If life was a joke, the punchline would have to be death.

We're born, live for several decades, fail in love, work hard to keep things stable . . . and then we die.

Ha ha,

True, death is no laughing matter. It is often a painfully emotional time for those involved. Yet, for as much time one may agonize about death when it happens, during most of our lives, we view the process with fascination and a sense of detachment.

We are inundated with death on a daily basis. From the nightly news broadcasts and the films of Arnold Schwarzenegger to the popularity of death metal bands such as Pungent Stench, Autopsy and Carcass, the final act of our lives is pushed onto us in mediums we generally term as entertainment.

A large number of books have also flooded the market, including Pictures of an Execution, an analytical study of the process, and numerous true-crime books such as Helter Skelter. The fact that the items not only sell but sell extremely well clearly illustrates a dark fascination we have with death. We want to read, see and hear about it constantly for it intrigues as well as scares us.

Our fascination with death, however, carries with it a certain detachment -- especially when we're young.

Gary Cattell, better known as the Willard Preacher, said the joys and exuberance of youth carry with them feelings of invulnerability in relation to death.

"When you approach middle age, you start to see yourself as mortal," Cattell said. "When you're talking about college people, they do not see themselves as mortal. They naturally assume that they have 80 years and a two-minute warning before they're ready."

Death, as many people think of it, is merely a physical act, the death of the body, Cattell said. Cattell said he believes society's fascination with death stems from its inherent fear of it.

"We're frightened to death of death, so to speak," he said. "Many people see it as a total end or something murky when in fact it's only a preparation for the next life, and many aren't preparing very well."

On the whole, students tend to discuss death in a fantastical realm of superficial excess.

Billy Ray (senior-labor and industrial relations) said he believes worrying about death isn't healthy, quickly adding that he ponders death almost every day, but not in the morbid, downbeat sense the word usually connotes.

"The ideal way to die would probably involve heavy sedation or jumping out of an airplane with a fifth of good whiskey with you,"

Ray said. "If you're going out, you may as well go out with a bang."

Ray's attitude is shared by others on campus, a strange fact that student filmmaker Andy Biscontini discovered while making his documentary, The Big D, with Susan Kass (junior-film).

The film's purpose was to examine perceptions about death. Interviewing students on the street, Biscontini (junior-film) had many strange responses to the question of how one would like to die -- from a bullet to the head and snowboarding off an airplane to the serenity of dying in one's sleep.

While making the film, Biscontini was inspired by media representations of death, especially a burial scene from the Marx Brothers' Room Service, in which the brothers Marx are gathered over a coffin singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." The Big D deals with the image of death as something absurd.

"I thought (the scene) was really funny, so I related that to the gut impulse to snicker during the movies, when somebody dies -- even when it's something fairly heavy duty," said Biscontini.

Local psychologist William Orlando said there is a large variation in how people deal with death, explaining that attitudes tend to vary depending on people's sensitivity.

"When we watch the news, we tend to be detached from the situation," Orlando said. "Personal involvement usually occurs when death hits close to home."

The ability to laugh at portrayals of death in film presents us with some breathing room to vent and release our own fears. Although representations of death are not inherent to the medium, the black humor in films such as Harold and Maude, The Evil Dead 2: Dead Before Dawn and the existentialist musings of Woody Allen allow us to laugh at death.

Jeanne Hall, assistant professor of media studies, said many film theorists have argued that the impulse behind filmmaking is a "mummy complex."

"(Film theorist) Andre Bazin believed that we were doing what other cultures had done in some ways to preserve life and face death," Hall said. "That means that all film is about preserving life on celluloid." Local psychologist William Orlando said there is a large variation in how people deal with death, explaining that attitudes tend to vary depending on people's sensitivity.

"When we watch the news, we tend to be detached from the situation," Orlando said. "Personal involvement usually occurs when death hits close to home."

The ability to laugh at portrayals of death in film presents us with some breathing room to vent and release our own 'fears. Although, representations of death are not inherent to the medium, the black humor in films such as Harold and Maude, The Evil Dead 2: Dead Before Dawn and the existentialist musings of Woody Allen allow us to laugh at death.

Jeanne Hall, assistant professor of media studies, said many film theorists have argued that the impulse behind filmmaking is a mummy complex."

"(Film theorist) Andre Bazin believed that we were doing what other cultures had done in some ways to preserve life and face death," Hall said. "That means that all film is about preserving life on celluloid."

With the recent furor about the levels of violence in pop cultural mediums, questions have been raised whether death has been dehumanized. Though Hall said the media get too much credit for that at times, Biscontini said he believes movies and television take death away from what it actually is so we may deal with it in a comedic, spectacular or overly melodramatic way that distances us from an emotional state.

"Once realistic death is involved, we tend to punch out," Biscontini said. "Baby Jessica was rescued from the well, but if she had died -- BOOM -- OK, tragedy story, it's over. Let's move onto something new. A film can deal with death realistically but it usually is only accepted in one way, which is to laugh and pass it off."

Dr. Judith Frankel, an area clinical psychologist, said the increasing detachment society has toward death has been growing since the Vietnam War -- we distance ourselves from death in Bosnia and Somalia because it doesn't affect us.

"We see these portrayals of death on the news, especially those entailing wars and battles over seas, and we become immuned to it," Frankel said. "On TV, we see these little TV characters dying and although they are people, we don't treat them as such."

Dom Diaz (junior-English) said it is important not to push the mishandling of death onto pop cultural mediums. Diaz said he believes the news media have an equal hand in the so-called dehumanization of death. I

"Every night, when you turn on the TV, they take two minutes to talk about someone, who's been shot but then give five minutes to the weather," he said. "It's cheapened as much as sex in that respect."

Ray agrees with Diaz, adding that "if it bleeds, it reads."

But whether we treat it as realistic or absurd, death does pop into our minds every now and then. Although Biscontini said he doesn't openly contemplate his own death, he does -- we all do for the act lies mysteriously somewhere in our future.

"Well, when I was 10, I'd sit there and say 'shit, in 80 years I'm going to be worm meat,"' he said. "I just hope it doesn't happen any time soon."