I bristled yesterday as I read yet another faux-controversy concocting article in my misguided home town paper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. You see, Body Worlds is coming to my town and the morality “experts” are getting restless. The “concern” is that maybe we shouldn’t be staring at dead bodies. The morality experts quoted by the article are suggesting that the Body Worlds exhibit, sponsored by the St. Louis Science Center, “exploits the dead for entertainment and commerce.”
What is Body Worlds? Check out the short video at the bottom of this page. Here’s a written description from the official Body Worlds site:
The BODY WORLDS exhibitions are first-of-their-kind exhibitions through which visitors learn about anatomy, physiology, and health by viewing real human bodies, using an extraordinary process called Plastination a groundbreaking method for specimen preservation invented by Dr. von Hagens in 1977. Each exhibition features more than 200 real human specimens, including whole-body plastinates,
individual organs, organ configurations and transparent body slices. The specimens on display stem from the body donation program that Gunther von Hagens established in 1983. The exhibitions also allow visitors to see and better understand the long-term impact of diseases, the effects of tobacco consumption and the mechanics of artificial supports such as knees and hips. To date, nearly 25 million people around the world have viewed the BODY WORLDS exhibits.
I visited the Body Worlds exhibit twice while it was in Chicago two years ago. The exhibition was breath-taking and educational. I plan to see Body Worlds III while it is in St. Louis. I plan to bring my kids (aged 7 and 9), because this is a terrific chance to learn about one of the most incredible phenomena on Earth—the human body. Viewing the body from the numerous perspectives offered by the exibitors, the question is not why it sometimes breaks down or dies. The real question is how it ever actually works, given its surreal complexity. There is no reason that human specimens should be viewable by anatomy students, but off-limits to the rest of us. Why has the viewing of dead humans become off-limits to most of us? There is probably no single reason, but it’s not because we aren’t interested in viewing dead bodies. I’ve long suspected that it’s due to a widespread reluctance to consider the undeniable fact that humans are animals. See here and here and here and here and here and here.
While at Body Worlds, I plan to be inspired (as I was in Chicago) by Gunther von Hagens’ professionalism and creativity. He puts boundless time and energy into preparing his specimens. Perhaps the problem for some people is that von Hagens has a little fun with his specimens. Instead laying the bodies out on slabs, he arranges them in real-world postures. They “do” things like play chess and ride bicycles. Oh, but how dare they arrange dead human bodies so that they are doing the same things that living humans do! Such disrespect!
Yes, there are now accusations that Body Worlds is “exploiting the dead for entertainment and commerce,” as though the dead can be exploited. And as though dead bodies aren’t exploited whenever they are dressed up for wakes, to allow us to pretend that those dead people are merely sleeping.
Consider yet another way of displaying images of dead human bodies: Two days ago, my family attended a St. Louis animal preserve run by Anheuser-Busch.
This beautiful facility is called “Grant’s Farm” because part of the land was once owned by Ulysses S. Grant. Given that Halloween is coming up, the grounds were decorated with ghoulish specimens that undoubtedly exploit the dead for entertainment and commerce. 
Check out these photos, then nod your head in agreement that we have a stark double-standard at play:
In two weeks, images of creepy dead people like this will be ubiquitous. Children will dress up like dead decaying people and we will chuckle and hand them candy. We’ll revel in the realism of the costumes and images and no one will judge us as immoral because of our desire to combine kids, candy and corpses. We just can’t get enough of the stuff, of course, so we’ll need to do it all over again, year after year.
But that’s not all. Not only do we look at things we’re not supposed to look at (the dead). We refuse to look at things we should feel free to look at because they’re interesting. You want an example of that to which I am referring? It was an unplanned show that we also saw at Grant’s Farm. It was (drum roll) . . . Llama sex. No, this is not my code word for something metaphorical. I mean llama sex. Llamas having sex. Llamas in flagrante delicto.
My two daughters noticed two llamas going at it in the llama area about 100 feet away from the camel area where we were standing along with dozens of other people. My kids kept staring because what they saw was interesting. I eventually took their cue and announced, “Hey, let’s go take a look at those llamas.” Here’s what we saw.
The sounds were as interesting as the sight, I can assure you. My daughters and I spoke candidly about the scene as we watched for a minute or two.
The llamas were interesting, but not as interesting as the tourists who were pretending not to watch the llamas. Dozens of tourists remained standing up the hill, ostensibly viewing the camels, 100 feet from the randy llamas. They were all sneaking peeks at the llamas, though none of them wanted to be seen actually looking at llamas having sex. They really really (really) wanted to walk down the small hill and take a closer look at those grunting llamas along with my young daughters and me. In the end, only two or three immoral souls joined us (a mom and her two kids).
