Posted on 05/08/2006 11:52:30 AM PDT by Caleb1411
Everybody in the house is all worked up about the no-skin show at the Science Museum. It opened Friday and is expected to draw 400,000 people to downtown St. Paul in a summer-long run. If Louie Arvanitis is ever going to reopen the Coney Island on St. Peter Street, now is the time. This is brass bands and straw hats for the restaurant business.
Besides, a little chili on a hot dog will look normal after a trip to the dissection festival up the street.
"Are you going to go with us?'' they have wondered of yours truly.
"You've got to be kidding me.''
"No, we're serious. This sounds like a fabulous opportunity to see the inner workings of the human body.''
"It sounds like the perfect chance to look inside Hannibal Lecter's ice box.''
They have actually gibbered and jabbered about what they most anticipate seeing, the diseased lungs of a smoker, for example, or the miles and miles of circuitry in the central nervous system.
"Bang your elbow on a door frame, you'll know all about the nervous system.''
"You're just squeamish.''
"Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I am dignified?''
"No, that has not occurred to us.''
Officially, the show at the Science Museum is called "Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies.'' The Science Museum announced the booking with fanfare last December, and I remember thinking then that we can't even have a good old-fashioned freak show at the State Fair anymore but we can show some guy who has been plastinated in the act of shooting a basketball.
That's the trick to this deal, plastination, which sounds like a George Bush mispronunciation. A German doctor and inventor, Gunther von Hagens, pioneered what he calls plastination in 1977. In other words, the doc figured out a way to preserve cadavers in plastic, like those plastic models you sometimes see on the reception desk at the doctor's office, only these were real people. This fellow even has an institute in Heidelberg, Germany, the Institute for Plastination.
I don't know about you, but I see a Mel Brooks movie.
Look, I can't help it and am even getting more comfortable with it, my reservations about such things, I mean. I wouldn't go so far as to say the exhibit is obscene. It is undeniably interesting to wonder how things work. But there seems to be such exclusion of the soul here that we are left in awe of the body and only the body. The underlying lesson, I suppose, is that maybe we will learn something that will help us to live longer, vitality being the national obsession and all.
Well, I already know that I am not supposed to smoke, and I already know that if I don't pivot correctly on the back swing, my right hip will take a good five minutes to get going the next morning. There is nothing to be gained by me seeing the ball and socket.
I realize it's just me. More than 400,000 people can't all be wrong. This show has been a tremendous success wherever it has been featured, and such a show is a newspaper columnist's gift-wrapped dream come true. But a doctor in Germany at an institute peels the skin off willing subjects who sign off with prior approval, of course, and then captures them in plastic. I love nothing more than the cut-away engines of motorcycles and automobiles that are displayed at car shows, but I don't need to see Aunt Wilma stripped down to what was, well, the insides of Aunt Wilma.
The other thing I keep wondering is where we go from here under the guise of science exhibits. This has to be about it, doesn't it? Because the next step is the Mel Brooks movie.
As I said in December, I'll take the kids to see Robert Wadlow's shoes or Bonnie and Clyde's bullet-riddled Ford or Little Irvy the giant whale, but they'll get no premature look at the strife that lies ahead from me.
I was waiting for someone to post an article about this! Can't wait to see the comments. I'll have to find a picture of the director of this show to post. He looks like the main villain from a horror movie, really scary. I think I'll wait this "attraction" out. The pictures from the advertisements are enought o make me feel ill. Weak stomache.
The point, at that time, was to say that life in this material world is brief and inconsequential, but eternal life in the next world is far more important.
But I hardly think that is the message in this science exhibit. Perhaps it's a bit more like this: We are flesh and bone. Life is short. Live it up while you can!
There was a show on Discovery or a similar network about Taxidermy. This guy's work was at the end of the show. It was...a little bizarre to say the least. All in all, I think it was done in as tasteful a manner as possible, but it still just seems wrong and a tad too voyeuristic for my tastes.
I think it's great.
Sounds like someone afraid to look at his own mortality or admire God's handiwork.
I saw the show when it came to Cleveland, and I thought it was really interesting.
Besides the biological aspect, you really have to marvel at the technical skill involved in his plastination and disection.
I'm just glad it's finally gone out of Houston. I'm sick of people talking about it here.
"I saw the show when it came to Cleveland..."
So did I. My wife loved it. I found it to be disturbing.
I know a guy who said that after he dies, he wants to be a skeleton hanging in a classroom.
No. Joe's just sqeamish. He's one of the good guy's in my book. He's quite conservative and has an entertaining show called Garage Logic on the radio here in the Twin Cities.
If you want to check him out you can listen live at http://www.am1500.com/
Oops! Link didn't work.
Here it is: http://www.am1500.com/
bump
My wife and I ( both retired Science teachers ) saw the exhibit in Tampa last Fall. We both enjoyed it . You will never look at a human being the same way again . The complexity of the human body systems is really astounding . We both think it is for children fron sixth grade and up !( with a pre lesson BEFORE taking them to the museum ).
Be sure to read the commments booklets at the end of the exhibit!!
Invented by a German doctor... hmmm... yeah, that's about right.
Sweet lord, he looks like a stereotype! Can't you just picture him clawing through a box full of sand, wondering what happened to the Covenant? Or hovering around Dark City, looking for who isn't asleep?
No, Mr. Von Hagen, I don't want to pet your "Minkeh."
Good Lord! The sculptures are real cadavers?
ping
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