Nothing reminds me of the Victorians like Christmas time. Charles Dickens. Carollers. A child choking on a sixpence from a Christmas Pudding.
So what could be more festive and Victorian than MASS PUBLIC CRYING. Kim Jong-Il is dead, and now the populace of North Korea is engaging in a very public mourning. It’s kind of funny but also really sad. Not sad because Kim Jong-il is dead, but because the people of NoKo have clearly been brainwashed to feel grief for a man that most of them have never met. Either that or the fear of secret police killing your family has you crying like you mean it.
Just watch the videos below. There are only two ways to cry openly: standing erect like you have a bean cane up your backside (The Dear Leader loved to look at things. He is looking at you right now from beyond the grave). Or option two: smacking the pavement in anguish.
As a ‘stupid Westerner’ with all of my #firstworldproblems, I can’t help but find the whole phenomenon slightly mental. But it wasn’t so long ago that we Brits engaged in a batshit crazy brand of mourning of our very own. World, I give you the Victorians.
So say your husband died, and now you face life as a widow. Very sad. These days, you’d invite your bezzie round for a cup of tea and probably re-bond all over again with your rebel daughter. Back in the day however, you had better start crying. And keep crying. In fact, in Victorian times mourning went on for months, sometimes years. Queen Victoria herself spent the rest of her life in mourning after Price Albert died in 1861. She died in 1901 and was fat as a house from all of that comfort eating. In fact she was so rotund, her coffin was almost square.
As for your wardrobe, well, you better own a lot of black. This isn’t a problem if you’re a massive goth, or have been buying loads of black any way because it’s a ‘slimming colour’. Accessorise with a veil to hide your tears, and a locket containing the dead’s hair.
The North Koreans also seem to be crying while facing pictures of Kim Jong-Il, beaming down at them affectionately, demanding loyalty from beyond the grave. The Victorians, however, immortalised their lost loved ones forever in a most macabre fashion. Although Kim Jong-Il will live on forever in oil paint with a rosy complexion and chubby cheeks, at least he won’t be remembered as stony cold corpse. Unless of course he is to be ensconced in a glass coffin, Lenin style.
If there was a death in a Victorian family, they used to get the photographer round sharpish to take a snap of you before rigor mortis set in. Propped up like you were ‘sleeping’, this practice was especially common with the deaths of children. Called a ‘memento mori’, literally meaning ‘remember death’, it was very much a family affair with siblings often surrounding the corpse. Sometimes they even left the eyes open. That’ll keep the citizens of the Hermit State forever compliant: prop Kim Jong-Il up with a fixed gaze, surrounded by flowers and secret police, and launch a flurry of communist propaganda. Say cheese!