Is there a moral to these stories? Perhaps. What is certain is that people often claim to be offended by things that don’t really offend them. What they are really worried about is that someone else might think ill of them if they were seen looking at something they found interesting. That attitude is unfortunate. Life is short and looking at love-making llamas is not immoral (though maybe my llama sex photography is closer to that line!). I have no doubt that most of those people who were too embarrassed to stare at the llamas would have walked down the hill and watched, at least for a minute, had they been the only person in the park.
Maybe the next time those hesitant tourists spy something interesting, they will have the courage to ignore social pressures and actually go learn something. In the meantime, they might want to consider going to Body Worlds, whether or not their neighbor approves of that exhibit. If they do have the “guts” to actually see Body Worlds, they could, later that night, visit the judgmental neighbor wearing one of those gory Halloween skeleton costumes (to put the neighbor at ease) and then tell him or her a few of the amazing things they just learned by staring, unashamed, at creatively displayed human cadavers.
Edgar and grumpy if you did not have any kind of issues with women, you would have compared pregnancy with a less offending body function like breathing, instead you choose to compare it with bowel movement, a certainly not so appropriate topic for dinner. I do not believe that this choice of comparison was random, because anything less offensive could have been chosen, so it does look as if the comparison was meant to degrade pregnancy and as a result women.
Dan: Von Hagens is German, so maybe the reason why your opinion of him is so positive is due to a lack of information that has crossed the ocean. It seems the controversy has not reached the States yet, so maybe it's time to research more details about him on your own as the influx of information might be quite low.
Regarding the gold fillings, we're not talking about atoms here, I mean original gold fillings from people who died during the Holocaust, just as we're not talking about some hypothetical atoms of dead people like Cesar that you're breathing in at every minute of your life. We're talking about people who have not been dead for so long, whose atoms are not floating around in our atmosphere yet, not that many at least, because their physical remains have been preserved and exposed in a show. I so doubt that you would use these gold fillings.
With the same kind of moral standpoint that allows us to use dead prisoners for a show we could also say, hey, why not use the gold fillings? I didn't kill these people and they're dead anyway. I paid for them, so I have the right to use them.
And for goodness' sake, he is not an artist. Who the hell came up with the idea that he was about teaching people science and the wonders of life and nature? It just irritates me that this man manages to present himself as an idealist to a whole group of people whose opinion I usually do respect (more or less, grumpy and Edgar! :D).
Someone said that this exhibit reminds him more of the shows at fairs. He was probably thinking of elephant man, people with stunted growth, anybody beyond the average with all kinds of abnormities who would attract people. It's not that I find dead people to be so disgusting that I frown at the idea of showing people how the human body looks like, it's the hidden motivation behind this show that makes it questionable to me.
As an afterthought, Dan, I'm sorry about what happened to your family. I don't think you wanted me to stop debating your argument though, right?
The society leader explains that he took the world's biggest crap in 1960, and that he was so proud of it that he took it home and decided to raise it as a child, and over time it grew up into Bono. This explains why Bono is ashamed of being called "number two" and why Bono can help so many people and still seem "like such a piece of shit". After this is revealed, Bono's father starts breast feeding Bono with his "Biddy". However, the society leader also points out that, even though Bono faked his newest record, Bono himself is over 80 Courics (200 lbs.) in weight, and thus is still bigger than Randy's old record crap or any other crap in the world.
Right after this is revealed, Randy is finally able to relax after taking a giant crap, estimated to weigh more than 100 Courics (250 lbs.).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/10/12/couric-c…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Crap
Gatomjp, you get it. Thanks for your remarks.
Grumpy, Edgar – Just think about who is insulted most by your analogy. It's not the mom. Just reflect next time before inserting foot in mouth.
When, 12 years on, one of your BM's is described by all as a joy to be around, and can get an A in algebra, play Scottish airs on the harp, and leap on to the back of a cantering horse, I wouldn't mind hearing all the details of how it came about.
Erika, you write:
What a seriously skewed idea of what childbirth is like. Doctors drag babies out of women? What you're describing is a massive medical intervention, not a normal childbirth. Does this reflect any actual conversation about birth that you have actually had with a real woman, or something you saw on TV or read about? I seriously doubt any woman who has been through labor would say "the doctor dragged the baby out of me." Routine episiotomies are also no longer the order of the day, so it sounds like you need more information, not less.
