←back to thread

90 points Michelangelo11 | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.517s | source
Show context
alwa ◴[] No.44522167[source]
Bizarre that this category of touring show continues after all these years. It seems like such self-consciously guilty behavior on the part of the organizers: you don’t accidentally end up with human corpses (that you’re selling as entertainment on the basis of being human corpses!).

They came by them somehow. If the nature of someplace’s justice system is that a death sentence comes with a “turned-to-plastic-and-paraded-around-for-selfies” enhancement, so as to trouble the offender’s eternal soul as well as their life, then just.. say that. “They’re ’bad guys’ and we as a company believe that’s what bad guys deserve.” Or even, “we weren’t involved in the circumstances of their death, but we figure if we’d had a chance to ask them they probably would be fine with it.”

As morally repugnant as I find the entire endeavor, I bet it wouldn’t even hurt ticket sales: people in the West have, in the not-so-distant past, treated hangings and beheadings as social occasions.

But like, there’s a right way to do informed consent—why not just do it and say “yeah we did it the obvious way”? Come to think of it… the ambiguity sure is a reliable path to free attention. It wouldn’t be the first marketing strategy to rely on provocation…

replies(7): >>44522247 #>>44522273 #>>44522287 #>>44522311 #>>44522554 #>>44522587 #>>44522648 #
1. potato3732842 ◴[] No.44522287[source]
The problem is that saying "yeah, we have no idea where the bodies came from beyond the fact that the people who we bought them from were authorized to sell them and we don't really care" won't pass muster with the subset of westerners an exhibit like this courts.
replies(1): >>44522581 #
2. xenophonf ◴[] No.44522581[source]
That's only a problem for exhibitors who value money over the inherent humanity of their exhibits.

I'm amused by the idea of donating my body to science, especially to medical colleges for teaching purposes, but I would want to make some kind of connection with that future. I would want people to at least know my name, see my face, have some idea that I am a person, that I want them to use what's left of me to go out and do some good in the world with it.

We're all just made out of meat, but that shouldn't dehumanize us. On the contrary. And running roughshod over human rights to put on a show does not treat its subjects humanely. Worse, that harms the audience, who gets inured to that inhumanity.