![]() Even as the Black Death returned to Europe, the images of Death and the Danse Macabre remained a popular visual warning that death could be waiting around the next proverbial corner - for everyone. The BBC says that's a shift that became more pronounced throughout the 16th century. When the same skeletons came for the poor, though, they offered a release from back-breaking labor, starvation, and a life of servitude. In his depictions of the Danse Macabre, skeletons and death coming for the rich and powerful were feared, because those were the people who lived a life of luxury, and had everything to lose. Atlas Obscura says that he wasn't just an artist, but he was an outspoken opponent of the economics of his era, which were the 1520s (give or take). That's most noticeable, perhaps, in the works of Hans Holbein the Younger. So, when did Death become the traditionally male figure he is today? (With, of course, some notable exceptions like Neil Gaiman's female Death from "The Sandman.") By the mid-15th century, the figure of Death had become associated with this passage from Revelations: "And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him." Standing amid piles of the dead is a lone woman, holding the arrows that delivered the plague to victims chosen with terrifying randomness. His wasn't the only female Death: Cherwell speaks to an image on the walls of France's Priory of St. Buffalmacco definitely could have read it, as it featured him in some of the stories. Interestingly, it's believed to be characters from Giovanni Boccaccio's "Decameron," a story about a group of rich friends who decide to wait out the plague by leaving the city and heading to the countryside. This show is absolutely nothing like Six Feet Under, for which I am grateful.With flowing robes and long, white hair, this early figure of Death was depicted as looking to the next set of souls she's going to take with her. (The postal service failed to deliver it,unknown to him until 2004.) We can only wait to find out how everyone's lives -and deaths- have played out. He has a love-hate relationship with the unseen being who delivers the death lists, and we know only that he had a daughter, and that he attempted to send money to someone named Rosie and her mother back in the 1920's. Little by little, the audience is fed bits and pieces of information about the lives and deaths of the main characters. The show still visits the serious side of things, showing how the Lasses lost a daughter, while George has lost her whole family. The dialogue is funny, and hearing what's going on inside George's head while she puts on a smile is more than a little amusing. ![]() The writers have produced some of the funniest comedy, especially where George's boss Dolores is concerned a former junkie who has taken home drifters ("passionate lovers", she calls them), who gives no thought to using a Tazer on a courier at the elevator in order to get her incontinent cat to the vet. ![]() Ellen Muth's interpretation of the disaffected, cynical teenager who is forced into sticking to a higher standard is right on. ![]()
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