Page - 59 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 01/01

Staging the Dead | 59www.jrfm.eu 2015, 1/1, 57–64 formed on a bodily level to communicate ideas about an individual person as well as a collective.7 The first portion will concern the importance of gender for the exhibiting of an indi- vidual dead body. The second will delve into the context of this exhibition, and will in- quire into the collective staging of the dead. finally, i will generalise the observations of the case study, emphasising the importance of material media for constructions of gender in a religious context. The lifeless BODy as GeNDereD During fieldwork on Roman Catholic charnel houses in Switzerland, we visited a range of ossuary chapels, where the deceased are laid out for their relatives and friends to see them one last time (fig. 1).8 The mortal remains (if they are not cremated) are exhibited as if the person were still alive. They are nicely dressed and coifed in a gen- dered way, either in their “sunday best” or in special burial gowns. The burial dress- es for women are decorated with lace or trim, while the men’s clothing is generally plainer and sometimes decorated with a collar or bow tie (fig. 2). Clothing, as one of the most important remaining material media, is the main code used to com- municate gender differentiations, which are based on culturally shared ideas of gender (e.g. the male as plainer and somehow more earnest, the female as more playful and decorated). 7 The separation of these two categories is widely debated, see elias 2001. 8 See Hauser 1994, for burials from 1700–1900 in Switzerland; Zihlmann 1982, for mourning practices in Central Switzerland in the 1920s; and Roost Vischer 1999, for today’s burial practices. Fig. 1: A public laying out in the Roman Catholic ossuary chapel in Alpnach, Switzerland. The deceased are lying in catafalques (CH 2014) © Yves Müller.