Honour(ing) The Departed: How Death Facilitates Honour in American Culture
In: Death, Dying, Culture: An Interdisciplinary InterrogationSearch for other papers by Gabrielle Kristjanson in
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Martin Scorsese’s 2006 crime drama film, The Departed, maps a trajectory by which honour can be facilitated through death in American Culture. I suggest that, in following the events of the film, the audience witnesses the progression of protagonist Billy Costigan as he achieves familial and individual honour. He does so through the death of his mother by which he is able to sever ties to his criminal family lineage and to fully actualize his own adult identity as a reputable and upstanding citizen and public servant. In the end he acquires public honour, achieved through his role as an undercover Boston police officer. While Costigan’s continuously honourable diligence is made known to the audience throughout the film, it is unknown inside the public sphere within the film. In this context, the public honour remains private until the end. Scorsese complicates this dichotomy of public and private by offering a parallel (dis)honourable narrative, while simultaneously playing into the fear of losing agency over one’s identity. By equating the acts of dying and killing with the denial or corruption of identity, non-physical death co-exists with physical death but is the primary threat utilized by both villains and heroes. Numerous deaths occur throughout the film, but only those of honourable characters are meant to elicit an affective response from the audience, which parallels the film characters’ emotional reactions. I investigate the significance of these factors on the public honour (or false honour), demonstrated through the aesthetics of the public (service) funeral for those who die in the line of duty within the film as a depiction and reflection of American cultural values.