Walter, Tony - Plastination For Display. A New Way To Dispose of The Dead PDF

Plastination for Display: A New Way to Dispose of the Dead
Author(s): Tony Walter

Source: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Sep., 2004), pp.
603-627
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
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PLASTINATION FOR DISPLAY: A NEW WAY TO
DISPOSE OF THE DEAD
Tony Walter
University of Reading
Plastination provides a new method, governed by medical technique rather tha

ritual, by which human remains may be transformed from unstable/wet to sta
the Korperwelten/Body Worlds exhibition, the public pay to view plastinated
are invited to donate their bodies for plastination after death. This article add
question of whether Body Worlds visitors accept plastination for display as a l
form of disposal. Three sources of data are drawn on: the ethnographer's accou
first visit to the exhibition in Brussels; the written comments of visitors to t
exhibition; and the stated motives of some donors. Plastination as fmal disposal
by the vast majority of visitors; they perceive the dry, odourless body interio
the clinical, scientific framework encouraged by the exhibition, and are often
by what they see. This is complicated, however, by certain surface features an
display which enable the problematic reinsertion of personhood. So, plastinatio
accepted, but not all forms of display.
In addition to burial and cremation, we now have a third choice. For me, it'
of secularized burial.
(Gunther von Hagens, interview with author, 2002)
I hope one day I'll be a dead mummy for display.

(14-year-old visitor to the Body Worlds exhibition, London 2002)
Introduction
The methods by which human bodies may be respectfully disposed

limited, and each society strictly regulates which methods are accep
When a new method is introduced, it can be controversial. An example i
replacement of endocannibalism by burial in the Amazonian society rese
by Conklin (2001). In the Western context, examples include the introd
tion of anatomical dissection from the sixteenth century onwards (Fer
1987; Richardson 1989), discussions in the 1870s to introduce cremation
a number of Western countries for the first time in nearly two millennia (J
1997; Prothero 2001), and media coverage in the late twentieth century
the prohibitively expensive process of cryonic freezing (which is in an
not a final disposal, or so hope those who have paid to have their bodie
served in this way). All proved controversial.
Another recent innovation is plastination. Whereas in a number of so
eties disposed-of bodies are visible and/or retrievable, for example thr
? Royal Anthropological Institute 2004.

J Roy. anthrop. Inst. (N.S.) 10, 603-627
604 TONY WALTER
secondary burial (Danfor

Cockburn & Reyman 19
form is usually rendered
by burial or cremation.
sented for public display
2004) 14 million people
Worlds, a travelling exh
have signed forms, ava
plastination.
While many journalistic
on this popular and cont
fact that it constitutes a
very few legal prohibiti
(White 2000). The law c
Europe, for example, hum
buried.1 But whatever t
posal by plastination? Th
plastination as a fmal dis
of plastinated remains. U
takes the form, for exam
an empirical study in th
A number of early anth
of the dead, whether of
find disgusting, or other
display? Bloch and Parry
transformation, in which
reality of death. What
achieved by plastinatio
drawing on Bloch's (1992
that in funerary rites li
corpse for public display
enment for exhibition visitors?
I suggest that Hertz s (1960) notion of wet and dry burial is particularly
informative. In the double funerals that Hertz analysed, the wet burial ritu-
ally disposes of the fresh corpse; there is then an intermediary period in which
the decomposition of the body is mirrored by the passage of the soul and the
ritual actions of mourners; this is ended by the dry funeral, in which the dry
remains are recovered, and ritually re-disposed of in a permanent location. In
the Hertzian scheme, wet corpses are objects of mourning; dry remains are
not. Plastination transforms a fresh corpse to be mourned into dry remains
that may be exhibited as objects of curiosity and/or scientific education,
turning a ritual (for there are no funerals, wet or dry) into a technical process,
the stated aim being not the destiny of the soul but the extension of anatom-
ical education to a lay audience.
Plastination and Body Worlds
The study of anatomy was a key element of early modern science. It literally
opened up the mysteries of the body s interior, in the way that geology came
TONY WALTER 605
to open up the earth s interior

verse. From the sixteenth to ei
attended, but had to be conduc
winter months, and the supply
Richardson 1989; Sawday 1995).
possible to preserve organs in
1996). Corrosion-casting, in wh
and then the other tissue corr
the blood vessels, has been used
vation of other soft tissue pro
century, skilfully made wax a
& Wallace 2000). From the ninet
vation both of organs in soluti
tion by individual students.
Anatomy museums have been
Austria, and Switzerland throu
mid-nineteenth century such
medical students, with the exce
parative anatomy. By the mid-
remains in continental museum
museums, was of no great inte
tural critics.
The possibilities of preserva
increased dramatically in the w
Gunther von Hagens. From t
Worlds, developed plastination
water with a resin that harden
that the body, or any combinatio
vertical position (von Hagens 2
tinates to medical schools, but
ten/Body Worlds public exhib
Austria, Switzerland, Belgium,
with an annual turnover of 20
ongoing public hostility in von
tions of the press, academia, lo
announced to locate the exhi
organization is partly based in
the production of plastinates h
cheap and highly skilled techni
produce per annum a thousand
individual organs) and fifteen
1,500 skilled person-hours to c
four hundred employees.
Body Worlds makes at least fo
tionships between organs, and
shown, reflecting the individu
idealized average displayed by t
ulations (Fig. 1). Secondly, the
jars, in turn protected within g
in the same space inhabited by
606 TONY WALTER
Figure 1. Internal organs.
people could donate their bodies for dissection (with whatever

