It is not unusual to have a little fun with death. The Irish playwright Brendan Behan waxed rhapsodic about the bells of hell going "ting-a-ling-a-ling, for you but not for me." And the English novelist Evelyn Waugh, in "The Loved One," poked fun at California's strange and overdone funeral rituals.
But California no longer has the corner on strange when it comes to the care and tending of the dead.
In Italy now, where scantily clad models hype everything from chocolate bars to computers, the sex-sells philosophy has been extended to the casket business. Lovely ladies in varying stages of undress appear in advertising for a Rome company called CISA, the better to call attention to its beautifully carved and inlaid wooden coffins. Its Web site, www.cofanifunebri.it, even links to a six-page 2002 calendar featuring young buxom women posing beside or on its coffins ("Sexy Calendario 2002").
On the whole, the American way of death is more serious, with no taint of the lasciviousness that for most of the dying is a matter of distant memory. Sexy advertising is pretty much nonexistent in the U.S. funeral industry.
Is it working in Rome? Maybe not; sales to Romans have not been brisk. On the other hand, the company notes, a number of inquiries have come from Greece and Spain. Draw your own conclusions.
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