Necrophilia in popular culture

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Necrophilia has been a frequent topic in popular culture.

Contents

[edit] Necrophilia in fiction

Romantic connections between love and death are a frequent theme in Western artistic expression.

  • In the Greek legend of the Trojan War, the Greek hero Achilles slays the Amazon queen Penthesilea, who is a lesbian, in a duel. Upon removing her helmet and seeing her face, Achilles falls in love with her and mourns her death. The soldier Thersites openly ridicules Achilles and accuses him of necrophilia. Achilles responds by promptly killing Thersites with a single blow. (In some traditions, Thersites' accusation is not unfounded--Achilles was so stricken by Panthesilea's beauty that he could not control his lust for her, even after her death.)
  • In Chuck Palahniuk's Lullaby, the protagonist has intercourse with his wife, though unbeknownst to him, she is dead. Another character in this novel is a necrophile paramedic.
  • Edgar Allan Poe once described the death of a beautiful young woman to be one of the most beautiful images. (By this, he was not saying that it is a good thing for young women to die; to him melancholy and pain were sources of beauty.) Also, his poem "Annabel Lee" includes, towards the end, possible necrophilic imagery.
  • Algernon Swinburne wrote a frankly necrophilic poem, The Leper, in which a man keeps the body of his former lover in his house: Love bites and stings me through, to see/Her keen face made of sunken bones./Her worn-off eyelids madden me,/That were shot through with purple once.
  • In Christopher Moore's novel, Bloodsucking Fiends, when the police find the vampire Jody in Tommy's freezer they think it's a dead body he's hiding so they send her to the morgue. The man working there is a necrophile and nearly molests her before she wakes up, giving him a heart attack that leads to his death. (She tucks his erection away so when he's found no one will suspect his dirty secret.)
  • In C.M. Eddy, Jr.'s short story "The Loved Dead" (written with the help of H.P. Lovecraft) the protagonist's actions revolve around his misunderstood feelings towards dead people. It starts with his own grandfather and progresses on toward necrophilia and becoming a serial killer to satisfy his desires.
  • In the video game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, there is an alchemist in the city of Skingrad who rather suspiciously asks if you know the fine for necrophila in Cyrodil. If you choose to tell her the fine, she says enthusiastically: "That's nothing compared to Morrowind. Thanks"
  • In The Secret Texts Trilogy by Holly Lisle, Andrew Sabir of the Hellspawn Trinity often rapes the corpses of the dead before his cousin, Crispin, buries them in his famous garden. Crispin and Anwyn, who are the other members of the Trinity, find this habit of his disgusting, and make that known even in their introduction. Often, Andrew's victims are children, as the energy of children, especially little girls, is considered by those who practice both Wolf and Dragon magic to be the purest.
  • In the adult webcomic Sexy Losers the continuing plotline "Shunji and the suicide girl" depicts a young necrophile (Shunji) who scares a girl (Yuuko) out of suicide several times by discussing what he will do with her corpse. After the her death he begins a long term relationship with the body as well as taking a job at a mortuary and using that for additional gratification.
  • In Hideo Yamamoto's original Manga of Ichi The Killer, the crime scene cleaner Inoue is depicted as a necrophile, and shown in silhouette having sex with the corpse of a 17 year old girl whilst his coworkers prepare to bury her.
  • In the Quantic Dream game Fahrenheit (also known as The Indigo Prophecy), a sex scene between Lucas Kane and Carla Valenti occurs after Kane's death, albeit after his resurrection. Valenti remarks that he is very cold.
  • In The Order of the Stick in comic 446 a Hell of a Job a Necromancer informs Xykon that she "loves the undead I mean really LOVE the undead" indicating necrophillia and met with repulsion from Xykon claiming he is not a biophile.
  • Patrick Bateman, the protagonist of the novel and film American Psycho, is depicted as engaging in acts of necrophilia, with bodies and parts of them.

