Discworld's Death is by far my favorite interpretation. Favorite quote: "Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know that in a universe so full of wonders they have managed to invent boredom? Quite astonishing..."
I can't believe she identified the discworld death as utterly awesome but didn't highlight how amazing he is in Mort where he is first introduced and the nature of his existence as an anthropomorphic personification is really highlighted...
Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape. external-preview.redd.it/apr9GPA8O-dxj5LfHhb29I3pZX_-FCbi5lfirNmkp3Q.jpg?auto=webp&s=76de4f9fa9a8110916a87e0f532bfac9c1e2e255
I find great comfort in interpretations of death as a kindly, even human like figure who eases people into the afterlife. Its why i like Terry Pratchett's version so much, even if he is rather blunt at times.
N G and why would death be a snarling cruel spirit? Everything dies; it’s sad. No need to be a prick about something universal. So I love the characterization of a “ kindly death”
I'm kind of in the middle about it. I like to think he treats the deceased differently depending on what type of person they are, if they are a kind but fearful soul re will re-assure them that a better place lies right ahead, but if they are an inconsiderate selfish soul he will openly scold them and assert his dominance to punish them. Like an ambassador from both heaven and hell, he reflects the people he comes to take away, that's my theory on him.
I find Terry Pratchett's death brilliant , he has a brilliant character development and becomes more human and how he even tries to make the actual death nicer, I also like the afterlife that Pratchett created.
In my native language (and culture), Italian, Death is a female persona because the word itself has the female gender: la Morte. And sometimes Morte is represented as a beautiful lady, mostly from poets.
@Madalin Grama Yeah, it always surprise me how I can almost understood romanian, when I hear it by accident XD I'm french by the way, and I found french and romanian are somewhat close ^^
5 лет назад
In Spanish death is also a feminine word but I cannot think of anything outside of Mexico that represents the concept as female.
In portuguese is also Female, Saramago even wrote a book about it. Where, pretty much, Death goes on strike and nobody dies. It's more about how humanity would deal with not dying, than death itself.
Only Sir Terry Pratchett could write a scene where Death makes me cry by NOT taking someone. "And what greater gift is there, than a future?" F#%I*&@% you, HCA, the Little Match Girl LIVES!
AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER. Terry took Death's arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night. ----------- Yeah ... departing this world as equals.
GNU Terry Pratchett is baked into the source code of parts of the internet's backbone, meaning it is invisibly woven into the underlying code of many, many websites. His name will continue to bounce back and forth across the internet for the foreseeable future. imo it's a near perfect memorial.
Agreed. If you can find them, look for her starring in "Grown Up Wednesday Addams." I'm in love with that character. Don't look at me like that. Lots of people are in love with fictional characters.
How is everybody so slow on the uptake? Yes, these are re-uploads from the League of Supercritics channel so they can now all be in one place on a channel Lindsay actively manages, rather than sitting on an unattended derelict channel where they can all be flagged for copyright one by one.
I always thought that Death was would be a comforting figure. After you die, they greet you and guide you to the afterlife. Imagine how frightening and lonely it would be to make that journey by yourself. I would want to greet Death like a friend.
The Book Thief (the book, not as much the movie) is super easily my favorite depiction of Death ever :) Gah, I love that book so so much!! And, though the characters and story itself are beautiful and heartbreaking, I really do think it's the brilliant use of Death as a narrator that puts it a cut above most other books for me.
I wish Lindsay had included Death from Supernatural. I seriously enjoyed at least his first appearance and how he was portrayed, and had the legion of reapers aspect as part of his character.
Soul Music and Hogfather being 3 hours long doesn't feel wrong, at least to me, because they fall into the British tradition of adapting things into series- (there was a BBC Radio 4 version of Guards Guards- where Death is credited as Himself, which also runs to 3 hours). Hogfather's a different beast being a later Sky adaptation, but Soul Music and the animated version of Wyrd Sisters (made at the same time by the same people, and which Death also turns up in) were broken into 6 half hour episodes, which makes the whole thing feel different- especially when you remember they came out about 20 years ago when we didn't have streaming, so at the time, you got your half hour of Discworld and had to wait a week for your next fix.
I'm so pleased that someone defended Hogfather the miniseries, it's by far one of my favourite adaptations. It has a lot of filler but it's all charming, entertaining filler.
