Category Archives: cadaver

Evil Dead and the dead body

Last semester around April, me and my friends decided to go watch a gem of a movie called Evil Dead. Now, Evil Dead was a remake of a 1981 movie directed by Sam Raimi. The movie consists of a group of teenagers who go to a cabin to detox this girl:

but it doesn’t go well for her….

She eventually gets possessed by some demonic spirit. This transition from a young, living girl to a possessed demon-girl was interesting to me because while she’s still alive, her body seems to be decaying in the same way a corpse decays. Why is it that demonic possession is frequently manifested in the rotting of the body? By associating the dead body with the demonic body, there seems to be a sort of implicit judgment of the dead body as having a deep connection to Satan or demons. The dead body is unholy and thus possession manifests itself through turning the host body into a corpse.

As I grew to perceive the possessed girl as a quasi-corpse, scenes such as this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lmGTDg-Asw

made me think more about the relationship between possession and death. The girl in the movie seems to no longer occupy her body, as seen when she says that Mia is no longer there. This reminded me of the saying, “S/he’s in a better place now” in that the body is thought to no longer contain the person’s soul. So, much like the dead body, the possessed body no longer contains the host soul.

In addition, my reaction to the sexualization of the possessed body seemed to parallel my reaction to necrophilia. As something that no longer exists in an easily categorized plane as living or dead, the possessed body seemed to function as something that cannot give consent. The sexualization of something that physically resembled a corpse made me uncomfortable, something that the makers of the movie wanted.

State Investigates Hospital Incident: Body Removed Without Consent

http://www.emorywheel.com/state-investigates-hospital-incident/

The Emory Wheel for Tuesday, September 24, 2013 reported an incident at our very own Emory University Hospital. The body of Leon Anderton, 68, was removed to be embalmed at Gregory B. Levett & Sons Funeral Homes reportedly without the consent of the hospital or family.

This is an example in everyday life that involves the problematic nature of a corpse. Can someone own a corpse? Who has the authority to handle this corpse? Why would something like this happen and why is so problematic that it did happen?

Something that also came up in this article is that the embalming process does not adhere to Orthodox Christian beliefs, which the family of the deceased is. But the process was already done by the funeral home when the body was returned. How does one rectify this situation when rituals so personal to a family are overlooked? Are there measures set up for this in their culture? Should there be? Why is it that embalming is the go-to ritual in American funeral homes? Since we have such diversity in our country, shouldn’t funeral directors cater to the diversity that exists in funeral rituals?

Beautiful and Macabre Meet in Art

http://www.jessicaharrison.co.uk/page7.htm

Look at this page, it’s on tumblr. This person makes porcelain figures of young, beautiful, 19th century-looking women with organs or their heads in their hands. This reminds me of our discussion of the idea of death being mixed with sensuality or beauty in the 17th and 18th centuries. The best way that they seemed to have represented this was with young women of a marriageable age coming into contact with the personification of death, or sometimes being that personification of death. These porcelain figures bring this gruesomeness of death and adds it to these beautiful women, who seem to be the picture of femininity. What are y’all’s thoughts on this? What message is this sending? and is it a good one? Does it speak to some nonchalance on our part about death? Does it discredit or support our pairing of beauty with death?

Seems almost zombie-like to me.

Marrying a Corpse

THE CORPSE BRIDE BY TIM BURTON

I recently just watched the Tim Burton movie The Corpse Bride and it got me thinking about the two worlds of the living and dead that Burton had created in the movie.

If you don’t know plot, a young Victorian man named Victor is supposed to marrying an woman, named Victoria, from an upper-class but unbelievably poor family that is using Victor’s rich merchant family to keep themselves from going bankrupt. Victor afraid of his wedding vows, runs away from the rehearsal in the woods, where, reciting his wedding vows, finally gets them right and put the ring on what looks like the root of a tree. Little does he know he actually put the ring on a corpse of a young bride who was murdered on her wedding night, becoming her husband. And the plot thickens…

What is interesting in this movie is the stark contrast between the world of the living and the world of the dead. The world of the dead is colorful, full of raucous jazz and laughter and is almost poking fun at the way each person died by making jokes about a man cut in half, the head of a waiter, etc. etc. And the way the Corpse Bride was betrayed and killed by her lover is made into a fantastically fun song that a skeleton named Bone Jangles sings. Comparatively, the world of the living is black and white and filled with organ music. The living appear more dead than the dead, with their sunken-in eyes and grey lips.

This is a story where the dead have this life in them that the living lack. The world of the living is restrained and limited, dark and grey, whereas the world of the dead is raucous and fun, jazzy, bright and coloful.

