Bizarre that this category of touring show continues after all these years. It seems like such self-consciously guilty behavior on the part of the organizers: you don’t accidentally end up with human corpses (that you’re selling as entertainment on the basis of being human corpses!).
They came by them somehow. If the nature of someplace’s justice system is that a death sentence comes with a “turned-to-plastic-and-paraded-around-for-selfies” enhancement, so as to trouble the offender’s eternal soul as well as their life, then just.. say that. “They’re ’bad guys’ and we as a company believe that’s what bad guys deserve.” Or even, “we weren’t involved in the circumstances of their death, but we figure if we’d had a chance to ask them they probably would be fine with it.”
As morally repugnant as I find the entire endeavor, I bet it wouldn’t even hurt ticket sales: people in the West have, in the not-so-distant past, treated hangings and beheadings as social occasions.
But like, there’s a right way to do informed consent—why not just do it and say “yeah we did it the obvious way”? Come to think of it… the ambiguity sure is a reliable path to free attention. It wouldn’t be the first marketing strategy to rely on provocation…
The western scientific community has a pattern of not treating the bodies of the deceased with respect due, often for very questionable value. I used to be ok with this—one of my favorite museums is the Mütter museum—but as time goes on I grow increasingly uncomfortable with the display of human body parts or entire cadavers.
Perhaps we can excuse the use of bodies for collecting genetic samples and learning about the context in death. There are good reasons to even argue against that, but at the bare minimum we could preserve and store these outside the public eye in a modicum of respect for their gift to us.
Here in the US, our largest equivalent problems are the use of bodies of indigenous, enslaved, and convicted-as-criminals for merely museum display. This has no academic or scientific value; just the casual disrespect of the dead.
Even just here in Philadelphia, this problem isn't relegated to the Mütter museum. The Franklin institute regularly uses real bodies, not reproductions. It's not relegated to ancient history, either: the University of Pennsylvania managed to get their hands on the remains of victims of the 1985 police MOVE bombing. Why? How? To what end? Nobody can remember..... thankfully, the university has absolved itself as legally culpable.
> The western scientific community has a pattern of not treating the bodies of the deceased with respect due
Not just human bodies, but living animals as well, and until relatively recently living humans also. Western scientific culture has a utilitarian "ends-justify-the-means" problem, even when the ends are as dubious as testing a new kind of lipstick that is one cent cheaper to produce.
I wonder what "informed consent" truly entails. When someone donates their body "to science," they are likely picturing anonymous dissection in a medical school lab for the benefit of students.
i don't think i would object to the category per se -- i could be persuaded to donate my body to such an exhibit especially if they told me they gave me a consent form that was like "here are the possibilities, check the ones that tickle you".
Probably it's set-up as distinct from societies that still treat executions as social occasions with the occasional "double-header". Either that, or a dig at the Jacobins.
"We used to too; although others still do it too."
I don’t think so at all—for that matter the Americans still execute prisoners, and still send news crews to attend the executions (though not to show the dying person directly). I was more thinking about TFA as specifically a British objection, and the other examples involving a press release from the New York Attorney General.
I don’t know how the exhibition is received in other territories, but I feel like it’s Americans, Brits, and Europeans who I hear raise this specific set of concerns that plastinated Bodies exhibitions display executed prisoners. Often mixed in with some degree of insinuation about Chinese justice systems and political practices.
Whereas it seems to me that dark delight in bodily violence is a much more essential aspect of the human condition—Rene Girard’s notion of a scapegoat mechanism comes to mind—and that for all the pearl-clutching, the event promoter probably would still sell tickets if they catered to it upfront.
The problem is that saying "yeah, we have no idea where the bodies came from beyond the fact that the people who we bought them from were authorized to sell them and we don't really care" won't pass muster with the subset of westerners an exhibit like this courts.
That's only a problem for exhibitors who value money over the inherent humanity of their exhibits.
I'm amused by the idea of donating my body to science, especially to medical colleges for teaching purposes, but I would want to make some kind of connection with that future. I would want people to at least know my name, see my face, have some idea that I am a person, that I want them to use what's left of me to go out and do some good in the world with it.
We're all just made out of meat, but that shouldn't dehumanize us. On the contrary. And running roughshod over human rights to put on a show does not treat its subjects humanely. Worse, that harms the audience, who gets inured to that inhumanity.
Maybe if any evidence ever existed of such a thing. But since there is none, I say people spend far too much time and effort worrying about the dignity of dead bodies that have no feelings.
There are lots of animist (etc.) societies that mark/hold certain grounds as sacred and unfit for other purposes and prevent their usage. Should we tell them to get on with the times?
I do not. I’m skeptical of the idea that there’s such a thing as a “bad guy” in the first place. Although I’ve met some pretty mean SOBs.
It does seem like one framing that comes up a lot when people try to explain why they support capital punishment.
But I’m more or less with lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson, who likes to phrase it “each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” (Come to think of it I believe noted nightclub philosophers Sofi Tukker went on to borrow that formulation too...)
Its been know for a long time that Chinese prisoners bodies are used as a resource.[0] I bet this use in exhibition is one of the least detestable uses, sadly.
