The Fearful Touch of Death: The Philosophy of Death and Pain in Aesthetics and Media

The central question this thesis is concerned with is the question of death: how do we make sense of it? Through philosophical examination, we discover we cannot make sense of death. Death is nonsensical because it cognitively and physically cannot be controlled via a binary context; death becomes something we fear. This fear we feel is, in turn, immune to true catharsis. To control the fear of death to some extent, we suture the fear we experience from physical punishment with our metaphysical fear of death. Thus, the meaning and experience of death become entangled in the binary of punishment and non-punishment. We tentatively argue that this suture is expressed in media texts, such as film; and further posit hypothetically that media texts such as film have the function of either alleviating, or controlling, the fear of death, both in production and reception.