Gunther von Hagens is not a man afraid of pushing the envelope.
The creator of the BodyWorlds exhibition is generally at the centre of a media frenzy somewhere in the world at any given time. It’s hardly surprising; when you display human corpses with their organs exposed, in lifelike poses, people are going to sit up and take notice. And they do; there’s always a flurry of ‘we must protect our children from this’ whenever the show’s in town. The controversy, predictably, finds ample expression on Wikipedia, where the Body Worlds page never quite settles down.
Incidentally, he also wears hats well. Hats can do a lot in the way of image creation, and von Hagens’ somewhat theatrical dress-sense is capped off (arf) by some ever-so-slightly gangsterish, villainous hats. You might almost think he enjoys kicking up a ruckus…
The most recent stink revolves around the new exhibition in which bodies – plastinated, so as to be sterile and permanent – are shown in the act of sex.
Yeah. Exactly. You just know that’s going to annoy so many people, don’t you?
Now, as it happens, I saw the first Body Worlds about a billion years ago, when I was in Belgium – where, yes, indeed, there was a huge row going on. At that point, it had never been to London, so I had no idea what I was getting into. And I have to tell you, it is an absolute must-see, brilliant thing, and you should take your kids and force your friends to go, too.
It’s about the most educational, most intellectually re-jiggifying, weirdly life-affirming, wonderous thing you can see for the price of a pizza.
Yeah, okay, that’s a moderately expensive pizza.
We – and by this I mean I and most everyone I know – live in a society where popular culture only shows us the interior of the human body in a medical setting. House, ER, Gray’s Anatomy – the interior landscape of the body is wet, pulsing, and damaged. If you’re seeing it, someone is probably going to die.
The body, inside the skin, is automatically a thing to fear.
It equates with death, which we barely talk about at all.
(Sex, on the other hand, is completely discussable – a reversal of the way things were in the UK a hundred years ago, when death was something everyone encountered and sex was taboo. Go figure.)
Body Worlds can dig you out of that hole. It shows you the human body as a stunning, brilliant machine. It gives you a goo-free, unscary glimpse of what lies beneath. I went in because I was with a group, and came out delighted and startled. The idea that this is something which lacks respect for the magnificence of humankind is frankly bizarre to me. This is a celebration of the body in perfect health, not a ghoulish peepshow of cadavers.
I confess, I haven’t seen the new show. I don’t imagine it’s any different, and the juxtaposition of sex and death is hardly a surprising one – though it was bound to renew the whole discussion, which is not doubt partly what Gunther von Hagens had in mind.
Go see. Tell me about it. I’m interested.
But look, compare and contrast the furore over Body Worlds with our beloved government’s decision to retain DNA it has been ordered to destroy. If you want to talk about disgraceful, let’s start with that.
In case you haven’t followed, the UK has been ordered to destroy DNA samples collected by the police from people who were arrested as part of an investigation, but never convicted of a crime. Our government is weaseling around, and essentially refusing to comply. They really want to keep those samples for use in future criminal investigations.
As Mark Thomas points out, this amounts to the creation of a third category: innocent, guilty, and innocent-ish. Or, basically, not-yet-proven-to-be-a-criminal-but-we’re-watching.
If Gunther van Hagens’ bodies are to be subject to scrutiny to ensure that the rights of the dead are respected, the government should be compelled to respect the rights of the living, not permitted to pirate and complain its way to a national DNA database.
More than that, though, it’s important to see this in the context of a continuing erosion by the government of the principles of our justice system, and of any ownership of the details of our lives.
I wrote about this when Jack Straw published his extraordinary article on how Labour had made us all freer – I still think he must have been joking – but here are a few more things to think about:
All travel abroad to be monitored
