Death

No-one has done more to confront society's death taboo than Gunther VonHagens, the pioneer of 'plastination', a chemical process enabling corpses to be preserved without their skins. These plastinated corpses, with their internal organs fully visible, were displayed in VonHagens's extraordinary touring exhibition Korperwelten in 1997.

VonHagens's stated aim was to educate the public about human anatomy, though his showmanship cast aspersions on the purity of his motives. He disputed that his work was art, though his exhibition was held in art galleries and his corpses were posed with props. When Korperwelten reached Britain, VonHagens, ever the sensationalist, even performed a public autopsy for visitors to the exhibition, which was televised by Channel 4. His exhibition was also featured in the film Casino Royale (Martin Campbell, 2006).

The most famous photographer of death is arguably Joel-Peter Witkin, who specialised in photographing corpses in Mexican morgues. Witkin's photographs include The Kiss (1982), a severed, bisected head whose two halves appear to kiss each other in an echo of the sculpture Le Baiser. Witkin treated the bodies he photographed as still-life objects, often surrounding them with the tropes of still-life painting such as bowls of fruit though also producing more elaborate, fetishised, and carnivalesque tableaux. His use of dead bodies as props to be manipulated extended to a successful request for the decapitation of a male cadaver for his photograph Man Without A Head (1993). (Thomas Condon also photographed corpses in a morgue surrounded by objects, though he received a custodial sentence in 2001 for the crime of 'corpse abuse'.)

Andres Serrano, who has confronted every other taboo discussed here, including sex, bodily fluids, and violence, has also produced a series of photographs with a death theme. His Morgue series (1992), depicting corpses on morgue slabs, is as glossy and alluring as his other work, another box to tick on the check-list of tabooed subject-matter that constitutes his back-catalogue. The most effective images in the series are those of partially-covered bodies whose external injuries are not displayed. Like Gilbert+George's microscopic fluid abstractions, the abject nature of their subject-matter is revealed only by the titles of the images.

Thai artist Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook has produced a series of contemplative video works in which she is seen reading aloud to shrouded corpses in a morgue. Her videos include Reading For Three Female Corpses (1997), Reading For Male And Female Corpses (1998), Pond (1998), Lament (2000), Reading For Female Corpse (2001), Chant For Female Corpse (2001), Three Female-Scape (2002), Conversation (I-III, 2002), Thai Medley (I-III, 2002), Wind Princess White Birds (2002), Sudsiri And Araya (2002), I'm Living (2002), Death Seminar (I-II, 2005), and The Class (I-III, 2005). Her video In A Blur Of Desire (2007) records animals at the point of death.

The subversive, witty Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan has exhibited a wide variety of stuffed animals, his most curious exhibit being a squirrel sat slumped at a doll's-house table with a tiny plastic gun at its side, posed as if it had committed suicide. In what can only be described as a gesture typical of the artist, this deliberately twee yet disturbing tableau was given the title Bidibidobidiboo (1996).

Damien Hirst prefers to preserve his dead animals in formaldehyde, the most famous examples being a fearsome shark (The Physical Impossibility Of Death In The Mind Of Someone Living, 1991) and a solitary lamb (Away From The Flock, 1994). Hirst's animals in vitrines (presented collectively as Natural History in his extravagant 1997 monograph I Want To Spend The Rest Of My Life Everywhere With Everyone One To One Always Forever Now) have been endlessly criticised, seen as the epitomy of the 'shocking' and 'sensational' nature of modern British art, though they are in fact incredibly moving and even profound. Hirst was seen as the leader of a new generation of young British artists, whose provocative works were presented in the iconic London exhibition Sensation (1997).

Canadian artist Rick Gibson is responsible for perhaps the single most offensive artwork ever created. After exhibiting Human Ear-Rings (1987) - two tiny aborted foetuses with hooks in their heads, worn as ear-rings - he was prosecuted for outraging public decency.