[edit] Necrophilia in film and television

  • In 2002, World Wrestling Entertainment ran the infamous Katie Vick storyline as part of a feud between Triple H and Kane. In the storyline, Triple H accused Kane of killing Katie Vick, who had rejected Kane's romantic advances, and raping her corpse. On the October 21, 2002 episode of Monday Night Raw in Nashville, Tennessee, a tape of the alleged act was shown depicting Triple H, wearing Kane's mask and current t-shirt, simulating an act of necrophilia on a mannequin dressed in a cheerleader costume. Reaction to this twist in the storyline was decidedly negative, and the Kane/Triple H feud was blown off with a casket match the following week.
  • In 1980 artist John Duncan reportedly purchased a body and taped his sex act with it. Blind Date essay
  • Takashi Miike's film Visitor Q contains a scene where a man rapes and accidentally kills a woman, and then decides to have sex with her before chopping her body into pieces. While having sex, the body goes into rigor mortis and his penis gets stuck.
  • The 1985 cult horror film, Re-Animator, loosely based on an H. P. Lovecraft story, contains a memorable instance of "reverse necrophilia". In the film, a decapitated surgeon is brought back to life and then sets about kidnapping and sexually molesting the nubile young daughter of the Dean of the Miskatonic medical school. The absurdity culminates in an ingeniously off-color slapstick-surreal double entendre: the "re-animated" surgeon holds out his severed head and attempts to perform cunnilingus on the daughter, who is now stripped, spread-eagled, and trussed to a table (i.e., the head literally "gives head").
  • The 1988 low-budget horror film Dead Mate has sexual necrophilia as its chief theme; the movie's chief antagonist, a mortician, and his henchmen murder young women (only one of these killings, a high-school cheerleader who is forced to drive into a lake and drowned, is actually shown) and then perform sexual experiments on their dead bodies.
  • In the 1988 comedy Mortuary Academy, the headmaster of the academy (Paul Bartel) forms a necrophiliac attachment to the corpse of a pretty cheerleader who has been brought in for embalming after choking to death on popcorn at a movie; one of the running jokes concerns his repeated futile attempts to have sex with the body.
  • In the 1989 comedy film Weekend at Bernie's, the corpse's mistress returns to his beachfront home and has sex with the corpse, not realizing that Bernie has been dead for days.
  • A 1991 Taggart episode, "Nest of Vipers", featured a plotline where a necrophiliac used venomous animals to commit murders.
  • In the 1994 film Clerks., Dante Hicks' on and off girlfriend Caitlin Bree mistakenly has sex with a dead man in a convenience store bathroom, believing it to be Hicks.
  • The 1997 film Men in Black, the character Dr. Laurel Weaver (played by Linda Fiorentino) is a cynical, dryly funny mortician, who hints at necrophilia in the morgue.
  • The 2000 film Quills depicts a dream where the Abbé in charge of the Marquis de Sade's asylum fondles and fornicates with a dead laundress. In it, she comes back to life during sex, then returns to a corpse once he realizes his actions.
  • The Season 3 Episode 6 of Nip/Tuck titled "Frankenlaura" features a necrophiliac mortician who preserves the body of his dead sister in order to make love to it.
  • In a scene in the film Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, the character Alfredo Sawyer is depicted as passionately kissing a severed and heavily decayed head as he disposes of body parts in a swamp.
  • In his comedy special Life is Worth Losing, George Carlin talks about necrophilia. One of his observations is that the best part is that one doesn't have to bring flowers; the flowers are usually already there.
  • In the Family Guy episode, "Death is a Bitch," Death (represented by the Grim Reaper), continues to have intercourse with a woman after he kills her with his touch. In the later episode "I Take Thee Quagmire," Glen Quagmire asks Death if he can have the corpse of his deceased ex-wife "for a few minutes", implying that, among other things, Quagmire could be a necrophile.
  • The Season 2 episode of Puppets Who Kill, "Dan and the Necrophiliac", features a female necrophiliac who is caught having sex with her dead uncle at his funeral. Later in the episode the character of Dan Barlow (played by Dan Redican), who is attracted to her, fakes his own death so that she will violate his corpse.
  • In the last episode of the anime School Days, Katsura Kotonoha is last seen hugging the head of her deceased boyfriend Makoto Itō on her yacht.
  • The Criminal Minds episode The Last Word features a necrophilic serial killer who kills women so he can have sex with the bodies.

[edit] Necrophilia in music

  • Satirical songwriter Tom Lehrer, whose 1950s recordings mentioned many topics not normally openly discussed in those days, referenced a friend of his who "wrote a heartwarming story about a young necrophiliac who finally achieved his lifelong ambition by becoming Coroner!" Lehrer gave the audience a few seconds to murmur in bewilderment, and then said, "The rest of you can look it up when you get home!"
  • Jimmy Cross's song "I Want My Baby Back" is a parody of the morbid teenage tragedy song genre that was popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s

Several rock artists also focus on the connection between romantic love and death, despair, and the occult:

