Depictions of Death in books & film

[well he's back]

Since I am currently reading two very good books with Death as a character - A Dirty Job and The Book Thief - I was thinking of the ways Death is depicted in various artworks, specifically in fiction. Most often portrayed in human form - Sometimes playing chess, often in long black outfit with scythe; sometimes as Brad Pitt.

Can you guys remind me of other examples? Which worked well for you? Is Death ever portrayed in non-anthropomorhic form? Any other thoughts?

[Kythereia]

Death as cute goth chick, for starters, and then Death as vampy Elvira-esque chick (may be NSFW).

Don't forget the Death of Rats.

[CalMeacham]

Ever since The Seventh Seal, the Pale White Guy in a long Ribe has been a widely used symbol of Death, probably because it's easier to do (and relate to) than the skeleton in a robe (see the Dance of Death segment in Metropolis, for instance. Or DEATH in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels).

others:

-- Lady Death -- hot almost naked large-breasted albino-white chick in the comics. almost makes you not sorry to go, but I suspect she doesn't deliver what she promises.

-- Ordinary Folks -- Sometimes Death (or the Angel of Death)looks like anyone else. Robert Redford in that old episode of Twilight Zone. The folks in Dead Like Me. James Mason in Heaven Can Wait (and the other guiys in earlier versions)

--the Gorgon -- I've argued that the face of the Gorgon is the Face of Death. I'll provide more details if you're interested. But it's not obvious.


-- Animals -- sometimes death is suggested/personified by a Dog, and Owl, etc.

[msmith537]

From Dead Like Me - Death as a socially maladjusted teenage girl forced to work in a crappy Office Space environment.

[silenus]

I just started A Dirty Job. Glad to see there are other Chris Moore fans.

The classic portrayal of Death is on the Discworld. Classic style: Tall, shroud, scythe, talks IN CAPITAL LETTERS, rides a white horse named Binky.

[Thudlow Boink]

Originally Posted by well he's back

Sometimes playing chess

or Battleship, or Twister...
(Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey)

[ddgryphon]

Next Monday on "Medium" death will be Kelsey Grammar.


Really -- Fraiser Crane will never get a date now.

[RealityChuck]

"Touched by an Angel" had the (appropriately named) John Dye, playing Andrew, the Angel of Death as a nice guy.

There's also Death Takes a Holiday and the Death-as-Brad-Pitt version Meet Joe Black.

Though not specifically named as such, Mr. Jordan in Here Comes Mr. Jordan is clearly Death. He was played by Claude Rains, and his portrayal is influential.

[CalMeacham]

Though not specifically named as such, Mr. Jordan in Here Comes Mr. Jordan is clearly Death. He was played by Claude Rains, and his portrayal is influential.

Yeah -- he's one of the predecessors of James Mason I mentioned (but couldn't remember). "Heaven Can Wait" was a remake of "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (which would've been called "Heaven Can Wait", only somebody else was using the title).

[RealityChuck]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

Yeah -- he's one of the predecessors of James Mason I mentioned (but couldn't remember). "Heaven Can Wait" was a remake of "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (which would've been called "Heaven Can Wait", only somebody else was using the title).

Ernst Lubitcsh, to be precise. I was going to mention Laird Cregar from that, but he was more Satan than Death.

[Quartz]

And He Speaks In Capitals. :d

[Quartz]

Bother! Let's try that again: 'AND HE SPEAKS IN CAPITALS.'

[Humble Servant]

Here's death in the appointment in samarra anecdote.

And here is one painting and here another, each illustrating the Latin motto, "Et in Arcadia Ego," one of the interpretations of which is that death is saying "I too am in paradise." Death is represented by a skull or a tomb.

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by Kythereia

Death as cute goth chick

Hey babe, what's your sign?

Oh. I see. Gotta go- I have some stuff to do in Samarra.

[kunilou]

While doing the play On Borrowed Time I played death as an impeccably dressed, extremely polite older gentleman.

Call it "Death as butler."

[Kizarvexius]

From the day I found myself face-to-face with it, I've always admired the depiction of Death in Bernini's ornamental tomb for Pope Alexander VIII.