On the other strand of this thread: projektleiterin, von Hagens acquiring bodies in China bothers me too. Dan's comment about atoms from gold fillings doesn't really apply. China executes more prisoners for more offenses than any other country, and anyone who is dealing in organs or cadavers there can't help but be aware of allegations that demand for organs is corrupting the justice system and contributing to the high rate of executions. So claiming that the problem was missing paperwork or whatever is like someone claiming they had no idea the watch they bought off a guy on the street corner was stolen. As to the claim that people are lining up to be plastinated after death so why would he need to buy execution victims, well, most of those people aren't dead yet.
On the other hand, he does claim to have destroyed the questionable cadavers, and to have avoided convictions for any serious crime so far..
I also agree that it's not art. The thing that pushes it over the line into freakshow for me is his soliciting the guy with giantism for his cadaver after death.
Ben:
My birth video. Let me show you eet.
Revealing our innards in a humorous vein does not imply a venal humour.
Freak shows are a (seldom mentioned) part of modern culture.
Any "reality" show is merely taking a set of mismatched or complementary personality disorders and pushing them to the edge to display what happens.
These posthumous displays are not so obscene as the not-so-old practice of pulling the insides of criminals out to put them on public display to watch as they died. This was acceptable practice (even to churches) in Europe and the Americas for many centuries.
IF I were a "real" enough man to click on that link, I'm sure it would be a wonderful, beautiful experience.
AND a bit icky.
Wow, I'm just amazed by how far off the deep end so many of you have gone concerning my comment. Get a grip, people. Not only was my observation directed to a tiny subset of the female population (i.e., pregnant women and their friends who ignore the usual boundaries of good taste when discussing the condition in public), it was more about human behavior and social norms than it was about pregnancy. People who actually know me (fyi, my circle of friends includes far more women than men) would howl with laughter to hear some of the ridiculous things some of you have said about me. I think Edgar hit the nail on the head when he observed that I must have hit a nerve. Indeed, from my perspective, your comments reveal far more about yourselves than they do about me.
Grumpy
I acknowledge that all my speculations about your motivation for picking that particular analogy, were simply that, speculation. I realize now that it would have been much much more appropriate just to say how hurtful your analogy was and to convey how it affected my perception of you, rather than climbing up to the judge's high box. In fact, I probably should have mentioned how offensive I found it the first time you used it, so as not to let the resulting impression of your character harden in my mind. But saying "That hurt my feelings," puts us in a vulnerable position so we tend to lob the judgment back instead of acting skillfully.
You may be a nice guy in person, but all I have to go by is what you write here. You write "my observation [was] directed to a tiny subset of the female population." You may have meant to convey this, but what you said was "American mothers." You may not have meant comparing childbirth to taking a shit to be offensive, but I think that most people would take it a put-down. Several others here found it so. Again, I don't think you are thinking of who you are comparing to crap in your analogy. To call someone a shit, or full of crap, or any one of a number of similar terms, is an insult in the English language.
And, when a number of people have found something you said offensive, does it really help to accuse them of going off the deep end?
I realize I could have gotten my point across much more clearly, with including judgmental language. I can also think of a number of ways you might have made your point without being offensive. We might have had quite a different discussion then, probably a much more interesting one.
Now you are being disingenuous, grumpy.
"People who actually know me (fyi, my circle of friends includes far more women than men) would howl with laughter to hear some of the ridiculous things some of you have said about me."
Being the writer that you are you are well aware of the power and limitations of language. All we know about you is what we read here. When you chose that offensive comparison (for whatever reason, even jokingly) it made you SEEM misogynistic. Surely you must be able to see that.
"…your comments reveal far more about yourselves than they do about me."
I'm rubber, you're glue? Is that what you are saying, grump? I'm curious, what do our comments reveal to you?
To Vicki: I just don't see how my analogy was "hurtful" to anyone. I merely pointed out that pregnancy is a normal biological function, as normal as any other biological function, most of which are, well, messy, for lack of a better word. What analogy would you use that would be a better analogy than mine? A fetus has a parasitical (and potentially life-threatening, as you pointed out) attachment to its host…perhaps you would prefer the analogy of a malignant tumor? Seriously, just compare the amount of text (and its content) devoted to my initial (and tangential) comment and your many longwinded rants in response, and it should be obvious that your comments are the product of your own over-reaction.
To gatomjp: I also don't see how I can reasonably be called disingenuous or misogynistic. These labels flow directly from your own (grossly) distorted misinterpretations of what I wrote; thus, they do not reveal anything about me at all. From my single analogy about pregnancy — one that I will continue to defend despite all the criticism it has generated — I've been accused of all sorts of ridiculous things. These accusations are plainly the result of reader over-reaction. As I said previously: get a grip. Try to look at my analogy more objectively and perhaps you will understand.