The BBC Radio adaptations of Discworld books are really good. (And so is Nation, btw. I haven't read that book, unlike the Discworld books which I have read all of them, but Nation is amazing as a radio play.) To anyone who haven't heard them, I'd suggest keeping an eye on BBC's web site for when they return for a re-run, which they seem to do now and then. I'm not a great fan of the movie adaptations, with the exception of Going Postal, which I think gets it mostly right and ends up being pretty good. The others are too over the top IMHO. When I read the books, they are incredibly funny (I think I literally laughed out loud repeatedly when reading all of them), but I still find them very grounded. To me, the best thing about Discworld is how human the characters are. And yes, how funny it is, but not at the expense of the characters, except maybe in the first books, but I started with those as a teenager so it didn't bother me so much then. I instantly fell in love with the series.
I live both of these, but 3 hours can sometimes feel a bit long in one sitting if it's not brokenupa certainway. Though I agree it makes a lot of sense since that's a common thing for British television. I wish there was a full series (like 10 episodes or so) of shorter episodes of the Hogfather or other Terry Pratchett works.
Adding to "not technically wrong" - in Russian books he speaks in all caps letters, because Russian print tradition rarely uses small caps. They are pretty much useless as a subtle emphasis instrument in our language because practically all letters are drawn the same way in upper and lower cases. So reading Death lines in original for the first time was a surprising change of tone - from loud and almost screaming to weighted and calm.
Ah, a good spanish literature that makes death a more unique (ish) character is José Saramago's: "Las Intermitencias de la Muerte" (The intermittences of Death) which portrays death as a female. I don't know if a good english translation exists, since his style of writing is very unique, such as starting dialogue midsentence by just putting a capital letter. So spoilers As a woman, death falls in love with this old man, she chooses to stay with him, and the next day, no one is able to die. They don't get healed, if you get in a car crash, you are contorted and broken, but alive. old age will continue, but you will not die. so it explores death as a political and crime state, were mafias formed to take people accross the border, so they may die. If you don't really care for spoilers, I still recommend giving it a read.
Death of the endless is my personal favourite interpretation. She is motherly, kind, and human in a series that everybody seems apathetic at best, borderline sociopathic at worst, which makes her stand out all the more.
There are two versions of death that i really enjoy in the Supernatural show. There are the reapers who are kind but have a job to do, and you see Dean take on the role as a reaper and lets his emotions run him. And you see him make decisions that affect peoples lives in the long run. He is faced with mortality of it all. Then there is Death himself who is a patient well thought out brilliant man. Who finds little to no amusement in the ways of humans because as he says "I'm actually a great deal older then god. And i will be here long after him"
Sacha Jewell I invite you to contemplate how insignificant I find you. Yeah- Julian Richings is the by far the best Death, and I’m so disappointed Lindsay didn’t include him.
Not to contradict you or anything, and I love Supernatural's Death too, but when does he say that? I remember him answering Dean's question of "I gotta ask. How old are you?" Death: "As old as God. Maybe older. Neither of us can remember anymore."
YOU SEE, YOU ARE HAVING A NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE, WHICH INESCAPABLY MEANS THAT I MUST UNDERGO A NEAR-VIMES EXPERIENCE. DON’T MIND ME. CARRY ON WITH WHATEVER YOU WERE DOING. I HAVE A BOOK.
Hm. I disagree about Dead Like Me having a tone problem. I mean, I love that show, so might be biased, but it's primarily a dark comedy. Also, the juxtaposition of the mundane afterlife with the sometimes gruesome deaths is meant to highlight how much death is a part of normal life. And it's funny. And sometimes sad. And sometimes moving. Which is also like real life.
Seems to me she is just making petty jabs. See her comment about 'indentured servitude' and the similar jab she made about Billy and Mandy because, something, something, slavery.
I also disagree about DLM having a tone problem, however it was canceled after two seasons, leaving a lot of loose ends (the movie does not count) and the tone and explicit language might have had to do with the cancelation. It had a very niche audience. I honestly think it would have done better if it had come out post-streaming era of television.
Clearly DLM has a big fan base that it did not reach in time to prevent it's cancelation. I agree that it did not have a tone problem as much as it had a.. marketing problem.
