{"id":296,"date":"2014-02-14T10:50:10","date_gmt":"2014-02-14T15:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/?p=296"},"modified":"2015-02-25T10:57:13","modified_gmt":"2015-02-25T15:57:13","slug":"blake-mccartney-body-worlds-vital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/2014\/02\/14\/blake-mccartney-body-worlds-vital\/","title":{"rendered":"Blake McCartney: Body Worlds Vital"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blake McCartney<\/p>\n

\"30616\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I had heard about Body Worlds a while ago, but I had forgotten about it until I found out we were going to see it in this class. I was not really prepared for what it turned out to be – I had only heard vague descriptions. The plastination itself wasn\u2019t disturbing; it was actually pretty hard to believe these were real human bodies! I read the pamphlet on plastination they provided, it\u2019s an interesting process (Body Worlds plastination process<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I just think that the way these bodies were displayed was kind of troubling. All of the bodies were shown doing various activities, or their muscles were arranged in designs. I found one display of a man with his muscles completely splayed out and a top hat on particularly disturbing.\u00a0 In past years there been debate over the sexist or \u201cheteronormal\u201d poses of the bodies.\u00a0 However, I thought they did a pretty good job with changing that; I remember seeing a male dancer and gymnast.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0978Blake\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The point of the exhibit honestly is not clear to me for reading the Body Worlds website and from the exhibit.\u00a0 The website states, \u201cthe exhibition shows the body through cautionary displays about distress and disease, and inspirational insights about the virtuosity and resilience of the human body\u201d.\u00a0 I only recall a couple displays about disease – most of them were just poses.<\/p>\n

There is definitely supposed to be educational value, but I was disappointed by the amount of anatomical labeling.\u00a0 I found that the descriptions were pretty vague and not very helpful in figuring out what I was looking at.\u00a0 The exhibit wasn\u2019t as educational as I had hoped.\u00a0 For someone who knows what they are looking at the exhibit is informative and interesting, but for the average person – who would be the majority of people who see this exhibit – wouldn\u2019t know what they were looking at.\u00a0 Before this class I would have just seen it as a freak show.\u00a0 Now I can identify a lot of parts, but I\u2019m not sure if that\u2019s the message people are receiving from Body Worlds exhibit.<\/p>\n

There is a lot of controversy over whether or not informed consent was actually given from the people who donated these bodies.\u00a0 From the research I did it seems that these people do in fact give informed consent to use their bodies for plastination, although, I\u2019m still a little skeptical.\u00a0 I feel people should be able to do whatever they want with their body after they die and that these people should have that right.<\/p>\n

Personally, I would never subject myself to this; it just seems demeaning to have people pay a company to gawk at you posed in some strange position.\u00a0 Also, you get no compensation for donating your body – you actua<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blake McCartney I had heard about Body Worlds a while ago, but I had forgotten about it until I found out we were going to see it in this class. I was not really prepared for what it turned out to be – I had only heard vague descriptions. The plastination itself wasn\u2019t disturbing; it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5245,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145219],"tags":[145209],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5245"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":337,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions\/337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}