Overheard:
Brad …so I have to leave early today. My seventeen year old is taking out the entire family for dinner.
Peter That’s huge!
Brad Well, to be honest with you, I think it happened because he was hungry. We were driving by the Mandarin Buffet and he asked if we could eat there, and I said no, we were in a hurry. He asked if we could go there if he paid. I said later, sure, and I thought it would pass. But yesterday he reminded me that today he’s taking us all out, and that I should be home in time.
Peter Still, that’s such a step – I mean, taking everyone out. Wow.
Brad I know. So I don’t want to screw it up by getting home late.
Todd cooks, I clean the kitchen. One late night as Todd was preparing dinner…
Todd You missed that spot there on the pot.
Sage Hey, you’re lucky I’m awake at all, much less cleaning.
Todd, grinning Don’t talk with your mouth full.
Friday Paul and I went to see the Body Worlds exhibit at the Science Centre.
Dr. Gunther von Hagens figured out how to preserve human bodies on a cellular level using a technique called plastination. So the exhibit is a bizarre combination of hard science (real blood vessels surrounding a real heart) and art (sculptures made of people instead of stone or metal) and images I wish I’d never seen (the insides of a pregnant woman).
Though it was kind of like when we watched David Attenborough wax rhapsodic over the Superb Lyrebird, a bird that can perfectly imitate a camera shutter and a chainsaw. While I believe that ol’ David was telling the truth, it didn’t seem quite real. Thirty two years of movie special effects can spoil the real thing.
And yet, despite the (false) fakey-ness of the experience, I don’t want to see it again. I’ve never understood cemetaries or funerals. When I die, I expect Todd to promptly cremate me and tell the crematorium to keep the ashes. But I have to admit that using dead bodies as sculpture was a little too much. I doubt that the horse and the baby camel died of natural causes. And I doubt that’s what these people were expecting when they donated their bodies to science.
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Andrea R
03 Oct 2005
I saw that in the paper when it opened! Or before it opened… anyway, it was in the Globe and Mail (my mom buys the weekend edition).
It was stragely compelling, morbidly fascinating, but yeah – maybe a bit much. The inside of a pregnant woman? Ew.
(And here I wanted to be a coroner.)
Kathy
03 Oct 2005
I have a book entitled “Weird Europe: A Guide to Bizarre, Macabre and Just Plain Weird Sights”. (I should mention here that I am interested in all things European, not necessarily just what this book has to offer). They mention two museums in Paris that remind me of this exhibit. I haven’t yet seen the Ontario Science Centre exhibit but I have seen an article and pictures in the Toronto Star newspaper.
The first museum is Fragonard Veterinary Museum which, apparently,
has a horse and rider displayed in a glass case with both “victims” posed authentically, the horse in mid gallop and the rider sitting atop the horse. They are described as “partially flayed, the skin peeled away to reveal bones and sinew”. Doesn’t that sound like something you want to rush out and see?
The other museum, Orfila Anatomy Museum, has a bunch of desiccated, nude corpses on exhibit in the lobby, where, you will be happy to know, it is free to view. It is housed with two other museums of the same genre and the reader is told, “The museums, skulking behind closed doors, promise more horrors to those who charm their way in”. Of course for that “thrill” you need to pay.
I guess Toronto is just trying to keep up with the other tourist hotspots in the world.
It does kind of make you wonder though if people would actually go to see the “Jeffrey Dahmer Museum” though, if such a place existed.
Elissa
03 Oct 2005
Actually, “the bodies were donated for plastination purposes through a declaration of will directly from the individuals involved.”
The Visible Human Project is a medical “resource” that is a human body sliced into millimeter-thin slices from head to toe, allowing doctors and med students to view cross-sections of the entire body. The male cadaver was a prisoner who had been executed by lethal injection in Texas. The woman died suddenly from heart disease. Both had donated their bodies to science, but had no way of knowing that they were to be used for this project.
Arlene
03 Oct 2005
Speaking of museums like that… has anyone seen the movie Margaret’s Museum?
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/margarets_museum/
It’s quite the movie…
Arlene
Sage
04 Oct 2005
Elissa – What a trip! I didn’t realize that.
I had to quickly end yesterday’s entry because Paul woke up early – I didn’t get a chance to add that despite my feelings, I think it’s a fantastic exhibit, and I’m really glad that Paul had a chance to view it.
Andrea R
04 Oct 2005
Arlene – yep I did. :)
Arlene
04 Oct 2005
Andrea – what did you think of the movie?
Arlene
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