Body Worlds

Throughout the history of modern medicine, human beings have been dissecting human bodies as a means of learning more about the body and how it functions. In order for medicine to progress this process has been necessary and important. It continues today as individuals donate their bodies for medical students and other scientists. But Body Worlds seems like something more than an activity facilitating the continuing advance of medical knowledge.

For me Body Worlds represents a curious and dark expression of the macabre in popular culture. In terms of it being a curiosity, on the one hand we often hear people decry violence in television and film, particularly in the horror genre, with its graphic depiction of bodily damage and mutilation. And yet the display of bodies carved into all kinds of configurations in the context of Body Worlds is considered a form of art which straddles both high and pop culture. On the other hand, as a dark expression of the macabre, I wonder why various cultures have made a value judgment against the Nazis for turning murdered Jews and other unwanted peoples into lampshades and other paraphernalia, and yet many people seem to laud the plastinates turned into poseable traveling displays as art. I understand that many of the deceased who are now Body Worlds art volunteered their bodies for use in this fashion, and thus they weren’t victims of genocide, but the question remains as to the ethical appropriateness of the use of human bodies for art or furniture. What view of human beings and sacralization related to human remains is attached to perceptions of the Body Worlds exhibit?

Another major ethical question looms in that allegations have been made that some of the bodies may come from executed prisoners in China, a country well known for human rights violations and questionable justice in speedy trials and immediate execution for a host of major and minor crimes. While von Hagens denies using such corpses in his exhibits at present, in 2004 he acknowledged such bodies were used which forced him to return them and stop the practice. Even so, news reports from this year indicate that questions remain concerning Chinese connections as the source for some the bodies.

Ultimately one’s views of the appropriateness or inappropriateness of Body Worlds and corpses as art comes down to a complex interplay between ethics related to cultural considerations. For my reflection on this phenomenon the images associated with the Frankenstein myth come to mind. (This is no doubt fueled by my forthcoming interview with Susan Tyler Hitchcock, author of Frankenstein: A Cultural History.) I envision Victor Frankenstein in his lab stitching together the pieces of cadavers in his own combination of science and art. The Frankenstein myth reminds us of the frequent human temptation to push beyond traditional boundaries of permissibility in relation to the body, science, and even art. The verdict of many readers and viewers of the various representations of the Frankenstein myth to such transgressions has been been a negative one. Is it applicable to Body Worlds? What does the use of bodies as art, whether those secured through ethical or unethical means, say about those cultures in which Body Worlds has been well received? Perhaps our sense of the Frankenstein story needs to be turned on its head: It was Victor Frankenstein who was the monster, not the creature he stitched together and brought to life. If this is so then it may be that our creation and enjoyment of plastinates reveals the monstrous in all of us.

Hostel

The League of Tana Tea Drinks (LOTT D) elite group of blogging horrorheads is putting together another unity blog, and one of the topics for discussion involved an invitation to complete the following sentence: “The problem with today’s horror movies is…” Contributors were given the opportunity to finish this sentence in keeping with its negative connotation, or take another approach that completes it more positively. Given my perspective on the current state of affairs in American horror films I complete this sentence by writing, “The problem with today’s horror movies is our current social and cultural context of postmodernity and the influence of commodification.” No doubt at this point readers are scratching their heads and saying, “What?” Allow me to explain.

Horror is a complex genre involving multiple layers of interpretation, and as Stephen King has noted it “is extremely limber, extremely adaptable, extremely useful.” One of the ways in which horror demonstrates its adaptability is that it provides a means of not only entertainment, but also an expression and means grappling with some of our greatest fears as individuals and cultures. It should come as no surprise then that as individuals and cultures change so do their fears, and these changes result in differing cinematic expressions of horror. Earlier in the modern period horror helped express fears of the Other in its various manifestations that were symbolized in the monster. But with late modernity or postmodernity, a post-1960s phenomenon which is often tied cinematically to films like Psycho (1960), The Night of the Living Dead(1968), or The Exorcist (1973), there has been a shift from the monster as Other to an internalization process whereby the monster is us. The shift from the externalized monster as the locus of horror to an internalized terror is the result of social forces and perceptions that in turn colored interpretation of the self. Lianne McLarty discusses this in her chapter “‘Beyond the Veil of the Flesh’: Cronenberg and the Disembodiment of Horror” as part of The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, edited by Barry Keith Grant (University of Texas Press, 1996):

