Tagliero-Beetlejuice

         In American Culture death is usually a scary aspect of life. Most Americans shy away from it because of the unknown. Most people don't know what happens after death so usually don't like the fact of death. In one scene of Beetlejuice. While the mother who was the interior decorator didn’t see anything but, the interior decorator said “what’s that?” That scene shows was a how we as Americans ignore the signs of death. I think as Americans we ignore the sign of the death because it is unknown to us. We don’t know what happens to you after you die? That’s what Tim Burton portrayed in the movie. He sort of made fun of death in a cruel sort of way to make it easier to watch a movie about people who are dead. He makes fun of it by the having a case worker as you die and a manual for the recently dead.

            As shown in Beetlejuice the idea of death is more of a joke, yes maybe he was trying to make it funny so that people won’t be turned off about the idea of death. The idea of joking about death is shunned by Americans because if you even joke about it or say it in a positive way, eloped usually say “why would you say something like that?” Or we whisper to each other when saying someone has died (saying died in a whisper tone of voice). It is so embedded in our nature as Americans to not even talk about someone when they are dead. They died that’s it, move on with your daily life’s.

An example of that was when the daughter went to go talk to the realtor about who lived in the house. She said “oh it was very tragic, they were very close to me. By the way can you give my card to your father, I did the whole interior decorating of that house. if he needs any help.” She just brushed over the topic, didn’t want to go into detail and dint want to say much about it.

The anathema for death in American culture is cause by the fact that we have been a costumed to using death as a form of punishment. We are seen as it being a sort of punishment than a way of life because as Americans we use the death row as one of our methods of punishment. Death is portrayed as punishment not the way of life in most Americans minds.