[Otto]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

-- Ordinary Folks -- Sometimes Death (or the Angel of Death)looks like anyone else. Robert Redford in that old episode of Twilight Zone. The folks in Dead Like Me. James Mason in Heaven Can Wait (and the other guiys in earlier versions)

Leaving aside the clearly absurd notion that the young RR looked "like anyone else" (minor swoon), Marvel in an old issue of Man-Thing (at least that's where I saw it) tried to establish Death in the Marvel Universe as something like this. There was Death, who appeared either as the classic skeleton-in-robe or as a beautiful woman (in the same robe), but there were also for lack of a better term "Angels of Death" who appeared as the person functioning in the role him- or herself perceived death to be. So there was a guy who found death to be fairly pedestrian, so he appeared wearing a white dress shirt and tie like a day at the office, whereas a woman who thought of death more exotically appeared in a skintight dress with long flowing magenta hair. No idea if Marvel has continued this sort of personification, what the relationship of these "Angels" is to the actual Death or anything, but I always thought that was a pretty cool concept.

[Der Trihs]

In the movie The Adventures of Baron Munchausen Death was a huge robed skeleton with a scythe and black feathered wings; really cool.

In the Valdemar books by Mercedes Lackey, Death is called the Shadow-Lover and appears as an idealized member of whatever gender you're attracted to.

Death of the Endless looks like a pretty woman.

Death of Marvel comics is a robed female with a skull face and skeletal hands, but noticable female curves under her robe. She sometimes takes on a human appearance, however.

[Miller]

In The Hudsucker Proxy, death is portrayed as a creepy bald janitor. He is opposed by the main character's guardian angel, portrayed by Morgan Freeman. Which is a good example of why you should always be nice to the cleaning staff at your place of employment: you never know when they're going to turn out to be anthropomorphic embodiments of abstract philosophical concepts.

[ddgryphon]

No surprise to anyone, Jack Kirby gave us the most unusual image of death:

A black man flying around on skis:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...icial%26sa%3DN

I mean really.

Death Takes a Holiday in the 70's Death was Monte Markham

Was it "Always" in which Audrey Hepburn was death or an angel or something?

[Antinor01]

On A Pale Horse by Piers Anthony (from the Incarnations of Immortality series) shows death as a human who performs a job function. When 'in uniform' death wears a cape, mask and gloves that give him the illusion of being a skeletal figure both in look and feel.

[Antinor01]

I just thought of Final Destination (first movie wasn't completely bad, but the 2nd sucked really bad and I refuse to see the 3rd one) Death is never actually pictured, it's just sort of...there causing things to happen.

To me that gave it a somewhat creepier feel, that death wasn't this thing you could see or interact with. That it could be anywhere at any time.

[msmith537]

Originally Posted by Antinor01

I just thought of Final Destination (first movie wasn't completely bad, but the 2nd sucked really bad and I refuse to see the 3rd one) Death is never actually pictured, it's just sort of...there causing things to happen.

To me that gave it a somewhat creepier feel, that death wasn't this thing you could see or interact with. That it could be anywhere at any time.

Although it is kind of implied that the black dude (the guy from Candyman) might have been Death.

[Antinor01]

Originally Posted by msmith537

Although it is kind of implied that the black dude (the guy from Candyman) might have been Death.

Hmm, I didn't recall that. But then it's been a while since I've seen it and even at that only the one time.

[Humble Servant]

Then there's Jessica Lange as an Angel of Death (with Ben Vereen as Death's MC--"Bye-bye my life, good-bye") in All That Jazz. That was good and very surreal.

[Ranchoth]

I kinda liked the South Park death. Your basic skeletal figure in a robe with a scythe, but instead of being a charming, cryptic, or erilie spectral, he was an utter monster—an inarticulate brute who couldn't even speak, and used his scythe as a crude hatchet to furiously bash down obstacles between him and his target. And he rode a tricycle (hey, think about it. You're Death. By all rights, only things that you don't ride are silly and wimpy.) I thought it was endearingly unique.

That, and the Red Death from Masque of the Red Death. (Both the story, and the movie with Vincent Price.)

[Malacandra]

Originally Posted by Quartz

Bother! Let's try that again: 'AND HE SPEAKS IN CAPITALS.'

Exactly. The First Time, You Were Talking Like A Golem.

(Which I always envisage as having a slight pause between each word, to the effect that golems don't talk in sentences.)