One of my favourite things involving Death is when they brought back Barry Allen from being dead in the comics. It was revealed that he had literally been outrunning Death for however many decades. The Flash didn't die because he literally just outran death. Comics are dumb.
TP's incarnation of DEATH: Fastest harvester of wheat anyone ever thought they saw, and they couldn't help but wonder how he did it when he only ever cut one stem at a time.
You managed to make me cry with this one. Damn you! And thank you - Sir Terry Pratchett was a sore loss for me. Now, if you don't mind, I COULD MURDER A CURRY.
+Rebeca A. Agreed! 100%! I love Death from the Sandman, she's one of my favourite characters of all time and I would have to say that that version of Death is probably the most realistic to what I believe death to truly be in our world.
I loved the take on "games against death" in maskerade. In the novel the witch granny weatherwax finds herself being asked to save the lives of two individuals, an innkeepers infant son dying of a sickness, and a valuable cow. Death, however, has come for one. The boy. She arranges for a single hand of poker to decide the outcome, and death, despite having a winning hand, deliberately flunks, taking the cow instead of the baby. "I LOSE. ALL I HAVE IS FOUR ONES"
Love your videos! I was so hoping you would include The Book Thief -- and you did! My other favorite incarnation is Shacath/The Angel of Death from American Horror Story Asylum. It's one of the few incarnations I can think of portrayed as a woman in pop culture. Her Death is calming and nurturing, greeting a lot of the characters as friends or rescuing them for horrible circumstances.
That's the problem when you have a great book and try to make a film of it - one runs up against the ever-decreasing attention span of the unwashed masses, and is forced to condense it until it becomes a barely-recognizable shadow of its former self.
@@ryanahr2267 Basically, the first few books aren't a good example of why Discworld is so amazing. I'd recommend starting with either 'Guards! Guards!' or 'Small Gods'. Hope that helps!
I'm a little disappointed Der Tod from Elisabeth Das Musical wasn't featured. He fits roughly into the Death and the Maiden trope, but there's a little bit of a spin in that he wants Sisi (Empress Elisabeth of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) to leave her husband (Franz Joseph) and mortal life and follow him willingly. She, feeling herself cheated of freedom both by Death's fixation on her, and by her very prescribed existence as a Habsburg matriarch, continues to live largely out of spite. He kills off her loved ones, including her son, in an effort to drive her insane... It's a trip. And all in the form of a musical, which is sometimes performed in drag (depending on the company).
Lindsay Ellis, I thank you so much for your videos. I only discovered this channel a couple weeks ago, and am so glad I did. Such intelligent, well-delivered, entertaining cultural critique is a joy to encounter. So, thank you. Also, praise Sir Terry Pratchett.
I still wish there had been room in this for Animaniacs' "Meatballs or Consequences," which is heavily influenced by "The Seventh Seal." Yakko and Dot play Death (checkers, as Yakko can't play chess) for Wakko's life, or at least the ability to tag along so they can stay together. The Sibs cheat, so Death claims them as well, but then all three drive Death crazy so he lets them all live.
I know it's old vid. But one interpretation of "death" that i really, REALLY loved was Anubis on the American Gods! He has such a serene and warm presence. On the series, the episode that starts with his "coming to america" was.. Well, i may had shed a tear.
I only made it through season one of the show but it was solid. I wish the book hadn't been written like a dry, soulless medical journal. A coworker I had at the time essentially forced me to read it because she was so hyped for the show that wasn't out yet and it was an absolute slog for me. I've only read one other book of his, a collection of short stories, and I literally only bought that for A Study in Emerald. That short story remains the only thing by Gaiman that I've enjoyed.
I can’t believe I’m finding your videos so late to the party. And all I have to say is I think your work and videos are fantastic. Well and deeply researched. Carefully and lovingly crafted, and executed and delivered perfectly. Thank you for your work! Keep kicking ass and being you!❤
So.... no Marvel Comics' Mistress Death? I mean, you did go over the whole gender of Death thing. I would think you might touch on the cool and disinterested feminine Death who serves as the object of obsessive desire for Marvel's most notorious villain. I mean, there's also the ridiculously oversexualized Lady Death elsewhere in comics, but I think Marvel's possibly-hallucinatory personification deserves a pretty strong mention.