eventually being buried or cremated), now people can dona
for plastination, in the knowledge that this will be the body's
Plastinated specimens are expected to remain stable for at least
years.
Fourth, von Hagens is committed to bringing anatomy out o
and into public view. His mission is to democratize anatomy, s
one ? not just medics ? can learn about their own bodies throu
the dead. To this end, he brings his flair for showmanship, thou
hold that this undermines the integrity of his educational pur
the plastinates are exhibited in physical poses (such as running
while others are shown in more clearly social poses (as a baske
cyclist, swordsman, or chess player). Von Hagens has given hi
identity (Fig. 3): the cyclist may never have known how to cycl
may not have been able to swim, the basketball player may nev
basketball. Von Hagens himself2 has compared this to plastic s
the posthumous name that Buddhist monks in Japan giv
(Reader 1991). Some of these posthumous identities echo those
cal drawings of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, blow-ups
the exhibition walls.
TONY WALTER 607
Figure 2. Man holding his own skin.
How does Body Worlds relate to contemporary ideas about museum display
and education? First, in display terms, Body Worlds is thoroughly modernist,
reflecting museum values of the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries:
objects that the curator deems to be inherently interesting are presented to
the public with minimal interpretation (Bennett 1995; Hooper-Greenhill
1992). There are none of the computer graphics and staged interactivity
(Barry 1998) that have characterized British museums and science centres
(Durant 1992) since the 1980s and German museums since the 1990s. Visi?
tors look at objects which they are not allowed to touch (Figs. 2 and 4); the
babies and some smaller plastinated organs are protected by glass cases (Fig.
5). The exhibition aims, in a strikingly unmediated way (Fig. 1), to impart
objective, scientific knowledge, rather than information bites and subjective
experience (Hooper-Greenhill 2000). Secondly, despite their untrendy mode
of display, the Body Worlds exhibits pull in the crowds, grab visitors' atten?
tion (Fig. 4), and attract press interest more successfully than do many so-
called 'user-friendly' 'customer-orientated', 'postmodern' museums. Thirdly,
however, in mixing education and entertainment (though, apart from the
exhibits themselves, in a very low-tech way), the exhibition is distinctly con?
temporary, while von Hagens' showmanship reminds other visitors of pre-
nineteenth-century curiosity cabinets. Body Worlds is hard to locate within
608 TONY WALTER
Figure 3. Basketball player.
any conventional history of display (Bennett 1995; Hooper-Gre

Fourth, it is only recently that research has been conducted int
of how visitors learn in museums, and indeed into whether mu
exhibitions should aim to impart knowledge or whether they a
inducing less controllable epiphanies ? the Eureka! experienc
Leinhardt, Crowley & Knutson 2002). We probably do not have
knowledge to assess Body Worlds' educational efficacy. Fifth, t
museums struggle to inform both the expert and the lay visito
1998), Body Worlds exhibits ? judging by visitors' comments ?
ated, if in different ways, by trained doctors as well as the
untrained.
Though von Hagens runs a successful medium-size international business
without public subsidy or family endowment, I see little evidence for the
charge often made by critics that he is motivated by profit.3 He ploughs profits
back into the business, sleeps very little, and works the rest of the time. He
is a charismatic leader who picks staff on ability and loyalty rather than qual?
ifications, and several family members are also involved in the business.
Always innovating, he surrounds himself with creative people; unconcerned
about official permissions or fashions in museum display, he implements
new ideas immediately and hopes for the best. His lack of respect for
TONY WALTER 609
Figure 4. Embryos.
Figure 5. Baby.
610 TONY WALTER
government-imposed ru
stem from his upbringin
Germany He cares little
is happiest when Body W
the museum-visiting mi
marketing tool.4
Since the mid-nineteent
lishments have sought, suc
fairgrounds (Altick 1978
Hagens' eccentric mix of
acceptable to most visito
times thought of as a po
in my view he is someon
that he is too driven b
bodies to concern himsel
Body Worlds as educatio
art (van Dijck 2001: 123),
categories. Von Hagens is
for example in his condu
prompting the public to
the dead.
The British context
There are a number of ways in which the treatment of the dead in Britain
differs from that of other modern societies. Taken together, they mean that
dead bodies have a relatively low profile in Britain.b Viewing the wet, recent
dead before the funeral is rather infrequent in Britain, compared to, for
example, the United States, Greece, and Ireland. And, compared to other Euro-
peans, the British are less aware of, and see less of, the dry dead: bones and
mummies. To be more specific:
(a) Holding a wake in which the dead body is publicly viewed is stan?
dard in Ireland and the USA (Habenstein & Lamers 1963; O'Crualaoich 1998;
Smale 1985), but in Britain this practice is found only among certain reli?
gious and ethnic minorities. Nor is it usual in Britain, in contrast to many
other societies, for example the West Indies and Greece (Danforth 1982), to
have the coffin open at the start of the funeral. In some parts of Britain, the
body is viewed privately by a few close kin (Howarth 1996); in others, this
happens rarely. It is safe to say that the number of recently dead bodies seen
by the average Protestant or secular white Briton is far less than the number
seen by the average Greek, Jamaican, American, or Irish person.
(b) The British Isles are the only part of Europe where old bones are not
regularly relocated to make way for further burials (Walter 1990: ch. 18;
Worpole 2003). Southern Europeans can visit these relocated bones in ossuar-
ies or other locations; northern continentals re-use graves but show no inter?
est in the bones thereafter. Douglas Davies and Alastair Shaw's (1995) national
survey found many, though by no means all, Britons are uneasy about re-using
graves. Proposals for re-use typically lead to expressions of alarm in the local
press, and a recent parliamentary inquiry on cemeteries reflected public sen-
TONYWALTER 611
timent by assuming re-use