Mondo And Snuff

Death - the ultimate taboo - has become the sole subject of an entire cinematic sub-genre: Mondo documentaries (or 'shockumentaries') featuring compilations of tribal rituals and other sensationalistic material disguised as ethnography. The trend was influenced by exploitative travelogue films such as Karamoja (William B Treutle, 1955).

The most successful Mondo films were those directed jointly by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, who founded the sub-genre with their Mondo Cane in 1962 and later directed the more abject Africa Addio (1966). George Franju's Le Sang Des Betes (1949), an horrific documentary filmed in a Paris slaughter-house, is a less exploitative Mondo production (a model for Frederick Wiseman's documentary Meat (1976), and for isolated slaughterhouse scenes in two later dramas: Rainer Werner Fassbinder's In Einem Jahr Mit Dreizehn Monden from 1978, and Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation from 2006), as is the autopsy documentary The Act Of Seeing With One's Own Eyes (Stan Brakhage, 1971).

Later Mondo documentaries, such as Faces Of Death (John Alan Schwartz, 1979), were essentially compilations of found footage, taped from television news broadcasts and re-edited. Just as porn compilations present endless uncontextualised money shots, so Mondo compilations excise all context from their footage and simply present one death scene after another. Two of the most famous deaths recorded on film (both of which appear in numerous Mondo compilations) are from the 1960s: a presidential assassination and a Vietcong execution. The assassination of John F Kennedy was filmed by Abraham Zapruder in 1963, though it was more than ten years later before his footage was broadcast uncut. Infamously, in frame number 313 of the Zapruder footage, a bullet dislodges part of Kennedy's head. (The footage was released commercially in 1998 as Image Of An Assassination: A New Look At The Zapruder Film, and was featured in Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK.) The execution of prisoner-of-war Nguyen Van Lem was photographed by Eddie Adams in 1968. His photograph, capturing the split-second when Nguyen Ngoc Loan's bullet was fired, became the defining image of the Vietnam war.

There are also many non-Mondo documentary films containing images of real death, including Bruce Connor's A Movie (1958), Carlos Vilardebo's Vivre (1960), Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (1982), and Peter Kubelka's Unsere Afrikareise (1966); what is unique about Mondo documentaries, however, is their recontextualisation of documentary footage, their emphasis on 'othering' and 'exotic' material, and their confusion between real images and reconstructions.

The films of Joe Christ (such as Communion In Room 410 from 1988 and Sex Blood And Mutilation from 1995) depict scarification, blood-drinking, and self-mutilation, and the director has cited Mondo cinema as a direct influence on his work.

In 1995 Executions, a video comprising footage of state executions from around the world, became the first Mondo video legally available in Britain. The makers of Executions (David Herman, Arun Kumar, and David Monaghan) stressed that their aim was to highlight the barbarity of capital punishment, though many commentators disputed their sincerity.

Mondo-style autopsy footage has occasionally been included in narrative cinema: Superbeast (1972, a horror film by George Schenck), features brief footage of a real autopsy, as do the drama Providence (1977) by Alain Resnais and the horror/exploitation film Buio Omega by Aristide Massaccesi. Juan Logar seemingly concocted the plot (and title) of Autopsia (1973), in which a traumatised Vietnam veteran feels compelled to attend an autopsy, purely as an excuse to insert extensive footage of a real post-mortem.

Thriller: En Grym Film (Bo Arne Vibenius, 1974), Philosophy Of A Knife (Andrey Kisanov, 2007), and Unrest (Jason Todd Ipson, 2006) have all used human cadavers as props, and a human skeleton was used as a prop in The Invisible Man (James Whale, 1933) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975). It is also rumoured that real skeletons are featured in Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper, 1982) and Poltergiest II: The Other Side (Brian Gibson, 1986). The Stranger (Orson Welles, 1946) was the first narrative film to include footage of Holocaust victims. Brian DePalma's Redacted (2007) concludes with a photographic montage of the corpses of Iraqi war casualties.