Marvel's Death is an interesting case, as it is no set entity, in the 50s and 60s it went around as man and would commonly be seen as a human in Jim Starlin's stories. Death treats every individual differently depending on how they view it, treat it as a friend like Mar-Vell then it will be kind, view as something you love but you also feel unworthy of receiving love then it will come to you like it did Thanos
I LOVE Terry Pratchet's death. He's one of my favorites. that particular incarnation had his own story, daughter, and beloved pony lol. I also really love the rappers from Dead Like Me.
minor correction: the red haired reaper in black butler, grelle, is a trans woman. straight from the manga-ka herself. trans rights yall! ps. im surprised you didn't cover death in marvel comics, Deadpool's on again off again love interest
Probably because the ANIME is different (notice how the anime were never human, whilst the manga eventually gives us backstory for how they came to be reapers) and also the anime doesn’t seem to care about the distinction or anything.
@@phastinemoon If you're saying that Grelle's gender is different in the anime... She pretty explicitly calls herself a woman multiple times throughout the anime so I'm not really sure what point you're making here.
There are so many depictions of death in media that covering them all would take forever. Secondly, Lindsay isn't a huge anime fan. She doesn't really cover most things in anime.
This video is about the Grim Reaper, about Death, as the western Anglo/Germanic depiction. .. So why would she talk about shinigami, spirits from Japanese religion/culture?
TheMrVengeance Because Shinigami are cultural imports from Europe. Shinigami didn't exist in Japanese mythology until Japan had more exposure to western culture and beliefs, and the idea of death as a being was borrowed and made to work within the context of Japanese mythology. Not to mention that shinigami are highly inconsistent throughout every depiction, in both mythology and pop culture, and in a lot of cases the word "shinigami" is simply used as the Japanese word for "grim reaper", such as in the case of Soul Eater or Black Butler, and many other manga and anime. Death Note just happens to be one of the more interesting depictions, in which the Shinigami are shown to live in a perpetual state of boredom and listlessness, where one gets mocked for even doing their job. Plus the three main Shinigami are fascinating depictions of Death in their own right, and Rem in particular fits into the depiction of Death falling in love with a woman that Lindsay talked about in this video. Not to mention Ryuk sharing that theme of Ennui with Terry Pratchett's depiction of Death.
This video immediately sent me to Hulu to watch the last five minutes of Robert Redford as Death. It makes me winsome smile every time. I'm already a huge Pratchett nerd so you saving his Death for last makes me super happy. Reaper Man is one of my favorite books. Thanks for this video, Lindsay.
Billy and Mandy was fantastic, up until Erwin became a mainstay. Seriously that kid just added too much stupid to an already stupid show. 😅 Still love the show though. Don't know if I could watch it nowadays but it was great for my weird-humored child brain.
Every time I see a scythe I am reminded of either: A) The Grim Reaper, or B) Sailor Saturn from "Sailor Moon," since she has one at the top of her staff (fitting since she is the soldier of Death and Rebirth, as well as the fact that in Roman/Greek mythology, Saturn was the god of the harvest and agriculture)
Not touched upon in this episode but perhaps you could do a loose canon on Empress Elizabeth (from Austria). There is a musical about Elizabeth where Death has a major role in it. It's a play on perhaps her darkest hours where she might have wished to be dead. Though we can never know for certain. It's kind of this wanting death but not wanting it at the same time. There are scenes where Death is seducing Elizabeth to come with him but she refuses him. And later on when Elizabeth wants Death to take her he refuses her. I found the musical really interesting and it is amongst one of my favorites.
Discworld actually changed my outlook on death, in such a good way. Changed my outlook on a lot of things, really. ....read Discworld, if you haven't, it's good
This is my favorite Loose Canon episode so far! I just love the scope of it, and how many historical and literary aspects of Death as a character (abstract, anthropomorphic or otherwise!) Lindsay manages to cover in this. Her technical skill in putting videos like this together has been pretty rock-solid for quite a long time (she HAS been doing this for a living for about a decade now), but what I REALLY love about this show in general is the topic format of covering a character or concept and its uses and appearances throughout history, which I hadn't previously seen anyone do - at least, not in the way SHE'S been doing it. It does seem overall pretty unique, as shows of this type go, which is awesome - YT NEEDS more content creators who think outside the box like this :D Also... *ahem*, I gotta add, Lindsay makes one wicked sexy Goth... I've had a lil crush on Lindsay since her Channel Awesome days as the Nostalgia Chick, so I've always found her really pretty, but goddamn, does she look amazing here! Freakin' HOT. :)
Actually the Grim Reapers from Black Butler were [SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS] originally humans who committed suicide. The whole thing's Christian mythos, and killing oneself is a sin, right? This is the punishment! Eternity working an apparently kind of shitty job.
