by Riley Landau.

The recent arrival in Perth of the exhibition Body Worlds: The Anatomy of Happiness promised a transformative experience of immersion in a realm of anatomical knowledge for the average viewer. The global platform brandishes a handful of studies and statistics that assert the show’s truly scientific and noble mission. Promotional material suggests that the plethora of real corpses transmogrified into plastic models via Gunther von Hagen's “revolutionary” method of plastination are simply tools to educate the public. At first glance, Body Worlds might be something special. It fashions itself as an utterly unique exhibition that presents real and ethically sourced bodies in the pursuit of science. In spite of this potential, Body Worlds is an exhibition of voyeurism and violence: a thinly veiled excuse to violate taboos in the name of education—allowing the viewer to feel cultured and simultaneously distanced from the violence and problematics of plastination.
    Body Worlds is complex. At its core are three elements: the anatomical displays, interactive features, and wall text. At first glance, this might appear the same as any other exhibition in contemporary curatorial practice. What Body Worlds manages to achieve, however, is the complete detachment of these three elements from each other. The exhibition is really two separate experiences. The first is the actual Body Worlds, which features the preserved corpses presented in a plethora of dissected states and posed to be partaking in various activities. These include a body playing chess, a flayed model mid freestyle stroke, and two flayed plastinates (as the show refers to the preserved bodies) fucking. The second exhibition is The Anatomy of Happiness, which consists of buckets of text and activities that barely connect to the actual objects on display. This ranges from a sloppily written history of sexological models entitled ‘Waves of Lust’, and a recurring reference to the ‘happiness module’ of the brain. On a few occasions, the wall text and bodies seemed to overlap—but these moments were few and far between. More often than not, visitors passed by these disconnected elements and instead gawked at the human remains prettily staged in front of them.
        It's certainly not a crime for wall text to evolve beyond the confines of the work it describes. Who doesn’t love curatorial rambling? But when the objects were once the bodies of living and breathing human beings, you have to ask what’s really going on behind the scenes. If the display of bodies isn’t really about showcasing the purported anatomy of happiness, what is it really about?
        An analogy can be found in the Paris Morgue of the nineteenth century. This popular destination was marketed as a place where the public could learn anatomical knowledge and occasionally aid in police investigations by identifying bodies. In reality, it was a space of entertainment. Visitors attended exclusively to try and find out which prostitutes had washed up from the Seine. Although the Morgue promoted itself as an educational and important institution, the reality is far darker. Body Worlds is much the same. Like the Paris Morgue, the show frames itself as educational, yet the second someone interrogates the connection between purported pedagogical value and the eventuated narratives of display, a different story emerges. Sure, some displays were educational, but these were often the small-scale presentations of individual organs and not the far more popular full-body models.
        The absence of educational value in these models necessitates a thorough analysis of what really is going on with the bodies. There are a number of full anatomical displays on offer. Some are posed simply: classic skeletal displays with a few bits and bobs left attached. Many bodies evolve far beyond the anatomical traditions that grace medical models. The most egregious of those bodies was the contorted display of a woman mid-backbend on a gymnastics display. Her skin has been removed, revealing the wealth of musculature that goes into such a complex athletic feat. There is an inevitable air of the male gaze hovering over a display that exposes the fully denuded body of a female figure. Even stranger is the fact that the room displaying this gymnast also featured a number of swings for visitors to play on—a strange juxtapositioning of interactive and fun elements adjacent to carefully posed human remains. One visitor could be seen on the swings pouting to her phone camera, flash on and a corpse in the background. No staff were around to intervene, and it’s doubtful that they would. Another woman was seen posting the gymnast to her story. If a medical student working with cadavers did anything even half as egregious, they would receive the utmost extremity of discipline. Instead, at Body Worlds, the visitor is empowered to stare at and disseminate images of a woman’s body made exposed and suggestive, all while swinging merrily away.