Two music videos also feature real autopsy footage: Hijohkaidan's Live And Confused (1990) and SPK's notoriously offensive Despair (1982). Although not featuring actual autopsy footage, the music video for Motorhead's Sacrifice (1995) nevertheless includes extensive footage of dead and mutilated war victims.

Snuff films, according to the urban myths surrounding their origins, are recordings of murder-victims being killed, and are rumoured to be distributed by organised criminals. The makers of the patently fake 1976 horror film Snuff (Michael Findlay and Carter Stevens) attempted to pass it off as a Snuff movie in order to generate publicity. The Islamic terrorist videos posted online following the 2003 war in Iraq, in which hostages were beheaded, represent the horrifying reality of death on film and could arguably be described as Snuff films.

In 1985, Japanese director Hideshi Hino set out to emulate as closely as possible the tropes of a Snuff movie. The result was Chiniku No Hana, released as part of a video (or V-Cinema) series called Za Ginipiggu. Chiniku No Hana depicts the protracted dismemberment and eventual decapitation of a kidnapped, bound, and sedated woman. It has no dialogue, no credits, and only one location. The cast and crew are not identified, and details of its production are scarce. While appearing to document the actual death of a kidnap-victim, the multi-angle camerawork and extensive editing demonstrate its professional, fictional nature. The Za Ginipiggu series is perhaps the first example of 'gorenography', otherwise known as 'gorno', a sub-genre of horror cinema in which violence reaches pornographic levels of explicitness.

There have also been a couple of commercial, though illegal, ventures into animal snuff. Jeff Vilencia established a thankfully short-lived trend for films in which small animals are stamped on by women wearing stiletto-heels. Vilencia stopped distributing the films (with titles such as Smush, 1993) after overwhelmingly negative publicity. A porn company called Sexy Outdoor Sports (2005) sold 'erotic hunting' videos of a female porn star killing a buffalo and having sex next to its carcass.

Violence

Media violence is regarded by many as a corrupting stimulus, though a persuasive counter-argument proposes that violent imagery provides a valuable catharsis and effectively satiates our naturally violent instincts. Bloodshed resulting from violent action contravenes our taboo against polluting bodily fluids, acting as a reminder of human frailty and uncontrollability. Similarly, we perceive ourselves as a sophisticated and civilised society, and violence reminds us of our baser origins; it is for this reason that violent imagery is censored and suppressed, and also significant is the inescapable association of violence with death.

Moral panics manufactured by tabloid newspapers and pressure-groups ensure that otherwise unremarkable films are given disproportionate media coverage, and every year another new film is breathlessly described as 'the most violent film ever'. Furthermore, films such as Braindead (Peter Jackson, 1992) are rendered funny rather than scary precisely because of their unrealistically explicit violence. (Braindead predates Edgar Wright's Shaun Of The Dead (2004) as a 'rom-zom-com' romantic zombie comedy.) There is, however, a select group of horror films vilified even by the genre press for their extreme violence, such as the Spanish necro-horror Aftermath (Nacho Cerda, 1994), the faux-Snuff August Underground's Mordum (Fred Vogel, Jerami Cruise, Killjoy, Mike Schneider, and Cristie Whiles; 2003), and the self-styled Vomit Gore film Slaughtered Vomit Dolls (directed under the pseudonym Lucifer Valentine, 2005).

The world's most extreme cinema currently emanates from Asia, where sexual violence and dismemberment are commonplace in 'category III' films such as TF Mous's unrelenting Hei Tei Yang 731 (1987), which includes the dissection of real human corpses and other atrocities. The violent excesses of 'category III' also extend to the over-the-top splatter of Takashi Miike's Koroshiya I (2001).

It is in China where contemporary art is currently at its most explicit and confrontational. A group exhibition in Shanghai, Bu Hezuo Fangshi (2000), included artists such as Xiao Yu, Sun Yuang, and Peng Yu, whose work incorporates blood, excrement, human cadavers, and aborted foetuses (the head of a human foetus grafted onto the body of a seagull, for example). Bu Hezuo Fangshi can be seen as a direct and more offensive successor to the British Sensation exhibition, and if Damien Hirst was Sensation's main attraction then his Chinese Bu Hezuo Fangshi equivalent is Zhu Yu.

