Still talking about "Bodies"

Since "Bodies ... the Exhibition" will be in Cincinnati until the fall, and since it is traveling to a myriad of cities in our nation, people are still talking about whether or not they morally agree with the idea of paying money to see dead bodies on display for education (or as Peter Bronson says, "edutainment"). In today's Cincinnati Enquirer, Gail Finke penned an excellent op-ed regarding the exhibit:

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When I first learned that "Bodies ... The Exhibition" was coming to Cincinnati Museum Center, I was naïve enough to believe that people who objected to it would not have to see it. But recently, I have seen TV commercials and other ads showing detailed photos of the cadavers - whether I want to see them or not.

It does not matter where these bodies came from. It does not matter if they were claimed or unclaimed, if one or a million consent forms were signed. It does not matter whether or not they will be eventually "given a decent burial." They are dead people. Using corpses to advertise anything, even themselves, should be right up there with profanity and nudity as off-limits.

Furthermore, the exhibit features not just any old corpses, but corpses that have been flayed, cut up, and posed for our amusement. The "educational" claim is a ruse. Of course people who are interested in medicine find them to be just like medical illustrations. They are actual human bodies. The important question is, would anyone come to see detailed models of bodies in the same poses? It would be a lot cheaper and easier to do, and the corpse factory could make duplicates.

But the answer is no. The attraction here isn't the chance to learn about anatomy, it's the chance to see dead human bodies. In person! Right in front of you!

These bodies are not in any sense "an anatomy textbook come to life," as the ad trumpets. They are dead. They are not thousands of years old, mummified in sacred rituals we can study to learn about an ancient culture and its beliefs. They are recently dead people posed "creatively" by exhibit designers.

They tell us a lot we might not want to know about our culture and its beliefs. The advertisements may talk about the "specimens" being "respectfully preserved," but these are nothing more than high-tech carnival displays.
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