Death and disposal of the people's singer: The body and bodily practices in commemorative ritual

Abstract

This contribution focuses on the power of commemorative ritual with special attention for bodily matters. It relies on empirical material from a sequence of ceremonies in commemoration of Dutch singer André Hazes (1951–2004). All celebrations were staged performances and widely mediated events. In the Dutch context, they were of an unusual form, content and scale, and evoked widespread amazement and even disapproval. Significant in all these performances was the bodily presence of Hazes, not only by the literal presence of Hazes' dead body, but also in the form of mimicked representations by his fans. Hazes was an ambiguous celebrity, his bodily appearance and habits offered occasion for identification as well as abjection. Emphasising his general physical appearance (fat, sweating, unhealthy looking), the ‘social body’ of André Hazes appears as a counter-ideal of rough authenticity, in opposition to the dominant social construct of the body as young, smooth, healthy and beautiful. The contribution's main argument is that his fans' bodily identification is a practice to contest dominant bodily ideals in a societal struggle about who matters and who does not.