peddling death

Death has been on my mind a lot this week. Nothing sinister I can assure you, it’s just happened to crop up, as it does. And a quick lunchtime foray around the blogs on my RSS feed – the wonderful British Beauty Blogger is a favourite – brought the subject to the fore, again.

I’ve always thought the fashion for garments featuring deathheads was really odd. Now the British Beauty Blogger tells me there’s a candle been launched in the shape of a skull available on net-a-porter for a mere snip at £45. Just great, now I can pay to be reminded of my mortality whenever I’m looking to chill at home.

They say what comes around goes around. During the Renaissance monks were no strangers to a real life human skull placed on a spartan table in their cell. It was meant to remind them of their mortality and there are many scenes of this kind in works by Spanish painter, Zurbaran and his contemporaries.

Death came up again when I was watching a re-run of the very first episode of Man Men a few days ago. It’s the one when they are pitching to Lucky Strike and all Don Draper has to go on is the fairly new research that smoking kills. It’s pitch brinkmanship at its very best. Needless to say he brings it out of the bag with his “it’s toasted” line. But his pre-pitch thinking where he struggles to come to terms with how to sell something that kills makes for brilliant viewing. Essentially, it can’t be done. How, he debates, can you sell Lucky Strike by telling the American public that they have a communal death wish, which is the route a junior colleague opts for in the pitch, with disastrous results.

Which all makes me think we’ve come a long way. Candles in the shape of skulls? Death seems to have a certain cachet after all, priced just £45.