The first thing you notice: eerie, sleek, air-lock cleanliness. Bodies: The Exhibition being an emporium of dissected dead people, I expected cots and canvas, a triage tent with bloodstains and tears. I couldn’t believe how many couples were on dates. An exhibition of dead bodies, apparently, is a romantic hot spot. I brought beef jerky.

The bodies on display are small and svelte, skinless, and Asian. Muscles and bones. Cross sections of neatly carved-up torsos. Wet- looking lungs and hearts. Kidneys, intestines, and dangling balls. Lots of balls. Bodies is a ball fest. Also: penises. One body is flayed into two parts—its skeleton holding hands with its muscular system (ball area included) in a macabre eternal jig. Even more unsettling were the eyelashes. Tiny, delicate fringes, so alive, so familiar, guarding soulless, piercing glass eyes. The eyelashes made the bodies look like they were about to say something. Something like “Stop staring at my balls.”

There is a hands-on station where you can hold an actual human brain. A brain. From the head of a human. “Look at it!” my friend said, aghast and kind of sad, turning the brain over and over in her hands. “It’s all full of memories!”

“Not anymore,” barked the brain docent, dismissively. I smelled the brain. It smelled like a chanterelle mushroom.

Eating beef jerky at the Bodies exhibit feels wrong (also, it is explicitly against the rules). Going out for ribs afterward—which we also did—does too. But the Bodies exhibit is wrong and demented by nature. It is a bonanza of wrong. Corpses of (alleged) dead Chinese prisoners in jaunty sports poses? Wrong. Without proof of where they came from? Or consent? Wrong. Some, it is rumored, possibly victims of torture? Beyond wrong. At the Bodies exhibit, what you’re dealing with are levels of wrongness. Adding jerky and ribs into the equation is an attempt to attain a higher (wronger) level of wrong. I was only playing their game. Bathing in the wrong.

I couldn’t escape thinking about the bodies’ origins. I didn’t see an incredible and artistically dissected human machine shooting a basketball and think, “Wow, look at the way the veins stem out of the triceps and lead to the fingers.” I thought, “Damn, I can’t believe they took a dead Chinese prisoner, burned off his skin, and put a basketball in his hand and his balls on display.”

Premier Exhibitions, the Atlanta, Georgia, company behind Bodies, has admitted that “the bodies were not formally donated by people who agreed to be displayed.” Everywhere I looked, I couldn’t help but invent narratives: Some Chinese peasant spent the last 15 years of his life imprisoned for stealing a pear for his daughter, was worked to death in a concentration camp, then his body was sold for $300 and ended up in the hands of Premier Exhibitions, which had his skin burned off with acid and his body pumped full of liquid rubber, then posed him like he’s throwing darts with the guys at the local tavern, and then carted him around the world in a wooden crate, to be ogled by teenagers on dates. I bet the guy never threw darts in his life. Now he’s aiming for a bull’s-eye for the rest of eternity, with his spleen hanging out.

Another corpse was sliced up into thin horizontal sections. It looked like ham. Like a meat and cheese plate without the cheese.

Feeling slightly freaked, we decided it was jerky time. It was a racy escapade, sneaking the bites of hard, dry meat while standing around inside the exhibition of hard, dry meat. But it’s one of those things you do, to see what it’s like—like cocaine or skydiving or a handlebar mustache. It’s an upping of the ante.

We came to the one female body in the exhibit. We named her Rebecca. Or Becky, if you’re feeling casual. Rebecca is commanding. She is completely shaved. There was more of a crowd around Rebecca than around the other bodies—something about her was compelling. The exhibit took on a whole new meaning for my friend, a woman, when she and Rebecca came face to face. “Knowing it’s a woman makes me uncomfortable. It’s more personal now. I was okay when I thought they were all dudes.”

It was hard to chew on beef jerky without being seen, so we left Rebecca for a dimmer, less crowded lower level. I managed to sneak a big bite of jerky (teriyaki) in the empty stairwell. I slipped through a doorway and ended up in the fetus room—a somber chamber of unborn babies of varying ages and phases. Not exactly the place—of all the spots in Bodies—you want to be gnawing on jerky. The 30-week-old fetus looked exactly like a doll. Some floated in fluid. I chewed.

Ethics and rumors and controversy aside, seeing these formerly alive humans up close, and understanding the scientific process behind preserving and displaying them, is undeniably fascinating. The “specimens” are dissected, dunked in acetone, placed in a large bath of silicone polymer, and then sealed in a vacuum chamber. Basically, they turn from flesh into plastic and will never decay. From the Bodies website: “All the bodies were obtained through the Dalian Medical University Plastination Laboratories in the People’s Republic of China. Asia possesses the largest and most highly competent group of dissectors in the world, and they are highly skilled in preparing the bodies for educational and scientific purposes.”