Originally Posted by well he's back

Sometimes playing chess,

Which the Death of the Discworld hates, because he can never remember how the knight moves.

[Bryan Ekers]

I remember watching the sketch in The Meaning of Life where a surly, profane angel comes to collect a food-poisoned dinner party filled with vacuous twits and heaps scornful insults on them in the process. I cracked up a friend of mine by commenting that clearly, Death needs a holiday.

Stephen McHattie played a dapper Death in a 1989 episode of The New Twilight Zone and groomed Janet Leigh (in one of her last TV appearances) as his assistant.

[well he's back]

Thanks for the responses - Some of the references I’m familiar with; others I’m going to look into. (Gorgon?) It’s time I finally get around to the Discworld, I think.

Still fascinates me how we can turn ideas or events such as “Death” into characters. I wonder how its portrayed in non-Western literature.

[gigi]

Originally Posted by Marley23

Hey babe, what's your sign?

Stop sign?
or Dead End ?

[Logan 5]

My favorite embodiment of death has to be from Jean Cocteau's Orpheus played by Maria Casares as The Princess. She is stark and beautiful.

Also Death as the dark cloud from Ten Commandments.

[Malacandra]

Originally Posted by well he's back

Thanks for the responses - Some of the references I’m familiar with; others I’m going to look into. (Gorgon?) It’s time I finally get around to the Discworld, I think.

Assuredly. You should note that while Death's speech is represented LIKE THIS, it's given some more description early in the serious: his tone of voice sounds rather like leaden coffin lids slamming shut in a vast echoing crypt, or some such.

And undoubtedly the funniest thing he ever says

SPOILER:

to an elderly wizard who has noticed Death looking at him in a funny way during a magical ceremony, and has forestalled an untimely visit by shutting himself in a magically sealed coffin with a time-locked lid inside a locked room, with any number of sorcerous wards to keep the Grim Reaper at bay, but has forgotten the importance of airholes in a plan like this,

is "DARK IN HERE, ISN'T IT?".

[Malacandra]

"serious" is an antique alternative spelling of "series", obviously.

[Rilchiam]

"Come, Lady Death" by Peter S. Beagle:

She could not have been more than nineteen. Her hair was yellow, and she wore it long. It fell thickly upon her bare shoulders that gleamed warmly through it, two limestone islands rising out of a dark golden sea. Her face was wide at the forehead and cheekbones, and narrow at the chin, and her skin was so clear that many of the ladies touched their own faces wonderingly, and instantly drew their hands away as though their own skin had rasped their fingers. Her mouth was pale, where the mouths of the other women were red and orange and even purple. Her eyebrows, thicker and straighter than was fashionable, met over dark, calm eyes that were set so deep in her young face and were so black, so uncompromisingly black, that the middle-aged wife of a middle-aged lord murmured, "Touch of the gypsy there, I think."

First read that as a high school sophomore, and was immediately inspired to try to achieve that level of clarity and smoothness in my own skin. I think staying out of the sun has helped to some extent.

[Millit the Frail]

My favorite film representation of Death wears long black robes and sucks at board games. Yes, I adore the Grim Reaper from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. "Best three out of five!"

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

Originally Posted by gigi

Stop sign?
or Dead End ?

"Bridge Out"

[Rocketeer]

Originally Posted by Millit the Frail

My favorite film representation of Death wears long black robes and sucks at board games. Yes, I adore the Grim Reaper from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. "Best three out of five!"

Let's see:

1. Electric football
2. Twister

I think there were four games, but I'm blanking here; what were the others?

[Elendil's Heir]

There was also a Twilight Zone episode with Ed Wynn as a traveling salesman who delays Death (a brisk young junior-executive type in a suit and tie, with a briefcase) long enough to let an ailing little girl live. Death takes Ed Wynn instead, and he's glad to go.

Last night, I saw the ad for Kelsey Grammer appearing on Medium as the Angel of Death. That's gotta be one of the signs of the Apocalypse, right there....

[Hal Briston]

Originally Posted by Rocketeer

Let's see:

1. Electric football
2. Twister

I think there were four games, but I'm blanking here; what were the others?

Clue and Battleship.

To the OP, you can find a nice list of what you're looking for here.