Coffin Dance Mania in Ghana: Visual Rhetoric and Cultural Context in the Internet Age’s Take on Death
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Abstract
This study examines how the Coffin Dance, a viral video of Ghanaian pallbearers performing choreographed funeral dances, became a globally circulated meme during the COVID pandemic that started in 2019. Analysing eight representative frames, I demonstrate that the video’s compositional choices (low angles, designed flatness) create a grammar that dignifies the ritual while enabling its decontextualisation. This dual semiotic logic allowed the video to challenge Western mourning frameworks (which privatise grief and suppress celebration) while becoming appropriable for political ends. The findings highlight a structural tension in digital culture: non-Western ritual practices gain global legibility through the formal design that makes them vulnerable to commodification.
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