Update: In light of our discussion today on 17th and 18th century views on death, I would like to point out that the love and sensuality of death that is brought out in these centuries, is apparent in this movie. We are not particularly disgusted that Victor will marry the corpse bride, we’re still banking on Victoria, but we feel sorry for the dead bride who was killed by a person she loved and trusted. What we might find problematic in relating to the bride is that she is dead and we are not, but look at the song lyrics of “Tears to Shed”, a song she sings:

The Corpse Bride – Tears to Shed

I know, it’s a spider and maggot telling her how special she is, BUT the message of the song is that she can still feel and do everything a living human can except breath (and she’s rotting, of course). She is still seen as beautiful and mostly marriageable and Victor promises to marry her. Of course this is post 17th and 18th century so Victor can’t be married to a dead person, but has to kill himself in order to be with her (so no real necrophilia here) and eventually Victor and Victoria do end up together so it’s living with living and dead with dead as it should be. Still it has that same sensuality of death that was beginning to be represented in the 17th c. then carried on to extremity in the 18th c.

America’s Next Top Corpse?

In season 8 of America’s Next Top Model, executive producer Tyra Banks received extensive criticism for her crime scene photo shoot, in which she made contestants pose as brutally murdered corpses dressed in glamorous clothing. The premise of the photo shoot was as follows: one contestant becomes jealous of the success of another and subsequently decides to strangle, stab, or mangle her opponent. The result? An edgy photograph, editorial enough to be in the pages of Vogue.

For a slideshow of the photographs, click here.

But it was not the concept of the photo shoot itself that critics found disturbing, rather, it was the shoot’s glorification of the violence and abuse against women. According to blogger Sabine Hikel, “Spliced together, the photos become a pornographic assemblage of horror; perhaps this is the point. Interspersed with very disturbing facts about violence against women, the effect of the photos is intensified.” The pictures, in a sense, represent the types of extreme violence that women most often face. In some photos, for example, the women are sprawled on the floor or over a bed, half naked or in ripped lingerie. This positioning seems to imply that these women died after experiencing some form of domestic abuse or rape. Additionally, their seductive poses and partial nudity indicate their roles as sexual objects. Because the contestants are modeling death, the pictures become much more about the makeup, clothes, and styling of the shot rather than the gruesome deaths each contestant was made to portray. Even during the elimination panel, Banks and the other judges make the point that regardless of the shot’s premise, the models must always remember to showcase the clothes. The message in these pictures is clear: alive or dead, women are glamorous objects, subject to the voyeuristic inclinations of the public.

Yet, the arguments of these critics seem overly one-sided. Yes, the women in these pictures are representing violent deaths, which seem lost in the beauty aspect of the photographs. However, the artistic value of these photos cannot be overlooked. From the photographer’s perspective, as well as that of the judges, these pictures are creative portrayals of taboo issues. Death, a process that is dark and scary, is reappropriated to an image that is beautiful and interesting. Of course, I am not condoning violent deaths or abuse toward women, but neither are these photos necessarily. Countless artists have used death as a motif in their artwork, and many more internet fetishists have come up with websites like “Suicide Girls” where they post pictures of girls who model suicide in provocative sexual positions. If these pictures really are just another type of creative outlet, then what’s the harm of posting them? Can death only be portrayed in a horrific and mortifying way? Additionally, does it make a difference that women are the objects of these pictures? Would our criticisms still hold true if the subjects of these pictures were men? Regardless of what we think, however, there’s no denying that Banks pushed the envelope. She definitely got our attention.

For Hikel’s article, click here.
For another similar article click here.
Finally, copy and paste this link for an article looking at violence against women in high fashion <www.rymaec.org/files/TV.Fall_.SayWhat.Final_.pdf>.

~Tiken S.

 

The fine line between bearing witness to atrocities and respecting the dead

This week in class, we read an excerpt from one of Philip Gourevitch’s gripping book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families about the genocide in Rwanda. His testimony of visiting the Nyarubuye Church after the massacre initiated a bigger discussion of what is ethically acceptable when it comes to using actual human remains to bear testimony of atrocities to commemorate events in the past, and also to assure that nobody ever forgets or questions the authenticity of this history. Andrea shared with us her family’s images from a visit to Auschwitz, a site that remains not only a ruin of a painful past, but also provides actual evidence against Holocaust deniers today. It is hard to argue against such tangible facts on the ground. Then a friend of mine, Petter Linde, who also happens to be an archaeologist, sent me an interesting link to an article by BBC News, that reveals a similar discussion about the ethics of photographing and displaying images of the dead from World War 1, entitled Fallen Soldiers: Is it right to take images of bodies?

Is it acceptable to show images like this from WW1, or is it ethically so problematic that the benefits of bearing witness of these horrific events do not compensate for the humiliation and lack of sensitivity and respect for the dead?

