For Halloween: The Rich and the Dead, and Vice Versa

It takes a special kind of star to remain in the limelight after passing to the Great Beyond, and Elvis is still the King when it comes to generating big bucks from the grave. While moldering for 27 years now, Elvis managed to crank out $40m last year alone for sweet little Lisa Marie, according to Forbes.

The list of smoking hot deceased:
1. Elvis Presley $40m
2. Charles Schulz $35m
3. JRR Tolkien $23m
4. John Lennon $21m
5. Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel $18m
6. Marilyn Monroe $8m
7. George Harrison $7m
=7. Irving Berlin $7m
=7. Bob Marley $7m
10. Richard Rodgers $6.5m
11. George and Ira Gershwin $6m
=11. Jimi Hendrix $6m
=11. Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe $6m
=11. Cole Porter $6m
15. James Dean $5m
=15. Dale Earnhardt Sr $5m
=15. Jerry Garcia $5m
=15. Freddie Mercury $5m
=15. Tupac Shakur $5m
=15. Frank Sinatra $5m

And speaking of the dear departed, Halloween is all about blurring the line between the quick and the really, really slow.

We love the adrenaline stab of a good spooking - we pay dearly to have the tingle chased down our spines. Why is this? Until very recently in human history (and still today in some American Indian, African animist, and Asian ancestor worship cultures) the presence of the dead among the living was felt to be very real. The action of the dead over the living was an essential part of life itself, and all of existence was filled with spirits, many malevolent and jealous of the living. We modern "sophisticates" get a charge out of being reminded of this in a safe, contemporary setting from which we can escape, like a movie theater or a haunted house.

So while the fascination with the living dead is as old as mankind, in the scientific, sophisticated America of the 21st century, these impulses are now centered upon popular culture and Halloween, which is still the seam between the warm vibrant life of summer and the cold still death of winter, when trees protest the chill of lengthening nights and the waning strength of the sun with a final explosion of color, and the border temporarily vanishes — at least in our imaginations — between the living and the dead, the seen and the unseen.

Article Author: Eric Olsen

Career media professional Eric Olsen is honored to be the founder and publisher of Blogcritics.org, which, quite frankly, rules - as do his wife and four children.

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