Necrophilia in popular culture

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Necrophilia has been a frequent topic in popular culture.

[edit] Necrophilia in fiction

  • One of the characters of the webcomic Sexy Losers, Shiunji Watanabe, is a necrophiliac who ends up working in a funeral home.

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 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.
  • 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, a necrophilic theme.
  • 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 2005 New York-based author Supervert published the book Necrophilia Variations, a literary monograph on the erotic attraction to corpses and death.
  • 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 necrophiliac 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 H.P. Lovecraft's The Loved Dead, with C. M. Eddy, Jr, the protagonist's actions revolve around his misunderstood feelings towards dead people, starting with his own grandfather.
  • In Poppy Z. Brite's novel, Exquisite Corpse, the protagonist is a necrophiliac and serial killer. He explains his behavior as a compensation for loneliness.
  • Richard Brautigan's novel Dreaming of Babylon: A Private Eye Novel features a coroner who speaks openly of his attraction to female corpses, though he denies having intercourse with them.
  • In the video game The Elder Scrolls 4: 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;"Thats much less than it is in Morrowind!"
  • 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.

An extension of the emotional connection between love and death is love for a person, which remains after death. Some ghost stories focus on a deceased person's undying love for a living individual, manifest literally in the form of a palpable ghost or poltergeist. While it is considered a romantic image for a person to die "in the arms" of a lover, sexual activity with the dead is usually considered taboo, but has appeared in recent film and music.

Resurrection erotica is a set of artistic sub-genres wherein a person is brought back from a nonresponsive state (death, or a coma) by an expression, sometimes graphically physical, of romantic or sexual love. An example of this in fairy tale is the Sleeping Beauty parable.

[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. Triple H also threatened to show footage of Kane's "crimes." Later, he showed the alleged footage, which cleverly showed Triple H dressed as Kane simulating an act of necrophilia on a mannequin dressed as Vick. The reaction from viewers and wrestling fans alike was so negative that WWE was forced to quickly end the storyline.
  • 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").
  • In the 1989 comedy film Weekend at Bernie's, the corpse's girlfriend 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, believeing 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 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.

[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!"

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

  • 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 and Metallica.
  • 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 "Nekrophiliac" by Danish psychobillies 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.
  • 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".
  • Many of the songs written by the death metal band Cannibal Corpse involve necrophilia.
  • 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 song 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.
  • Death metal band Cannibal Corpse released a song called Necropedophile. Most of their songs revolve around the topic of necrophilia.
  • 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.
  • Sam Bakley 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 "Necromancing," 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 an 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."
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