Walt Ozymandias
A grave is a nominal marking of a person's life found in a graveyard or a ruin. A grave or tomb usually has an insignia like a cross or Star of David, and in earlier times there were cartoushes. On a grave there is the name of the deceased and the dates or era in which individual lived. For a generation that marker may carry some significance, and then the grave or individual ebbs out into time. Written in Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias, there was a king who had warned to the onlooker of his memorial: "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,/ Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and Despair!"(Abrams, 726) Ozymandias stands, a trunkless visage, on the fragments of his once great empire. His kingdom is reduced to a vast, boundless, desert. The body of the memorial stone is itself reduced to fragments. Like Ozymandias, king of kings, who sought to be preserved into the future, a folk myth surrounds Walt Disney in his supposed attempt at suspended animation. There have been urban legends regarding Walt Disney that have presumed that he never died, but that he had his head encased in a cryogenic state. Disney, in reality, is resting securely in a Forest Lawn burial site. Yet, despite the fact that this urban legend is false, the legend tells much about how our society deals with death and the passage of icons. Disney at one time had been a king of kings, and a ruler of a mighty works himself. What does the very nature of memorial making and suspended animation reveal about our attitutues towards death? How does power, whether it be business related or one's reign supreme, affect a society's or an individual's view of death.
An attempt towards living beyond death is not new. King Ozymandias declared with his glaring visage that his presence could somehow affect the future beyond his death. Egyptian preserved remains, carved with emblematic cartoushes, and scenes from the deceased's life foster an attempt to live beyond the finality of death. Yet, the civilization that housed these memorials crumbled or was conquered. These civilizations, such as the one Ozymandias ruled, were very important in maintaining the works of his domain. Ozymandias's primogenitors failed in their attempts to keep up his works. Ozymandias's memorial is a type of gravemarker, because it marks the ruins of his civilization and it is fitting that the memorial is not able to stand up on foundation legs of memory. The civilization that would hold significance on his epiteth have all been swept away by time: "Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colassal wreck, boundless and bare."(Abrams, 726)
According to this model, then, will the works of the 'great' Disney survive? Businesses and empires fluctuate in time. To this day we do not hear of a business that has survived since antiquity, such as: "Momi Farkis, king of all entombers, established since 420 B.C. We'll embalm you into the next millenium!" No, this scenario does not happen. Disney's own industry will be vulnerable to this very fate. After a hundred years or so, the novelty of this Mouse icon, will recede into the past, along with the empire that he built. Where Disney is actually interred offers a similar point. Forest Lawn is a business as well. Will Forest Lawn and its body strewn hill continue for 1000 years or more? Most likely this will not be the case. Gravemarkers will soon become obsolete to our society as our human population passes the ten billion mark. Burial, will then possibly be an ever increasing faculty of the well off.
This is where suspended animation steps in. An advertisement for cyogenics reveals what future enlistees may hope from this process. The following advertisement was found at the Life Extension Foundation: "If Foundation members fail to live long enough to benefit from the life extending advances expected in the future, we offer them to sign up for cryonics--the final option in avoiding death."(Internet, 4/10/00) This in itself is a business which in its nature is transitory. To bankroll such an effort would be in the five to six figure range each year depending on whether one desired a whole body freeze or head only freeze. This financial obligation is what made the Disney suspended animation story so plausible. He actually did have that kind of money to ensure perpetual suspended animation.
This is where Ozymandias takes on a special meaning. If a king and his domain, as powerful and mighty as they were, could not resist mortality then it follows that Disney's own works are temporal as well. What more, a foundation, like the Life Extension Foundation, will not have legs to stand on when capital takes a shift downwards. And finally, the very foundation on which Forest Lawn stands on, its premise of a proper burial, may collapse as well. Organizations, rulers, are all susceptible to a death of their own. If the Walt Disney myth had been true would the sign posted outside of his cryonics chamber read as a grave post, a la Ozymandias, or would it read then as a medical chart?
The implications of Cryonic suspension counter this normal pattern of life. The term that the Life Extensioners use, avoiding death, is unusual. How does one really avoid death? Is then Cryonic suspension really living? The current definition, found on a related site, on Cryonic suspension is as follows:
A (currently non-standard) medical technique for attempting to prevent the permanent cessation of life in individuals on the brink of death. It involves the use of low temperatures to halt metabolic decay. A person who is cryonically suspended can not be revived by current medical technology. The freezing process does too much damage. What is accomplished is that once frozen the person's biological state does not change. The reason for performing a cryonic suspension is the belief that science, technology, and society will advance to the point where revival of the person is both possible and desirable. (Online, 4/10/00)
The key word here is desirable. Is it desirable to live past retrieval? To slowly ebb away in an icy grave would seem a nauseous exercise. In addition, currently it is illegal for anyone living to attempt a cryonic state, therefore suspended animation has never fully been acheived. This is due to the harsh anti-euthanasia statutes we have in federal law. Cases of living patients have been denied under these laws. All those 'individuals' who have opted for cryonics have already died. In short, anyone who is in a state of cryonics was already dead. They are awaiting some kind of resurrection, of sorts, that will bring them back from the dead.
A civilization like the Egyptians tried this as well. Their mummification practices are still renowned for the well preserved states the bodies survive in. Yet, the civilizations these individuals resided in are all gone. The bodies, too, are lifeless entities that are commonly accepted to never become animated again, either. If Disney had been interred cryonically he, too, would then just be another lifeless form of flesh that could not be brought back to life? The immortality question appears to be an illogical one. Cryonics appears to be a thinly veiled attempt at mummification, just a couple millennia after its first manifestations. Maybe Master Entomber Farkis did survive! Well, businesses and sovereigns really do succumb to death. Sometimes they foolishly wish to become resurrected in times to come.
On the other hand, there may be a plausible argument for life after death. As a counter, there have been many advances in cloning. Humanity may be able to prolong life, at least in the physical form. Again, the key word is desire. What really resides in this desire to live beyond the grave? Is a clone of one's person really going to preserve the spirit of the first person cloned? This desire of immortality surfaces, in the form of cloning, as an empty pursuit.
When an urban legend appears in a society, what does it say about the desires of that society? Our desires for immortality were placed on a person like Disney to reiterate our own individual wishes of moving beyond death. Disney, himself, posited his own beliefs about a society about tomorrow that was called "tomorrow land". His attempts to have his works outlive him are temporarily in effect, but these systems, his works will change into other starting points for other ingenious minds to come. It was Ozymandias' desire to carry on in the form of a statue his spirit of awe and despair long after his death. The only awe came from a traveler, someone who is alive, to retell the past of Ozymandias. Ozymandias becomes an object of mere fascination at the artifactual evidence it relays.
Disney is like Ozymandias in that his empire will fall to ruins. Like the Life Extentionists or the Ancient Egyptians, we place our desires in avoiding death, hoping that we might survive after death. It remains, that these Life Extensionists are more like Life Extortionists, posing as an exit from death, but really influencing individuals to dump away all of their assets into a burgeoning growth industry: the industry of avoiding death. Or the final production of death, in places like Forest Lawn, where even a humble grave doesn't come cheap. Either way, whether you want to skip seeing St. Peters, or go the good old fashioned way, societies since good ol' Farkis' day have always had a buck to make in preparing for the 'next' world to come, even if that next world happens to be this world.
There is something comforting in the idea of death. Eternal longevity holds too much responsibility to really be desireable. As for future generations, they will have their own Ozymandiases and Disneys with their own new businesses or collectives. We will have made peace by receding into the shadows.