Bone machine

Come on baby, don’t fear The Reaper – BLUE OYSTER CULT

I believe them bones are me – ALICE IN CHAINS

amlet fin-gered it while dramatically mulling over concepts such as life, death, despair, and that whole dark and twisted existential enterprise. Shamans, mages, mystics, magician and assorted quacks use it for their esoteric rituals. The Nazis made it a part of their SS insignia. Artists as diverse as Goya, Albrecht Dürer, Gustav Klimt, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol and Robert Williams painted it at some point in their careers. Bands such as the Misfits, Metallica, Iron Maiden and the Grateful Dead, and an army of death metal bands, appropriated it for their posters, records and T-shirts. R.K. Sloane used its image to depict Guns ‘N’ Roses on the band’s "Appetite for Destruction" album. In vintage issues, Captain America goes into Armageddon mode against a fascistic red one. The Punisher wears an outfit emblazoned with it. Mexicans even devote a whole day to it, with hawkers selling statuettes, cake toppers and sugary confections of its likeness. Writer Octavio Paz said that Mexicans, unlike most Westerners, have no qualms about getting close to it. "He chases after it, mocks it, courts it, hugs it, sleeps with it; it is his favorite plaything and his most lasting love."

Ah, death’s head. The skull, that bony symbol of death and decay, is this article’s shtick.

We, the living, are so enamored with the concept of death and the undead. (Nothing like watching zombie movies on a dark and stormy night.) But some people find the image of the skull awfully disturbing, too macabre, too Evil Dead or Hammer House of Horror. British artist Damien Hirst scoffs at those easily bothered by the imagery: "You worry about your complexion (now), but you’re going to be a skull in a hundred years’ time."

Yeah, why be afraid at all of skulls and skeletons (two of this writer’s favorite things)? We keep our baby pictures, right? Think of skulls as snapshots of our future in the Polaroid booths of the cosmos. Skulls allow us, in the same vein as Hamlet, to come face to face with our mortality and our inevitable shuffling off this mortal coil. To remind us that death is just a slip, a fall, or a bizarre gardening accident away.

But these days, the dead head has taken on a new life.

Skullduggeries

The skull motif is alive and well in the world of art and fashion.

There was an exhibit titled "Bone Idle" mounted in London by interior-design company Showroom Dummies – founded by artist Abigail Lane, Bob Pain, and Brigitte Stepputtis, the head of couture at Vivienne Westwood – which featured products specifically designed around the theme of death such as crockery, jewelry, painted eggs, as well as T-shirts and leather jackets decorated with skulls, skeletons and puns like "Get A Head" and "Bone of Contention." During the exhibition, a film showed a man juggling skulls projected on the front of the exhibition space.

Damien Hirst, the infamous preserver of dead sharks and sheep in glass tanks of formaldehyde, announced that his next art project is a skull cast in platinum and encased in eight-thousand-plus diamonds titled "For The Love Of God."

The artist told The Observer, "I just want to celebrate life by saying to hell with death. What better way of saying that than by taking the ultimate symbol of death and covering it in the ultimate symbol of luxury, desire and decadence?" So, diamonds are a dead person’s best friend.

Hirst also designed a black shirt with a gold skull design that is being sold on the Net. It is "not for washing or wearing," claims a site. It is a "genuine piece of Damien Hirst art that should be framed." I didn’t check how obscene the price is. Maybe the shirt comes with a free sheep.

Well, designers are taking the ultimate symbol of death and creating entire businesses around it. Like a Disneyland for the Dead.

David Colman reports in The New York Times that this fixation with skulls has led to the production of skull umbrellas, sneakers, swimsuits, packing tape, party lights, a skull-branded line of hand tools, even toilet brushes.

Ralph Lauren came out with shirts not embroidered with a polo player but with a skull. Alexander McQueen put skull imagery in coats, polo shirts and trousers. Colman wrote, "(McQueen’s) $210 skull-print silk scarf is one of the best-selling items on the men’s designer floor at Barneys New York."

Talk about the dead making a killing.

The Hot Topic clothing chain has loads of punk and heavy metal shirts adorned with skulls – the uniform of non-conformists. Don’t you just dig the irony?

Yes, the skull has become the new happy face. But you know how fast things unfold in the world of fads and trends. Chrissie Hynde once sang, "Don’t get me wrong if I come and go like fashion. I might be great tomorrow, but hopeless yesterday." Maybe, as I type this article, something new is poised to replace the skull as a fashion icon.

Weeks, months, a year from now, when some blank thing has become the new skull, and the designer skull shirt or silk scarf has become passé, how will we then regard the skull?

Ah, there is a term for it.

"Double-dead."

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For comments, suggestions, curses and invocations, e-mail iganja_ys@yahoo.com.