Playing dead Talking about the trials of having her actors play dead, Stopkewich told a Canadian wire service, "We had to pull out a lot of shots where you could see the pulse and that. It's a very difficult thing to achieve. People think all you have to do is close your eyes and lie back."
But if playing dead isn't easy, it can certainly be fun. Witness a group of hot, naked, wanna-be dead chicks who reside, predictably enough, on the Internet, at www.NecroBabes.com. Billed as "A Friendly Place to Play Dead" and administered by Vicki (who, not incidentally, makes a hell of a fetching stiff), NecroBabes offers ? you guessed it ? necrophilia porn. Professional photographers take shots of attractive young women posing in various states of postmortem repose ? for example, stretched on an aluminum autopsy table or sprawled nude on an apartment floor outlined in chalk. With its still photographs divided into "The Morgue," "Crime Scenes," and "The Funeral Home," NecroBabes raises the fetish for cold flesh to an art form.
There are other erotic sites that focus on death, but it's usually mingled with cannibalism, torture, and murder. NecroBabes and Rob's Necrophilia Fantasy (www.burknet.com/robsfantasy) are about the only Web sites that spend a fair amount of time on actual dead folks, as opposed to how they got that way. There has yet to be a club formed, even in pervert-heavy San Francisco, for people who want to play dead. (Any takers?)
Vicki's interest in NecroBabes' subject matter stems from her own desire to play dead. It's a little harder (though certainly not impossible) to level charges of exploitation when Vicki admits freely on the NecroBabes site that her fondest sexual fantasy is to be dead ? in a sense, totally helpless, and totally available. "The turn-on, I would have to say, is the idea of having a woman who is letting the guy do all the work as she plays dead," Vicki says. Asked whether that fetish might translate into any actual necrophilia, Vicki has this to say: "I don't have much insight into anything 'real.' Our site is strictly fantasy. This is just about girls playing dead. Or perhaps Sleepy Girls," she adds, referring to an associated fetish, popular on the Internet, for passed-out, drugged, or sleeping women. NecroBabes links to a site that features numerous photo stories and still photographs on that topic.
As far as the demographics of their members/viewers goes, Vicki says, "I would take a stab here and say they're mostly European, but we have many members from Japan. These are guys who were turned on by the girl next door when they played cowboys and Indians and she played dead. Or seeing the covers of the detective magazines with the model posing in a crime scene. Anything real is a turnoff."
Myriel, another NecroBabes model, points out that most of the women who pose for NecroBabes are just professional models doing a modeling job and that they are not turned on by death. "Except for Vicki and me," she adds.
Vicki's fetish for death began at an early age, when she played a dead girl in a school play. "Although I didn't know it at the time, I enjoyed being handled and moved while playing dead," she says. "After the experience, I would always enjoy opportunities to play dead. When we would play cowboys, Indians, or war, I died well. I enjoy fantasizing about being killed. This includes handling and sexual manipulation of my body."
Vicki muses, "I'm normally a very independent, controlled person. In my fantasies, I'm killed. Then I have no more control. My killer can then do what ever he (or she) wants with my body. I don't have to orchestrate, just allow them to indulge themselves."
NecroBabes recently launched NecroDudes, with the tag line "Now It's Our Turn," giving equal time to the other side of the gender gravestone.
Speaking just for myself, I'm flattered.
However taboo a given topic, sexual or otherwise, may be ? whatever horrific response it may evoke in people confronted with it ? its taboo nature doesn't end where it begins. We are frightened, titillated, and disgusted by necrophilia because we are frightened, titillated, and disgusted by death. And how could we not be? In many ways, death is the defining moment of our humanity. Beyond it, we are something else. Whatever your attitude toward necrophilia, death is something you are going to kiss, like it or not, sooner or later.