Zhu's contribution to the exhibition was Eating People, a series of photographs documenting a performance he gave at the Shanghai Biennale. During the performance, titled Shiren (2000), Zhu cooked a dead baby's corpse in a microwave, brought it to the performace area on a plate, and then ate it. The Eating People photographs of this event circulated on the internet, and caused revulsion and scepticism in equal measure, with many who saw the images doubting their authenticity. Zhu was interviewed on British television in 2003 (Channel 4's Beijing Swings, by Martin Herring), thus reigniting the controversy. In another case of extreme yet unverifiable performance art, John Duncan claimed that he had intercourse with a female corpse in 1980, though the performance, titled Blind Date, was recorded only in audio format.

Animal Snuff

In the 1970s, a brief series of cannibal films was made in Italy, beginning with Umberto Lenzi's Il Paese Del Sesso Selvaggio (1972), followed by Ruggero Deodato's Ultimo Mondo Cannibale (1977), Sergio Martino's La Montagna Del Dio Cannibale (1978), and Lenzi's Mangiati Vivi (1980). These films were made on location in the Amazonian jungles, and any wild animals encountered during filming (including musk-rats, turtles, and monkeys) were killed for the camera. Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust (1979) and Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox (1981, advertised as 'banned in 31 countries') are the most notable films from this sub-genre. They are also the nastiest of the videos prosecuted for obscenity in the UK. Aside from its inexcusable animal-killing, Cannibal Holocaust is a surprisingly sophisticated film. It contains a complex 'film within a film' narrative and it intelligently subverts our notions of verisimilitude and authenticity. (Sandeep Singh captured real cannibalism on film in Feeding On The Dead, 2005.)

Surprisingly, many narrative films feature real animal deaths, including Michael Haneke's Benny's Video (a pig is shot, 1992), Le Temps Du Loup (a horses's throat is cut, 2003), and Cache (a chicken is decapitated, 2005). Other films with animal deaths are: Scott Sidney's Tarzan Of The Apes (an out-of-control lion is killed, 1918), Jean Renoir's La Regle Du Jeu (rabbits and pheasants are shot, 1939), Sergei Eisenstein's Stachka (cows are killed in a slaughterhouse, 1925), Luis Bunuel's L'Age D'Or (a rat is killed by a scorpion, 1930), Roberto Rossellini's Paisa (an eel is killed, 1946), Barbet Scroeder's Maitress (a horse is killed, 1976), Juzo Itami's Tampopo (a turtle is killed, 1985), Walter Hill's Southern Comfort (a pig is killed, 1981), Robert Bresson's Mouchette (a rabbit is killed, 1967), Thierry Zeno's Vase De Noces (a chicken is decapitated, 1974), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel (another chicken is decapitated, 2006), Ted Kotcheff's Wake In Fright (kangaroos are killed, 1971), Fred Vogel's August Underground's Penance (a live rat is fed to an alligator, 2007), Ermanno Olmi's L'Albero Degli Zoccoli (a pig is killed, 1978), Rene Cardona's Tintorera! (several sharks are killed, 1977), Fernando Arrabal's Vibe La Muerte (a bull and a lizard are killed, 1971), Brad F Grinter and Steve Hawkes's Blood Freak (a turkey is killed, 1972), Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid (chickens have their heads shot off, 1973), Cornel Wilde's The Naked Prey (elephants are shot and eviscerated, 1966), Bert I Gordon's The Food Of The Gods (rats are killed, 1976), John Cardos's Kingdom Of The Spiders (numerous tarantulas are killed, 1977), Jean-Luc Godard's Week End (a pig is killed as an act of anti-bourgeois revolution, 1967), Tinto Brass's Salon Kitty (more pig-killing, 1976), Peter Whitehead's The Fall (a chicken is killed, 1969), Catherine Breillat's Une Vraie Jeune Fille (a chicken's head is cut off, 1976), John Waters's Mondo Trasho (chickens are decapitated, 1970), Adam Simon and Darren Moloney's Carnosaur (yet more chickens are decapitated, 1993), Jose Mojica Marins's O Exorcismo Negro (a woman bites a hen's head off, 1974), Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (a buffalo is sacrificed, 1979), Ki-Duk Kim's Seom (flesh is cut from a live fish, 2000), Lee Kang-Sheng's Bangbang Wo Aishen (a carp is eaten alive, 2007), Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev (a horse is killed, 1966), Jorg Buttgereit's Nekromantik (a rabbit is skinned, 1987) and Nekromantik 2: Die Ruckkehr Der Liebenden Toten (a seal is killed, 1991), Robert Bierman's Vampire's Kiss (the eating of a live cockroach, 1989), Herb Robins's The Worm-Eaters (worm-eating, 1977), Rui Zhang's Dao Ma Zei (a lamb is killed, 1986), Crispin Glover's What Is It? (snails are killed, 2005), Herman Yau's Yibola Bing Du (chickens and frogs are killed, 1996), Hyeon-Il Kang's Mago (frogs are trampled on, 2002), Chan-Wook Park's Oldboy (a live octopus is eaten, 2003), Monte Hellman's Cockfighter (cockfighting scenes, 1974), and Bernardo Bertolucci's Novocento (a pig is killed, amongst other transgressions; 1976).

