INSIDE:

NEWS/STORIES/ARTICLES
Book Reviews
Columns/Opinion/Cartoon
Films
International
National
NW/Local
Recipes
Special A.C.E. Stories
Online Paper (PDF)

NW RESOURCE GUIDE
Archives
Consulates
Organizations
Scholarships
Special Sections

Upcoming

The Asian Reporter Eleventh Annual Scholarship & Awards Banquet -
April 2009

May, 2009

Asian Reporter Info

About Us

Advertising Info.

AR Merchandise
Contact Us
Subscription Info. & Back Issues

Readers Map on Frapper

ASIA LINKS
Asian Studies
Currency Exchange
More Asian Links
Public Holidays
Time Zones


Copyright © 2000 - 2008
AR Home

Talking Story  by Polo

From The Asian Reporter, V17, #44 (October 30, 2007), page 7.

Body Worlds 3 is gone now. So are the crowds, their noise, and our short span of attention. The extraordinary exhibit has left town, but before its departure the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) propped open their front doors all day and all night for an entire weekend. "We had (to) extend our hours beyond anything we’ve ever done in the past," said OMSI President Nancy Stueber. A first in the museum’s 63-year history. An astounding 300,000 visitors packed in to view Body Worlds 3 during its four-month Portland stay.

For those who missed the mad house, here’s a little background.

The exhibit creator is Gunther von Hagens, a German physician and a world-class showman. In 1975 Dr. von Hagens invented his "body plastination" process. The precise procedure and its chemistry are patented by Dr. von Hagens, but in brief: An expired person’s body fluids are drained then replaced with a plastic compound, making him or her available for a variety of purposes, depending on your professional ethics or personal conscience.

Okay, now here’s the clearly bad part:

Originally, Dr. von Hagens intended his product as a medical teaching tool, and indeed his company still sells plastinated people for that purpose. According to allegations by several credible sources, he buys deceased folks from Russian or Chinese government officials or businessmen; they may or may not be executed prisoners or unclaimed deceased mental hospital patients or homeless men or women. It’s hard to say. Documentation is often absent. For sure though, there’s an ugly paper trail of criminal complaints and awful accusations against Dr. von Hagens in a number of countries.

All right, now here’s the arguably okay part:

Educational enterprises aside, Dr. von Hagens’ Institute for Plastination has been hugely successful in marketing his evolving series of Body Worlds exhibits. In twelve years of international travelling shows, including making the set of the blockbuster James Bond movie Casino Royale (2006), Dr. Von Hagens has grossed over $200 million. And the dead people displayed in Body Worlds, the doctor insists, are all legal.

What has made Body Worlds so controversial, and made Dr. von Hagens so rich, has a lot to with how he’s drummed up public attention. For example, in a 1995 promotion for his Berlin exhibit, Dr. von Hagens sent a plastinated eight-month pregnant woman, her torso sliced open revealing her unborn baby, on a bus around town. A leader of Berlin’s Jewish community compared Body Worlds exhibits to human skin lampshades made in Nazi extermination camps. In 2002, defying threats of British prosecution, Dr. von Hagens performed a human autopsy in a London theater for a paying audience of 500. The intensely debated event was the U.K.’s first public autopsy in over 170 years.

Dr. von Hagens argues he is democratizing our knowledge of our bodies, and 20 million or so enthusiastic admission-paying viewers of his exhibits apparently agree.

For Body Worlds 3, Dr. von Hagens did a better advance job of complying with American ethical concerns. A number of respected U.S. institutions — the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the California Science Center, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, among them — have cleared the public conscience. Exhibits in Boston, Houston, and Portland have enjoyed tremendous public participation.

So while it’s easy to question what passed as "ethical science" by those institution’s advisory boards, it’s really hard to argue with a half-million viewers in every big city on Body Worlds’ U.S. circuit, paying and packing into museums.

We can argue and argue and argue. Some will insist it’s educational; some will call it exploitation. Argument is central to the American ethos. But argument, even between our best minds, is kind of thin. None of it is enduring. Not at all reassuring. At bottom, talk is not trustworthy.

Howard Markel, a practitioner and a professor of pediatric and psychiatric medicine at the University of Michigan, a science guy you can trust, suggests that rather than engaging ethical debate or examining questionable marketing motives, we’re better off relying on our own insides.

"If you feel in the pit of your stomach that gurgling noise," Dr. Markel said for an in-depth National Public Radio series on Body Worlds, "or if you feel goosebumps on the back of your neck, you probably ought to listen to it. And you ought to think about it."

Our skin, our bones, our blood pressure, are lie detectors. Better yet: Truth-tellers. With a capitol T.

If what remains of a deceased daughter or dad or grandma does not raise your skin or pulse, does not make your bones ache — maybe you’re okay. But maybe something really bad has happened. Has happened to you. To us. To America rushing into ever larger attention deficits.

Because, I tell you true, I grew up in Asia, I studied in Arabia and Persia, I worked in East Africa, and everywhere I noticed everyone saddened or maddened by dead people. Even elephants and dogs weep.

And here’s another truth: During Iran’s 1978 revolution, enthusiastic crowds of working dads and shopping moms and curious school boys, me among them, shouldered and elbowed for a great spot at the edge of public executions. We did it in America too, not so long ago — hang bad guys for their crimes, lynch black men for being black. We did it at downtown parks for families dressed in their Sunday best.

We say we know better now. We got rid of park hangings for the same reasons Englishmen got rid of public autopsies. Our humanity evaporates. Once missing, soul is hard to restore.

Still, death is arousing. Watching life leave is fascinating. Ask anyone who downloaded Saddam’s last minutes. OMSI sold 300,000 tickets. We’re all still interested in dead people.

But it’s still troubling.

There’s still a world of difference between the propositions of institutional ethics panels and our tender souls. There’s still our delicate humanness. That difference and this humanity needs no debate. There’s just no argument. If you don’t feel it — you don’t.

Back home we call unfeeling folks layak. The unliving. Back home ghouls make you reach for a Buddha amulet or a holy crucifix, for some silver bullets or a white ash stake and mallet. In Portland, most of our 300,000 visitors are probably not layak. More likely they’re just our over-stimulated and attention deficited; it’s only us numbed up and dumbed down.

Hati hati (beware) soul erodes, humanity absents, so easy.

• Chicago Tribune, July 31, 2005, reported by Russell Working.
• NPR, "All Things Considered," August 10-11, 2006, reported by Neda Ulaby.
• The Berliner Paper.com, November 17, 2006.
• Oregon Museum of Science and Industry press release, October 1, 2007.

##