One of the aspects that overlap fantasy, storytelling and real life is the concepts surrounding death such as the afterlife. This concept and part of life has been around for billions of years since life begins and ends. Even though we never know if there is more after death there are many theories and hopes that there would be more than the nothingness that potentially happens when you die. Death also provokes a lot of emotions within people, whether it be fear, grief, pain, empathy or other it is a powerful but tragic tool within storytelling.
So, the questio remains can death or the afterlife be an immersive experience through the use of human emotion and connection?
Life and Death depicted in Real Life
Humans have always had a strange fascination with the concept of death and what comes after it, whether it be through religion or just natural curiousity. As death is such a major part of the natural cycle of life people have tried to idealise and justify it within different ways whether to find comfort or just to make the idea of the unknown easier to deal with, which is how the afterlife came about. 'Archaeological evidence for afterlife beliefs goes back at least 12,000 years, when bodies started to be buried with useful stuff to take to the other side. But such beliefs are far from a thing of the past.' (Lawton, 2019) Death is intertwined with myths, supernatural and the unknown.
Spirits and the Afterlife
The idea of the afterlife is surrounded by the perception of the supernatural world with ghosts, spirits and other ideas of out of body type depictions.For example the concept of the jinn which are supposed to occupy a ‘shadow world, at once shared with humans but also transcending time and physical space.’ (Saber, 2022)
This is also why death is depicted greatly within horror as many people fear the idea of dying and due to that it creates a sense of panic or intensity within the audience when consuming horror genre media. These horror aspects of death vary from platform to platform from cursed VHS tapes to wall-crawling terrors, one of the most powerful horror based storytellers would be that of the Japanese-inspired horror as it has had a powerful influence on film and television for decades. (WP BrandStudio and AMC, 2019)
Depicting Death within our Media and Society
Death as well as the depiction of the ideas after it has been deposited throughout time in poetry, art, myths and so forth. Mythology and religion help some of us, as humanity, to come to terms with death by providing powerful examples of how to live and die (Art Uk, n.d.).
Within some cultures celebrating death and the life that was lived is tradition, such as in dias de los muertos otherwise known as the day of the dead celebrated in mexican and some spanish cultures. Upon dying, a person was believed to travel to Chicunamictlán, the Land of the Dead. (History.com Editors, 2018). This aspect of culture has been represented in films such as Coco as well as within books such as Cemetery Boys (Thomas, 2021) which experiments with the idea of ghosts, identity, family and grief, this novel demonstrates a touching tale of connecting with the dead.
Others have looked into how people portray and bring about the news of death Starck (2006) covers the concept of life and death within the media and how some media portrays death in completely different ways. Whereas in fiction and fantasy te afterlife and death have been depicted in such a vast amount of ways, to give one instance of this would be the novel Under the Whispering Door (Klune, 2021) which has it’s whole narrative about the way station between the time after you die and the progression onto what is next, dealing with the concept of ghosts, growth, grief of a life you didn't get to experience and deals with the loss of loved ones in a very subtly gentle way.
Death and elements surrounding it have become immersive through video games and VR. Creatives have found many visual dictations of death from recreating experiences dying through VR experiences designed to create a sense of transcendence (Erl, 2023) to visually styled depictions of purgatory such as Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus, 2021) or Eternal Hope (Doublehitgames, 2020). I believe that the way that we grieve plays a major role in depicting death within everyday life.
There are so many depictions of the afterlife but Coco turns one of the tales from the day of the dead to show off one of the many possibilities that people like to cling to and also covers the grief of death in such a meaningful way demonstrating this vision of the afterlife where people who are remembered reside. Soul has a similar situation using animation to connect with the audience to portray purgatory.
Others have taken a completely different approach by making death into a narrative. Making the lore of death to be something that can be turned into a story, video games such as Death's Door (Acid Nerve et al., 2021) and Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife (Meta Quest , 2021) have used techniques such as VR or interactive game play to engage an audience.
Whilst some have made death to be an action base others have made interactive eerie environments to display the art of death. Sometimes they immerse you with the idea of limbo which is controlling your fear and confronting monsters and other they explore the exploration of death and the after life.
But sometimes it's the games that make you feel the emotion surrounding a concept that allows the player to fully feel immersed and connected with a story such as spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus, 2021). Where they explore connection, peoples stories and how they deal with their own deaths as well as loss but also tell a heart-wrenching tale of spending people on their final passage and saying goodbye.
(Thunder Lotus, 2021)
Other games explore death through characters that are still alive grief and allows the audience to be immersed in a world without these characters that they get to know during the storyline. Two of the most creative ways that I’ve been immersed within games like this would be The Last day of June (PlayStation, 2017) that captivates the heartache of grief and what a great loss can do to the ones left behind.
Whereas the second most powerful way that a story has depicted grief would be in What Remains of Edith Finch where you get drawn in by the characters past and mourning the loss of living in this world alone. It explores how this character has dealt with death and explores the grief of having experienced the tragedy of losing a loved one, especially one so young.
Film and Tv have also depiced death often:
Death has also been used a lot within film or series as well as types of afterlifes, theses narratives often demonstrates ghosts or tragedy such as The good place (Netflix, 2016) who have their own twist of life after death. Whereas Ghosts (Nicholson, 2023) show off the idea of what happens when souls get stuck within our reality.
