Funerals

Regardless of how it sounds, a funeral is a performance. Sure, the primary focus of a funeral is to honor the dead, but this is accomplished through a whole slew of rituals that are in essence performances. If people didn’t want a performance, an undertaker wouldn’t be hired to (as Goffman says) “direct” the event. The undertaker is clearly there to take a leadership role in ensuring the funeral has the conventional elements – all the elements that people who aren’t necessarily distraught because of the person’s death but who are at the funeral supporting the people who are distraught expect to see. Religious practices at the memorial service, the funeral procession, and the carrying of the casket by the pallbearers are all symbols of respect – but the whole symbolic nature of these practices seem to me to be just more of a performance.
Looking at another angle of this, the family members of the diseased are actors in the performance as well. In the “front region”, these family members do their best to act put-together, but in the “back region”, they can truly let their feelings out. When my grandma died, my mom played such a large role in the logistics of making sure the funeral was properly arranged that she couldn’t wait for the funeral to be done with so that she didn’t have to put on a show for others but rather do her grieving in private. If a funeral was truly about honoring the dead and supporting those affected by it most, a big service would not be needed.