Like Amy, I despised the "Body Worlds" exhibit, considering it to be defiling the human body for entertainment purposes (despite its scientific pretensions). Guenther von Hagens, its originator, has now tipped his hand, showing what a sick SOB he's always been: his new exhibition depicts cadavers having sex. Says Wesley J. Smith:
But breaking "taboos" is all that matters in a hedonistic culture crumbling from the destruction of social cohesion. Further, hedonism denigrates human exceptionalism by reducing us to the level of instinctive and self indulgent beings living for the next, ever more nihilistic, thrill.We can break this downward spiral only by seeing clearly what is happening and refusing to participate in it.
The Catholic philosopher Tom Hibbs wrote about why "Body Worlds" is so morally objectionable back when it came through Dallas. Excerpt:
Merely asserting that one is engaging in the laudatory practice of overcoming taboos about the proper use of dead bodies does not make it, in fact, laudatory. One might equally claim that hard-core pornography can educate viewers about sex by reducing sex to the manipulation of body parts stripped of any larger human significance.The problem with death in our culture is not that we have taboos about it, but that we lack a rich language for articulating the experience and its meaning. It's hard to see how Body Worlds will help solve that problem. Indeed, what is on display is not the mystery of death, but the reduction of bodies to inert plasticized parts displayed for viewers - a pornography of the dead human body.
Now that the von Hagens has created actual pornography with dead bodies. As Smith says, what's left now? This stuff is Satanic. In a sane society, this ghoul would be in prison or in an insane asylum. In our culture, he is rich and famous.
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Damien Hirst is brilliant. I am so sorry you found his exhibit "gross". If you consider "the way of all flesh" as an old saying goes, perhaps you might see the beauty in the efficiency of nature. Those rotting cows were beautiful in their own way. Too bad you missed the point.
The copulation merely added a whimsical flourish. Funny stuff.
In the late 1940s, author Ray Bradbury visited Guanajuato, Mexico and saw the famous modern mummies buried there. The experience was so deeply unsettling that he wrote short story, "The Next in Line," right away (which, he explains in a collection of stories, is not how he usually writes--he generally takes a long time to plan, etc.).
These mummies were not intended to become a "tourist attraction" so to speak, but they became one anyway. And there is something rather horrible about that, just as there is something rather horrible about abusing corpses in any way.
I think putting corpses on display for people to gawk at is a kind of abuse. I don't think it's the same as scientific or artistic study. Where we draw lines around these concepts is more important in what it says about us as a culture than it is to the deceased, who are mercifully unaware of what is being done to their mortal remains.
As they are, so shall we be. But what our children choose to do with our remains matters, too--to them, and to their character, more than to us.
When BODIES: The Exhibit came to Hawaii, it was hyped not just in newspaper ads but also on TV.
State Representative Marcus Oshiro introduced a bill banning such exhibits. I don't know if von Hagens's exhibit would have fallen under the ban, but I think it would've provoked much controversy.
http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session2009/Bills/HB29_.pdf
http://www.starbulletin.com/news/20090128_Bill_would_restrict_display_of_human_bodies_parts.html
HB29 HD1 was deferred in March, however.
http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session2009/lists/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=HB&billnumber=29
I don't have any objection at all to displaying a cross section of von Hagens' corpse in an autoerotic pose.
Next week would be fine.
"Where does he get his corpses from?"
They are all donated. The exhibit provides information to those who are interested in specifically donating their bodies for exhibition.
The same cannot be said of some Body World imitators, who have procured bodies through shady means (e.g. executed criminals) and that have also had some "preservation issues" at their exhibitions.
I agree with the poster above who said one of the most fascinating parts of previous exhibits is how you can see the influence of smoking and overeating on the body in the preserved specimens.
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