Less is Morgue...

Interrogating the Failing Frisson of 21st Century Necroscopy

by David Sekuroko

“Our appetite for the spectacle without increases in inverse proportion to our appetite for the spectacle within. The voyeur forsakes the stale ingredients and indifferent cuisine of home for the feast of the forbidden peephole.” — Roland Barthes.

Abstract: As a long-standing member of the corpse-cinema community arising around the seminal “morphed mondo” esthetic during the mid-to late twentieth century, it has been apparent for an increasing period that the essential quality of the necroscopic experience has faded simultaneous with the swelling quantity of death imagery sourced by methods of mass communication, viz. the Internet, home video etc. Using a personal take derived around photographs and CCTV footage supplied by maverick employees at a US-based morgue over the past 15-year time period (c. 1990 to present), advancing technology is theorized as the root cause of this decreased thanatic frisson and suggestions are advanced viz-à-viz a return to “real death” in t <i

<img src="corpse5.jpg" alt="Unusual decomposit

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       post-normative notions of “necrop

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    at I shall call, after Kleberson (1987), the “post-optic previsioning of the scopophilic gaze&rdqu <p

Esoteric Index