Modern film and television is littered with images of dead bodies, but according to mortician Caitlin Doughty, not many shows or films depict the dead accurately. Doughty is the founder of The Order Of The Good Death, a group of funeral industry professionals, academics, and artists who aim to “bring discussions of mortality back into the public sphere,” whether that means helping people confront their own death fears, the death of loved ones, the afterlife (or lack thereof), grief, corpses, bodily decomposition, or all of the above. As Doughty tells us, most onscreen corpses are simply bodies painted slightly blue and fail to elicit the powerful reaction to seeing a dead body.

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