This ‘delegitimization’ of social institutions and the ‘instability’ of subjectivity finds expression in the ways in which these films depict both the monstrous threat and its consequences for protagonists. In contemporary (postmodern) horror, the threat is ‘not simply among us, but rather part of us, caused by us.’ Institutions (like the church and the military) that were once successful in containing the monster and restoring order are at best innefectual (there is often a lack of closure) and at worst responsible for the monstrous. Contemporary horror also tends to collapse the categories of normal and monstrous bodies; it is said to dispense with the binary opposition of us and them, and to resist the portrayal of the monster as a completely alien Other, characteristics of such 1950s films as The Thing (from Another World) (1951), Them! (1954), and The Blob (1958). This tendency to give the monster a familiar face (the monster is not simply among us, but possibly is us) is tied, in postmodern horror, to the focus on the body as site of the monstrous.

This shift from modern horror with the monster as external Other to the internal us with a related emphasis on the body has resulted in the continued tendency toward the production of slasher films beginning in the 1970s and gaining steam in the 1980s and beyond. A further development of this may be found in more recent films where the monster is not the lone psychological deviant such as Michael Myers of Halloween, but a group dynamic (in terms of the perpetrators) of psychological deviance as in Saw (if not in the original at least in the sequels), and Hostel, where the body most strongly becomes the site of the monstrous through graphic depictions of torture and mutilation.

I am not a prude when it comes to violence in film, but I do have my preferences in expressions of horror, no doubt due to the influences of my social environment as I was growing up. I first encountered horror in the late 1960s and early 1970s through horror’s twins in science fiction and fantasy films that depicted the monsterous Other as alien invader, the result of science gone awry, or prehistoric beast meets modern society. Later I encountered the classic Universal and Hammer horror films which again depicted the monster externally, and it was only in my later teens that I engaged postmodern horror with its emphasis on psychological deviance, the internalization of horror, and bodily mutilation as the primary expression of the horrific. In essence I suppose I was inculturated in a particular expression of horror, the early modern expression with the externalized monster, and as a result I have always found this expression of horror more frightening, indeed, more appealing. I think I might also find the complete internalization of horror within myself extremely distasteful. I recognize that human beings are indeed a curious mix of greatness and tragedy, but for me, postmodern horror’s revelry in human evil and bodily mutilation presents an overly dark and nihilistic expression of human nature and horror that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Related to these social and cultural considerations that result in a struggling horror market is its connection to commodification. Horror films are commodities designed to provide the highest return on investment possible, at least in those films produced by Hollywood and mainstream studios, and the emphasis on horror as commodity often leaves creativity and good storytelling by the wayside. In my view, some of the best contemporary horror comes from independent filmmakers and from the international market, with directors from Asia and Mexico, not the United States. In regards to independent filmmakers, the priority is given to good stories and frights, and while international horror is just as connected to commodification as the American horror market, somehow they have manged to provide a fresh infusion of creativity and conceptualization into the American horror market.

I recognize that my preferences for horror cause me to lean largely toward the Gothic, although my preferences for an early modern form of horror certainly go beyond this specific expression of horror. I am not alone in such preferences, as evidenced by others such as Bruce Lanier Wright in his book Nightwalkers: Gothic Horror Movies (Taylor Publishing Company, 1995):

..I believe that ideas have consequences, and I do worry about the idea embodied both in gore-porn and a good many modern ‘horror’ films. The underlying theme of Grand Guignol entertainment can be stated quite simply: You and I are pieces of meat, and all our interactions – anything we do to or for one another – are merely the random collisions of pieces of meat, without meaning or significance. This is a legitimate artistic position, and one developed with some brilliance by George Romero and others. It’s also a tremendously popular idea in mass media. The handful of individuals how decide what appears on television and in our theaters, not being particularly altruistic by nature, must believe it’s what you want to see.

The Gothic position, by contrast, is that good and evil do exist, and that men’s actions carry a moral weight; that our choices count. And if our actions have some sort of importance, maybe we do, too. Maybe we’re more than just the some of our desires and hatreds.

This post will likely be a little more “heady” than many of my fellow LOTT D unity post bloggers, but I think there’s something worth thinking about here. If horror is indeed an adaptable and useful genre we might be thinking about not only why it entertains, but also why it changes in its expression, and what the internalized “monsterous us” of contemporary, postmodern, nihilistic horror says about us as individuals and as a culture.

(For those readers interested in reading more of McLarty’s thoughts on Cronenberg and the body as site/sight of horror, as well as the other contributors to The Dread of Difference, or Wright’s further thoughts on Gothic horror in Nightwalkers, these books can be found as part of the TheoFantastique Amazon.com store.)