I was taken to the Body Worlds[0] exhibit when it was going around and it was extremely fascinating and disturbing. At the time I knew nothing about it, but when I was looking at the exhibits I noticed that many of people displayed looked Chinese. There were even children in the exhibits. Trying to imagine how those bodies ended up there for us to look at was a very discomforting thought and I didn't enjoy thinking about that at all. Very unusual experience.
Body Worlds - at least when I started in the 1990s (and their website claims: as well as today) - was a 100% european-bodies from volunteers exibition.
As a Bodies enthusiast, anything pre 97 including Body World can be relatively uncontested - PRC execution was still bullet to back of skull then. Lethal injection transition took until 2010s.
All the drama/allegations around executed bodies started popping up during transition period. Mostly around Dalian which became hub of plastination. I think collection went from like 20-200+ bodies over that period. IIRC von Hagen had to return a few bodies he thought was sus. Falungong made claims these were prisoner bodies - there was big FLG round up in late 90s.
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They came by them somehow. If the nature of someplace’s justice system is that a death sentence comes with a “turned-to-plastic-and-paraded-around-for-selfies” enhancement, so as to trouble the offender’s eternal soul as well as their life, then just.. say that. “They’re ’bad guys’ and we as a company believe that’s what bad guys deserve.” Or even, “we weren’t involved in the circumstances of their death, but we figure if we’d had a chance to ask them they probably would be fine with it.”
As morally repugnant as I find the entire endeavor, I bet it wouldn’t even hurt ticket sales: people in the West have, in the not-so-distant past, treated hangings and beheadings as social occasions.
But like, there’s a right way to do informed consent—why not just do it and say “yeah we did it the obvious way”? Come to think of it… the ambiguity sure is a reliable path to free attention. It wouldn’t be the first marketing strategy to rely on provocation…
Perhaps we can excuse the use of bodies for collecting genetic samples and learning about the context in death. There are good reasons to even argue against that, but at the bare minimum we could preserve and store these outside the public eye in a modicum of respect for their gift to us.
Here in the US, our largest equivalent problems are the use of bodies of indigenous, enslaved, and convicted-as-criminals for merely museum display. This has no academic or scientific value; just the casual disrespect of the dead.
Even just here in Philadelphia, this problem isn't relegated to the Mütter museum. The Franklin institute regularly uses real bodies, not reproductions. It's not relegated to ancient history, either: the University of Pennsylvania managed to get their hands on the remains of victims of the 1985 police MOVE bombing. Why? How? To what end? Nobody can remember..... thankfully, the university has absolved itself as legally culpable.
https://archive.ph/2025.06.23-112139/https://www.newyorker.c...
Not just human bodies, but living animals as well, and until relatively recently living humans also. Western scientific culture has a utilitarian "ends-justify-the-means" problem, even when the ends are as dubious as testing a new kind of lipstick that is one cent cheaper to produce.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_Human_Project
It would make sense to both get payed immediately and have a percentage of the future revenues sent to your family.
Although this opens another can of worms, and seems in general a repulsive business to me.
Is that unique to the West?
"We used to too; although others still do it too."
I don’t know how the exhibition is received in other territories, but I feel like it’s Americans, Brits, and Europeans who I hear raise this specific set of concerns that plastinated Bodies exhibitions display executed prisoners. Often mixed in with some degree of insinuation about Chinese justice systems and political practices.
Whereas it seems to me that dark delight in bodily violence is a much more essential aspect of the human condition—Rene Girard’s notion of a scapegoat mechanism comes to mind—and that for all the pearl-clutching, the event promoter probably would still sell tickets if they catered to it upfront.
I'm amused by the idea of donating my body to science, especially to medical colleges for teaching purposes, but I would want to make some kind of connection with that future. I would want people to at least know my name, see my face, have some idea that I am a person, that I want them to use what's left of me to go out and do some good in the world with it.
We're all just made out of meat, but that shouldn't dehumanize us. On the contrary. And running roughshod over human rights to put on a show does not treat its subjects humanely. Worse, that harms the audience, who gets inured to that inhumanity.
Maybe if any evidence ever existed of such a thing. But since there is none, I say people spend far too much time and effort worrying about the dignity of dead bodies that have no feelings.
It does seem like one framing that comes up a lot when people try to explain why they support capital punishment.
But I’m more or less with lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson, who likes to phrase it “each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” (Come to think of it I believe noted nightclub philosophers Sofi Tukker went on to borrow that formulation too...)
[0]https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/sep/13/medicineandh...
[0] https://bodyworlds.com/
All the drama/allegations around executed bodies started popping up during transition period. Mostly around Dalian which became hub of plastination. I think collection went from like 20-200+ bodies over that period. IIRC von Hagen had to return a few bodies he thought was sus. Falungong made claims these were prisoner bodies - there was big FLG round up in late 90s.
Frank: International treaty, all skeletons come from India.
Freddy: No kidding, how come?
Frank: How the hell do I know how come? The important question is, where do they get all the skeletons with perfect teeth?
Apparently skeletons from India really was a big thing: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45738-6