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Body Worlds says its purpose is educational. No doubt about it. Is it at the same time too gruesome for public exhibition?

Would you go?* Doug

P.T. Barnum made a forture out of dead bodies. So what's the problem? The trick Doug is that you don't view your own body and get a royalty check from body worlds.

Doug-

I teach drawing from nude models and skeletons, and have even viewed and palpated a cadaver, so you'd think I'd be fine with this. The whole CSI-desensitization thing, though, is quite disturbing to me. Maybe it's a holdover of Renaissance beliefs that artists, doctors, morticians, and I suppose crime investigators should be somehow cut from a different cloth. Why shouldn't the average person get to see the wonders of the body? Leonardo's drawings are stunning. Thousands lined up to see them at the Met a few years back, standing quietly and close, using magnifying lenses to study them.

That does sound different than the kitschy poses described here.
My non-art students in lecture/discussion courses have brought in presentations about this Hagens Body Worlds stuff. Technically, there's no body there at all; it's been replaced by plastics, injected into certain systems and tissues, then the actual body is dissolved in acid, leaving the plastic. At least that's my understanding. Sort of a high-tech wax museum approach.

If the general public is more likely to come to such displays, rather than studying Leonardos, however, it makes sense for museums in need of cash and does allow an audience a chance to learn things they otherwise would never enconter.

In the end, it is a choice the museums and individuals atending must make. It has both good and negative aspects in close balance.

This exhibit plays a rather prominent role in the Bond flick.

Checked out the Hagens site. Seems it is only the fluids and fats that are replaced. Rest is preserved from rapid decomposition (but not total, apparently) to very, very stable, slow decay. Like any object does (cars and houses, and less than living bodies, whose decay is in some equilibrium with growth for twenty years, followed by ultimately futile attempts to stave off inevitable).

They have some interesting rationale there for the "sportive" poses. They stress how one can teach about diseases, too, better than in books...ewww. But since the fat is dissolved, they will be hard-pressed to teach good nutrition.

Thanks for the research, Jim. It's starting to creep me out a little, although morbid curiousity could draw me to the show.

John, I didn't see the new Bond movie. There is something about it on the Body Web site.

Oh for Pete's sake, Doug. You've seen this sorta thing before. We have "skeletal structures -- posed in various positions as if they're actually alive" right here in Greensboro! Just go to any board of education meeting. Dot Kearns is the most scary--and even their display each month isn't very educational.

I know I'm not driving all the way to Charlotte when I can see the same thing right here for free.

Wow, we've found someone who's less helpful to the discussion than Connie Mack. And a lot less funny.

ba-CHHINGGG

(rim shot for Doug)

I don't like dead bodies.

Hopefully Doug, you deem this "helpful to the discussion."

If it isn't, I am sorry.

NOTICE TO ALL FUTURE BLOGGERS:

All entries on Doug's blog are to be concrete and absent of your own feelings or creativity, unless they are in accordance with Doug's views or concerning a subject which has not grown tiresome for him. If not, you will be subject to ridicule.

Thank you.

I didn't set any such rule, Savage, but I reserve the right to call someone out when I think he's gone beyond the bounds of fair or decent comment. (Especially when the commenter isn't brave enough to associate his real name with his insult.) You have the right to do the same to me.

You don't ridicule them. Fight them back with debate. Give your opinion, cite facts, of why Dot Kearns is not mentally and spiritually dead, for instance.

On second thought, this burden may not be fair to you, but you get the drift.

It's perfectly fair to ridicule someone who signs his or her name "Dead bodies on Eugene St."

Doug, the vast majority of people posting use pen names.

From your frame of reference this name may seem silly, but I assure you, there are many people for whom brain-dead people on Eugene St.are a real issue and a serious problem.

...and, actually, it is pretty funny!!

Actually Doug, now you've made the case for me to drive all the way to Charlotte! I didn't want to do it but now I am VERY curious if their dead bodies have more life to them than some on our BOE. You go right ahead and deny it but it's FACT. Ask our failing students if they think the folks running the show for them are dead or alive!

DotRot is a brain dead twit and I'll say it till the day I die! Then you may pose me in any position you want but I would have enough sense not to sit on some board and pretend that I knew what I was doing!

Why don't you take one to the board of elections office in 2008 and see if you can file it to run for school board.

Better yet, file to run yourself. Although I warn you: You'll have to give your name.

Even your "brain-dead twits" on the board are brave enough to stand up and take the heat. In my book, that at least makes them alive.

I'm not so sure they stand up and take the heat, Doug. I specifically remember Alan Duncan saying "I will NOT sit up here and be hooted at!"

But...you are right. He uses his real name and I do too.

To keep on topic, I think dead bodies are creepy.

All right, I give up. I've always been a big fan of Sir Charles, one of the funniest guys in sports.

Isn't there a specific medical mental condition where a person reads, sees and hears all topics as some how a reflection of their own narrow interests, and hence cause to steer all conversation back to said obsession?