Conclusion:
Death has been a part of human cycles of life since the beginning of time and aspects that surround it have been ingrained into everyday lives or cultures to form myths as well as narratives around the unknown of death. Death can provoke a range of emotions within people and has often formed beautifully painful stories describing people's losses and lives. This would be a fascinating concept to explore for designing a type of afterlife that is not heavily represented or to use the emotion surrounding great loss to form a narrative that would move and make the audience feel something.
References:
Acid Nerve , Foster , M., Fenn, D. and devolverdigital (2021). Death’s Door | Out Now on PC, Xbox Series S/X, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, and Nintendo Switch. [online] DEATH’S DOOR. Available at: https://playdeathsdoor.com/ [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
Art Uk (n.d.). Life and death | Art UK. [online] artuk.org. Available at: https://artuk.org/discover/topics/life-and-death [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
BBC (2019). Ghosts | Trailer - BBC. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://youtu.be/5e0nB1mSd9Q?si=sEzWLerOF4-wvnIX [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
Doublehitgames (2020). Eternal Hope - A Puzzle Adventure game about love and hope. [online] Eternalhopegame. Available at: https://www.eternalhopegame.com/ [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
Erl, J. (2023). Experience your own Death in Virtual Reality by Artist Shaun Gladwell. [online] MIXED Reality News. Available at: https://mixed-news.com/en/experience-death-virtual-reality/ [Accessed 3 Dec. 2023].
History.com Editors (2018). Day of the Dead. [online] History. Available at: https://www.history.com/topics/halloween/day-of-the-dead [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
IMDb, Pixar and Disney (2020). Soul (2020). [online] IMDb. Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2948372/mediaviewer/rm1028837889/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
Klune, T. (2021). Under the Whispering Door. Tor Books [online] TJ Klune. Available at: https://www.tjklunebooks.com/under-the-whispering-door [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
Knava, P. (2020). What Remains of Edith Finch and the Power That Stories Have Over Our Lives. [online] The Gist. Available at: https://gist.plex.tv/what-remains-of-edith-finch-and-the-power-that-stories-have-over-our-lives/ [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
Lawton, G. (2019). Why almost everyone believes in an afterlife – even atheists. [online] New Scientist. Available at: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24432570-500-why-almost-everyone-believes-in-an-afterlife-even-atheists/#:~:text=Archaeological%20evidence%20for%20afterlife%20beliefs [Accessed 6 Dec. 2023].
Meta Quest (2021). Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife | Launch Trailer | Oculus Quest + Rift. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://youtu.be/5hdeR7HBO4k?si=6fXF2rqCjARPPwdA [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
Netflix (2016). Watch The Good Place | Netflix. [online] www.netflix.com. Available at: https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80113701 [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
Nicholson, R. (2023). Ghosts series five review – this beautifully warm comedy bows out on a high. The Guardian. [online] 6 Oct. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/oct/06/ghosts-series-five-review-this-beautifully-warm-comedy-bows-out-on-a-high [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
Pixar Animation Studios (2020). Pixar Animation Studios - Coco. [online] Pixar Animation Studios. Available at: https://www.pixar.com/feature-films/coco [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
Playdead (2019). Limbo. [online] Playdead.com. Available at: https://playdead.com/games/limbo/ [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
PlayStation (2017). Last Day of June - Gameplay Trailer | PS4. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://youtu.be/YeV7HLpfPXw?si=uHuBYf8rZvX_50zW [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
Posin, A., IMDb, Paramount+ and Netflix (2022). The In Between. [online] IMDb. Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8851148/ [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
PQube (2020). Evergate | A New 2D Puzzle-Action Platformer | Out Now. [online] PQube. Available at: https://pqube.co.uk/games/evergate/# [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
Saber, I.F. (2022). Jinn: Who are the supernatural beings of Arabian and Islamic tradition? [online] Middle East Eye. Available at: https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/jinn-islamic-arabian-tradition-supernatural-beings [Accessed 6 Dec. 2023].
Starck, N. (2006). Life after death : the art of the obituary. Carlton, Vic., Australia: Melbourne University Press.
Superbright VR (2020). In Death: Unchained - Launch Trailer. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://youtu.be/UEHPI8jFbmg?si=1_AcShMLUIZbNHBe [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
Thomas, A. (2021). Cemetery Boys. [online] Aiden Thomas - Cemetery Boys. Available at: https://www.aiden-thomas.com/cemetery-boys [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
Thomas, A. and Lauderbaugh, M. (2020). Cemetery Boys Art. [online] Cemetery Boys. Available at: https://www.aiden-thomas.com/cemetery-boys [Accessed 6 Dec. 2023].
Thunder Lotus (2020). Spiritfarer. [online] Thunder Lotus Games. Available at: https://thunderlotusgames.com/spiritfarer/ [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
Thunder Lotus (2021). Spiritfarer® Animated Trailer - What Will You Leave Behind? (ESRB). [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://youtu.be/PZfqGU6Y5uU?si=dXu3wsBd_fGPKXbM [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
WP BrandStudio and AMC (2019). The Ghosts of Japan. [online] Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/brand-studio/amc/the-ghosts-of-japan/ [Accessed 5 Dec. 2023].
Comments