Estimated read time: 8-9 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Dec. 10--Tour the new exhibit at the Museum of Nature & Science, and you will almost surely emerge affected.
You might be revolted. Or amazed. It's likely you'll be forced to contemplate your own mortality, what you believe about the afterlife, or how you want your body treated.
What does it mean to show respect for the dead?
And is this it?
Body Worlds, the traveling show that opened Saturday, features real dead humans -- flayed, dissected, posed and preserved in plastic. It's part anatomy lesson and part show business.
The exhibit is one of the most successful on the modern museum circuit, having pulled in more than 20 million visitors in 35 cities over the past 11 years. A Body Worlds display even has a cameo in the new James Bond movie.
Why?
A visitor will learn in enormous detail exactly how the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone and to every other part of the body, but that's not the only reason for the crowds. If Gunther von Hagens, the German physician who created Body Worlds, only showed his preserved cadavers in a sterile, scientific setting, that might be unnerving enough. But most of the unclothed, skinless bodies are displayed in active, lifelike postures:
A man plays chess, his brain, spine and nerves in plain sight. A basketball player drives to the hoop, every muscle exposed in its dynamic tension. A horse rears, a rider balanced on its back, the muscles and bones of both exposed.
"The Blood Family" made the trip to Dallas, but there's no room to display it. The tableau features a man and woman standing with their arms around each other. His left arm reaches up to balance a child perched on his shoulders. The child is giving a "thumbs up" gesture to whatever is in front of them.
Imagine a Norman Rockwell painting of a family attending a parade.
Except the "family" is nothing but three red clouds of blood vessels. For this display, the arteries of the figures were injected with red plastic, and the rest of the bodies were dissolved away.
These three were probably strangers in life -- Body Worlds gives out few personal details about body donors. In death, they're linked in an affectionate pose that demands questions. How did they die? How did the boy's parents decide to donate the young body for this process? How dare Dr. von Hagens pose them in such a cheerful fashion?
A recent addition to the collection looks almost like a sculpture and has an artlike title: "Phoenix with Birds." A woman kneels, arms stretched high. Two pigeons fly from her hands. She's dissected to show the blood vessels in her abdomen. And there's no more to the pigeons than their circulatory systems.
The emotionally engaging positions are no accident, Dr. von Hagens said. The first time his "plastinates" were shown, in Japan, some visitors complained that the rigid anatomical poses made the bodies seem anxious and scary. Since then, he's spoken to many visitors -- and to people seeking to donate their bodies.
"They like this emotional, postmodern display," he said. "I try to evoke some allegorical feeling in people, to emotionalize their feelings about their own anatomy."
Dr. von Hagens figured out how to "plastinate" dead bodies about 30 years ago while serving as a resident and lecturer at Heidelberg University's Institute of Pathology and Anatomy. He preserves the tissues in a way that leaves the cells intact and replaces all the water with plastic.
Muscles look a bit like beef jerky. Organs are more pallid than their fresh counterparts but retain the exact shape and size they did in life. They'll probably stay that way for centuries. There is no odor.
Dr. von Hagens wants people to approach without fear and think about how what they see applies to their own innards. The dark gray of a smoker's lungs, the enormous burden of fat created by obesity, the enlarged heart created by cardiac disease -- all are clearly on display in oddly aesthetic settings.
The bodies, he said, come from volunteers, donations by surviving relatives, existing collections and government morgues holding unclaimed corpses. He has assembled enough bodies for three simultaneous traveling shows. The other two are now in Boston and Vancouver.
One set of displays in the Dallas exhibit may be particularly disturbing:
A room devoted to examples of fetal development includes preserved fetuses. The centerpiece is a woman, reclining on her side not unlike a bathing suit model. But this model's belly is opened to show the 8-month-old fetus in her uterus. (The exhibit says the woman donated her body when she realized she was pregnant and dying. After she died, doctors could not save the baby.)
Body Worlds is often described as controversial. Reaction to the exhibit depends on where it shows, Dr. von Hagens said.
