The American Way of Death Revisited

by Jessica Mitford

  If the undertaker is the stage manager of the fabulous production that is the modern American funeral, the stellar role is reserved for the occupant of the open casket. The decor, the stagehands, the supporting cast are all arranged for the most advantageous display of the deceased, without which the rest of the paraphernalia would lose its point—Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. It is to this end that a fantastic array of costly merchandise and services is pyramided to dazzle the mourners and facilitate the plunder of the next of kin.

  Grief therapy, anyone? But it’s going to come high. According to the funeral industry’s own figures, the average undertaker’s bill—$750 in 1961 for casket and “services”—is now $4,700, to which must be added the cost of a burial vault, flowers, clothing, clergy and musician’s honorarium, and cemetery charges. When these costs are added to the undertaker’s bill, the total average cost for an adult’s funeral today is $7,800.

  The question naturally arises, is this what most people want for themselves and their families? For several reasons, this has been a hard one to answer until recently. It is a subject seldom discussed. Those who have never had to arrange for a funeral frequently shy away from its implications, preferring to take comfort in the thought that sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Those who have acquired personal and painful knowledge of the subject would often rather forget about it. Pioneering “funeral societies” or “memorial associations” dedicated to the principle of funerals at reasonable cost do exist in a number of communities throughout the country, but until recently their membership was limited to the more sophisticated element in the population—university people, liberal intellectuals—and those who, like doctors and lawyers, come up against problems in arranging funerals for their clients.*

  Some indication of the pent-up resentment felt by vast numbers of people against the funeral interests was furnished by the astonishing response to Roul Tunley’s 1961 Saturday Evening Post article. As though a dike had burst, letters poured in from every part of the country to the funeral societies, to local newspapers. They came from clergymen, professional people, old-age pensioners, trade unionists. Three months after the article appeared, an estimated six thousand had taken pen in hand to comment on some phase of the high cost of dying. Many recounted their own bitter experiences at the hands of funeral directors; hundreds asked for advice on how to establish a consumer organization in communities where none exists; others sought information about prepayment plans. Thirty years later, the situation seems worse. In 1993 I wrote a letter encouraging funeral simplicity which appeared in a “Dear Abby” column. More than thirty thousand people wrote asking for information about funeral-planning societies. The funeral industry, finding itself in the glare of the public spotlight, continues to engage in serious debate about its own future course—as well it might.

  Some entrepreneurs are already testing the waters with stripped-down, low-cost operations. One, calling itself “Church and Chapel Funeral Service,” contracts with conventional funeral homes to lower costs by doing the unthinkable—moving the service out of the mortuary to a church, a cemetery chapel, even a nursing home.

  In 1994 Russ Harman launched Affordable Funeral Service in a Washington, D.C., suburb. Taking the low-cost approach to the extreme, he operates with no facilities outside his own home. He uses private residences, churches, or, if viewing the deceased is desired, a rented mortuary. The basic strategy, according to Ron Hast’s Funeral Monitor, is to keep overhead low. A white, unmarked van is used instead of a hearse. There are no limos. Business is booming, with three vans patrolling the nation’s capital and lone vans in five other cities. Harman’s next project is to take the operation nationwide. Will Affordable Funeral Service be able to do it? It seems likely, since late word is that it has been swooped into the net of SCI, whose worldwide operations are the subject of chapter 16.

  Is the funeral inflation bubble ripe for bursting? Back in the sixties, the American public suddenly rebelled against the trend in the auto industry towards ever more showy cars, with their ostentatious and nonfunctional fins, and a demand was created for compact cars patterned after European models. The all-powerful U.S. auto industry, accustomed to telling customers what sort of car they wanted, was suddenly forced to listen for a change. Overnight, the little cars became for millions a new kind of status symbol. Could it be that the same cycle is working itself out in the attitude towards the final return of dust to dust, that the American public is becoming sickened by ever more ornate and costly funerals, and that a status symbol of the future may indeed be the simplest kind of “funeral without fins”?

  * See chapter 20, “New Hope for the Dead,” and this page for a list of nonprofit societies that will provide advice and information to nonmembers as well as to members.

  3

  The Funeral Transaction

  A funeral is not an occasion for a display of cheapness. It is, in fact, an opportunity for the display of a status symbol which, by bolstering family pride, does much to assuage grief. A funeral is also an occasion when feelings of guilt and remorse are satisfied to a large extent by the purchase of a fine funeral. It seems highly probable that the most satisfactory funeral service for the average family is one in which the cost has necessitated some degree of sacrifice. This permits the survivors to atone for any real or fancied neglect of the deceased prior to his death.…

  —National Funeral Service Journal

  The sellers of funeral service have, one gathers, a preconceived, stereotyped view of their customers. To them, the bereaved person who enters the funeral establishment is a bundle of guilt feelings, a snob, and a status seeker. Funeral directors feel that by steering the customer to the higher-priced caskets, they are administering the first dose of grief therapy. In the words of the National Funeral Service Journal: “The focus of the buyer’s interest must be the casket, vault, clothing, funeral cars, etc.—the only tangible evidence of how much has been invested in the funeral—the only real status symbol associated with a funeral service.”

