Notes

Thanks for logging in.

Searching Member Sites
I’ve recently added a search function so that you can limit your Google search to just the blogs that are members of MetaxuCafe. I think that will be a good resource for everyone looking for literary topics online and you’ll find it right on the front page as well as other places on the site. Now if you want to read about, say Orhan Pamuk, but only want to search the litblogs you trust, you can narrow your search right here.

• Home
• About
• Blog Headlines
• Find Blogs
• Forums
• Roundtable

The Bodies Exhibit: Why We Read Frankenstein

by paisleyandplaid on April 27, 2008

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, usually credited as the first true work of science fiction, stresses the fairly common themes of man’s overweening pride, his error in overstepping boundaries, and the often horrific events that follow such actions.

In Shelley’s day, early 19th century, many in the field of “natural philosophy,” or science, were trying to discover the “life impulse,” or the origin of the life. This was the time that Dr. Galvin (see Galvinism) was attempting to resurrect dead bodies. It was commonly believed that electricity, also newly discovered, was the spark of life and experiments were conducted making a dead frog’s legs jump, for instance. Percy Shelley’s first wife, the pregnant Harriet, drowned herself in the middle of London in a pond upon learning that her husband was having an affair with Mary. Doctors tried new methods of resusitation on her to no avail.

Many, like Shelley and her atheist husband, Percy the poet and her philosopher parents the Godwins, had abandoned a belief in God, so substitiute answers to fundamental questions were sought. Elaborate salon discussions were held at the Godwin home where Percy and Mary met.

However, the Shelleys held Romantic worldviews. While denying the Judeo-Christian God, they also distrusted pure science and favored a more transcendental view and certainly believed, like all Romantics, in the sanctitiy of Nature—capital N. Tamperings with nature, its fundamental laws, would surely open a Pandora’s box.

Hence, when the married Percy, Mary, Lord Byron and Mary’s half-sister and another friend were vacationing at the Vila Diodati, a contest was proposed. It was raining and philosophy is only fun for so long. Everyone go away and write your best ghost story.

The boys got bored with the project and left it in favor of throwing the football, but the 18-year-old Mary invented the monster we are all so familiar with today: Frankenstein’s monster. (Frankenstein is actually Victor Frankenstein, the dubious creator. The monster is unnamed.)

The novel was and still is a hit and has been produced and parodied in many genres, including Gene Wilder as “Young Frankenstein” in Mel Brooks’s comedy. But Mary was dead serious. Her point: Don’t mess with Mother Nature. Victor’s fascination with the “unhallowed arts” digging around in cemeteries searching for body parts was even to the atheist a despicable act. Further, Victor’s experiment playing God (Shelley’s Nature) results in the death of his little brother, a family friend, and his own bride on their honeymoon, all victims of the monster and Victor’s pride.

Last weekend I visited a museum where the Bodies exhibit is on display. This exhibit has stirred global controversy, one side lauding its educational value, its magnification of the glories of the human body, the other side declaring it an exploitation of human dignity. In the museum I visited, the exhibit was adjacent to the children’s museum. A uniformed employee steered children away, loudly warning parents to keep to the right.

No wonder. Twenty-one real human bodies and 260 body parts are displayed in “dynamic” positions that mimic everyday activities. Some hold that the Church kept the world in the scientific dark ages through its squeamish approach to the human body. Others, like me, believe that there is a sanctity to life and death and the body itself. To display real people, though dead, without names, without identity, and reportedly without their permission (possibly Chinese prisoners,) is an invasion of privacy (current battle cry du jour) in the most extreme manner.

In an article by Paulette Miniter for SmartMoney.com, the following financial statistics shed more than a little light.

“Provocative ideas are often lucrative ones, and though Premier [Geller runs Premier Exhibitions (PRXI: 4.68, -0.34, -6.77%), a $463 million company that operates “Bodies” shows around the globe.] has been public since 1993, it’s just starting to get respect on Wall Street. Shares have gained 158% year to date to $15.65 as of Wednesday’s close. “We believe the company’s stock price has only recently begun to reflect its potential for significant sales and earnings growth,” Chris Krueger, an analyst at Northland Securities in Minneapolis, said in a research report in late July. Shares hit a 52-week high of $18.62 on July 18.

“In Premier’s fiscal first quarter, ended May 31, revenue nearly doubled to $11.4 million and earnings about tripled to $3.3 million. Cash and cash equivalents are up to $19.7 million, a substantial increase from $2.5 million a year earlier.”

The National Enquirer pulls in big bucks, too. This display appeals to man’s base, morbid curiosity. It’s a freak show. Anyone who wants to study the human body for educational purposes will find no shortage of material. Exhibit viewers see more than medical students do.

Who are these “bodies?” Victor used the random recently dead and buried. “Bodies” uses anonymous cadavers, too. From China. According to an AP article by Mitch Stacey published by the Washingtonpost.com August, 2005,

“The company says it legally obtains specimens from the Dalian Medical University Plastination Laboratories in China, but there’s been media speculation that some of the bodies are those of executed prisoners or other victims of an underground anatomy market. Premier maintains the bodies used in its shows are unclaimed cadavers.”

Anything for a profit. Imagine your father’s body, privates and all, on display for millions of gawking viewers. Without his permission. He has no name any more. He has no grave with a tombstone marking the resting place of his mortal body. He has been plasticized by a firm in China and is viewed at $2o.oo a peep in a carnival side show. Hardly dignified. It’s dehumanizing and recalls everything we hated about Nazi experimentation, doesn’t it?

Where is the Church on this? It holds the corner on these issues and should make the traditional Judeo-Christian view on this subject known. (I saw some Catholic anti-exhibit press.)

I appreciate the navy burial service and offer it here. Note the careful, reverent protocol. But what were we thinking. Look at the “Bodies” stock figures. The Department of Defense could make billions! The exhibit: War . . . What is it good for?

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq85-1.htm

This post has been viewed (on this page) 170 times .