In Japan, he got no questions about ethics or morals. In his native Germany, a culture that he says loves to argue, he got lots of questions. In England, people wanted to talk about the fetuses. In Los Angeles, nobody challenged his scientific credentials. In Boston, people demanded to know whether the exhibit was science or art.
Cultural rituals
Mostly, what the display raises are questions, among them: Is this any way to treat a body?
The long history of human funerary practices offers an enormous number of answers. Egyptians mummified their kings. Early Christians had their bones placed in ossuaries.
But even among modern cultures, folks who watch TV and carry cellphones, there exists an enormous range of mainstream definitions for respect for the dead.
Zoroastrianism is one of the world's oldest religions. Most remaining practitioners live in Mumbai, India. According to the tenets of the faith, the only theologically respectful way to treat the body of a loved one is to have it eaten by buzzards. (A buzzard shortage in Mumbai is currently forcing the community to consider alternative methods.)
In Greece, the high cost of burial plots means most people are buried for only three years in a rented plot, then moved to a crypt. The government recently approved the use of cremation, but the Greek Orthodox Church opposes that practice.
In Madagascar, bodies are periodically dug up and paraded through town to be "shown" new buildings and introduced to new members of the family.
Orthodox Jews believe a body should be cleaned, wrapped in linen and buried as quickly as possible in a plain wooden box with holes in the bottom to speed return to the soil.
Most American Christians, meanwhile, are buried in a manner designed to retard decomposition as much as possible: Their blood is replaced by chemicals, their mouths are stapled shut, and their faces are caked with makeup. Coffins are typically airtight and, for good measure, buried or sealed in a concrete crypt.
Other less common final treatments include placing "cremains" -- what's left after cremation -- into fireworks, a coral reef, pottery, or a rocket sent into space. A Texas woman was buried behind the wheel of her beloved Ferrari, wearing a favorite nightgown. A few people are frozen, in hopes of some future medical discovery that will permit resurrection.
In that context, how weird is Body Worlds?
It's an unquestionable public success, a for-profit enterprise that has made Dr. von Hagens a lot of money.
The Art Newspaper, a British publication that tracks museum shows, lists the top exhibits worldwide annually. Body Worlds isn't technically an art show. But if it were, a 2005 showing in Chicago would have come in third, behind two King Tut exhibits.
Frivolous?
Those who are uncomfortable with Body Worlds wonder if the various poses are a frivolous use of human remains.
Michael Kearl is chairman of the department of sociology and anthropology at Trinity University in San Antonio and an expert on death and dying. He's got no problem with Body Worlds but says a colleague calls it "death pornography." In the same way that sexual pornography divorces emotion from sex, the critic said, this display separates the appropriate emotions of grief and sorrow from the viewing of the dead.
Dr. von Hagens disagreed. For the donors and their families, he said, this is how they choose to be remembered and to mourn.
And most people approach the displays with a respectful attitude of awe and reverence, said Angelina Whalley, Dr. von Hagens' wife and business partner.
"I understand and respect that the exhibition doesn't appeal to everybody," said Dr. Whalley, who is also a medical doctor. "But it's everybody's choice whether to see it or not."
Officials of the Museum of Nature & Science are trying to pre-empt criticism. They've lined up local doctors willing to speak in favor of the exhibit. They're scheduling public forums about health and science to run every month the exhibit is here. And they're reaching out to some local religious leaders, said Nicole Small, the museum's chief operating officer.
The museum is anticipating huge crowds. It's hired 80 new employees and upgraded the ticket-selling system.
The museum isn't paying to bring the exhibit to town, Ms. Small said. Instead, the museum and Dr. von Hagens' company will split the take from ticket and souvenir sales.
Dr. von Hagens is frequently asked about the eventual fate of his own body.
Of course, he wants it plastinated.
His preference would be to get chopped into thin sections -- along with his trademark fedora -- so his parts could be used to educate people in many places at once. His wife is inclined to keep him in one piece.
He's philosophical about whatever happens.
"I think it's up to the next generation to decide how to plastinate me," he said.
E-mail jweiss@dallasnews.com
-----
Copyright (c) 2006, The Dallas Morning News
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Milan:F,
