Media Meditation 3- In which there is death.

"So it goes."

-Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five.

There has always been, for as long as we can remember, death. This being such a huge part of real life it has in someway had to be translated to media in someway. It had to be translated to books, and movies; to newspapers, and music. It represented differently in all forms of media.




(Video courtesy of www.youtube.com - Taken from the the movie The Royal Tenenbaums.)


In the above scene we see how suicide is dealt with in movie format. At first we see the character cutting off all of his hair, and shaving off his beard. I feel this is representative of the feeling of lightness. The pacing in this video is easy and simple to watch, again triggering the lightness. Until the end when he is found it seems in, some odd sense, calm, until the character is found-- then there seems to be nothing but panic (in the lighting, and the pacing, not just the mood and feeling) for everyone but him.



In the song Yesterday by Atmosphere it presents the idea of losing a loved one (the speakers dad) and how you can't get that person back. It is a calm realization and recognition of becoming who you are becoming and this person never getting to see that. The music is calming, non-upsetting or overwhelming for our limbic brain.

The quote presented at the beginning of this blog, "so it goes," is from the novel Slaughterhouse five. It is said after any named character in the book dies. It is the idea that death is such a part of life,

it happens:

(image courtesy of http://www.hollow-hill.com)