He explained that he and his staff have enlisted 6800 body donors since he began seeking volunteers in Germany in 1979, including 142 from North America over the past two years. “The most respect you can give to other people is after death if you are willing to follow their wishes. I’m coming from East Germany, and there was no democracy, there was no democracy of free speech, there was no democracy of free decision, there was no democracy of even moving out of the country. So it is rooted in my biography that I want to bring a little more democratization to society, democratization beyond death.” Hooray for democracy!
I inquired about the flesh skirt and the high heels, what to me were failed attempts at humor. “I believe that humor is a way to conquer our mortality,” he acknowledged. “And I think I owe it to the [humorous] spirit of the body donors.” His idea is that entertainment keeps people looking long enough to be educated. But if the balance between entertaining and informing falters, that’s when it becomes a freak show. His response: “The plastinates are shown in everyday activities. So it’s not necessarily freaky.”
An acquaintance I bumped into at the preview was trying to think of a way “Body Worlds 2” could be more tasteful. She wondered whether plastic models wouldn’t suffice. Perhaps for scientific study, but the reason von Hagens’s specimens are so moving and sometimes disturbing is that they’re real bodies. A fake corpse playing soccer is just tacky; a real corpse playing soccer is tacky and charged with something more.
Von Hagens argues that he’s part of a long and noble scientific tradition. Scientific progress, like artistic progress, often requires upsetting propriety; today’s quacks are tomorrow’s Galileos. But I’m not sure von Hagens is a Galileo, despite the museum’s trumpeting him as “the leading anatomist of our time.” He’s more like a remarkable tinkerer turned outsider artist, with a multi-million-dollar budget. That’s why he includes a metal plaque inscribed with his signature before each full-body display. It feels one step removed from a surgeon tattooing his name across a patient to claim credit for his handiwork. But what questions “Body Worlds 2” work raises! Why does it upset us if someone shows no respect for the dead? Do the dead care? When we die, are our bodies more than meat? Why does our meat make us so mortified? Ultimately these questions are all part of the oldest question: what happens to us after we’re gone?
‘Body Worlds 2’ | Museum of Science, Science Park, Boston | Through January 7