The preparation room of a funeral home is a mystery to most people.
It’s a place the public rarely sees. This is where funeral professionals wash, embalm, dress, groom and otherwise prepare deceased people for viewing, burial or cremation. Because most of us have little firsthand experience with what happens there, movies and television can have an outsized influence on what we imagine goes on behind those closed doors.
Episode Thirteen of Mortality Movies takes viewers into the prep room.
Join Gail Rubin, The Doyenne of Death®, Licensed Spiritual Counselor Kelly Saindon, and Death Educator Jane Westbrook for this episode. They examine how films and television portray care of the dead, from embalming and cosmetics to natural burial and the ancient Jewish ritual of tahara.
Along the way, the episode raises an important question: Does keeping the care of our dead largely out of sight make death more difficult for us to understand and accept?
What Exactly Is Embalming?
The Canadian dark comedy Just Buried (2007) provides an introduction to embalming through a young female mortician who matter-of-factly explains the process. A funeral director who viewed this scene confirmed the validity of the description.
For viewers unfamiliar with funeral home procedures, even a fictional glimpse into embalming can be illuminating. The process temporarily preserves the body and can help restore a more familiar appearance, particularly when a family plans a viewing.
But embalming is not synonymous with funeral care, nor is it required for every death or every type of funeral.
That distinction matters. Many Americans have absorbed their ideas about funerals from popular culture and may assume embalming is simply “what happens” after someone dies.
Movies give death educators an opportunity to explain the options families actually have.
Making the Deceased Look Like Themselves
Bernie (2011) opens with Jack Black as Bernie Tiede teaching mortuary students some of the techniques used to make a deceased person presentable for viewing.
The film is based on the remarkable true story of Tiede, an assistant funeral director in Carthage, Texas, who was known for his attentive service to grieving families before becoming famous for an entirely different reason.
The opening scene demonstrates the skill involved in restorative work. Funeral professionals aren’t simply putting makeup on someone. Their goal is often to create a peaceful and recognizable appearance that helps family and friends remember the person as they were.
And that’s where My Girl (1991) provides a useful counterpoint.
Jamie Lee Curtis plays Shelly, a cosmetologist newly employed at the family-run funeral home operated by Harry, played by Dan Aykroyd. The scene illustrates what can happen when the makeup applied to a deceased person doesn’t reflect how that individual actually looked in life.
Anyone who has ever approached a casket and thought, “That doesn’t look like Mom,” understands the problem.
A viewing can be an important opportunity to acknowledge the reality of a death and say goodbye. But for that experience to be comforting, families generally want to recognize the person they’re seeing.
Must There Be a Funeral Home Viewing?
The acclaimed HBO series Six Feet Under repeatedly took viewers into the Fisher family’s preparation room, making visible many aspects of funeral service rarely portrayed on television.
In the scene shown in the full episode of Mortality Movies, David Fisher washes the body of his brother Nate. Their mother enters with Nate’s good suit, expecting that he will be prepared for a traditional viewing.
But Nate chose natural burial. He is not going to be dressed in a suit. David tells his mother to view him as he is. She reluctantly picks up a cloth and helps wash her son’s body.
The moment opens a larger conversation about what families expect to happen after a death versus what the deceased actually wanted.
A funeral home viewing can be immensely valuable for some mourners, but it isn’t necessary for everyone. Natural burial, immediate burial, cremation and other choices may involve different approaches to preparing and spending time with the body.
What’s important is understanding those choices before a family is making decisions while grieving.
An Ancient Tradition of Caring for the Dead
Perhaps the most striking example in this episode comes from the Mexican film My Mexican Shivah (2007).
The film clip depicts tahara, the traditional Jewish ritual of washing the body and purification of the soul of a deceased person before burial. The ritual is performed by members of the Chevrah Kaddisha, the sacred burial society.
Unlike modern commercial funeral preparation, tahara is traditionally carried out by members of the Jewish community. The volunteers provide an act of service, men doing the ritual for men, women for women. It usually takes place in the funeral home prep room. The body is carefully washed and purified with water while being treated with respect and dignity.
The film takes some liberties for the camera. A cloth covers the genital area for modesty during filming, whereas that would not ordinarily be part of the ritual. Usually, the body is covered with a sheet during the tahara for the modesty of the deceased.
Yet the scene offers something rarely seen on film: ordinary people personally caring for someone who has died. They wear PPE, personal protective equipment, such as latex gloves, masks and gowns.
In the Jewish tradition, participating in this work is considered a profound mitzvah, a sacred good deed. The deceased can never repay the favor, making care of the dead an especially selfless act.
For people accustomed to handing all physical care of the deceased over to professionals, that idea can seem extraordinary.
For much of human history, it wasn’t extraordinary at all.
Bringing Care of the Dead Back Into the Conversation
The films in Episode Thirteen show very different ways of preparing a body, but together they help demystify something our culture often keeps hidden.
Professional embalming and restorative work can help families have a meaningful viewing. Natural burial offers alternatives that may involve minimal intervention. Jewish tahara demonstrates how hands-on care of the dead can itself become a sacred ritual.
Perhaps the preparation room doesn’t have to be quite so mysterious.
Learning what happens to our bodies after death can help remove some of the fear. And understanding our options gives us a better chance of making choices that reflect our own values, traditions and wishes.
After all, talking about what happens in the prep room won’t make anyone dead.
It just makes us better prepared.
Would you want to participate in caring for the body of someone you love after death? Or would you prefer to leave that care entirely to funeral professionals? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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You can also discover a treasure trove of conversation-starting films and TV shows in Gail Rubin’s latest book, 98.6 Mortality Movies to See Before You Die.