  • Skunkabilly band "Cap Gun Standoff" wrote a song entitled "Home Sweet Hell" which depicts the story of a man raising the corpse of a woman (Zombie slut) to have sexual intercourse with, while keeping her alive by feeding her the flesh of people he has already killed.
  • In the 1970s, shock rocker Alice Cooper recorded a couple of songs about necrophilia, "I Love the Dead", and "Cold Ethyl".
  • American industrial rock band Stabbing Westward has many songs dealing with despair, drug abuse, sexual abuse, death, and romantic love, often in conjunction.
  • Horror punk band The Misfits wrote a song called "Last Caress" which includes the lines "Sweet lovely death/ I am waiting for your breath/ Come Sweet Death, One Last Caress". Also covered by NOFX, Metallica and AFI. Additionally, thereis another Misfits tune, called "Hate the Living, Love the Dead", where the focus is on the construction of an undead bride.
  • Rammstein wrote a song called "Heirate mich" (Marry me) in which a man digs up his dead girlfriend and "takes what's still there".
  • Horror punk band Murderdolls, led by Wednesday 13, has created a life style out of singing about necrophilia and sexual acts with the dead.
  • Punk rock band TSOL had a minor hit with "Code Blue", a song that justifies necrophilia by claiming (among other things) that the singer can, "Do what I want and [she] won't complain."
  • The Rockabilly subgenre of Psychobilly is full of bands who sing of necrophilia as a main staple of their music. A strong example of this is the song "Nekrofelia" by Danish psychobilly band Nekromantix.
  • In the 1980s and 1990s, necrophilia emerged in the heavy metal sub-genres of death metal, black metal and goregrind.
  • In 1993, a music video for Tom Petty's hit song "Mary Jane's Last Dance" featured the singer simulating various romantic poses with a dead woman (played by Kim Basinger).
  • In 1996, a Russian band called Sexual Minorities ("Сексуальные меньшинства" in Russian) released the album titled Necrophilia - The Cold Ten (in Russian, "Некрофилия - Холодная Десятка"), which contained parodies of Russian pop-songs.
  • In 2000 Comedian Stephen Lynch released a song called "A Month Dead" about a necrophile whose lover is beginning to smell on his album A Little Bit Special.
  • American death metal band Vehemence has recurring lyrical themes often explicitly describing acts of necrophilia.
  • British metal band Cradle of Filth released a poster with vocalist Dani Filth standing in a cemetery, with the words "Dead Girls Don't Say 'No'"
  • In 2003 the Colorado based humor-horror punk band Crackula recorded a song entitled "NecroFeelin'" about a necrophilic love affair.
  • British Grindcore band Raging Speedhorn wrote a song called "Necrophiliac glue-sniffer".
  • Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen mention necrophilia in their song "Formidable Marinade" on the album Journey through the Sea of Shadows
  • Slayer have many songs concerning necrophilia. They released Necrophiliac on Hell Awaits, Dead Skin Mask (about Ed Gein) on Seasons in the Abyss and yet another track on Divine Intervention about Jeffrey Dahmer called 213.
  • Brotha Lynch Hung, a hardcore rapper from Sacramento is one of the most gruesome and explicitally violent lyricists with songs graphically chronicling a life filled by drug use and sale, promiscuity, ultra-violence, rape, infanticide, necrophilia, and cannibalism.
  • Wolfpac a horrorcore rap group released a song called Death Becomes Her about having sex with a dead girl and eventually having to hide the body from the police.
  • Insane Clown Posse released a song entitled "Cemetery Girl". In the song Violent J digs up his dead girlfriend.
  • Griffen Cooper and the Grave Robbers With lyrics based totally on necrophilia and high school health class this band never quite made it to a major record deal
  • In 2006, Gnarls Barkley released a song entitled "Necromancer," which describes a man's obsession with a dead woman. At points he asks her to "wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up." He describes her "sexy suicide" and says that "she was cool when he met her but I think I like her better dead."
  • The video for Nick Cave's single Where the Wild Roses Grow features Kylie Minogue as a murder victim whom Nick Cave's character fondles.
  • Black Metal band Mayhem Released a song Called "Necrolust" from the Deathcrush EP.
  • Idlewild (2006) depicted a scene in which musician-mortician Percival, played by Andre 3000, sings a romantic song to his dead girlfriend as he gazes longinly at her half-dressed corpse, which he embalms, applies makeup to and dresses up.
  • Killing Miranda released a song "Burn Sinister". Choice lyrics snippets: "away from prying eyes", "my cold dead flesh", "romance this rotting meat", "the smell of formaldehyde and perfume"....
  • Killa c, a horrorcore rapper has mentioned necrophilia in a few different songs. The song Shez Dead on Murdaeyez starts with Killa C saying, "Bitches man, I kill em, then I f*ck em." Another notable song is Ghost Town feat. The R.O.C. on Tainted Flesh where in the chorus Killa C says, "In our town you can even fuck a dead bitch."
  • Voltaire wrote a song on his Almost Human album called Dead Girls about a man being convicted for fornicating while the deceased in a morgue
  • Cannibal Corpse has many songs about necrophilia and corpse defiling, such as "I Cum Blood", "Necropedophile", "Dismembered and Molested" and "Gallery of Suicide". Ironically they also have songs about the dead coming back to life and raping the living, like "Necrosadistic Warning" and "Post Mortal Ejaculation" and even songs about zombies having sex, like "Unite the Dead." George Fisher says that 'the songs are all in good faith, and are not meant to offend real necrophiles, despite offending everyone else.
  • Cradle of Filth's song "Lord Abortion" is thought to be about necrophilia, based on lyrics and a female voice at the introduction that says "Care for a little necrophilia, hm?"
  • Noise musician Atrax Morgue's work revolves heavily around necrophilia; track titles include "Necrosadism", "Esthetik of a Corpse", "Cold Pleasure", "Necrophile Lust", and the "Necrophiliac Experience" series.
  • The song "A Little Piece of Heaven" on Avenged Sevenfold by Avenged Sevenfold talks about necrophilia.
  • The song "Last kiss goodbye" by Lordi talks about hiding a girls body, and being in love with her.

[edit] References