Bodyworlds

It's such a cliched thing to say but the human body is an amazing piece of work.  It's like 'Wow!  All these cells are working together to make up us!'  Heh - the pathetic little things we are.

I first heard about Bodyworlds some number of years ago when SBS (or was it ABC?) aired Gunther von Hagens' live autopsies.  I only managed to watch one or two episodes - I think it must have conflicted with an young adult TV show or something.  So when I saw posters that Bodyworlds was coming to London, I put it on my to-do list.

As usual, you should always try not to pay full price for any exhibition in London and yep, I found a 2 for 1 on lastminute.com.  The website is surprisingly good for such things.  Paying £15 for a full price ticket is otherwise a bit steep!  I had expected to meet a long queue of people at the entrance but there was nothing of the sort.  Yay!  It wasn't going to be crowded.

I had expected the exhibition be displayed in normal lighting so I was a little surprised to see that minimal lighting was used and it bordered on a being inside a silent version of Abercrombie & Fitch.... errr and instead of preppy clothes there were bodies.  Unfortunately no photography is allowed of the plastinated cadavers which left me a little disappointed because that's all I wanted to do!

Whilst I am fully aware that these are actual bodies, my personal opinion is that it felt like I was looking at a biology/anatomy textbook.  Every so often, I would look at the fingernails of the models and it would hit me that I was in fact looking at a cadaver and then I would ponder what this person looked like before dying but then that would give way to 'Oh this person donated their body to science' and then my next thought would be 'I'm soooo donating my organs when I die'.<-- In fact, you can take that as my legal statement.

It didn't occur to me until writing this blog that such an exhibition would conjour up controversy.  Obviously I don't advocate any form of illegal sourcing of cadavers (duh!!!) but if someone gave their explicit consent, then what is the big freaking deal?  Also, the cadavers engaging in coitus. The - I guess happy? - couple were displayed in a separate room and you could choose not to see them demonstrating the reverse-cowgirl position.  (Google the position if you have to.)  But again, to me, it felt like I was looking at a copy of a factual sex manual or the (particularly extensive) reproduction section of a biology textbook.  Meh.  Nothing I haven't seen before in a women's magazine.  Most of us are products of copulation, you know.

Smee, even with his non-science-y background found the exhibit fascinating.   The plastinated giraffe was way cool as was the man on the horse.  Sure I've seen a horse in the flesh, but this horse was particularly big!

The exhibit didn't take too long to go through (about an hour) and we were rewarded with a little paper certificate congratulating us for making it to the exit doors.  Bonus!!