2001), though it is undertak
Robson 2004).
(c) Although Hindus typica
erwise invisible in Britain. T
the coffin into the cremator
the cremator are witnessed b
the remains in a pot for bur
(d) Unlike Italy, where ther
of mummified corpses (Cock
& Poppi 1994), Britons are n
(e) In Protestant England
relics for display ended at
first displayed in Germany,
clerics, who could hardly cri
when the Catholic church ha
clergy, however, vehemen
putting the dead on display
2002).
(f) As already noted, a number of continental European countries have
publicly accessible and well-known anatomy museums, so many of their pop?
ulation have already seen preserved organs on public display. Britain's only
such museum, London's relatively unknown Hunterian Museum, displays
mainly non-human remains.
For all these reasons, both wet and dry remains are relatively invisible in
Britain compared to other Western countries (C. Davies 1996). From the late
1990s to the present, however, the use and misuse of dead bodies, first by
artists and then by doctors, have been frequent headline news in the national
media:
(i) British avant-garde sculptors such as Marc Quinn and Damian Hirst
have created high-profile art works that incorporate animal body parts or the
artist's own body fluids, so that both the dead body and the living body
become a memento mori (Berridge 2001: 255). The 1997 prosecution ofthe
sculptor Anthony Noel Kelly for illegally removing body parts from a hospi-
tal anatomy store hit the headlines, as did the revelation (Savill 2002) that a
tramp had informally bequeathed his body to an artist friend. By the time
Body Worlds arrived in London in March 2002, the dubious use of body parts
by artists had become staple fare for art critics and arts correspondents.
(ii) More significantly, the late 1990s saw media exposes of hospital
pathologists appropriating babies' organs for research use without the parents'
permission. The scandal, kept alive by public inquiries and by campaigning
parents, was still headline news when Body Worlds arrived in London. Many
British newspapers had already demonized Professor Dick van Velsen, the
Dutch pathologist working at Liverpool's Alder Hey children's hospital. What
would they and their readers make of Professor Gunther von Hagens ?
another foreign medical professor ? and his spectacular display of dried
corpses?
When Body Worlds came to London in 2002, it therefore found itself in
a society where the dead and human remains are rarely on view, yet where
the alleged misuse of dead bodies by artists and doctors was an ongoing
612 TONY WALTER
scandal. The dead body is p

is ritually transformed -
ondary burial, or other m
a conquering of death (D
1991). In Britain, such tran
Body Worlds includes a di
massively increased visibili
the process of transforma
provide little or no inform
burial, and cremation, and
very little information to
in dissection, autopsy, org
tion that makes the techno
observers had arrived in a
carefully hidden.
Body Worlds scholarship
I have argued that plastin

disposal of the human bod
making manifest the transf
addressed this issue? Comp
arly work on Body Wor
Scholarly articles may be
and von Hagens and Wha
ence papers (Hirschhaue
Hindmarsh 2001). Authors
anatomists, and social scie
a number of medical, m
Morriss-Kay 2002; Richard
cles on the process of plas
There are a few empirica
some commissioned by t
2002) uses representative s
(not least the very high le
pared to the much more m
Staiblin and Zander (2001
responses to the German
of London, researching vi
(vom Lehn, Heath & Hindm
bition to their sample in
the more controversial e
analysed and published. On
Compared to visitors in ot
involved: they point to fea
their reactions. Body Worl
nated involvement (Figure
common visitor behaviour.
TONYWALTER 613
Apart from frequent refer

scholarship ignores the expan
been identified by anthropol
generating repulsion, awe, s
scholarship on Body Worlds
a privately circulated transla
in which he addresses legal
not encountered Hertz (1960
von Hagens develops his own
distinguishes corpses (bodies
cadavers (anatomical specim
in a preservative fluid), and
that are almost indefmitely
and last (corresponding to H
at the root of the furore in
widely disparate views of w
key question for whether h
display is whether they are
a corpse?' He is certainly co
northwest European conte
question because the transfo
the grave or crematorium,
this has been a much debated
and English-speaking variant
Hallam, Hockey, and Howar
Body Worlds exhibition Tie
limits of public display' (1
addressed in this article. Wh
final disposition for the dea
that are, or were, dead hum
Method
How to answer these questio

prises either the subjective i
data of visitor surveys; my aim
empirical data. These compr
(1) My own detailed field
by myself, twice with my
use the notes of my first v
February 2002, a month bef
nor had I previously seen a
an anatomical dissection. Like most visitors to the exhibition in Brussels
and London, I am middle-class and have little knowledge of my own int
rior. How did I, personally, respond to the exhibition? My responses gener-
ated several lines of thought which I then tested on a wider public b
examining other kinds of data (2-5 below) when the exhibition came to
London.8
614 TONY WALTER
(2) At the end of the exh

ments in a 'guestbook'. I
from the late summer of
London visitors as a wh
between 20 and 40 in most cases.
(3) In addition, comments can be made on the web. The exhibition's press
office provided me with a laptop on which these comments were held, listed by
language, and I scrutinized 1,500 consecutive English-language comments from
the same period, emailing a number of them to myself for further analysis.
(4) I read the guestbooks at a table positioned next to the guestbook table,
on which I placed a notice inviting visitors to talk to me about their responses
As a result, I conducted taped interviews with seven visitors, and chatted to
others.
(5) Body Worlds publishes many of its visitors' comments, including some
very negative ones.
(6) I conducted a formal interview with Professor von Hagens, along
with several informal conversations with him and his staff during the London
exhibition.
(7) I conducted telephone interviews with four British people who had
signed donation forms.
The ethnographer writes

