HW 47 - Peer Perspectives on the Care of the Dead

For researching peer perspectives on care of the dead i interviewed my sister (age 14 similar background), my friend dean (age 16 similar age), and George (someone i met a few days ago who is very wealthy). The first person i interviewed was my sister. She like me has not been exposed to death very much, other than the death you see on T.V. (when you think about it, that's really actually a lot), which lead me to my first question. How do you feel care of the dead portrayed in today's entertainment industry compares to your experience with care of the dead? to which she responded, "When i watch T.V. the only thing i can think about when you say care of the dead is the doctors who examine the body after the person is dead." I explained  to her that they were called morticians and then proceeded to ask her about cremation (whether she knew about it or not and her thoughts on the topic). To my surprise she knew what it was but really didn't know much about it.

The next person i interviewed was my friend George. His grandmother passed away a few years ago and had agreed to tell me what the process was like caring for her after she had died. I asked if she was buried or cremated and he said she was buried but not buried your average way. He said that she was buried naturally. I asked what that meant to which he responded, "she wasn't buried in a cemetery with a metal coffin or gravestone she was buried on our property upstate without any casket and had a rock instead of a gravestone.

The last person i interviewed was my friend dean. I have known dean for 16 years but this topic has never came up. I asked dean what he knew about care of the dead. He told me that he knew about cremation and burials and was very familiar with mortuary's. hearing that i wanted to know how he came about knowing about them, maybe his answer was similar to my sister's. He told me he watches a lot of CSI and Law and Order. He said that although he hasn't had many close experiences regarding care of the dead that he feels he knows a lot about it. I asked if he feels that the entertainment industry represents care of the dead well, to which he responded that it doesn't represent it well because they leave a lot of things out.


I wanted to focus my questions surrounding there thoughts on care of the dead represented in the entertainment industry. I did this because i felt it is something we all can say we have some sort of connection to. During the interview i noticed that all of them got there general ideas of care of the dead from television, Shows like Law and Order depict this care for the dead in almost every episode. This lead me to think about how we base our own knowledge on care of the dead based on what we see on T.V.? which also begs the question is this a good or bad thing? Do our thoughts and ideas that come from T.V, the internet, and video games give us a good platform to start off when going deeper into this unit or does it stop us from growing as we do?