Bodyworlds has arrived in Los Angeles, and just like when I first saw the ads in NYC in December '06, I feel REALLY WEIRD and uncomfortable. Where are these bodies coming from? Then I read an article in the NY Times that talked about where they come from - China. In Hong Kong in November I saw people protesting the "harvesting" of human bodies. Understand that if you patronize Bodyworlds, you are allowing Gunther Von Hagens
to profit from the HARVESTING of Chinese bodies. Tell me this man does not look eerily like the creepy preacher guy in Poltergeist II.
After reading the NY Times article, questions arise:
1. Who were these people that have been plastinized?
2. Did they really have free choice in donating their bodies?
3. There are rumors these are bodies of dead Chinese prisoners.
All in all... creepy and disturbing. Yet unquestioning Americans go to Bodyworlds in droves despite questionable complicity in the harvesting of human bodies.
In contrast, driving home today I noticed a large group of white folk protesting in front of the federal building on Wilshire calling for a free Tibet, decrying human rights violations by the Chinese government and military... rightly so.
Does anyone else see the disconnect and contradictions here?
So this is what I observe here.
It's ok to support state sanctioned violence and human rights violations as long as it's produced by a white German dude in a creepy get up as long as it's presented in an aesthetic manner at your local museum.
at the same time...
It's not ok to turn the other way with Chinese government actions in Tibet.
