Familiar and Alien Deaths: Philippe Ariés Western Attitudes Towards Death

While many historians explore the history of nations and kings, in 1974, the French historian Philippe Ariés explored what may be the sole constant in human existence: death. In a series of lectures entitled "Western Attitudes Towards Death", Ariés contends that the perception and reception of death reflects the changing understanding of the self in relation to the world, from a life fated to death in the Middle Ages, to one in deep denial of its own mortality in the industrial world.

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The Idea of the Id: Adam Curtis' Century of the Self

For good or ill, the theories of Sigmund Freud exerted an enormous influence on the 20^th century, becoming deeply entrenched in Western culture to the point that Freud’s terms “ego”, “id” and “subconscious” have become common in everyday language. Within only a short time of its invention, psychoanalysis leapt from clinical practice into the world at large. In his 2002 documentary series The Century of the Self, Adam Curtis explores the application of Freud in the realms of advertising, marketing and politics. “This series,” Curtis narrates, “is about how those in power have used Freud’s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.

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The Horrifying Puzzle: Sven Lindqvist's A History of Bombing

Sven Lindqvist’s 2000 A History of Bombing grapples with the great terror of the twentieth century, the cascade of bombs raining down unto the helpless masses below, from its first application in colonial warfare to the potential of radioactive death on a global scale. Lindqvist approaches his subject through a series of loosely collected anecdotes, ranging from the personal, the imaginary (such as science fiction, horror, or the Cold War thriller), to the more clinical and sober reporting of wartime casualties. What results is a “labyrinth”, a “horrifying puzzle” of destruction and death on a scale heretofore unseen in human history.

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Satire in the Strange Realms of the Underground World

Ludvig Holberg’s 1741 Latin novel, The Journey of the Niels Klim to the World Underground presents a far-ranging satire of European society through an imaginary voyage of a young college graduate as he travels throughout a series of fantastic worlds beneath the earth’s surface. Utilizing the freedom of an imaginary world, the novel circumvented the strict censorship of its day to become something of a best-seller in Germany and Scandinavia. The eponymous Niels Klim approaches each society with an unwavering sense of his own superiority, and that of his homeland, only to be continually humiliated and ridiculed. The satire of the work emerges from the conflict between the naïve bravado of Klim and the different societies and values he encounters. Effectively, the novel circumvents potential censorship and backlash by seemingly reinforcing European values and supremacy, only to indirectly dismantle this perspective with the reason or foolishness of the elaborate fantasy worlds the narrator encounters.

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Viking Terror & The Blood Eagle

Writing around the year 1200, the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus recounts a vicious execution, taking place several centuries before his own lifetime in the age of the Vikings: “they ordered [Ella’s] back to be carved with the figure of an eagle, exultant because at his overthrow they were imprinting the cruelest of birds on their most ferocious enemy. Not satisfied with inflicting wounds, they salted the torn flesh.” (1) While tantalizingly vague, this execution became known in the later centuries as the “Blood-Eagle,” and has sparked a great deal of controversy with regards to its existence or meaning. However grisly this vision purports to be, it nevertheless proves to be relatively sober-minded in comparison to the later Icelandic account “The Tale of Ragnar’s Sons”, from roughly a century later: “They now had an eagle cut onto the back of Ella, and then tore the ribs from the back with a sword, so that the lungs were the pulled out.” (2)

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