- wikipedia
- The Bodies Exhibit
Remember cringing at the sight of a polluted fetal lung at the Bodies Exhibit last year? If you missed the freak show then it’s probably too late for next time. The Seattle City Council’s Housing, Human Service, Health, and Culture Commission Wednesday passed a recommendation prohibiting the unlawful display of human remains in the city without the written permission of the deceased.
The full council will vote on the ordinance Monday and possibly fine tune it a bit. Although the ordinance doesn’t specifically mention the controversial Bodies…The Exhibition, most of the discussion at Wednesday’s meeting revolved around it. Seattle’s legislation was borrowed heavily from San Francisco’s, which asked Bodies’ organizer Premier Exhibitions to certify all the dead bodies. “It was never produced so they never returned,” said Council Member Nick Licata, the sponsor of the legislation in Seattle.
“They are a violation of cultural sensibilities … A carnival of the weird,” said Betty Luke, a member of Seattle’s Chinese American community who testified before the committee. “Imagine if a person close to you passed away, and after the funeral her body was sent to a processing plant to pose as a ballerina?”
Ron Chew, who teaches at University of Washington and was director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum, said that apart from their questionable origin, the Bodies’ exhibit was an act of desecration. “Exhibiting human parts for a for-profit show is just wrong,” he said. The Bodies exhibit is made up entirely of plastinated cadavers from China, which human rights advocates question whether were legally obtained.
Council Member Bruce Harrell pointed out that there seemed to be an educational aspect to the exhibit which added a twist to the debate. “I support medical research but I would argue that there are ways to do this without using human bodies,” Chew said.
Bodies gave Seattle $90,000 is admission sales taxes in 2009-2010. The city is set to lose $45,000 in 2011 if it approves the ordinance. Violators will be fined for each day they display body parts illegally. Exceptions include human remains that are more than 100 years old, human teeth and hair and religious observations.
oh jesus christ, grow a pair of balls
I never really put the two together but Bodies really did come across like a carnival freakshow. It felt slightly wrong, morally dubious, and dangerous viewing all those cadavers.. not unlike paying 2 bits and seeing the bearded lady on the midway. The strange mix of thrill and disgust is similar.
However, I found the show educational. I walked away from the exhibit slightly nauseated but with a profound appreciation for the majesty that his the human body. The complexity of something like the cardiovascular system, stripped from all it’s surrounding bone and tissues was stunning to behold.
That being said, ew, icky. Gross.
There’s also this little bit warning posted at the entrance of the exhibit:
“This exhibit displays human remains of Chinese citizens or residents which were originally received by the Chinese Bureau of Police. The Chinese Bureau of Police may receive bodies from Chinese prisons. Premier cannot independently verify that the human remains you are viewing are not those of persons who were incarcerated in Chinese prisons.”
Some of the bodies are rumored to be those of executed Chinese political prisoners.
Is Bodies planning on coming back, or was this pulled out of someone’s ass?
And, all ethical considerations aside, good fucking riddance. I got so sick of seeing that shit for months at a time.
Gonna have to stick with Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe for human remains viewing I guess…
Whats the big deal? Aren’t there enough dead Chinese dudes to go around?
Unnecessary paternalism.
The city is set to lose $45,000 in 2011 if it approves the ordinance.
Jeebusonastick, I don’t see how this is relevant to the ethical issue that is being debated. If selling tickets to raping your own grandmother with an ice pick was profitable, would you do it?
Is it possible that the city could find a revenue stream that didn’t involve the public display of dismembered corpses?
Throbbing squirm, gurgling bloody mess.
So…what about the peat bog man..or a mummy…or the Old Curiosity Shoppe? This law is a bunch of bullshit.
Even if the Bodies exhibit is exploitive that doesn’t mean we need a blanket policy that makes us look like a bunch of bible-belt prudes. If you don’t like an exhibit, don’t go see it. I really don’t want to hear SAM saying “Sorry, Damien Husrt – your art is too spooky,”
I’m glad the council is banning this exhibit. If it should try to come back I know a lot of people who will call in indecency charges on their billboards – including me – and since that is in the eye of the beholder it will stick. If you want to go look at dismembered corpses in the privacy of your own convention center or whatever, that’s one thing, but don’t make me look at it by the side of the road on my way to work everyday for months on end.
What do you expect from a nation full of people that can only experience emotion through violence in entertainment? Bodies helps fill the need. Who cares if the people in the exhibit actually led real lives, right? They have him set up like he’s throwing a football n stuff!!
Lol, it’ll be ok to show dead bodies off for religious (aka stupid) reasons, but not for educational and financial (aka not stupid) reasons? Love it.
So all BODIES has to do is invent a religion, which should be rather easy as it’s been done continually for eons, and charge for the privilege of letting heathens observe their arcane cult rituals. Gawd, I wish they had the balls to do that.
I like carnivals and I love weird…and Weird carnivals are awesome.
Does that make me a bad person?
I don’t think people realize that executing a prisoner for education is the same logic the Nazis used to justify their experimentation on Jews.
What about educating our kids that you don’t have to culturally desecrate another person to educate yourself about your body?
Mmmm. People jerky. Now I’m hungry.
But there aren’t really “bodies” on display at BODIES. There are rubber-casts of dead tissue.
Thank God. What a horrible exhibit.
God forbid we toss out science for superstition and miss a chance to discuss the fucking tax consequences. Stranger, you make Tim Eyman look like an amateur. And forget about the First Amendment….
Good. I hate seeing the disgusting advertising everywhere. I cannot wish enough harm on the people who organize that exhibit.
@20 “God forbid the city stop a traveling circus showing what may or may not be dead Chinese prisoners. Let the FREE MARKET determine ethics. If someone wants to pay money to see murder slaves SO BE IT. Let the INVISIBLE HAND decide! There is TAX MONEY to be made! HURRAH! HURRAH! First amendment! If I want to cut up prisoners to feed my family it’s MY RIGHT! HURRAH!”
I saw the exhibit 3 weeks ago in Montreal. The bodies are ghoulish and disrespectful if you are disgusted by the human body, if you are curious or amazed or reverent that’s what you will find.
Ahead of me in the exhibit was a father and three children astonished by what they were seeing. They would stop here or there, and talk about each display. Watching them was supremely cool.
In high school I took anatomy/physiology, and as part of my grade we dissected dead cats. Now, I’m not particularly squeamish, but performing the actual cutting of something that had been once alive upset me a great deal. If the teacher had provided a cat cadaver with relevant anatomy incised for us to explore, I would have felt less anguish but just as much respect for the animal that was educating us.