Is it inappropriate to dance at a funeral? The answer to this is both culturally and personally specific. For some it’s an obvious yes, for others a horrified no. Yet others may have never even considered the question. For many ‘Westerners’ (i.e. white, mainstream North Americans) funerary rites are a very serious and proper matter, doleful and staid. They aren’t alone in this, though their (technically our, though I’ve personally always found funerals a bewildering practice in the first place) funeral traditions do seem to operate under a constant dread of impropriety that isn’t felt elsewhere. Almost as if one is afraid to embarrass the dead.

I’m sure you all have your own answers and feelings in regards to this question of deathly dancing, but let’s add a twist: What if the deceased came back? Specifically mid-funeral. If they were to open their eyes and sit up in the midst of the service, what would you want them to find waiting for them? Would you hope to impress upon them their significance through respectful tears? Or would you rather they wake up to the joyful stamping of feet? What if it was that very stamping, the rhythmic testing of the floorboards, which woke them?

This, I think, is what Danse Makabre is asking. Or at least, what it’s asking me. If we are truly at the end, the end of the Earth, the end of humanity, my own end, then how shall we send ourselves off? More importantly, is it too late to wake the dead?

If it isn’t, what will it take? What the hell kind of dance party could pull it off? Will it be the ecstatic twirling of religious ritual, the raucous procession of a brass band in full regalia, or do we truly need to get down in the dirt and pound Mother Earth’s heart back to life? If we are in mourning over the death of the world, is there a suitable expression of our climate grief which could stir the ground beneath us back into some semblance of life; or at the very least convince us that we had done all we could?

This line of questioning reminds me of two very different films, which each tackle the idea of death (and dancing) in their own unique way: Midsommar and Return of the Living Dead. At first blush there is little in common between the two, other than both falling vaguely within the genre of horror. But under the surface (yes, that is a zombie pun) both are grappling with ideas of death, survival and the dissolution of the self in the face of corrupting influences.

In Return these themes are right in your face, being cornerstones of the zombie genre generally. Interestingly, however, the cause of the zombie outbreak stems not from anything supernatural, nor alien, nor even viral. The creation of zombies is the (ambiguously intentional or unintentional) by-product of military experimentation, in the form of a preserved body in an oil drum of toxic liquid. An oil drum which is disturbed as a result of one of the punk protagonists abandoning his counter-establishment ideals and getting a job with ‘the man.’ In response to this outbreak, the military orders the destruction of the entire area by missile, more to cover up their own crimes and failures than as a solution to the zombies themselves.

In Midsommar the physical peril and loss of self stem from what is on its surface a rural Scandinavian cult, but is really just a thinly veiled metaphor for facism. They bring in outsiders to breed with, to continue their otherwise remote and genetically shallow society, and then brutally kill anyone who they can’t indoctrinate into staying with them willingly. In both films, whether the antagonistic force is one of facism or militant, industrialized capitalism, it is clearly spelled out that these forces place no value on individual lives, but only their own continued existence and maintenance of power. Outsiders, whether they be working class punks or hapless American tourists, are expendable.

Return of the Living Dead is, of the two, much more explicit about the expendability of nature under such systems, with both the toxic corpse being incinerated, leaching its poison into the air and ground, and then later the military willingly dropping a nuke on their own territory to cover it all up. Midsommar is more subtle in this regard, with the fascistic cult living in a seemingly more harmonious state with nature; but they too are unhesitant to burn and kill the natural world around them in the furtherance of their goals.

Both films present us with a necropastoral setting, embodying death, dehumanization, toxicity, and the subversion of the natural order. In one this stems from the by-products of mechanized capitalistic warfare, and in the other from a dysfunctional, death and purity obsessed ideology. In both, the protagonists are steadily overwhelmed by these forces, only to ultimately succumb to them, either through death, undeath, or indoctrination. And, relevantly, in both films the protagonists dance, albeit to very different effect.

In Midsommar the outsider protagonists first witness and then politely, if awkwardly, take part in the ritual dancing of the community they’ve entered upon. Even after some of their members begin to disappear, or witness things which they cannot rectify, they continue to acquiesce to the customs of their destroyers. Eventually, the lead protagonist comes to fully embrace the rituals and dances of the fascist society, segueing into her ultimate acceptance of their ideology, marking her as the lone survivor of the primary cast.

In Return on the other hand, the punk protagonists begin a raucous (and almost unpleasantly horny) dance party in a graveyard, explicitly to thumb their noses at the destructive and control-obsessed system which surrounds them. And this attitude is only escalated as the situation grows ever more dire, with the punks consistently rejecting the assumed authority of the older and more empowered characters around them, always with the result of them outliving those same people. While they still suffer casualties, a few of them make it to the very end, wiped out (or implied to be, as we don’t witness the actual detonation) only by the overwhelming, apocalyptic force of a nuclear missile.

So I ask again, if we are at our end, observing in real time the funeral of the Earth and of ourselves, how shall we comport ourselves? Shall we acquiesce, politely, to the delusionally pleasant rituals of our destroyers, too fearful of giving offense or making a scene? Or will we thrash and grind with abandon in the graveyard, and leave the respectful tear-dabbing and affirmation muttering to those with nothing left to lose? If we’re doomed either way, how do we want to go out?

For my part, and I believe the part of Danse Makabre, I say we stop wringing our hands and raise some hell. And just maybe, if our dance is hard enough, loud enough, fucking punk enough, we can still raise the goddamned dead. We’ll just have to be willing to get our good shoes dirty.