So, this exhibit is indeed more like a freak/reality show for you than an educational recreation?
You're comparing the Body World shows with a cruel and disgusting tradition that has attracted a lot of people as well, but is no longer practised for human reason…? Do you really want to draw a comparison between yourself and all these Middle Age rubberneckers?
Do. some. research. That's all you're being asked to do before you walk happily into this show and defend it like it's the next cure for cancer.
Grumpy, when a guy claims, and not only once it seems, but several times, that being pregnant belongs to the same category of natural body functions as bowel movement it's a red flag for me. Period. What this kind of attitude tells you about me? That I have issues with guys? Umm, probably true, but I still know that you are not honest here.
What is it with all this "it's just a normal body function" and "also animals have sex"? Why is that people get so upset then when their partner cheats on them? Animals most of the time don't seem to be so picky about it. I say, get a grip on yourself and stop this whining. People talk about the wonder of life when they see an animal giving birth. Kittens – aw, so cute. Puppies – aw, so sweet. Babies? They're the product of a body function just like going to the toilet.
People, People! Please. I'd like to comment that the elevation of pregnancy (an incredible process terrifically portrayed by NOVA's documentary "Life's Greatest Miracle") is OK by me, as long as it is not meant as a disparagement of bowel movements. BM's are incredible in and of their own right. In a prior post I went so far as to decribe humans as "mobile intestinal tracts"! Or, perhaps it's an age thing, and maybe I'm just showing my age. In fact, for very old folks (I'll define "very old people" as people older than me), you sometimes hear bowel movements being venerated above every other natural pheonema.
I therefore toast bowel movements and pregnancies. Without either of these glorious functions you couldn't have the other.
Caveat: By singling out these two incredible functions, I'm not intending to impliedly dispage any other functions such as the Krebs Cycle or the coagulation cascade that enables the healing of wounds. I'd add that death itself is, to some extent, a "natural" function too, and that serious scientists have dared to ask the simplistic sounding question of why people die.
I do chuckle (but only a little bit) that Grumpypilgrim might have thought that he was preempting the sort of criticism he has received by his choice of screen name.
For fear of sounding patronistic, I hope that in light of Grumpy's clarification (that he didn't mean to include all talk of pregnancy by all women) and the various metaphorical fig leaves I've noticed in further down in these comments, that we can move away from personal internecine skirmishes. If that doesn't happen soon, I'll intentionally say something really stupid and insulting to unite everyone against a new common enemy. I love you all that much.
Erich, again i am not bristling at the gross-out factor. Having worked as a nursing assistant when I was in college, I've probably cleaned up more human shit than you will ever see in your entire life. Caring for a colostomy patient or seeing a nurse dig a fecal impaction our of a bedridden patient certainly gives one an appreciation for the wonders of a normal healthy bowel movement.
What I object to is the trivialization of a process that involves just about every system in the body and which is the beginning of a life-long relationship. To pick an event that is gender neutral, dying is also as natural as peeing. If someone, perhaps a lonely person
who has no one else to talk to, begins pouring out the details of their terminal cancer, would you cut them off by saying "dying from cancer – it's as natural as taking a piss."
As you point out elsewhere, there is no soul separate from the body. Everything, all our most profound experiences, our deepest thoughts, hopes, wishes, dreams, and noblest actions are contained in ridiculously fragile sack of blood and bones and shit and mucus. Throughout history, people have turned to religion to help and support them through life events such as birth and death. If we can offer no vocabulary, no way of talking about the experience of being a human animal, other than a dismissive and reductionist one, then people will continue to turn to religion.
In my mind the above consideration, the fact that most women of my generation have mothers who gave birth in twilight sleep and never learned to breastfeed, and the feminist insight that "the personal is the political," I think there was an important discussion buried here. I have not been very skillful, reacting in a judgmental way instead of nurturing a conversation.
Grumpy
End product of bowel movement=shit
End product of birth = baby
Ouch.
I will not trouble you with them anymore.
I am sorry for the accusations I made, but not for the parts where I tried to explain my feelings.
I would have liked to see the reactions of people following such a comment.
It is after all only directed at people with cancer their friends who ignore the usual boundaries of good taste when discussing the condition in public. Most people do not want to hear sick people talk about death. Wasn't there someone who recently complained about this horrible person who talked so much and drove everybody away? What's his name again? 😀
Vicki writes:
"End product of bowel movement=shit
End product of birth = baby"
Vicki, you again amaze me by how much you are reading into my comment. Please, please try to get a grip. I was once a baby myself, so whatever you might consider "hurtful" about my comment would be applicable to me as well, and I certainly don't consider it hurtful.
