do feel close to their leaders, not to foreign leaders but their own because they represent the collective that you belong to. I don't think it's pseudo-closeness at all... I think the death of a Head of State means that a significant part of the country goes into genuine mourning because part of their culture has died.

Tryphena Absent

22:46 / 13.04.05

I mean, think about this, Kennedy, George V, Diana... all died young, were perceived as a Head of State and were mourned very publicly by a high proportion of people.

Queen Victoria's death was mourned for three months. When Abraham Lincoln was killed all of the schools were shut.

in the case of very powerful cultural figures, the 'don't speak ill of the dead' tradition is countered - or, at least, partially offset - by the ways in which the deceased related to the 'criticiser'.

That I think is a necessary truth but in Italy you don't expect overt criticism of the Pope just after he's died and you don't expect it in a national newspaper in a country with a large population of Catholics because that criticism would ignore the function of the Catholic church. And even then what do you have to gain criticising the man immediately when you can do it two weeks later? You can respect the living and criticise later because in criticising the head of a church you are criticising the members of that church.

And then, in addition, there's sensitive and insensitive criticism. If you're going to say 'he deserved what he got' about Reagan (or the Pope for that matter) than there's a big chance that relations of alzheimers sufferers/victims are going to get upset with you because they don't think anyone deserves it. (I'm aware that you haven't been doing that, I'm just pointing it out.)

23:00 / 13.04.05

I think you have a point regarding the lack of 'official' nationwide mourning, but suggest that, where British monarchs are concerned, this seems to go hand-in-hand with a decrease in automatic respect - possibly as a result of the gradual erosion of an established class structure following World War I. Within this context, not 'speaking ill' of dead monarchs seems to have persisted beyond other funerary or class-based traditions.

I actually attributed pseudo-closeness to the post-Diana world, rather than overt grieving itself - following Diana's death, it was almost eerie to hear so many people describing her as a "friend" or even "my best friend", despite never having met her - and I think this pseudo-closeness (surely a consequence of the rise of mass media, particularly visual mass media) may, in part, have replaced the more formal traditions of mourning, where certain public figures are concerned.

23:05 / 13.04.05

So... I suppose the distinction between Dead Public Figure (with very obvious failings and therefore deserving, as I see it, of criticism) and Dead Close Friend (probably unreasonable to criticise them directly to their nearest and dearest) is, in the case of Diana, blurred. If one is surrounded by people who view her as a "friend", then there's probably more pressure to eulogise (or, at least, to airbrush out her failings) than if a less celebritytastic figure had died.

09:23 / 14.04.05

what do you have to gain criticising the man immediately when you can do it two weeks later?

There is everything to gain and to lose in the race for the public image. After a fortnight of bombarding the world with propaganda about how great the pope was, then the image gets fixed forever and is extremely difficult to dislodge. Publishing an article a month later about all the negative stuff would just bounce off the armoured PR shell and people would just tell you to stop harping on about a subject that's already closed.

Furthermore, in the case of most people the positives outweigh the negatives, so bringing up the minor negatives is frowned upon since they are assumed to be the exceptions, which is fair enough. However, in the case of JPII (and many monarchs), his negatives are pretty freaking huge, authorising the death and misery of millions, so bringing that up is hardly a minor issue; it is central to who he is and what he represents.

14:25 / 14.04.05

Paradoxically, once a person dies they are beyond defamation, so strictly speaking you can speak *more* ill of the dead than you could when they were living.

14:28 / 14.04.05

I think that might also be a (small) element in the feeling. In a debating sense, you're attacking someone who is unable to counter. Kicking a man while he's down.

Not cricket.

18:14 / 14.04.05

I thought that it had something to do with upsetting their spirit and making them feel agrieved as a newly dead person enough to haunt you for a long while. But this is a vague memory from a children's ghost book which had a section on poltergiests, zombies etc. Also raises the question, what do the ghosts that haunt you do once you are dead?

19:27 / 14.04.05

Kick your arse behind the bike sheds of the Afterlife.

