Obit Research

A recurring theme in the world of obituaries is the usage of an evenhanded tone in content.  For example, you’ll scant see a major media outlet disparage a recently deceased individual, because it’s appropriate, if at least customary, for the dead to be honored, not mocked — not even a little.

Still, it’s easy to see how political ideology could seep into an obituary of, well, anyone involved in politics, any celebrity with a political opinion, or, in the case of Kurt Vonnegut, a figure who represented a galvanized faction of agitated Americans during a time of great social turmoil.

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I’ve been working my way through a rather thorough examination of the more sociological aspects of obituary writing, and it seems clear that we can learn quite a bit about some of the more difficult-to-spot assumptions that a culture makes.

Though there seems to be a general feeling among obituary editors that the medium has democratized substantially, particularly since the early ’80s, it turns out that it doesn’t seem to be true, in the aggregate. Obits today are still primarily about men, primarily about cultural producers/professionals (writers, artists, etc.), and primarily about those in the dominant social class.

A particularly telling quote from their conclusions in a chapter called “The Social Value of Death,” from the book The Obituary as Collective Memory, by Bridget Fowler:

“We are compelled to argue -outside certain clear-cut lines of universalistic achievement such as sport -that the editors are still unconsciously affected by the common patterns of action, speech and lifestyle by which an elite recognises itself. It is elite membership -and the cultural capital that accompanies it -that preserves the subject from the judgement of being ‘boring’. In other words, studying obits is one route into today’s status classifications, the ordering of symbolic capital. Such social classifications are still profoundly determined by the accidents of great wealth, or negatively, by forms of class racism. They disqualify from serious consideration those who have not been educated at great schools or the higher-ranking universities and those who do not work at the most esteemed of national institutions.”

I think we can all agree that we would like to steal emulate the Washington Post’s “Post Mortem” blog. The writers break down the most recent obituaries concisely, delivering the most interesting aspects of a person’s obit in easily digestible blog entries.

A post from a few days ago caught my eye, mainly because it had the word Publix in it. Anyone else who is from or has lived in Florida will know why my eyes got so excited.

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I found an interesting difference in how Tributes.com and Legacy.com displayed a recent AP article about the passing of South African anti-apartheid activist Frans “Ting-Ting” Masango. Take a look at Frans Masango on Tributes.com versus Frans Masango on Legacy.com.

The Tributes page looks and feels more like a memorial Web site and allows grievers to read the Associated Press article and sign the guest book in the same location. Conversely, Legacy.com users would need to somehow find a separate Legacy.com page unlinked to the article that allows users to sign the AP guestbook for Frans Masango. Legacy.com itself does not appear to currently sponsor a guest book for Frans Masango.

Given these options, a reasonable person would clearly opt to sign the Tributes.com guest book. This raises a few questions:

1) Why doesn’t a guest book for Frans Masango automatically appear on Legacy.com? Perhaps because he is not a U.S. citizen?
2) Why doesn’t Legacy.com adopt Tributes.com’s policy of posting AP obituaries and guest books in the same location?
3) Would it be profitable for Legacy.com to feature guest books of foreign celebrities? Or would this be unpopular among Legacy’s users?

I started this blog entry reflecting upon an interview I did with an old high school friend who is studying film at New York University.

I have known Dan since the seventh grade, and I don’t think a school day went by that he didn’t make some sort of movie reference to whatever it was that we happened to be studying—French grammar, U.S. history, the stock market in economics. You name it, Dan referenced it.

So it was no surprise that he brought up the film Citizen Kane when discussing obituaries.

“Citizen Kane is basically an obituary about this Charles Foster Kane character that’s lived and died, warts and all. That’s an interesting text to me and I would look for something similar in obituaries.”

For a while there at the beginning of the decade, the biopic was as prevalent in theaters as celebrity-dancing competitions are on television. The Aviator, Ray, Walk the Line, Ali, Kinsey, Cinderella Man and a slew of other biographical films all came out before 2005.

This research project has us thinking about what would attract a younger, more diverse audience to Legacy.com, and to obituaries in general. Are movies the answer?

The Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, opens with a young Howard Hughes being warned of germs by his mother, which we can assume leads to his obsession with germs and other compulsions. The audience also sees Hughes’ triumphs as a movie director and a man about town.

Jamie Foxx’s starring role as Ray Charles in the 2004 film, Ray, tells the story of the great musician, his fight against segregation and his battle with drug addiction.

Walk the Line follows a similar plot, chronicling the life of Johnny Cash, portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, and the Oscar-winning performance of Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash.

There are always inconsistencies between real-life and the film version of a person’s history. However, these are three examples of well-received, popular obituaries, produced by Hollywood, instead of newspapers.

© 1941 RKO/Turner Entertainment, via Wikipedia

Well, maybe it’s not an opinion, because it’s hard to take issue with obituaries that celebrate lives.

What makes The Economist’s approach so unique — and laudable — is that, as editor Ann Wroe puts it, a chronological retelling of a person’s existence is, well, boring.  In short, it doesn’t do life justice.

During an October 2008 New York Public Library panel discussion (embedded video at bottom), she said:

“I think you do have to hone in on certain points in [life].  There will be one or two incidents that will really illuminate the whole thing.  I think it was Virginia Woolf who said that it might be possible to write a whole life out of one tiny incident — maybe even just two minutes — and I think that might be true.”

Take, for instance, the magazine’s obituary of Norman Borlaug, who died in September.  It didn’t begin by listing his day and place of birth, nor did it dive into details of his upbringing and education.  No, instead, it began to tell a story.

“AS DAWN broke over northern Mexico, Norman Borlaug wriggled from his sleeping bag. Rats had run over him all night, and he was cold. In a corner of the dilapidated research station where he had tried to sleep, he found a rusting plough. He took it outside, strapped the harness to himself, and began, furiously and crazily, in front of a group of astonished peasants, to plough the land.”

Hook. Line. Sinker.

Here’s the man’s commemoration: an anecdote about the time he defiantly pushed a plough through a third-world field, a metaphor for his commitment to becoming a “feeder of the world”.

Obituaries are opportunities to do more than recall facts, and the realization makes The Economist stand out.  Whether that mode of storytelling will transition to the Web as journalism makes its shift remains to be seen.  But this project will certainly look for clues that may hint at an answer.

[Note: The panel discussion is entitled "DEAD from the NYPL: The Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries", and the entire video is worth a watch (Ms. Wroe's contributions begin somewhere around the 1:15 mark).]

I see on my Yahoo Pipe of obituaries that Mr. Magic, an old-school hip hop pioneer and DJ, has moved along to join his ancestors.

The NY Times obit on him is quite thorough, save for one element.

While his accomplishments as an early cheerleader for the hip hop aesthetic are enumerated, his career path plotted, and personal details revealed, what we don’t get is an immediate sense of the music that was such an integral part of his life.

From the NYT piece:

“Mr. Magic, born John Rivas, was the first host on commercial radio to devote a program exclusively to rap when his “Rap Attack” began broadcasting on WBLS-FM in New York in April 1983. Disco and funk were then fading, and rap was emerging as a rebellious new art form in the streets, housing projects and parks of New York City.

But many radio stations and music executives were wary of the frank explosiveness of the new music. Mr. Magic played a role similar to that of Alan Freed in popularizing rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s.

‘Magic was the guy who carried a flag for the music on the radio, exactly as Freed had done for rock ’n’ roll,’ said Bill Adler, a former director of publicity for Def Jam Recordings.”

Fine and good.  But isn’t it richer to know that it sounded like this:

Well, I think that makes it more interesting at least.