As regards your rants, this website welcomes longwinded rants. My objection is that you should try to keep things in perspective, and recognize that your replies have gone way, way off on an unnecessary tangent. My choice of BMs was utterly arbitrary and in no way intended to connote the many things you have read into it. Indeed, if you reread my original comment, you will see that I never disparaged *pregnancy* at all. My comment was directed to women for whom pregnancy becomes an excuse to suspend normal boundaries of good taste in public conversation. Thus, the ONLY people for whom my comment might be viewed as "hurtful" would be women who practice such behavior. So, go ahead and rant all you want, but please rant about something that I actually said, not some imagined attack on pregnancy that exists only in your imagination.
Grumpy, you've convinced me. Those living pregnant women who natter endlessly on about their natural bodily processes are indeed a serious threat to our society's high standards of good taste.
With this principle established, we can go back to feeling superior to people who feel creeped out by an exhibit that includes a dead pregnant woman, flayed and sliced open.
I agree with you Vicki. It was a poorly chosen analogy, arbitary or not.
I'm still waiting for ANY of my above critics to provide a better example than the one I mentioned. EVERY HUMAN ON OUR PLANET shits — usually every day — so what is so horrible about using that as my example? If you don't like my example, then give me a better one and I'll be happy to use that one instead.
Grumpy, since you don't seem willing to drop this, here are some thoughts:
1. I could go into all the physiological differences between pregnancy/birth and pooping. In fact, the only thing they have in common is expelling something from the body. So your "metaphor" seems more like a synecdoche, with the second stage of labor standing in for the whole undifferentiated concept of "pregnancy."
2. A better analogy might have been sex. Sex is something that most people experience as positive, and it's generally a very absorbing topic for discussion and thought. However, in a formal or "polite" setting, play-by-play descriptions of sexual encounters are generally off-limits. Between friends though, and in single-sex settings, such discussions are usually acceptable to most participants. If some of the participants in such a discussion have never actually had sex, there can be a fascination/repulsion thing going on, and an anxiety as to whether the listener will be able to "perform' when the time comes. I think that's quite similar to how most women, and many men, experience discussions about childbirth.
3. Your comments (original and subsequent justifications) seem to accomplish a neat trick. Erich suggested that people were uncomfortable viewing dead bodies at this exhibit because they were uncomfortable with the fact that people are animals. There was more than a bit of self-congratulation going on for being among the few who can face this fact. But at the same time, you censure pregnant women for breaking the humans-as-animals taboo, instead of celebrating them for telling it like it is. In this way, you never have to climb off the judge's box and admit that you too, are uncomfortable with some aspects of human animality. You could have just said – yeah, I get uncomfortable when I hear too-detailed descriptions of pregnancy and birth.
4. I do admit there are aspects of birth stories and talking about birth that resemble the way men exchange war stories. There's an element of bragging – look what I endured, and I survived. And some women do have very traumatic experiences of birth that haven't really been fully processed, and when they start to tell their stories, more and more details that they've been repressing come out. This sort of thing usually happens around other women/parents, but if lots of your friends have kids, you may have been the odd man out in some of these sessions. You could always excuse yourself, maybe offer to do the dishes or something until a new topic gets introduced.
Self-congratulation? Well . . . maybe. It's because I have to work hard to see the obvious and then I want to share it. Fair enough?
"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." George Orwell.
Self-congratulation and nothing else? I can't agree with to that extent. I think that we humans excel in pretending that we are other than what we are and that this inability to deal with the extradinary foundation for human thought–the living meat of the human body–is the origin of endless social mischief.
Working hard to see humans as human animals can bring deep lasting humility. It can also explode one's sense of entitlement. Just try to give me a better antidote for hubris.
Vicki I think you're arguing with too much reason for grumpy to understand and I'd hate to see you get upset about him… He doesn't understand, because he doesn't want to understand. Usually he makes sense, but not on this post, that's somewhat disappointing.
OK, one more point – from the time we can wipe our own bums and as long as we have full mobility, most of us are able to poop without help from others. But due to the fact that evolution has given us big brains and upright posture, most women need help giving birth and in the post-partum period. Breast-feeding also is not completely instinctual in humans (maybe not in primates) and requires the right setting to get established. Many women cannot look to their mothers for the most basic info they need to give birth and feed their babies normally, because in our culture, the abnormal has become the norm. So the urge to bond and talk with others around pregnancy and birth is not only normal but quite necessary. Grumpy may argue that rules of "good taste" – whatever that may mean in an age of Jerry Springer and live televised colonoscopies – should always prevail over a pregnant woman's need to compare notes with others, but I don't think he has much of a case.