Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. Fool's avatar
  2. Santa Monica's avatar
  3. Charles Bakker's avatar
  4. Matty Silverstein's avatar
  5. Jason's avatar
  6. Nathan Meyvis's avatar
  7. Stefan Sciaraffa's avatar

    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

China Acts on Funeral Strippers (Wolff)

Jonathan Wolff

From the BBC, via my colleague Michael Otsuka:

Five people have been detained in China for running striptease send-offs at funerals, state media say.
The once-common events are held to boost the number of mourners, as large crowds are seen as a mark of honour.

But the arrests, in the eastern province of Jiangsu, could signal the end of the rural tradition.

Local officials have since ordered a halt to “obscene performances” and say funeral plans have to be submitted in advance, Xinhua news agency said.

The arrests, in Donghai county, followed striptease acts at a farmer’s funeral, the agency said.

Two hundred people were said to have attended the event, which was held on 16 August.

The Beijing News said the event was later revealed by a Chinese TV station. The leaders of five striptease troupes were held, it said, including two involved in the farmer’s funeral.

“Striptease used to be a common practice at funerals in Donghai’s rural areas to allure viewers,” Xinhua agency said.

“Local villagers believe that the more people who attend the funeral, the more the dead person is honoured.”

As well as ordering an end to the practice, officials have also said residents can report “funeral misdeeds” on a hotline, earning a reward for information.

Can this really be true, or has the international news media fallen for a hoax? (Reuters covered the story too.)

Intelligent cultural analysis welcome. Extra bonus points to anyone who can come up with an argument why such practices should not be tolerated, drawing only on premises to be found in standard liberal thought (i.e. no appeals to tradition, religion, or an unanalysed notion of dignity).

Leave a Reply to Bitch | Lab Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

9 responses to “China Acts on Funeral Strippers (Wolff)”

  1. Mike Otsuka

    The BBC's source for the story is Xinhua, the Chinese government's news agency:

    http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-08/23/content_4999002.htm

    It's hard to think of a motive they might have to make this up.

    Reply
  2. Michael Rosen

    1. The character of public space contributes to social welfare

    2. Ugliness and offensiveness diminish the value of public space. (Although this principle is general, what counts as ugliness or offensiveness obviously varies. Greeks find nude sunbathing offensive; Germans don't.)

    3. Authority may be properly used to promote social welfare by protecting against ugliness or offensiveness

    4. (3) may be defeated only if there is an overriding reason to protect the actions that would have to be controlled or prohibited

    5. But in this case there is no such reason

    6. Candidate reasons would be (i) the right to practise one's religion freely (ii) the right to free speech (or, more broadly, self-expression)

    7. But (re (i)) stripping plays no essential role in religious practice — it is, admittedly, merely a contingent means to promote an end desired for (arguably) religious reasons.

    8. Nor (re (ii)) is it plausible that public nudity in this case is playing an essential role in a valuable form of self-expression — it is, admittedly, merely a means to attract spectators and thus is no more protected than a garish and inappropriate advertising hoarding

    Reply
  3. sanbikinoriaon

    No comment on the story, but I'm hoping my friends all take this practice up!

    Reply
  4. kid bitzer

    so no appeals to tradition, religion, or an unanalysed notion of dignity, eh?

    How about "eeeewwww!!"

    does that count?

    On a (marginally) more serious note, doesn't the rationale here put you in mind of the kind of things people say about the gods sometimes?

    We want to honor the dead. They'll feel honored if a lot of people show up at their funeral. But luckily, the dead are **too stupid** to realize that no one is showing up qua funeral, but rather qua strip-club!! No matter–the dead will still feel honored!

    It's like those weird rules about religious piety that wind up treating the gods as though they're **really stupid**, like parents that you can deceive by putting a lot of water back in the gin-bottle and they'll never notice.

    Does superstition always involve placating agents that are both hostile and also really stupid? Or is it that our child-like fear of hostile parents always morphs into a child-like glee at out-witting the big lugs?

    Reply
  5. Jessica

    In some chinese literature sources (particularly the more ancient ones), one can encounter images of funeral mourners "tearing their clothes apart" as a spontaneous expression of deep sorrow.(I am not joking.)It would not be surprising that out of the hundreds of millions of villages in China, the value of funeral has been taken by some to include this public display of sorrow, and sooner or later, evolved into the hiring of "people who are willing to tear their clothers apart"(in the post-interpretive stage), and later became "strippers". The hiring of mourners to augment the sense of honour for the deceased and to express grief for the loved ones is not a unique phenonmenon in China. It has been practised in Jewish and other cultures. See

    http://www.arabfilm.com/item.html?itemID=212

    What is not clear in this news is the manner and scope of the stripping. Was it an expression of sorrow, or purely sexual or a combination? The original meaning of "stripping" could have been lost, but it is not possible to critique with so little background info. What is said by Xinhua should always be taken with a pinch of salt!

    Reply
  6. Gray Proctor

    I lived in Jiangsu for a year and never saw anything like that, but I was in the city of Suzhou. Rural Jiangsu is considered very backwards and might be expected to have very different customs.
    Taking a macro-look: China's set of "prude" taboos is very strongly ingrained, but this is also a culture that let the best land lie unused so that buried ancestors could enjoy the sunny side of the hill. Also note Confucius said that one's duty to family is more important even than one's duty to the emperor. So as weird as it seems, it might be true… even though it's reported in xinhua.
    There are plnty of examples of the Party putting a stop to local customs because they were wasteful (burial itself is no longer practiced in China) or superstitious, but this doesn't seem to fit within them. Am also hesitant to call this a direct attack on superstition, b/c the party is less ideological these days and because many of these "superstitions" create jobs.
    Is the gov't afraid that too many people will come to funerals and some opportunistic dissident will make a speech? "Power grows from the barrel of a nipple?" You need a permit to gather in large groups in china anyway.

    Reply
  7. marcel

    I had thought to leave planning of my funeral to my wife, kids, sisters, whoever survives me. This suggests that I may have to take an active role in it.

    Reply
  8. Andy Mitchell

    In my town, police often warn young ladies at Mardi Gras time of year that, while displaying their breasts is not against city ordinance, "creating a disturbance" is.

    Reply
  9. Bitch | Lab

    I did a little poking around to learn from an H-Asia discussion archive from 1995 that a Canadian scholar reported funerals featuring pornographic videos, circa 1994-5. Also, the Peking Duck blog has some commentary indicating that such rites might also be about the deceased's virility.

    H-Asia list:
    http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/55/400.html

    Peking Duck:
    http://www.pekingduck.org/archives/004036.php

    Reply

Designed with WordPress