The official word from Bodies: The Exhibition is that these people died from “natural causes.” They say the law doesn’t allow them to disclose information about identity or cause of death. Nothing at the exhibit clearly addresses any of the torture rumors (floated by people like New York’s attorney general Andrew Cuomo: “The grim reality is that Premier Exhibitions has profited from displaying the remains of individuals who may have been tortured and executed in China”). You’d think the whole thing would be one giant disclaimer.

We wandered on and came, at last, to the lone butthole. A butthole away from its body. No cheeks, just tubing. A solitary butthole in a square glass display case. Like one would look—with admiration and awe—upon a teacup recovered from the Titanic, we stood and gawked at this lonely, sliced-out, slightly hairy human hole. A mummified lone butthole. Mummified and glowing under track lighting. There I stood, entranced, bewildered, gnawing, tasting leather and hickory.

On our way out, we passed the Bodies merchandise for sale: toy eyeballs, keychain spines, bone-shaped pens, and some fake formaldehyde squeezy toy holding more eyeballs and little skulls. The merchandise is a circus of wrong. A black hole of wrong. I bought three Bodies pens, as gifts.

Then we went to Willie’s Taste of Soul. Meat. I saw fibulas. I couldn’t get the dart-throwing dart-man out of my head. I was eating dart-man. Dart-man would throw his dart at my nuts. Rebecca, shaven Rebecca. Her power pose. Pork ribs. A pile of ribs on a plate. Not in a power pose. Willie’s food is delicious, but it didn’t go down easy. I’m sorry, Rebecca. recommended

Trent Moorman—Stranger music columnist and Line Out blogger—has also written for Vice, Rolling Stone, Tape Op, Portland Mercury, The Jung Society Quarterly, and Thresholds Quarterly (School of Metaphysics)....

80 replies on “Eating Beef Jerky at the Bodies Exhibit”

  2. Pat Boone is a sad little caricature of a man, looking for validation on a liberal webforum.

    and i’m sure he never “fought a dictator” or faced an enemy soldier in his entire, uneventful life.

  4. Great stuff Trent.

    That’s why I’d never go. A hall of state sponsored murder victims, posed for your enjoyment.

    Almost as if a serial killer put on a neat little traveling display, and everybody came and gawked in wonder.

    The Teriyaki jerky, haha, beyond wrong 🙂

    Maybe in the future, when China rules the world, some of us will be lucky enough to be exhibited in this little traveling roadshow of death.

    “Oh look, Caucasian! I give no thought to source of this body, but surely must be from one of China’s glorious overseas battlezones…”

  5. After going to bodies, I went to Licorous and had a lamb shank. My date was TOTALLY grossed out as I sucked the marrow out of the bone.

  8. You guys make me laugh so hard. Something that has gone around the world and been appreciated by millions, comes to seattle and the take on it is the same old weak take seattle does on everything: make fun of it, sexualize it and then try to top the gross-out angle. You’re like dogs with a dictionary in that you do this because you do not understand anything intellectual. I know you really wanted to break in the exhibit and suck it hard, for real. That’s the fetish that drinking antifreeze will get you, apparently.

  9. Bahahahaha! This article made me laugh so hard. I used to work there (briefly), and at one time or another shared about every thought you experienced while going through the exhibit. ALL THE BALLS!!!
    And you’d be surprised how many people mentioned a hankering for beef jerky to me, or just how generally hungry they had gotten as they and their dates strolled around looking at corpses.
    The best part was all the jack asses who tried to shake hands with the whole skeleton near the entrance. I’m like, ‘C’mon guys. He was alive at one point, and would probably bitch slap your disrespectful little ass now if he could’.
    Premier exhibitions: a morally bankrupt company, and possibly one of the worst employers I’ve ever had. Good times…

    Cheers!

  10. I was so moved by this article that I decided to undertake my own “Trent Moorman Bodies Challenge” and report it here. My experience was as follows:

    Purchased honey bbq jerky product meat stick and put it in the left inside pocket of my jacket as I entered the exhibit. I was really nervous they were going catch me. I overheard 2 other people in line talking about this article and was pretty sure they were jerky sneaking.

    I got in with meat product undetected and like Trent had much difficulty finding a place to nibble. There were many a watchful eye. When my chance came to enact the jerky, I was next to the ‘meat and cheese plate without the cheese’ body. I quietly unwrapped the meat product, but just couldn’t do it. I was too grossed out. I failed at this part of the challenge. My friends laughed at me the rest of our trip.

    I couldn’t get Trent’s scenario of the peasant stealing the pear out of my head.

    The Lone Butthole was an enormous highlight of the journey. Dartman had a big crowd. More people talking about this article there. The merchandise yes, a black hole of wrong.