  Whether or not one agrees with this rather unflattering appraisal of the average person who has suffered a death in the family, it is nevertheless true that the funeral transaction is generally influenced by a combination of circumstances which bear upon the buyer as in no other type of business dealing: the disorientation caused by bereavement, the lack of standards by which to judge the value of the commodity offered by the seller, the need to make an on-the-spot decision, general ignorance of the law as it affects disposal of the dead, the ready availability of insurance money to finance the transaction. These factors predetermine to a large extent the outcome of the transaction.

  The funeral seller, like any other merchant, is preoccupied with price, profit, selling techniques. Mr. Leon S. Utter, a former dean of the San Francisco College of Mortuary Science, has written, “Your selling plan should go into operation as soon as the telephone rings and you are requested to serve a bereaved family.… Never preconceive as to what any family will purchase. You cannot possibly measure the intensity of their emotions, undisclosed insurance, or funds that may have been set aside for funeral expenses.”

  The selling plan should be subtle rather than high-pressure, for the obvious “hard sell” is considered inappropriate and self-defeating by industry leaders. Two examples of what not to say to a customer are given in the Successful Mortuary Operation Service Manual: “I can tell by the fine suit you are wearing, that you appreciate the finer things, and will want a fine casket for your Mother,” and “Think of the beautiful memory picture you will have of your dear Father in this beautiful casket.”

  At the same time, nothing must be left to chance. The trade considers that the most important element of funeral salesmanship is the proper arrangement of caskets in the selection room (where the customer is taken to make his purchase). The sales talk, while preferably dignified and restrained, must be designed to take maximum advantage of this arrangement.

  The uninitiated, entering a
casket-selection room for the first time, may think he is looking at a random grouping of variously priced merchandise. Actually, endless thought and care are lavished on the development of new and better selection-room arrangements, for it has been found that the placing of the caskets materially affects the amount of the sale. There are available to the trade a number of texts devoted to the subject, supplemented by frequent symposiums, seminars, study courses, visual aids, scale-model selection rooms complete with miniature caskets that can be moved around experimentally. All stress the desired goal: “selling consistently in a bracket that is above average.”

  The relationship between casket arrangement and sales psychology is discussed quite fully by Mr. W. M. Krieger, former managing director of the influential National Selected Morticians association, in his book Successful Funeral Management. He analyzes the blunder of placing the caskets in order of price, from cheapest to the most expensive, which he calls the “stairstep method” of arrangement. As he points out, this plan “makes direct dollar comparisons very easy.” Or, if the caskets are so arranged that the most expensive are the first ones the buyer sees, he may be shocked into buying a very cheap one. A mistake to be avoided is an “unbalanced line” with too many caskets in the low price range: “The unbalanced line with its heavy concentration of units under $300 made it very easy for the client to buy in this area with complete satisfaction.”*

  In developing his method of display, Mr. Krieger divides the stock of caskets for convenience into four “quartiles,” two above and two below the median price, which in his example is $400. The objective is to sell in the third, or just above median, quartile. To this end the purchaser is first led to a unit in this third quartile—about $125 to $150 above the median sale, in the range of $525 to $550. Should the buyer balk at this price, he should next be led to a unit providing “strong contrast, both in price and quality,” this time something well below the median, say in the $375 to $395 range. The psychological reasons for this are explained. They are twofold. While the difference in quality is demonstrable, the price is not so low as to make the buyer feel belittled. At the same time, if the buyer turns his nose up and indicates that he didn’t want to go that low, now is the time to show him the “rebound unit”—one priced from $25 to $50 above the median, in the $425 to $450 bracket.

  Mr. Krieger calls all this the “Keystone Approach,” and supplies a diagram showing units 1, 2, and 3 scattered with apparent artless abandon about the floor. The customer, who has been bounced from third to second quartile and back again on the rebound to the third, might think the “Human Tennis Ball Approach” a more appropriate term.

  Should the prospect show no reaction either way on seeing the first unit—or should he ask to see something better—the rebound gambit is, of course, “out.” “In” is the Avenue of Approach. It seems that a Canadian Mountie once told Mr. Krieger that people who get lost in the wild always turn in a great circle to their right. Probably, surmises Mr. Krieger, because 85 percent of us are right-handed. In any event, the Avenue of Approach is a main, wide aisle leading to the right in the selection room. Here are the better-quality third- and fourth-quartile caskets.

  For that underprivileged, or stubborn, member of society who insists on purchasing below the median (but who should nevertheless be served “graciously and with just as much courtesy and attention as you would give to the buyer without a limit on what he can spend”), there is a narrow aisle leading to the left, which Mr. Krieger calls “Resistance Lane.” There is unfortunately no discussion of two possible hazards: what if an extremely affluent prospect should prove to be among the 15 percent of left-handed persons, and should therefore turn automatically into Resistance Lane? How to extricate him? Conversely, what if one of the poor or stubborn, possibly having at some time in his past been lost in Canada, should instinctively turn to the broad, right-handed Avenue of Approach?