Documenting the dead – to create a record, to support testimonies of atrocities, to communicate what most of us are unable to put into words – has long been business as usual for journalists.  But we see that today this is becoming increasingly questioned by both the public and by authorities. I understand the visceral reaction to photos of dead people, and I feel sympathy for those who feel that this is in some way undignified or at least questionable. But at the same time we must then also ask ourselves where to draw the line? Is it not equally, if not more problematic, to publish images of living people in conflicts – those who may still be suffering, or whose lives may be at risk because of the exposure. Is it not more objectionable to capture the images of starving children or wounded soldiers, than of dead ones? Of course, this immediately gets very complicated and probably we must resort to an uncommitted “it depends”. And yet, without testimonies like this, would the world community care, even less take action?

The image of the naked Phan Thi Kim Phuc in 1972 raised awareness among the American public about the reality on the ground in Vietnam and the effects of the use of napalm bombing for thousands of civilians.

Without images like that of Phan Thi Kim Phuc the American public may have felt differently about the Vietnam war.

But the question remains: how far should we go to use the bodies of the dead to tell our stories? Do their voices to some extent still speak through the materiality of their bodies, or, are we simply exploiting the raw effect these gruesome images have to make our own points and further our own agendas?

Liv Nilsson Stutz

 

The Modern Mummy

There is a certain fascination with the idea of mummies. The fact that they are so old, yet extremely well preserved makes them an interesting area of study for scientists. In a recent Discovery Curiosity special, this was just the topic of research. The special, titled “I Was Mummified”, chronicles the journey of a terminally ill Alan Billis who donated his body to be mummified in the name of science. Dr. Stephen Buckley, the scientist in charge of the project, had been studying the way of embalming that took place in the time of Egyptian pharaohs. First, he chemically analyzed the compounds found in and on mummies. Then using only materials that would have been available back then such as linen, beeswax, sesame oil, and salt, Buckley performed as many as 200 experiments to perfect the process. The only thing left to do was to test out his seemingly perfected method on a human.

Shortly after his death, Alan Billis’s process of becoming a modern day Pharaoh had begun. His internal organs were removed through a small incision in his abdomen. The only thing left was the heart, because the heart was thought to perform the functions that we now know the brain performs. The brain was also left undisturbed, contrary to popular belief that the brain was removed through the nose using hooks. The body cavity was filled with linen balls to preserve fullness. The incision and body were sealed using a beeswax and sesame oil mixture. Then in order to draw the moisture out of the internal tissues, Alan was placed in a natron salt bath for 35 days. This process helped to set the body fat in a new stable form. He was then placed in a heated chamber to dry out for two weeks. Finally, he was wrapped in linen and left to dry out for six more weeks.

After these six weeks, he was partially unwrapped to be observed. He appeared dark, but still resembled himself. Decomposition seemed to have been halted, his skin was hard and leathery rather than soft and slimy as would have been expected without the process of mummification. The scientists had succeeded.

Mummy (not Alan Billis)

This was so amazing to me. The fact that scientists could recreate the methods of the ancient Egyptian embalmers is a testament to modern day science. However, the even more incredible fact is that thousands of years ago people had this knowledge, which allowed them to preserve bodies that are still around today.

Ritual mummification was crucial to the Egyptians because it allowed the body and soul to reunite in the afterlife. Even though, today it was not so much a ritual as it was a science experiment, learning about the ritual lets us clearly see the time and care that was put into preservation of the body. This is still done today with our less intensive form of embalmment. In order to make modern day embalming a seemingly normal practice, we tend to place our reasoning for this technique in past accepted funerary practices, like mummification.

To read more: http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/season-2-episodes2.htm

Savanna Johnson

Resting In Pieces?

When one dies, the conservation of the integrity of the body is practiced in our culture.  Many times when a person dies, we still have an emotional attachment to the body because the body and identity of the person are intertwined.   Although the person has died, the body is still treated with respect through the conduction of certain rites and rituals at funerals.  The treatment of the dead body is related with mortuary practices.  The way cadavers are controlled, is the way the family copes with the death of their loved one. In other words, the way the cadaver is handled is the way we indirectly handle and define death.  Thus, funerals provide a sense of closure, and introduce the initial process of peaceful detachment. However, for a Muslim family in London, this was not the case.

On Friday April 18, 2003, a Muslim woman’s body was found in the hospital morgue covered with pieces of bacon, as it was being arranged for the viewing. In Islam, the consumption of pork is prohibited.  Thus, the act of having bacon put on the body is not only disrespectful to the body, but also to the religion, the family, and the Muslim community at large. One of the family members said, “ ‘I witnessed her passing away and then for me to witness that again, it’s traumatic. I feel emotionally raped.’ ”  The person who committed this crime was attacking the religious beliefs of the deceased, by performing this traumatizing act. As a Muslim myself, I was awfully disturbed and repulsed. Even if the person who died wasn’t Muslim, it is such a grotesque thing to do in general!  But because the family is Muslim, a deeper meaning is behind it.  Somebody symbolically put what is forbidden in Islam on the dead body as “a slap in the face”.   This incident reflects on how cadavers are located in a liminal phase, of being between a subject and an object.   The dead body is just an object, but is the main subject of this issue.  This hate crime just shows that people are capable of doing anything and everything they possibly can to make a point.

