Lots of people are good at getting favorable press, but Gunther von Hagens is really good. He’s the guy behind the “Body Worlds” exhibits that show dead, flayed, dissected human beings preserved in plastic. He’s been on the road with this for years and it’s surprising how favorable the press is considering the topic of his show.
But he’s upped the ante with a show featuring necrophilia. Wait, is it necrophilia if it’s two dead people having sex with each other? I’m not sure. Anyway, he’s got dead bodies having sex.
Over the years, we’ve had more than a few looks at media coverage of the various exhibits. Some media coverage has been fantastic, querying local religious leaders about what their religion teaches about the body and how it should be treated. Others never even broached the topic of religion at all. It’s a classic GetReligion ghost story.
So let’s look at this Reuters piece:
Body Worlds exhibitions, visited by 27 million people across the world, have been criticized for presenting entire corpses, stripped of skin to reveal the muscles and organs underneath, in lifelike and often theatrical positions.
Von Hagens has already triggered uproar with a new exhibit which shows just two copulating corpses.
German politicians called the current “Cycle of Life” show charting conception to old age “revolting” and “unacceptable” when it showed in Berlin earlier this year because it included copulating cadavers.
The way a plastinate is exhibited can vary from country to country to reflect local sensibilities. A vote of local employees decided that one of the copulating female cadavers should wear fewer clothes in Zurich than was the case in Berlin.
Ack! Get this story over to the folks at Reuters Faithworld! That phrase “have been criticized” is so passive. Who criticized the presentation of human corpses? Why did they criticize their presentation? And why did people say that copulating cadavers are “revolting” and “unacceptable”?
I’m sure this businessman will be taking his necrophilia show on the road. Hopefully we’ll see some more substantive coverage of the exhibit when he does. Religions differ on whether the body is sacred or nothing more than a vessel of no importance. Either way, I’d be curious what different religions have to say about the ethics behind having sex without, well, explicit consent.
Anyway, assuming we’ll see more mainstream coverage of this new exhibit, here are some good examples of how to do it well from Eric Gorski and Jeffrey Weiss. After all, this topic is central to art and culture in both the East and West.
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Comments (7) |
September 16, 2009, at 10:43 am
Herr von Hagens’s shows an admirable tolerance for and inclusion of the necrophile community, whose partnerships deserve to be recognized and celebrated just like everyone else’s. Necrophiles are free at last to come out of the coffin, in no small part because of Herr von Hagens’s commendable effort to combat necrophobia and vitonormativity.
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September 16, 2009, at 11:00 am
“A vote of local employees decided that one of the copulating female cadavers should wear fewer clothes in Zurich than was the case in Berlin.”
Wait - the cadavers are clothed, even partially? Well, that blows right out of the water any pretension that this is a scientific exhibition, and not a side-show attraction in the tradition of the freak shows or the Fiji Mermaid.
Anatomical specimens are not presented clothed.
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September 16, 2009, at 11:26 am
The plastinate exhibit in general is a worthy educational program, but copulating cadavers are a sadly static form of sex education that the viewing public may not be prepared for.
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September 16, 2009, at 1:11 pm
The show was obscene before, it’s just “kicked it up a notch” to draw in the public it’s already jaded.
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September 16, 2009, at 1:27 pm
Mollie,
I won’t describe my reaction but I really wish you had chosen a different image for this story.
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September 17, 2009, at 8:54 am
I’m not sure I see the religious angle to this in your review of the article.
Unless someone thinks that dead bodies actually are capable of having sex, this isn’t about the consent of the corpses, and pursuing that is a red herring. The corpses posed as though they are having sex are “consenting” no more and no less than the ones posed as playing poker. Given that the plastination process severely anonymizes the corpse, consent really doesn’t come into it, unless there is some violation of the express instructions of the donor as to how their body was to be used.
Some actual religious issues involved might be:
The question of respect for the empty vessels people leave behind when they die.
The whole issue of titillation and gratuitous sexual display in what might otherwise be a purely educational exhibit.
Personally, when I went to the Chicago exhibit, I don’t recall copulating corpses, but I found the things like the poker game and other staged settings were in far worse taste than straightforward copulation might have been.
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September 18, 2009, at 2:48 pm
[…] DEHUMANIZING– Consensual sex after life …. […]
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