Livening Up A Funeral
Dr. Faustus recently called my attention to a phenomenon that’s occasioned numerous salacious newspaper and internet headlines in recent years: the practice for some few recent decades in rural Taiwan of hiring what are variously termed “strippers”, “pole dancers”, or “exotic dancers” to perform at funerals or on vehicles called “electric flower carts” in funeral processions. In truth, the reality seems rather more tame than the headlines. Despite diligent searching, I was unable to find a single image in Google or on YouTube featuring actual nudity. Does that tell us more about the funeral performances, or about the culturally-restricted media through which I am learning about them? I wish I knew.
Although quite a few flashy moments of exotic funeral dancing can be found out there buried under the turgid narration of various news and entertainment presenters, I was less successful at finding unfiltered video. The best I could do was this one bit of cell-phone video where the exotic dancers are seen to prance fairly tamely about the casket in their nice undies:
Quite honestly, I think if I were the one whose departure was being so festively celebrated, I’d rather have the marching band:
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I tend to see it as a way of drawing attention to the funeral, raising the status of the deceased. Yet it also says something about the tameness of the stripping culture where poledancing is viewed as a neutrally as pilates.
I once attended a Christmas party that featured a pair of poledancing. Athletic but also very nonsexual. The bellydancers in China also wear bodystockings to cover their navels.
The newscast at this link says there are local laws against nudity.
http://www.dail..._news
And China is cracking down:
http://www.dail..._news
The practice seems harmless enough to me. But maybe they’ll adapt the jazz funeral as a substitute.
I admit it was while a few fast dozen thoughts raced through my curious mind that I paused and considered the possibilities of what how things might take place before reading the post and watching the video. I wanted to taste it all.
Drawn by pervy curiosity, I clicked for the marching band after reading, were you given the choice between the two options, you’d opt for the band. I’m all about the band now, too.
There’s just so much to savor about the concept, from the overall appearance and presentation of the performance, to what seemed to me to be rituals of tradition with the red robed religious men maintaining stoic smiles stuck behind the suppression of the more deep-rooted smiles their entire bodies are taught to conceal. With or without the robes.
Happy to have had time to pop in here. Having read several posts before responding to this one, I’m a grinning fan. Thanks for being here and making it a spot I can sit a spell, learn some, twitch some, wish some, and be grateful I’m owned by Someone who I’ll share this with and in doing so the generosity in this blog moves forward and finds its way to the mind of another like-minded beautiful beast of a Man.
My favorite reaction to this news item was (as it often is) that of Charlie Pierce: “And thus do the Irish finally fall into second place as far as funeral rites go.”