Saturday, 16 February 2002, a bright sunny morning in Brussels; dominating the
exhibition entrance is a five-metre-high full-colour banner of the de-skinned
horse-and-rider to be found within. As we enter, though I catch a glimpse of full
bodies in the distance, the start is nothing like what I've been expecting from the
posters of visitors peering at whole-body plastinates (Fig. 2). Rather, we look
down into glass cases at small exhibits, with room for at most a dozen people
around each case. The first has a baby's skull, and explains how the cranium plates
shift over one another at birth, and don't entirely fuse together for some years -
hence the weakness of kids' skulls. Other cases have a femur, or other major bone,
with a stainless steel connection, and the audio-guide tells me how bones knit
(in the way other tissue does not). In another case are all the major joints, with
an explanation of how they move (and one can see how easily a shoulder can
become dislocated); a normal and an arthritic knee (I can imagine in a new way
how much pain my father must have been in with his arthritic knee); an origi?
nal hip-ball and a stainless steel one (remarkable how similar they are, and I can
see how a hip replacement is so much easier than a knee op.).There are no great
shocks, but I am hooked, since I know enough people who've had orthopaedic
surgery, and here it all is shown in its reality. As the poster says, 'La fascination de
l'authentique'. And it seems that everyone else is likewise fascinated. Nobody
seems disturbed or upset, nobody's bored, everyone's engrossed. We are being led
into and through a totally medicalized discourse (consistent with Body Worlds'
educational mission), and we accept this, and are gripped by what we see and
learn. The audio-guide voice is male, clear, clinical, authoritative.
At no point do I hear silly laughter or giggles (though a weekday with school

parties might be different), nor any obvious manifestation of disgust, nor people
looking faint or sick.The friend with whom I'm staying said she really, really didn't
TONYWALTER 615
want to come with me. If she'd

ill? Maybe a number of people
So far I've seen only dry bones.

freaked by these. Next though
then there's an entire person, in
right, standing next to him, are
ton. I'm amazed, as are others
moved from the skeletal to the
later. The guide also explains tha
tissue can be given enough rigid
first exhibits not in a glass ca
touch, but they point details ou
They are fascinated, and I too
tummy muscles are the only m
therefore have to do some 'skele
my weak tummy muscles lead to
cause any obvious side-effects.
We have, therefore, moved - s

toward whole wet corpses, exc
nation means that they aren't
strong spotlighting. We are bein
human full bodies, though eve
This is all very clever,9 and very

material shows only whole bod
assumed that the exhibition wou
the bits within - rather like m
cut into their corpse, beginnin
constituent parts. But we do it
plates of a baby's skull, a femur
stands, then muscles, the circula
start with the person and break
with the bits and add them toge
ing, yet - as a middle-aged perso
operations on their bones ? I can
there are some jigsaws of whol
the whole from discrete bits.
... When I've got used to lots of complete bodies, however, I begin to see it the
other way around, and during a break in the exhibition cafe I look around at
people and find myself mentally undressing them (of skin as well as of clothes)
and seeing them as bundles of muscles, and organs. Is this how medical students
see everyone?10 Reflecting on my de-skinning of my cafe-mates, I realize that
mentally undressing people to expose their skin is to sexualize them; but to
undress them one step further, to take off their skin as well as their clothes, is to
anatomize them. Sexuality is about the sight, the feel, the smell, of skin - utterly
different from the smell-less sight of plasticized muscles and organs that we have
here. I have been skilfully led into a clinical gaze, with none of the trauma expe?
rienced by the first-year medical student who has to make that first cut into a
not-long-dead, fleshy, wet, body (Fox 1979; Hafferty 1991;Walter 2004). And yet,
and yet, these plastinates have a certain curious humanity.
616 TONY WALTER
... Here is a face. All but ey

told) we won't be able to r
is the only time I feel I'm
the skin around the eyes. Ye
face is sliced off, so as it t
the eyes, the nose, the lips.
... The core of the exhibition

literally as well as metaph
cavities, but stop a millimet
can get with an exhibit th
now seen. It feels like we ar
were restricted to medical
hundred years, and now v
really is in the Renaissance t
Tulp's students in Rembrand
matic in the 'exploded' whol
body to be expanded so tha
as all the other organs. In tra
the outer organs before the
Why is
this such a revelati
tute. Even
looking at the fu
stitute. It's the 3-D, real si
into which you can peer an
In a separate section, there

foetuses from 4-8 weeks [F
seven weeks. People are fas
how many have given birth,
are thinking. How many of
they were carrying? Lookin
nant women do have their
not this - anatomical - kno
Then there are two slowly
foetuses from about 15 to
stand in one spot, and wat
with total fascination [Fig. 5
esting, but disturbing: we ar
actually born - what on
monster? Uniquely, this disp
Then we have Reclining wom

