CORPSES: The Review
This weekend, we went to go see BODIES: The Exhibition. It was creepy and interesting. But mostly, it was creepy.
Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s the one where they take actual dead humans, apply a mysterious technique called “polymer preservation” (which, from what I can tell and imagine, is something like pumping the corpse full of plastic resin, resulting in something like petrified wood - only considerably more morbid), and then posing them like Ken dolls. I say “Ken dolls” because they are pretty much all dudes (you can tell from all the penises).
The exhibit is billed as an educational service, teaching the public about the magical world underneath their skin, and it comes complete with people dressed up like doctors (the iconic white lab coat) who explain things and answer questions. These people are not, however actual doctors, or med students. The one working while we were there was a photographer and a rapper. He was super nice and said that the exhibit provided inspiration for his music (for reference, this was in the circulatory system section).
The show is pretty much what you might expect; you progress through several rooms, each focused on some bodily system, from the skeletal to the reproductive. All of the body parts are from real actual people, and as we moved through, I became more and more disturbed by the whole production. I understand that these people donated their bodies (more on this later) to science or whatever, but despite the educational framing, it felt more like spectacle than anything else. People making jokes, chewing gum, and pointing, made me rather uncomfortable, and I felt under-dressed, like I should be wearing a suit or something. I mean these were real people, who lived lives. Now they are entertainment? Do their families get a cut of the ticket price? Did this guy even play basketball?
I don’t know if that is prudish of me or not. What knocked me over the edge was the leathered, flayed skin of one of the humans, laid out and tanned in a glass case. From this, we were meant to learn about the skin. It’s the largest organ in the body, don’t you know. The eyes, nose and mouth had been cut out, leaving empty holes, like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The tip of his penis had been cut off as well; I’m not sure why. Someone bumped the case, and the skin slowly rocked back and forth, empty.
All the dead people appear to be Chinese. This is kind of weird, since you might expect that the distribution of people who want to donate their bodies might cut across racial boundaries. At least, it wouldn’t be 100% Chinese, 0% everyone else. This made me wonder if the bodies had really been donated, or if they had been sold or something, by the poor family of some Mainland Chinese peasant or something. I dunno.
Anyways, according to Wikipedia, it’s a little more sketchy than that. The bodies were apparently donated by the Chinese government, the government having been unable to find any next of kin (!!!). That’s right, no informed consent, just, “hey, we found some dead bodies, you want some?”.
Wild speculation is that the former owners of the bodies might have been political prisoners who had been executed and “dissapeared,” apparently to museums across the country. Sweet.
I guess the question for me is: was there anything so compelling or educational about the corpses that couldn’t have been done with a bunch of _fake_ brains, lungs, and skeletons? I don’t know, I kind of feel like most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. I think the biggest difference would be that the show wouldn’t sell as well. And that’s kind of a troubling reason for me.
The exhibit is showing up in Rosslyn right on the other side of the river from DC, by the Iwo Jima Memorial. Tickets were 26$ a pop. My recommendation: skip it.
Mandatory Wikipedia link:
Here.
At least it’s not as sketchy as this one:
Banned in Germany!
, by Frank Herbert. It’s a verifiable classic of Science Fiction writing, it spawned a movie which is a classic of Science Fiction filmmaking, and I found a battered old copy of it at the by now famous Fredericksburg Library Booksale.