As mentioned earlier, funerals provide a sense of closure for the family members.  However, this upsetting act made it a lot worse for the family to cope with their grandmother’s death. As a result, there is a cash value prize to whoever comes forward on who may have committed this racial hate crime.  The article can be found in the link below:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/muslim-womans-body-found-in-hospital-morgue-covered-with-bacon-745706.html

 

S.G.

The Frozen Dead Guy Days

Some families traditionally cremate their deceased, some bury them, and in Colorado we sometimes like to keep them chilling in a shed in the back. Literally.

About 15 miles down the road from my home in the foothills of the Rockies, there is a relatively small town called Nederland, Colorado. Around 1300 people inhabit the mountain town, yet if you drive by during the first week of March you are sure to find it packed. You may also accidentally run into a scheduled coffin race or ice turkey bowling contest. In 2012 Nederland celebrated the 10th annual Frozen Dead Guy Days festival, inspired by and dedicated to “Grandpa Bredo,” more formally known as Bredo Morstoel.

Mr. Morstoel is originally from Norway and after passing away spent several years at a cryonics facility in California. Since 1993, several of his relatives, who reside in Nederland, have kept him cool in the “Tuff Shed,” a mini cryonics facility on their property in Nederland. Unfortunately his daughter Aud Morstoel and grandson Trygve Bauge experienced some trouble with visas and a near eviction because of electricity and running water requirements, but with the help of a local reporter Grandpa Bredo became an international sensation. There has been some minor continued legal trouble surrounding the housing of Mr. Morstoel in the Tuff shed and the festival that is dedicated to him, including a new Nederland law concerning the storing of bodies (which does not, however, apply to Mr. Morstoel since he was already being housed in Nederland at the time of the creation of the law) and a complaint filed by the family concerning festival naming rights.

Even so, the festival is still going strong and grows with each year. This past year’s events included tours to the Tuff Shed, cryogenics presentations, Snowy Beach volleyball, and a polar plunge among other events and musical performances.

Being enrolled in a class that focuses on the topic of death and burial, the Frozen Dead Guy Days immediately caught my attention the first time I saw a flyer. I’ve always been interested in cryonics, but have never had the chance to view a cryonics facility or listen to a lecture on it. At what point does the freezing or the work of the cryonics team begin, since pinpointing a time of death becomes more difficult with every medical advancement? How does brain death fit into this? If a patient is certified brain dead, can the team from the hired cryonics facility come in and begin their work on an otherwise living body? Would this really be any different than if the process of organ donation were to be started right after brain death?

Though cryonics and the housing of deceased relatives on private property raises a lot of legal, moral, and just plain interesting questions, what I do know is that next time I’m in town during that first week of March, I will be hopping on the bus to Nederland for the weekend.

To read the fully history of the Frozen Dead Guy Days and find more information on the festival, see http://frozendeadguydays.org/aboutfdgd.

Jana Muschinski

Cadavers: Something of Value and Meaning for Some

There is much controversy about how the bodies of the dead should be treated. In the past, during times of great plagues, those who suffered and died from the plagued had their dead bodies piled on one another in the streets. Some people had the lucky job of picking up the dead bodies and dragging them out of the cities in order to “clean” the streets. Nowadays, that would be considered cruel and disrespectful. We have established laws that regulate what we can and cannot do to a dead body, such as dissection, burying one in a residential place, and having sexual intercourse with one. However, most of the laws that are set in place are done so in order to protect emotions of the remaining family member’s or make them feel better based on what they think a dead body actually represents or contains. Growing up in a society that practices such laws made it difficult for me to understand how other cultures could have opposing views of the dead body and treat them as mere objects.

For example, the Chinese sold the plastinated bodies to the United States to be put on display in museums of New York City and Atlanta in “Bodies…The Exhibition” to be viewed by paying customers. These bodies were taken from chinese prisons without the prior consent of the deceased or their family members. The skin on their bodies were peeled back, and the bodies were arranged in comical “poses.

What? Is there no wrong doing done here because the benefits (income) that can be made by such an exhibit is so significant? Or is there no attachment because these people are not Americans, and since we do not have any cultural or familial commonalities with these people, should our laws not apply to bodies brought into the country? Is this not cruel and brutal and inhumane? This is outrageous and disgusting.

You can read more about this at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1241931/Bodies-Revealed-exhibition-accused-putting-executed-Chinese-prisoners-show.html

picture from: http://ourtakeonfreedom.wordpress.com/2012/02/26/bodies-exhibit/