Animated: ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ calms my anxiety

In summer camp after sixth grade, the song “Dumb Ways to Die” became stuck in my head. The animated video of the different aforementioned “dumb ways to die” and accompanying song began as an Australian public service announcement. The video was meant to warn people about the dangers of not following rail safety guidelines. 

Still, it seems that the original intent behind the song was never a focus for most people that sang “Dumb Ways to Die” nonstop. Instead, “Dumb Ways to Die” became iconic, mostly because it poked fun at death in imagining situations that simultaneously felt far-off, and yet so realistic. 

Featuring adorable colorful beans getting themselves into dire situations, the animated video and song features lyrics such as “set fire to your hair” and “eat a two-week-old unrefrigerated pie.” The beans are then shown doing exactly those actions. As more “dumb ways to die” are narrated and more beans die, a gradually increasing number of the dead beanies join together, bobbing to the music and dancing along.

It’s cute — morbid, obviously — but also cute and catchy. I catch myself singing this at random times to distract myself from impending events or situations. There’s a hint of fear in there too, one of the unpredictable possibility of death. How do you know if you’re doing something that may be a “dumb way to die?” 

Personally, I do all sorts of dumb things every day, and I’m not sure if any one of those could be a possible route to death. I wouldn’t know until I was dead. By then, it’d be too late; I’d be one of the dancing dead beans.

But I digress. Even though there is that hint of fear in there, “Dumb Ways to Die” does make light of death, a concept that often feels too dark to speak about. Although I treated the song as primarily a humorous jingle when I was younger, I’ve come to respect it more now. Morbidly, it reminds me that I could die at any instant, which makes the everyday stresses of my life — grades, the job hunt and general paranoia about social interactions — feel less magnified of sorts.

It was only recently that I discovered that there was also an accompanying mobile game in the “Dumb Ways to Die” brand. Curious, I downloaded it, wanting to see what I had missed out on when I was younger. 

The game is very much similar to the video in that it features the beans in the situations that can lead to their deaths. Yet here, it’s you, the player, who had the power to prevent their deaths. By clicking and moving your finger on your phone, you can save the beans, even though they’re already in these situations because, well, they’re beans.

The game does somewhat give me an artificial kind of anxiety; I want to click fast enough to save the bean, even though I know that this is just a game and I shouldn’t invest so much effort into it. Yet it also gives me a sense of control, as if I have this illusory control over death. Therefore, rather than contributing to my anxiety, the memory of listening to “Dumb Ways to Die” and playing the game gives me a certain kind of satisfaction when I feel like my efforts have effects.

It helps that the beans are adorable; I want to save them, and it makes me happy when I do. It’s the kind of short-term pleasure derived from playing a game that then seeps into the slight joy I feel when I hear “Dumb Ways to Die.” 

My reaction to the song is one of nostalgia and also just something that detracts from my anxiety. Before a presentation or before I click on the assignment to view my grade, sometimes I sing “Dumb Ways to Die” to myself so I can relax and remind myself that life is precious and much more than the negativity that can infiltrate it. 

“Dumb Ways to Die” is important to me because it reminds me of the summer after sixth grade when practically everyone at camp would sing it. It also reaffirms how animation as a medium is immensely helpful for me in understanding and coping with my own anxiety. 

Other animated videos, such as Hannah Grace’s short “Overcomer” and the BBC’s “Incredible animation on battling and overcoming anxiety,” are also impactful in the ways they visualize anxiety. “Overcomer” is relatable, particularly when animated text of negative thoughts move across the screen — much like my own internal negativity. The BBC’s animations echo that relatability in amplifying the physicality of worrying.

I resonate with such videos because whether they’re serious or lighthearted, they show that people out there share anxiety like mine and that someone out there might be in the same mental state as me. Whenever I’m struggling with a bad bout of anxiety, I turn to animation. For me, that’s the smart thing to do.

Valerie Wu is a senior writing about animation and digital arts from a contemporary perspective. Her column “Animated” runs every other Thursday.