me that at 8 months, if the
mother should die suddenl
ian, 'otherwise it dies with
This is the only occasion the
and (b) alludes to the circu
These verbatim extracts fr

time visitor, an experience
how the body's surface pro
TONY WALTER 617
duces anatomical identity, a

by the exhibits; I learned
without demur. I had no qu
body. I spent almost as much
and many were behaving l
months later, I observed sim
frowns, puzzlement, and dis
Let us now turn to the Lo
between what I wrote and w
Other visitors write
When I visited London Body Worlds in September 2002, there wer

guestbooks. Visitors often took several minutes to compose and write,
could spend up to fifteen or twenty minutes reading other peoples com
Many ofthe adults and almost all the children, several aged 6 to 10, giv
age. Over a double-page spread, certain words or phrases may be repea
is as though some visitors leave the exhibition with feelings and reactio
they are not sure how to express, and pick up ideas and key words from
vious entries on the page.12 Occasionally, writers disagree with those wh
written earlier on the page, the later comment always being from an e
siast disagreeing with an earlier critic. Sometimes an entry is briefly an
by a later writer, for example, 'You sad person/child/teenager'.
There are far more positive than negative comments. A number of en
that are generally highly positive nevertheless criticize one particular a
Certain issues clearly divide writers ? whether or not children sho
allowed in, whether dead babies should be displayed, and whether the
body poses are fun or degrading to the donor.
What follows includes only those themes in the guestbooks - both p
and internet versions - that are relevant to this article. Additional data from
observation and interviews are included where appropriate. First I examine
attitudes to plastination itself, then opinions about the way in which the plas?
tinates are displayed.
Plastinated interiors
Fascination
Many comments describe a shift from pre-visit anxiety to on-site fascination:
I was expecting to be shocked and disgusted, but was fascinated instead. Truly amazing
to see under my own skin.!!
its not goury or evil it is an exelent way of showing people of all ages how our bodys
work! ... most people critisising this have not yet been to see it.
My feeling of having been staged-managed by the first, dry, exhibits is con-

firmed by another visitor:
Apprehensive before going but instantly comfortable on entering exhibition.
618 TONY WALTER
Some had had difficulty

had previously seen, but
plastinates in the exhibit
I find that looking at the pi

more disturbing than their or
Von Hagens told me, 'An

books, always for good h
... Pictures always give t
the gothic imagination is
wet, and smelly is not fan
It was Great! and it didn't smell!
Dead bodies that do not smell do indeed force a shift in how we categorize
the world, and it is not surprising if some had been anxious about visiting
'The anatomical exhibition of real human bodies', as the poster on the Londo
Underground has it.
Disgust
Disgust, shock, and criticism are, however, expressed by a number of writers.
The word 'disgust' was rarely elaborated on, so it is hard to interpret. Toilet
training and puberty are two times when we are very aware of our own bodies
and develop and revise our notions of bodily disgust (Miller 1997: 13), so it
is no surprise that many of the disgusted appear to be teenagers. Nor is it
cool for British teenagers to show enthusiasm for adult-organized events. But
it is also possible that children may use 'disgusting', 'gross', 'weird', and 'sick'
as terms of praise; the context did not always make clear the meaning of these
often brief and ungrammatical comments.
Disgust and criticism are often mixed with praise and fascination:
shocking and perhaps a little grotesque but also one of the most interesting things ive
ever seen.
excellent, if a little weird (13 year old).
The clinical gaze13

Insofar as visitors do not experience the exhibition as
they (like myself on my first visit) have accepted th
in which the plastinates are displayed and the accom
(Hallam, Hockey & Howarth 1999: 39). Many describe
cational and informative; they say they have learned
and about the human body:
The most fascinating way to learn about the body - makes yo
They understand their own medical complaints in a
It was nice to see my ailments from the inside.
TONY WALTER 619
And I am not alone in my de-
I saw inner body in everyone after
Some, though, criticize the ex

as too clinical:
Very educational, but lacking in emotion!
Others say it was boring for children, not least because the audio-guide com?
mentary is too adult and too medical. One child criticized it for being too
clinical:
It is very boring because you show the same things over and over but on the other side
I like it is very educational but there shoul be more blood and gutsy stuff it is not very
scary or evolting. Thanks 4 The Great Exhibition.
Children who have been to attractions such as the London or Edinburgh

Dungeon, which go out of their way to scare children, may have been hoping
for loads of blood and guts.They will be disappointed. The only child I know
to have visited one of the Dungeons left in terror before the end, something
that I never witnessed in many hours observation at Body Worlds and that
was never referred to in the guestbook. Though several guestbook entries by
those coming without children make predictions of children having night-
mares, comments about actual pre-adolescent children refer to their positive
engagement in a factual, rather than a gothic, gaze.
Indeed, the exhibition is so devoid of what we normally understand by
blood and guts (though there are guts, as clinically clean as everything else)
that it is actually more clinical than clinical. There is not the smell that, despite
the clinical surroundings, pervades a post-mortem (Fox 1979), or many other
hospital settings:
Absolutely fascinating even for somebody like me who hates needles and would hate to
watch an operation.
The Body Worlds experience is primarily visual, spatial, static, and odourless.
Blood does not spurt, heart muscles do not pump, corpses do not putrefy.
And yet these plastinates are not the virtual bodies to be found on a com-
puter screen: von Hagens' plastinates were once human, they occupy 3-D
space, visitors may move around them. They are experienced as both real and
unreal. And though visitors see the plastinates through a clinical gaze, the next
section shows that Hirschauer (2002) is right that they also attempt to human-
ize and personalize the exhibits, and they do this through gazing not at dis-
sected plastinated interiors but at surface features.
Display
Babies and women
Along with the question of whether children should be admitted, opinion
divided about the baby section. Some expressed warm approval for the exh
620 TONY WALTER
tion as a whole, but objec