        The policy around images in the show was rather lax. The opening sign made it clear that photography was for non-professional uses, it stressed that they would prosecute offenders. A mention of the ethical care for human specimens appeared in smaller text beneath the legal notice as an afterthought. It felt disappointing, to say the least, that photography was largely encouraged outside of professional use. I heard several discussions about what item is best to post to Instagram. I’m not one to hate on a good story post, but the acceptability of what’s okay to post probably excludes human corpses. The only room where photography was explicitly banned was the sex room. Even then, attendants stood outside the room—meaning you could simply walk into a corner and take a photo without being seen. No two people, dead or alive, should be photographed in the midst of a sexual act without consent. Body Worlds is not only complicit but an active accomplice in the stripping of human dignity engendered in the circulation and sensationalisation of so-called scientific displays.
        The presentation of another body saw the figure mid swim-stroke and wearing a swimming cap branded with Body Worlds. Accessorising with branded headgear despite bearing full nudity seems an odd way to spend an eternity. A number of other strange and disjointed elements feature throughout the show. There was a dancefloor, a soundtrack playing repeated laughing sounds, and a meme about blood pressure plastered above the wall text. It’s unclear how something such as a meme is meant to be educational and not simply disrespectful to the bodies on display. The unfortunate truth of it all is that Body Worlds was never about education; rather, it was the spectacle of taboo that gives the show its popularity. It’s a space that allows the average person to divulge in a dark fantasy of having fun while looking at cadavers.
        It is important to remember that any institution providing an experience might have the best intentions available, but when the manner in which the public is encouraged to engage is vastly disparate to its intended ethical claims: alarm bells start ringing. Even if it were true that Body Worlds is purely about anatomical education, which is already a dubious claim, many visitors are positioned to default to revelry and fun. They eye up bodies, make jokes about appearances and altogether forget the significance of working with genuine remains. Body Worlds perhaps should feel like a hushed church reliquary, where remains are treated with a sense of respect and reverence. What exists instead is the same showground you would see at Scitech. Simple things like the inclusion of swings, games and memes in the presence of cadavers all suggest a framing of the show where the display of bodies is all a bit of fun, no different to the memes and games they share a space with.
        This is no doubt surprising to the founders of Body Worlds, who seem content to benefit from this sensationalised and play-based approach the exhibition offers. But any ethical challenge of the curatorial strategy is secondary to the more scathing issue that the show’s fundamental premise is the gruesome reduction of human beings to their anatomical properties.
        The strangest example of the exhibition not really caring about education was the plethora of historical and philosophical quotations plastered around the place, often attached to figures on blown-up black and white posters. These ranged from quotes of Abraham Lincoln to Jim Rohn. Oftentimes, the image depicted someone completely different and unrelated to the originator of the quote. Abraham Lincoln’s quote was displayed with a photo of a smiling, presumably Asian man. Quotes from scientist Frederick G. Koenig were plastered over another wrinkled man who definitely was not German. There is something deeply disturbing about Body Worlds’ attempt to showcase non-white bodies while still quoting white philosophers, admittedly one of the worst attempts at manufacturing diversity I’ve encountered. Body Worlds’ supposed championing of diversity manifests in little but lip service. Their attempts at wider representation  largely fail, veering into the realm of orientalism and exoticisation. So instead of just admitting that their exhibition centres the white bodies display, they attempt to fabricate diversity. Their critical mistake was only presenting these bodies in photography, while plastering historic philosophers of the Western cannon over their underacknowledged bodies.