    For the post exhibit festivities, I wanted to try to up Trent’s upping of the ante and go with McDonalds Chicken McNuggets. I am not a McDonalds eater so this was broadening for me. I was able to eat 5 full McNuggets. I weakly did so. Heavy amounts of Sweet and Sour sauce were needed. Ronald is evil.

    I did not sleep so well that night. I still have my uneaten jerky stick. Thank you.

  11. Really like the article. Funny and well written but also very judgmental. Also, a scientific curiosity and a desire to see the inner workings of the human body does not equate to a lack of morality. Where else as a high school student am I supposed to see the human anatomy in this regard? (and no cracks about this please :P) Also, don’t just assume that I’m okay with abortion because I’m okay with the use of the human body after death for scientific and educational purposes. It just makes you seem like another idiot who doesn’t know his lone butthole from a hole in the wall.

  13. Yeah…don’t care what happens to my body after I’m done with it. I wouldn’t mind my body trying to hit a triple-20 for all eternity.

  15. I saw one of the Titanic exhibits a while back. They had someone’s spectacles on display. It was very eerie. Like this “lone butthole”.

    I had a group of friends say they were going to go to Bodies and sneak jerky in. Looks like Moorman has created a thing.

  19. @23 – talk about a fucking bore. You don’t know me, you don’t know my life. Maybe you’ve also lived in multiple cities in multiple countries and have also surmounted the fear of too much difference. Maybe you’re queer, poly, and kinky too, and have had as much experience of passion and risk and humour and beauty and life has I have. Maybe.

    I “turn up my nose at things I think are below me”? No, I just recognise pretentious twaddle when I see it. Please, do tell me just what is “beautiful” about eating frigging jerky in that context. As for judging, yeah, there’s a nice bout of pot vs kettle going on that you need to check out.

  21. Trix, so because you’re queer poly, kinky, and think you’ve experienced a bunch of things, you think that gives you the right to be an asshole. There’s already an asshole that’s been written about in this article, lets not add to that number.

    You are exactly what is wrong with the world. You, my boring asshole, are the pretentious twaddle.

  25. A group of concerned Seattle Citizens will soon be presenting an appeal to Seattle City Council to quickly join San Francisco, the State of California, Hawaii which have all banned the Bodies Exhibit. The Seattle exhibit has been forced to post a disclaimer that the Exhibitor the cadavers displayed were obtained through the Chinese Police as unclaimed bodies and have no documentation who these people were in life. The Exhibitor cannot disprove these vulgarly displayed cadavers were not political prisoner, were not tortured and were not executed. Contact each City Council Member to express your support to ban the Bodies Exhibition and to close the doors of the current showing.

  26. The website for Bodies: The Exhibition states that the bodies, “…died from natural causes. However, in a number of cases throughout the exhibition, our medical director has been able to identify the obvious medical problems that the specimen suffered from, and, where appropriate, it is so indicated.” Furthermore, many medical specimens in the United States are, in fact, unidentified bodies. “Every state requires that unclaimed bodies first be offered to the largest medical school or a special office that distributes the bodies to schools of medicine, dentistry, physical therapy, mortuary science or others that use cadavers.”

    Maybe the specimens in this exhibit did come from prisons. Maybe they were homeless people who died after stumbling to the hospital. Maybe they died old and alone with no identification and loss of memory from Alzheimer’s. Maybe maybe maybe. The fact is, the company itself states that the bodies on display have all been examined for any unnatural causes of death and any bodies not dead from natural causes are not in the exhibit. Also, none of these bodies had any locatable next of kin who could dispose of their remains, so the fantasy of a family mourning the desecration of their loved-one is unlikely.

    I find this article to be juvenile and sloppily-written; touting rumor as if it is fact, breaking the rules of the establishment, and possessing of an intense fixation on testicles. I thought the exhibit was tastefully done and I recommended it to all of my friends. I’m thankful that I was able to see such incredible detail about the body’s inner workings and I’m sad the exhibit was only here for a limited time. I have some family coming up to visit this summer and, according to an employee I spoke to during my visit, the exhibit won’t be in town after the end of the month, so they won’t be able to see it.

  27. All this, very interesting. All debatable. I’m just not ok with dead bodies on display who didn’t give permission while they were alive, making money for someone else. Isn’t that inherently wrong? Or on a high level of wrong as Moorman posits.

    & 77, Moorman never says any of this is fact, it’s all “alleged”. Your reading comprehension seems lacking.

  28. Is this supposed to make us feel better? Ugh:

    “All the bodies were obtained through the Dalian Medical University Plastination Laboratories in the People’s Republic of China. Asia possesses the largest and most highly competent group of dissectors in the world, and they are highly skilled in preparing the bodies for educational and scientific purposes.”

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