  The Comprehensive Sales Program Successful Mortuary Operation is designed along the same lines as Mr. Krieger’s plan, only it is even more complicated. Everything is, however, most carefully spelled out, beginning with the injunction to greet the clients with a warm and friendly handshake and a suggested opening statement, which should be “spoken slowly and with real sincerity: ‘I want to assure you that I’m going to do everything I can to be helpful to you!’ ”

  Having made this good beginning, the funeral director is to proceed with the arrangement conference, at each stage of which he should “weave in the service story”—in other words, impress upon the family that they will be entitled to all sorts of extras, such as ushers, cars, pallbearers, a lady attendant for hairdressing and cosmetics, and the like—all of which will be included in the price of the casket, which it is now their duty to select. These preliminaries are very important, for “the Arrangement Conference can make or break the sale.”

  The diagram of the selection room in this manual resembles one of those mazes set up for experiments designed to muddle rats. It is here that we are introduced to the Triangle Plan, under which the buyer is led around in a triangle, or rather in a series of triangles. He is started off at position A, a casket costing $587, which he is told is “in the $500 range”—although, as the manual points out, it is actually $13 short of $600. He is informed that the average family buys in the $500 range—a statement designed to reassure him, explain the authors, because “most of the people believe themselves to be above average.” Suppose the client does not react either way to the $587 casket. He is now led to position B on the diagram—a better casket priced at $647. However, this price is not to be mentioned. Rather, the words “sixty dollars additional” are to be used. Should the prospect still remain silent, this is the cue to continue upward to the most expensive unit.

  Conversely, should the client demur at the price of $587, he is to be taken to position C—and told that “he can save a hundred dollars by choosing this one.” Again, the figure of $487 is not to be mentioned. If he now says nothing, he is led to position D. Here he is told that “at sixty dollars additional, we could use this finer type, and all of the services will be just exactly the same.” This is the crux of the Triangle Plan; the recalcitrant buyer has now gone around a triangle to end up unwittingly within forty dollars of the starting point. It will be noted that the prices all end in the number seven, “purposely styled to allow you to quote as ‘sixty dollars additional’ or ‘save a hundred dollars.’ ”

  Some grieving families will be spared this tour altogether, for a sales technique of the nineties is to sell caskets by catalogue only. One might not think of a casket as “photogenic,” but morticians exclaim with enthusiasm that families are choosing more expensive caskets when they don’t have to look at the real thing. The buyer is not likely to have caught the significance of this guided tour, whether it be through the catalogue or the display room. As a customer, he finds himself in an unusual situation, trapped in a set of circumstances peculiar to the funeral transaction. His frame of mind will vary, obviously, according to the circumstances which brought him to the funeral establishment. He may be dazed and bewildered, his young wife having just been killed in an accident; he may be rather relieved because a crotchety old relative has finally died after a long and painful illness. The great majority of funeral buyers, as they are led through their paces at the mortuary—whether shaken and grief-stricken or merely looking forward with pleasurable anticipation to the reading of the will—are assailed by many a nagging question: What’s the right thing to do? I am arranging a funeral, but surely this is no time to indulge my own preferences in taste and style; I feel I know what she would have preferred, but what will her family and friends expect? How can I avoid criticism for inadvertently doing the wrong thing? And, above all, it should be a nice, decent funeral—but what is a nice, decent funeral?

  Which leads us to the second special aspect of the funeral transaction: the buyer’s almost total ignorance of what to expect when he enters the undertaker’s parlor. What to look for, what t
o avoid, how much to spend. The funeral industry estimates that the average individual has to arrange for a funeral only once in fifteen years. The cost of the funeral is the third-largest expenditure, after a house and a car, in the life of an ordinary American family. Yet even in the case of the old relative whose death may have been fully expected and even welcomed, it is most unlikely that the buyer will have discussed the funeral with anybody in advance. It just would not seem right to go around saying, “By the way, my uncle is very ill and he’s not expected to live; do you happen to know a good, reliable undertaker?”

  Because of the nature of funerals, the buyer is in a quite different position from the one who is, for example, in the market for a car. Visualize the approach. The man of prudence and common sense who is about to buy a car consults a Consumers’ Research bulletin or seeks the advice of friends; he knows in advance the dangers of rushing into a deal blindly.

  In the funeral home, the man of prudence is completely at sea, without a recognizable landmark or bearing to guide him. It would be an unusual person who would examine the various offerings and then inquire around about the relative advantages of the Keystone casket by York and the Valley Forge by Batesville. In the matter of cost, a like difference is manifest. The funeral buyer is generally not in the mood to compare prices here, examine and appraise quality there. He is anxious to get the whole thing over with—not only is he anxious for this, but the exigencies of the situation demand it.

  The third unusual factor which confronts the buyer is the need to make an on-the-spot decision. Impulse buying, which should, he knows, be avoided in everyday life, is here a built-in necessity. The convenient equivocations of commerce—“I’ll look around a little and let you know,” “Maybe I’ll call you in a couple of weeks if I decide to take it”—simply do not apply in this situation. Unlike most purchases, this one cannot be returned in fifteen days and your money refunded in full if not completely satisfied.