I see dead people
My sister took me to the Body Worlds 2 exhibit at the Museum of Science in Boston. That’s the one where dead bodies have been plasticized (plastinated, technically), dissected and posed. I found it interesting, impressive, awesome, creepy, creepy, and obscene.
Interesting because you get to see how we’re put together.
Impressive because the craft requires such meticulous work.
Awesome because some of the exhibits make us seem so improbable. In particular, one exhibits shows nothing but the feathery lattice of the head’s blood circuitry.
Creepy because they’re dead people. Or, possibly, they are dead people whose bodies have been entirely displaced by plastic, in which case the exhibits aren’t so creepy but the process of creating them is.
Creepy because the creator, Gunther von Hagens, has spent a few decades dissolving corpses in acid baths for profit. Oh, and for education. (The exhibit tickets are $24 and the marketing is slick.)
Obscene because seeing a dissected person teaches you something, but seeing a whole, skinned dead person posed as a ballerina or as someone kicking a soccer ball treats a dead person like a meat mannikin.
The Wikipedia article on Body Worlds is very interesting, particularly the part about how the creator has asserted that his cadavers’ poses are copyrighted.
[Tags: body_worlds a href=”http://www.technorati.com/tags/copyright” rel=”tag”> copyright anatomy exhibits ]