Cool Arthur Kirkland icon Kelsey, and I was just stating information. Black Butler is clearly based around Christian mythos for the most part, so going by that standard to make the connect. I just wish she'd done a touch more research before making the reference, or going with something she wanted to do more research into. And Black Butler is set when Queen Victoria of England is still ruling the country, not to mention the rules of that age seem to be a lot more Old Testament type in general rather than "Jesus loves everyone". Hardline hellfire and everyone being consistently fucked no matter what.
hmm, I find you glissed on the whole "gender of death" problem a little too easily. The fact that the word "death" is grammatically female in lots of languages with a lot of mothertongue speakers means that a large portion of humanity visualize death as a woman; also, the skeleton-with-scythe representation is not necessarily sexualized, so it is normally perceived as woman in those countries. My point is, if you go beyond anglocentric culture, you're bound to finde lots of woman-deaths. This is not to say the video isn't interesting.
I don't think grammatical gender really has much to do with a cultural perception of masculinity or femininity. French speakers don't think of a house as a girl, it just happens that “la maison” sounds better than “le maison”, and “la” is also the article used for female people and animals. This is a simplification, but you get the idea. You could still be right about cultures seeing death as a woman, but I wouldn’t conclude that just on the linguistic point.
Yes I find this interpretation about why this or that word is feminine or masculine to be redundant because almost it ultimately doesn't actually mean anything.
However there is not that much correlation between these languages and these perceptions, in Spanish, death is also a feminine word but most Spanish speakers have been fully accustomed to the skeleton scythe archetype
@@fellinuxvi3541 Err, I think you mean "most Europaen Spanish speakers". In Mexiko, La Muerte is a very popular figure (I kinda wished The Book of Life had come out earlier so Lindsay could have covered it).
Gender for things in neo-latin languages is quite weird. Whilst I agree most spaniards don't think in Death as female just because the pronoun is femenine, there is this one case I always found fascinating with the word for "sea," "mar." It usually uses the male pronoun "el mar," yet sailors tended to personalize it as a lover of sorts and changed it to "la mar," with a female pronoun instead. So you find yourself in this strange situation in which "el mar" doesn't really have any gendered implications besides sounding better to our ears, yet "la mar" is very much intentionally gendered as a representation of those men's relationship with the sea.
Only thing I can think of that you missed is Death from Supernatural. He's a pretty interesting character and his entrance into the show is super cool. They killed him a few seasons ago because that's apparently a thing.
I know this episode is over two years old but it is still my favorite. Watched it over a dozen times. It sits at the top of my watch later list. Well done.
Gotta say I was waiting the whole time for you to talk about the Book Thief. I was worried for a second you weren't going to and then it was only in there for like 10 seconds 😓 still a great discourse tho!
"When the first living thing existed, I was there waiting. When the last living things dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave."
There are soooo many versions it would be insane to expect you to have talked about them all (Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Incarnations of Immortality). Thank you for another excellent romp through the genres. You do good work.
This is like how older sitcoms always worked in a day-at-the-beach episode. Excellent essay as always, but Lindsay dressed appropriately to talk about Death is edifying for the eyes as well. 😍
Huh. Are the loose canons being moved from another channel? I have trouble remembering where everything is as of late. Either way, this is my favorite Loose Canon. Death is the best.
I’m thinking of getting a tattoo of Death from The Sandman. I’ve loved those books since I was a kid and have always gravitated towards her. I find this interpretation very comforting, that death is just this kind, honest woman who loves you and is ready to take you where you have to go when your time comes. It’s impossible to fear or hate her, and that’s how I want to feel about dying.
I always thought Death from Sandman was based on Siouxsie Sioux, from Siouxsie and the Banshees. I mean hell....Dream is at least somewhat based on Robert Smith.
A female Death happens in Portuguese as well, where "A Morte" has been mostly represented with womanly characteristics. Especially in the Romantic period of Brazilian literature.
