November 18, 2005
Now extended yet again, and open daily from 10am to 10pm, the confounding ethics of displaying cadavers reaches a gruesome new level with the fascinating new exhibit at South Street Seaport. Because the cadavers in "Bodies...the Exhibition" come from Dailan University in China, which has been "previously implicated in the use of executed prisoners for commercial purposes," it is time to take a step back and reflect. Harry Wu, the great paragon of democratic values who valiantly clashed with the Chinese government during the 1989 Tiananmen uprising and has been living in exile in the United States for some years, has something to say on the subject. We ought to listen:
"Considering that China executes between 2,000 and 3,000 prisoners a year and their long history of freely using death row prisoners for medical purposes, you have to wonder," Mr. Wu said, adding that he would pursue legal steps in this country to ensure that the show was not using illegally obtained bodies. "In China, a piece of paper means nothing." Harry Wu is quite right, especially considering years of the government's "Strike Hard" campaign, with huge numbers of executions taking place, including those in public and those in mobile execution vans.
Republicans and Democrats alike used to lambast the Chinese government for its outrageous practices, such as its lao gai, prison camps utilizing prison labor to produce goods for profit. These days, no one even bothers to ask if the for-profit People's Liberation Army ships any prison-made goods via its China Ocean Shipping Company to Wal-Mart. People just want a bargain; the general attitude seems to be to hell with the product's origin unless it poisons our children.
Back to the cadavers: news coverage of this morbidly fascinating exhibit only serves to tantalize potential patrons even more, and therefore the steep admission price ($24.50 for adults, $18.50 for children) becomes justifiable in the mind, when one thinks, "I have really got to see this." The German Gunter von Hagens, who brilliantly and gruesomely began the first traveling exhibit of corpses, must somehow be congratulated. As our taste for the morbid is sated, if our ethics and morals are not utterly compromised then surely at least they are called into question by patronizing the show. What genius! As the premier freak show maestro P.T. Barnum never said, "There's a sucker born every minute." But why listen to me? Order tickets and go see for yourself.
UPDATE: Two years after I first wrote this review, several disturbing stories about the underground bone trade in India emerged. Both National Public Radio and Wired followed the trail through West Bengal in gruesome detail, and the ethical implications of attending an exhibit such seem even more apparent today.
Tags:
bodies the exhibition, harry wu, human cadavers, lao gai, p t barnum
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Posted on 11/18/2005
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