No animals were actually killed in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974), though several roadkill animal carcasses are included, notably a dead armadillo. A dead rabbit is used as a prop in Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965), its gradual decay symbolising the psychological deterioration of the central character. Peter Greenaway's A Zed And Two Noughts (1985) features periodic footage of a decaying swan and zebra. A dead cow's eye is sliced open in Un Chien Andalou (Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, 1928). A sheep's eye is used to represent an android eye in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982). A dead horse is seen in Ingmar Bergman's The Serpent's Egg (1977). A horse's head is featured in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972). A pig's head on a pedestal appears throughout the short film The Loneliest Little Boy In The World (Mike Dereniewski, 2000). There are flayed and crucified lambs in Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain (1973). The mutant baby in David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977) is rumoured to be a dead calf foetus, though the director refuses to discuss it. Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) includes a menagerie of stuffed animals, including a swordfish and a tiger.

With their mechanical reanimations of dead animals (they rip apart a dead pig in their 1986 video The Virtues Of Negative Fascination, directed by Jonathan Reiss), it could be argued that the Survival Research Laboratories group owes their existence to a pioneer of early animation, Wladyslaw Starewicz, who used stop-motion to reanimate dead beetles, grasshoppers, and ants. Starewicz's films include: Lucanus Cervus (1910), Rozhdyestvo Obitateli Lyesa (1911), Veselye Stsenki Iz Zhizni Zhivotnykh (1912), Prekrasnaya Lyukanida (1912), Mest Kinematograficheskogo Operatora (1912), Strekoza I Muravey (1913), and, most famously, the feature-length Le Roman De Renard (1937). Similarly, Jan Svankmajer has animated slabs of meat and disembodied body parts in Tichy Tyden V Dome (1969), Meat Love (1989), and Sileni (2005).

Two avant-garde films, Stan Brakhage's Sirius Remembered (1959) and Paul Kocela's The End Of One (1971), both depict dead or dying animals. Brakhage filmed his pet dog in various stages of decomposition, moving his camera violently and looping the footage. By contrast, Kocela's film is a graceful film depicting the slow, quiet death of a seagull. Neither of these art films sensationalise their subjects, and both were intended as tributes to the tragic animals they depict. The same could be said of Denys Colomb DeDaunant's Corrida Interdite (1958), a lyrical film conveying the choreography and violence of a bullfight.