clearly disturbed by the b
The real dead babies are real

dead children!
Very interesting and I have learnt a lot. my favorite was about the babies growing. Thanks
(female, age 10).
The babies were, uniquely among the whole-body plastinates, protected by

glass cases (like in a traditional anatomy museum), placed on black velvet (a
sign of mourning),lo and had all their skin on (so looked more real, more
human, than other exhibits). One parent who had had a termination because
of foetal abnormality emailed me:
The most difficult bit of the exhibition for me. I wondered how these parents felt on
discovering their child had a major abnormality and how they would feel if they knew
where their children were now. How would the public have responded had these babies
then been dissected/plastinated in the same way as adults? I suspect this would have been
a step too far for many visitors.
Unlike other Body Worlds exhibits, the babies look little different from those
in existing anatomy museums. The early nineteenth-century collection at the
Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh contains very similar displays of
grossly deformed babies and wax models of normal foetuses, arranged - as at
Body Worlds ? by age. The eighteenth-century Hunterian collection in
London displays a series of normal foetal development. That which most dis-
turbs at Body Worlds does not require plastination and may already be seen
in other anatomy museums.
Body Worlds' policy is to keep donors' identities confidential. The medical
condition of some donors is clear, with blackened lungs and enlarged livers
revealing heavy smokers and alcoholics. But the social identities of whole-
body plastinates are not clear, with two exceptions. These are, first, that it is
clear if the death was in utero or infancy. We have just seen that this person-
alizes these plastinates and disturbs a number of visitors. The second excep-
tion is gender. Almost all the whole-body plastinates are male and, apart from
the swimmer, the few female plastinates display aspects of reproduction,
implicitly defming the female as a reproductive machine. Many female visi?
tors complain that they would like to see their anatomy as well as men's.
Surface tension
'Fascination beneath the surface' is one of Body World's advertising slogans;
'Discover the mysteries under your skin' is another. Such slogans play with an
ambivalence within Western culture about the meaning of surface/interior.
Our anatomical insides (such as blood and guts) are gooey and sticky and
smelly and disgusting compared to the skin's beauty, which can symbolize the
whole human being. On the other hand, the spirit within (e.g. the heart) is
seen as a persons true self, to be contrasted with surface traits that are only
'skin-deep' (Benthien 2002: 17; Miller 1997: 58). We both eulogize and fear
the interior; we both admire and distrust the surface.
Many visitors are fascinated by what they find under the skin at Body
Worlds. But they can be disturbed by surface features. When I took a group
of sociology undergraduates to the exhibition, one fainted at the first exhibit
TONY WALTER 621
which had fingernails, anothe

would not enter the baby sec
may disturb are: (1) the pose
their skin on and that one
tattoos, hairs on the skin, an
Worlds' most controversial w
eight-month child in her ope
itors to be sexually seductive,
and she is wearing lipstick.16
For visitors, skin symbolizes
tity - and it is what makes s
with the babies. Their pose is
actual position in their short
nates) or they simply look dead
detail.Two women are at the c
intrigued, says,'Look, you can
surface features that provide id
The poses
Observation indicates that a number of visitors enjoy the poses - they smile,
they laugh, they point. Opposition to the poses, however, is regularly recorded
in the guestbooks:
Some exhibits arranged in extremely poor taste.
Exploitation of the Dead Human Form. Utterly disgusting. In a word, Shite!
A plastic model depicting swimming or running or catching a ball would not

be seen in poor taste, but - for many visitors - a plastic-filled corpse doing
the same things is. Some visitors see these objects as not just plastic', but as
retaining enough of a corpse-like identity to require some respect ? but not
the respect due normal corpses, otherwise display in any form (even without
poses) would be seen, by British visitors at least, as disgusting. Some oppo-
nents contrast the illegitimacy of the poses with the legitimacy of the scien?
tific gaze:
From a Scientific standpoint the examples of tissue preservation via plastination were
excellent. However, some of the poses were disturbing and disrespectful to the donors.
Initial impression was one of intrigue and awe ... The artistic element is quite repulsive.
Far from highlighting science, it both scuppers and insults it.
A corpse preserved for purely scientific purposes would be more acceptable

to these writers. Yet of course von Hagens knows that the more exotic the
poses, the more people will visit the exhibition; he does not want to provide
just another exhibition for the museum-going classes, and as a businessman
he needs enough visitors to make some profit to re-invest in the business. In
so doing, he inevitably incurs the wrath of some ofthe museum-going classes.
Discussion: plastination, yes; display, perhaps
To conclude this analysis of visitors' writings, no visitors write of being

disturbed by the exhibition's technical innovation ? plastination. Plastination
622 TONY WALTER
enables lay people to view

from probably peer-grou
objected to viewing pla
seemed plastic, not real,
plastination as a mode of
consent:
ethically and emotionally disturbing. I feel the issue of informed conse