Even taken at its best, the pedagogy of Body Worlds has a few serious flaws. The transformative elements are sold to the viewer as an opportunity to look within your own body. To view the museum in this way, as they desire, necessitates an erasure of the body’s identity and dignity. A secondary requirement is believing that by gazing upon the organs of another, you somehow gaze upon your own internal organs. The show does its best to aid in this process and fully strips its displays of humanity. The language surrounding the corpses is explicitly dehumanising, exclusively referring to the displays as “plastinates” as if formaldehyde and acrylic can somehow strip the body of its complexity and transform it into an anatomical model. The opening plaque thanking the donors refers to the bodies as ‘specimens’ and draws attention to the fact that donors ‘wanted to contribute to the medical enlightenment of laypeople.’ But, as stated before, what is enlightening about a woman’s flayed body exposed on a gymnastics’ beam? Does the branded swimming cap help enlighten the audience? And does the recreation of sex between two presumably strangers really help the audience learn about anatomy? The answer is a resounding no.
        In short, the show fails to deliver its key promises and instead devolves into a carnivalesque showground of debauched voyeurism. In its mistreatment of bodies—displaying them in questionable positions, placing swings and games alongside them and actively dehumanising them—Body Worlds is a horrifically unethical exhibition.
        But the question of ethics and Body Worlds goes far beyond the actual exhibition. It’s a story spanning from Germany to Kyrgyzstan to China. A story dominated by the pioneering figure who started it all, Gunther von Hagens. The eccentric, fedora-wearing anatomist, who works in a hidden laboratory concealed by a moveable staircase, has been involved time and time again in ethical controversies over his practice of plastination. To protect Dispatch’s non-existent legal team, it is important to note that the donors of Body Worlds did provide informed consent in their life to participate in the exhibition. The issue is that Body Worlds represents a fraction of the plastination that von Hagens and his associates have carried out. So, although the skeletons in the closet of Body Worlds might be ethically sourced, unlike the average man, von Hagen’s has a number of other closets filled with very literal skeletons of varying ethical acquisition. In 2002, a Kyrgyzstani Parliamentary Commission looked into a number of bodies from hospitals and psychiatric institutions that had allegedly made their way to plastination institutes.[1]He has also been forced to return a number of corpses to China, on the grounds that they were executed political prisoners.[2]
        The question of von Hagen’s moral character hangs heavy over the show, it becomes impossible to separate the ethical acquisition of some corpses when the same technique that they epitomise has been forced upon the bodies of individuals who did not provide the same consent. So, separate to the failure of Body Worlds to deliver on its themes and provide an ethical experience, the very fundamental existence of Body Worlds is an affront to the standard Australian institutions must uphold regarding the display of human remains. The majority of Australian museums have, in some capacity and at some time, held and displayed the remains of Indigenous bodies acquired through colonisation, genocide and violence. The consequence of this history is that these institutions, and by extension any exhibition in Australia, should be incredibly sensitive to the ethical considerations engendered by the display of remains. The display of bodies connected to transgressions of any kind must be subject to immense scepticism, lest our public institutions propagate and validate our past colonial practices. Platforming Body Worlds, is a soft repetition of these practices. Thus, any engagement with Body Worlds should be met with criticality and doubt in its new Australian context.
        Sometimes, it’s good to go to bad shows. It’s oftentimes an opportunity to be exposed to new and fringe ideas, even if sloppily executed. It’s also rather rare for a show to be so awful in its entirety that no element connects with you. Most importantly, sometimes it is just fun to hate. This is not the case for Body Worlds, by visiting you submerge yourself in a problematic logic of dehumanisation, spectacle, and support for an alleged body-snatcher. Body Worlds sold itself on the basis of enlightenment, what was found instead was an abject space where visitors are encouraged to let go of their morality and delight in the dystopian voyeurism of corpsewatching. The unfortunate truth is that while I can sit and write about the horrors the show encapsulates, and its obvious flaws as an actual exhibition—Body Worlds is one of the most popular touring exhibitions in the world. Because, as horrific as it is, people love anything dark and taboo. Body Worlds succeeds because it has miraculously managed to toe the line between permission and abhorrence. Education that doesn’t actually exist, odd curatorial narratives and selective ethicality when it comes to acquisition are all just tools that blur the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable. My only hope is that more people can see beyond these justifications and find at the core of Body Worlds the questionable logic at its core.
        This is not to say a plastination exhibition cannot be ethical. But the road is long and paved with challenges. Firstly, the organisation running it must not have a history of acquiring questionable bodies and work only with the highest integrity when it comes to acquisitions. Secondly, the show must invest in a curatorial strategy that actually engages with the bodies on display. This entails letting go of the swings, memes and music that occupied so much of Body Worlds. Thirdly, each display must be carefully considered from various perspectives to reduce any sensationalism. Finally, and most difficult to ensure, audiences should not be able to photograph or take videos of any of these displays and put them on the internet for their own gain, be it cultural or financial. Donors consent to being medical models, not to being shock factor ornaments to decorate online spaces. Because Body Worlds fails at all four of these essential elements, it is impossible to reconcile any benefit of the exhibition with the extensive list of oddities and problems it engenders. In the simplest terms possible, do not go.
 

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Footnotes:

1. Annette Tuffs, ‘Von Hagens Faces Investigation over Use of Bodies without Consent’, BMJ : British Medical Journal 327, no. 7423 (2003): 1068, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.327.7423.1068-c.

2. ‘German “Doctor” Denies Using Executed People in Work’, Deutsche Welle, 25 January 2004, https://web.archive.org/web/20220729120227/https://www.dw.com/en/german-doctor-denies-using-executed-people-in-work/a-1096764.

Body Worlds: The Anatomy of Happiness. Credit: Supplied.