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Dying with the times
The Shrouds, the recently-released film by director David Cronenberg, features a character named Karsh who launches a revolutionary system of digital shrouds that allows the living to stay in touch with their loved ones and observe the decomposition of their bodies in the grave. Does this dystopian tale reflect the moral panic linked to death and new technologies?
Delphine Moreau-Plachy1: The printing press, television, radio… Every technological advance triggers a moral panic. In addition, from an anthropological point of view death is seen as irrational and incomprehensible. Combining it with new technologies is thought to constitute a form of dissonance, judging from the reactions of the people I interviewed for my thesis on the expression of grief on social networks.
In reality, however, these tools are highly varied. There are now digital cemeteries and memorials that function as commemorative sites and repositories of information. A new art form is also emerging, giving rise to digital mausoleums, for example. The actress Isabelle Huppert took part in her own ‘3D embalming’ in the form of a digital memorial. My interviews revealed concerns about 'deadbots', artificial intelligence systems that make it possible to ‘communicate’ with the deceased. I could also mention the experience of a Korean mother who used a virtual reality headset to see her seven-year-old daughter who had died of cancer.
Are these tools revolutionary or are they part of a continuity of practices?
D. M.-P.: We’re still a long way from a Black Mirror-style dystopia. Digital practices related to death are very limited in scope. New technologies – digital or not – have always served as a medium for communicating about death and mourning. Although new, these tools only update existing customs, for example through spiritualism. Nowadays, this kind of collective traditional rituality is no longer as pertinent and is being replaced by other rites around death, more personal and multiple. For example, expressing grief on social media does not prevent visits to the cemetery.
What about the commodification of these new practices?
D. M.-P.: Not all digital uses are affected by commodification. Deadbots are not free, of course. But we must keep in mind that death and funerals have always been commercialised, whether for purchasing a burial plot or placing an announcement in the newspaper. The only notable change could be the existence of companies in charge of deleting the deceased’s digital data.
Who are the people who post the most about death and in whose memory?
D. M.-P.: Not surprisingly, among the more than 1,000 digital publications that I studied for my thesis, women posted the most. This observation is in line with sociological studies showing that they take on the role of primary mourners, perpetuating family ties and memories. The posts mainly concern parents, especially fathers. Grandparents are also strongly present in the final corpus, confirming the intra-family relationship in the expression of mourning. Friends are also widely represented, especially in posts by people under age 45.
In general, posting about mourning on one’s profile amounts to ‘producing your own decedent’, as the sociologist Fanny Georges puts it. In a sense, it’s the creation or even appropriation of the deceased, by describing them from a personal viewpoint.
How does what is expressed online reveal what takes place offline?
D. M.-P.: In the 84 interviews I conducted, some of the posts needed to be understood in light of the offline context. For example, one of my respondents had posted about her mother on Facebook because her family thought that she ‘didn’t seem to be in mourning’. It was a way of proving her sorrow to her relatives.
In cases of perinatal bereavement, mothers experience a kind of marginality offline. They turn to social networks in particular to find support and recognition from a community. At that point we’re in a realm of intersubjectivity that I think characterises our contemporary relationship to mourning.
Does mourning on social networks constitute a violation of post-mortem digital identity?
D. M.-P.: Creating a digital identity for a deceased person can pose an ethical and philosophical problem, insofar as a narrative or photographs can be published without the consent of the decedent or their loved ones. However, hypervisibility remains rare, because mourning posts are seen primarily by friends and/or other subscribers. The ethical issues rather relate to the creation of digital identities than to exacerbated visibility.
Film
The Shrouds by David Cronenberg, released on 30 April, 2025.
For further reading
Mickey 17: Downloading the human mind
Nosferatu: Vampires combine fear, laughter and entertainment
Shelley’s Frankenstein: a feminist novel?
- 1. A postdoctoral fellow in sociology and the information and communication sciences at the Centre Max Weber (CNRS / ENS de Lyon / Université Jean Monnet / Université Lumière-Lyon 2).
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Author
Specializing in themes related to religions, spirituality and history, Matthieu Sricot works with various media, including Le Monde des Religions, La Vie, Sciences Humaines and even Inrees.