Mroski Beetlejuice

            

Beetlejuice
Death Denial

Beetlejuice denies death by making death seem like life.  The dead have to have jobs, sit in waiting rooms, and deal with pests in their homes just like the rest of us.  This denies death by making it seem more like a transition than an actual death.

We see denial even in the way that death is first presented.  The Maitlands are unaware of the fact that they have even died in the first place.  Even when they realize that they are dead, they just try to keep “living” their day to day lives until they are presented with the problem of people destroying their house, which they are still attached to like living people.

Death is also overlooked in the way that Lydia is able to converse and live with the Maitlands almost as if she were their own child. After all of the bio-exorcism hooblah is over with, we find Lydia talking about her school work, dancing, studying, and visiting with the ghosts as if it were normal.  This makes them seem more like living people and less like ghosts.

Personally, I look forward to when I die. Not to say that I want to die, but I embrace the idea of death and the possibility of something greater.  That said I come from a Christian standpoint, and thus I do believe in an afterlife.  I feel like America is more predominantly a deistic country than anything.  Most people believe in a being, and that he just started the universe and left it alone, like a divine clockmaker, or don’t believe in God at all.

            The reason I bring all of this religious crap into the post is to suggest that most people in America don’t whole-heartedly believe in anything after death. As the saying goes, “the heart can’t exalt what the mind rejects.”  If there isn’t anything after we die, what’s the point if you are just going to die eventually? In the long run will it really matter if I contract cancer and die at 40, or if I get mauled by a lion ten minutes from now? From a standpoint that doesn’t truly believe in an afterlife, you die, and that’s it.  It’s the end. Sometimes the best way to deal with a truth that uncontrollable and that dark is to hide it from sight, and that is exactly what happens in America.

            In other countries where death is more embraced, the people usually think that there is something more after you die.  In these cultures, death is a part of the cycle of life. There is a belief that there is something more to death than an ending.  It is a lot easier to work with and talk about this idea than to say that we are all completely pointless blips in a fragment of an eternal existence.