I saw a lot of dead people last week–mostly because I’ve discovered hulu.com and the entire first season of Bones.

It’s an interesting show in that it places death, specifically rotting, gooey, slimy, violently abused corpses on an elegant, scientific and hygenic table for the viewing enjoyment of the audience. The lovely Emily Deschanel runs her hands over the bones, coaxing out the truths found deep within the marrow. Her team of smart, but attractive and young, scientists rip apart the dirt that covers the mutilated bodies and rebuild the the skeleton image as the bones implies the face looks, and etc. to tell the audience the mystery. The whole show is centered around death, particularly the corpse of a person who never gets to speak but who is the diving board from which the show launches action, plot, drama and even romance!

Basically, as a forensics team, Emily and co. piece together and paint a portrait of the victim’s last moments.

I also saw real dead bodies last week–at the California Science Center. The BodyWorks exhibit by Guther von Hagens is on show through September. Using the latest form of embalming called plastination, von Hagens’ exhibitions brings real specimens of human remains to live human audiences. Think of it this way: Instead of studying a specimen in a jar of formaldehyde, scientists and laypersons can now reach out, pick up, examine and touch a real human remain as if it were a laminated piece of paper–no decay and no goo.

Ok, you can’t really touch the exhibits, but you get to be really close. I present images here and here.

My first thought upon entering the exhibit is that we’ve stumbled upon a new form of portraiture. Think about it: So many classical works of art and even photography are meant to capture and evoke the memory and face of a certain person or time. In the California Science Center are portraits of people who were real and alive, but died and allowed their skin to be stripped and insides to be put on display. That’s no mannequin you’re looking at with generic features. Instead, that’s the unique inner face and body of what once was a person with a name, favorite color and, perhaps, an allergy.

As I wandered along the exhibit, looking at plastinates in athletic poses (hurdling, tumbling, doing archery), and at slides (slices of individual organ systems) as well as individual body parts (bones and organs, bones and organs sliced in half, bones and organs in certain stages of health or disease), I began to see the living patrons as pieces. Suddenly, the outside, which is somethings that is thrown in our faces so much, didn’t matter, and I was just thinking about how the cheek muscles in the live people standing next to me contained hundreds of capillaries that somehow connect back to their aorta and heart, which shoots red blood cells through the entire body in about 20 seconds.

This post may sound serious, but at the exhibit, I was as giddy as a school kid on a field trip. I started wishing that I had a doctor to ask questions to, that I remembered everything in my high school biology class. I had to sit in a corner for awhile because I was asking myself and other patrons too many questions that I couldn’t answer, they couldn’t answer thoroughly or that the signs didn’t even begin to dissect.

How old were the plastinates at death? Was the plastinate posing as a gymnast really capable of such movement in life?

When they get posed, are the muscles malleable? Do they automatically stretch into the correct athletic position or do they need to be individually placed to mimic muscular movement?

Does the plastinate exhibit body mass loss after plastination or is its size and proportions exactly as it was in life? If the plastinate was a particularly sick person, is that something the body would show?

If the humerus is connected to the shoulder bone, where is that on me?

If what? Then who? Why that? Can it? Would it? Should it? If it did, then what? Why? So what? What does it mean? How does it do it? Why would it happen? What could go wrong?  And etc.

The energy of the exhibit was really good. I was surprised not to see any signs of protests or of patrons, who were unable to handle the pieces, leave or voice their concern. Kids were everywhere as well as persons of shapes and sizes. At the table next to the lung pieces, there was a plastic case for smokers to discard their cigarettes for good. On the upper story, patrons were able to take their blood pressure and even touch an example of a plastinated human heart.

There was a plastinated giraffe in the last room as well as information for potential donors.

I guess I could talk about all the scientific facts that I learned, but I wouldn’t remember them all–my head reeled with information and questions so much so that by the end of my tour, I left exhausted. But I do want to again reiterate how thought-provoking the exhibit was. The Science Center says that von Hagens approach to plastination is to bring a new dialogue to the field of anatomy, much like what happened with Leonardo da Vinci. He bound science and art, innovation and creativity, life and death, invention and portraiture, and that is exactly what happens at BodyWorks. There is the heart and mind and everything else packed tightly beneath a skin that is as glorious a creation of human beings as a story is bound within a book.