addressed
The Alder Hey scandal has highlighted the question of informed consent for
obtaining anatomical specimens, especially of children. Although it seems that
von Hagens has been on the right side of the law in the various countries
from which he has obtained bodies, the law in some of those countries (allow-
ing, for example, unclaimed bodies to be used for dissection) is on the wrong
side of the sensibilities of many Britons. The lack of consent given by babies,
and even by the few non-human specimens (horse, rabbit, chicken), was often
singled out, perhaps reflecting rather British sensibilities about children and
animals.
Apart from this issue of consent, almost all the negative comments con?
cerned the signs of personhood read by some visitors into bodily exteriors
and poses, few if any of which are essential for the display of anatomy. Visi?
tors may also be disturbed by surface features that suggest personhood, several
of which (hair, fingernails, tattoos, an entire foetus) do not require plastina?
tion for their preservation. Perhaps the most emotionally revealing moment
in my first visit to Body Worlds was the face: skin, lips, hair, a person to the
front, scientific anatomy to the rear. The one disturbs; the other is scientifi-
cally fascinating.
Donors write
A full examination of plastination as a new alternative to burial, c

or ordinary anatomical dissection requires an analysis of the languag
donors. Why do they donate? What meaning does it hold for them?
ing these questions in full would require another article, but suffice
say two things. First, of the four donors I interviewed, none had an
about the poses or uses to which their plastinated bodies would be
though some visitors may find certain poses degrading to the dead,
seem very unlikely that any donors, having themselves visited the e
would feel the same way.
Secondly, some donors are attracted by plastination because it av
messiness of burial and the banality of cremation. A British journ
interviewed a number of donors wrote that each 'seems to have ch
tination as a solution to the problem of how their own deaths shoul
with. It also represents a handy antidote to the mournful attitude
prescribed by the Victorians and with which we still live' (Roux 20
donors17 quoted in the donation information pack, plastination ha
gance that burial and cremation cannot match:
TONY WALTER 623
There is a lot of talk about 'dying

a dignified manner. The limited p
always seemed degrading to me an
My soul will know that its body i

very much for this new possibility
1962).
One's body may be perceived to be not only in good hands, but in better
hands than in life:
With regard to my body, I really have not treated it well after decades of bulimia ... I
will make this body available to you, my body which probably will be difficult to handle
for me for the rest of my life (female, born 1956).
People in Britain often choose cremation over burial because they perceive
it as cleaner, more hygienic, more dignified (Walter 1990); plastination takes
this a step further. In fact, given the overall messiness of life on earth, one
14-year-old girl writes in the guestbook of plastination as
wonderful and a class act - five stars! I hope one day I'll be a dead mummy for display
before we all get killed by global warming, species of animals die, meteors hit earth,
flooding, radiation, deserts spreading, no water.
Conclusion
Mummification for eternity (or at least millennia) is now a practic

sibility for anyone willing to pay for their corpse's shipment to the
of Plastination in China, at a price comparable to that of a conv
funeral.
In northwestern Europe, where mummification is not practised,
with soft tissue smells and rots, and is, in Hertz's terminology, wet; dry
are composed of bone or ash. Body Worlds, by displaying soft tissu
dry, does not smell, and is stable, confuses such assumptions about
dry. This is likely to be particularly troublesome in the advertising
whose viewers may well imagine smell and rot. What is surprising,
fore, is the speed with which plastination is accepted by the ma
Body Worlds visitors. To quote one advertising leaflet, 'Layperso
reacted in a completely different way to the exhibition than was p
by experts'. If visitors overwhelmingly approve of the process of p
tion, subject to the deceased's previous consent, it is because the
that these objects were once corpses, but are no longer; they h
transformed into dry remains, into scientific exhibits, losing their
personhood.
But Body Worlds also shows a degree of artistic display and sh
ship redolent of the Catholic mummies of Italy, its baroque extrav
contrasting with the minimalist funeral cultures of late twentieth
northern Europe. And it is here that the problems come, in certain
of display and surface features, both of which re-personalize the e
These features divide visitors. The greater the artistic licence in th
624 TONY WALTER
the less clinical the exhib

some visitors.
A new way to dispose of human corpses - plastination for display - has

indeed arrived. In the long run, though, precisely because plastination is so
permanent, demand for donors may prove limited. Once the number of
medical schools replacing traditional anatomical donation with plastination has
plateaued, and once von Hagens has achieved his aim of a permanent public
exhibition on every continent, some of those signing donation forms today
may, when they decease, find their services no longer required. The young
visitor who wrote 'I hope one day I'U be a dead mummy for display' had
perhaps better not live too long.
NOTES
I am indebted to Hans Hadders, Valerie Sheach Leith, Dirk vom Lehn, Kay W
anonymous JRAI readers for their helpful comments. Pictures are provided by,
by permission of, Body Worlds.
I In Bavaria, for example, there was in 2003 an (unsuccessful) legal challenge t
ten, on the basis that the law required plastinates, as human remains, to be bur
in 2002, official concern about Body Worlds was based not on any law abou
legislation regulating anatomical donation and dissection.
"Conversation with author, 13 January 2003.
3 See, for example, the cover story in Der Spiegel 4, 2004 (19 January). For o
ofthe profit motive among death workers, see Mitford (1999) and Parry (1994).
4 My assessment o? von Hagens in this section derives from my observation
sations with him, and from interviews and conversations with several people wh
his lifestyle twenty-four hours a day.
3 There are very few comparative analyses of the treatment of the dead
West, rare exceptions being Goody & Poppi (1994) and C. Davies (1996). See a
(1998) frequently misleading encyclopaedia of funeral customs, and Ha
Lamers' (1963) more accurate, but dated, one. Sweeping assertions that death
modern society (e.g. Aries 1983; Blauner 1966) ignore marked differences b
societies.
6 Personal observation, Tokyo, 1999.