10:10 / 15.04.05

I think it's a recognition, not of the dead, but respect for the living who cared about the dead and the reminder of mortality to those people. It's just rude to insult someone who was close to the people around you when they've died.

Sure, amongst our individual social communities criticising the dead is understandably frowned upon. But when it comes the death of public figures is there a confusion going on? Are people simply applying the same rules and forgetting/neglecting the important differences between the death of a president and, say, Joe Bloggs. The fact that public figures, alive or dead, are part of the larger social fabric and as such *must* be criticised.

Obviously I don't think this tells the whole story.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:48 / 15.04.05

For me, the whole Diana thing was a frightening example of how "not speaking ill of the dead" can get a bit out of hand (I'm sure anyone who was in London at the time will know what I mean- in the shop where I was working, on the day of the funeral we were told that if a single customer made a single complaint about inappropriate Diana-related comments made by a member of staff, that member of staff would be fired immediately. A bit weird for a comic shop).

It also seems to give rise to a fair bit of hypocrisy- I can understand the eulogising of the Pope by people who thought he was alright while he was alive, but from people who didn't it rings a bit false- and probably diminishes the eulogies of those who DID, by devaluing the entire currency.

12:10 / 15.04.05

*mumblemumbleritualsreinforcestatusquomumble*

13:45 / 15.04.05

As far as not upsetting people goes, I'm happy to exercise tact around the friends and family of the deceased, but I wont be a hypocrite about it if I didn't get on with the deceased. You don't have to say anything nasty, but you don't have to say anything nice either.

The question with public figures is do you consider someone who never met the public figure but who holds them in great respect a friend to be treated with equal tact as, say, the deceased's best friend? Personally, I don't think so. If you can't hear dissent about your role models without experiencing emotional hurt, I think you're too invested in them.

A member of my family died a few years back. This person had negatively influenced many members of the family and discussing and acknowledging that hurt at the funeral and wake really helped heal a lot of sore hearts. I would hope that the people at my funeral will feel able to talk about all of my life, not just the good bits.

I just hate the fake sympathy and platitudes crowd. No matter how you dress it up as consideration, you're lying.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

13:53 / 15.04.05

Perhaps also an element of dying placing someone very much in 'the past' and, for a Western society that is largely based around the concept that things were better 'in the olden days' it becomes 'they were better than what we have now because they were in the past'.

09:56 / 18.04.05

Perhaps it's a way of acknowledging that the wrongs committed by the deceased cannot now ever be entirely resolved. In small communities, that might be an essential part of preventing festering disputes from turning into interminable feuds.

If the same rationale was anachronistically carried over to more populous societies, you would expect to see similar reverence for public figures representing the status quo - or, in the case of Diana/Kennedy, the social order or values that the mourners would like to embrace.

14:41 / 23.04.05

When I were a lad, my mother would tell me to supplicate on her behalf after each of the five daily 'contact' prayers, so that it would become a habit that I'd continue with after she'd died.

The basis for this, assuming it wasn't gratification of her ego, was in a saying of Mohammed along the lines that after you die, only three things can change the balance of your deeds: the prayers of your children, a continuous charity or knowledge you've left behind.

Since focussed thought can cause changes on this plane of reality, and presumably does so once you've left it as well according to Islamic tradition, perhaps speaking ill of someone when they dead is assumed to have the opposite effect of prayer? So you're actively harming someone's chances of absolution.

But you could say this contradicts the Islamic idea that only your actions can count for or against you in the final equation. Unless someone praying for you/speaking ill of you is a direct consequence of your behaviour towards them in this life.

Sorry for only referring to one particular belief system, it's just the one I know best. Does this idea fit in with any of yours?

22:59 / 12.06.05

You should honor the dead more then the gods themselves. Man only finds honor in death...it's what you do in life that should be criticized or judged.
Speaking of which...where is my Nganga?

"I am shu of unformed matter. My soul is God, my soul is eternity."