7Confirmed in interview with author, summer 2002.
8 Many thanks to Felicity Ruperti, Kate Anthony, Toby Jones, and other Body Worlds staff
for their help in offering and making these materials available. They went out of their way to
assist, including providing data I had not known existed.
9 And fully intended, confirmed in interviews with von Hagens and his wife Angelina
Whalley. Traditionally, anatomical textbooks also start with the skeletal and muscular structure.
1(1 Apparently it is (Good 1994: 73).
II The London exhibition differed from the Brussels version in important respects. The
London venue, a high white-painted factory, felt cold and clinical compared to the low curved
vaults of warm Flemish brick. The baby section had fewer exhibits, in a static line rather than
in revolving cabinets, so visitors moved at their own pace rather than watching a rotating
carousel, and they continued to talk to each other. Unlike in Brussels, the London exhibition
did not warn visitors that they might find the baby section disturbing.
12Compare condolence books (Jones 1999) and visitors books in private homes.
13 For a more detailed analysis of this aspect of Body Worlds, see Walter (2004).
141 am indebted to Stephanie Fournier for insights about the non-visual senses. Plastination
still awaits research from the viewpoint of the anthropology of the senses.
10 My thanks to Julia Knight for this observation.
16 This exhibit is one of those on which vom Lehn trained his video camera.
17 Most donors are German, so it is likely that these quotes are translations.
TONY WALTER 625
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TONY WALTER 627
Wetz, EJ. & B. Tag (eds) 2001. S

(Beautiful new worlds of the body
White, S. 2000. The law relating to
81.
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Worpole, K. 2003. Where the dead
Plastination et exposit
les morts
Resume
La plastination offre un nouveau moyen de transformer en objet stable et see le corps hu

et instable des defunts, suivant non plus un rituel religieux mais une technique med
Dans l'exposition ? Korperwelten/Body Worlds ?, le public paie pour voir des corps
tines et les visiteurs sont invites a donner leur corps pour etre plastines a leur tour apres
mort. L'auteur a voulu savoir si les visiteurs acceptaient la plastination destinee a l'expos
comme une forme legitime de traitement des corps. Trois sources de donnees sont utilis
le recit fait par l'ethnographe de sa premiere visite a l'exposition, a Bruxelles, les comm
taires ecrits par les visiteurs a Londres, et les motivations formulees par certains donne
Dans leur tres grande majorite, les visiteurs admettent l'idee de la plastination comme t
ment fmal du corps : ils ont pu voir les structures internes des corps, seches et inodores,
le cadre volontairement clinique et scientifique de l'exposition, et ont souvent ete fas
par ce qu'ils ont vu. Tout n'est cependant pas aussi simple, puisque certains elements
traitement des corps et de leur presentation permettent une personnification qui peut e
mal percue. Autrement dit, la plastination en elle-meme est acceptee, mais pas toute
formes d'exposition.
Department of Sociology, University of Reading, PO Box 218, Reading RG 6AA,

j.a. walter@rdg. ac. uk

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Plastination for Display: A New Way to Dispose of the Dead

Author(s): Tony Walter

DISPOSE OF THE DEAD

Plastination provides a new method, governed by medical technique rather tha

I hope one day I'll be a dead mummy for display.

The methods by which human bodies may be respectfully disposed

? Royal Anthropological Institute 2004.

secondary burial (Danfor

Plastination and Body Worlds

to open up the earth s interior

Figure 1. Internal organs.

people could donate their bodies for dissection (with whatever

Figure 2. Man holding his own skin.

Figure 3. Basketball player.

any conventional history of display (Bennett 1995; Hooper-Gre

The British context

timent by assuming re-use

scandal. The dead body is p

Body Worlds scholarship

I have argued that plastin

Apart from frequent refer

How to answer these questio

(2) At the end of the exh

The ethnographer writes

At no point do I hear silly laughter or giggles (though a weekday with school

want to come with me. If she'd

So far I've seen only dry bones.

We have, therefore, moved - s

This is all very clever,9 and very

... Here is a face. All but ey

... The core of the exhibition

In a separate section, there

Then we have Reclining wom

These verbatim extracts fr

duces anatomical identity, a

Other visitors write

When I visited London Body Worlds in September 2002, there wer

My feeling of having been staged-managed by the first, dry, exhibits is con-

Apprehensive before going but instantly comfortable on entering exhibition.

Some had had difficulty

I find that looking at the pi

Von Hagens told me, 'An

It was Great! and it didn't smell!

excellent, if a little weird (13 year old).

The clinical gaze13

The most fascinating way to learn about the body - makes yo

They understand their own medical complaints in a

It was nice to see my ailments from the inside.

And I am not alone in my de-

I saw inner body in everyone after

Some, though, criticize the ex

Very educational, but lacking in emotion!

Children who have been to attractions such as the London or Edinburgh

tion as a whole, but objec

The real dead babies are real

The babies were, uniquely among the whole-body plastinates, protected by

which had fingernails, anothe

Some exhibits arranged in extremely poor taste.

Exploitation of the Dead Human Form. Utterly disgusting. In a word, Shite!

A plastic model depicting swimming or running or catching a ball would not

A corpse preserved for purely scientific purposes would be more acceptable

Discussion: plastination, yes; display, perhaps