Yesterday a number of us toddled to the Ontario Science Centre to see the BodyWorlds 2 show. It features actual human cadavers, preserved through plastinization, in various stages of muscular, nervous and skeletal undress and posed to show various aspects of anatomy, disease, and dynamic motion.
Almost everybody who went had a background in some aspect of what was only display: Laura’s sister Tamiko works with pathologists, Laura’s mom is a retired lab tech who has created plastinized biological samples (albeit on a much smaller scale), Laura’s aunt Michiko was a nurse, and Laura and I studied brain and behaviour (including surgery on, and post-preparation of, rat brains).
I had heard that there were about 25 cadavers and lots of body parts, and I went thinking the latter were filler. In fact, I now think that the bits and pieces were key to understanding and focusing on what was going on. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the whole-sized bodies became repetitive, but by the end the subtleties in the differences of the way they were displayed were more likely to be appreciated by an anatomist.
And no matter how comfortable you are with the concept of these latter-day Visible Men and Women (and occasional ungulates), we were all emotionally drained by the show. Is it coming face-to-face with the reality of the anatomy or of my own mortality in this fragile frame of bone and meat? For me it was the one-two punch of the two together.
And apropos of our visit (since he doesn’t know about the show), Jon suggested we sing Pinky and the Brain’s Brainstem song as we went up the stairs for dinner. How very fitting!
Sung to the tune of Camptown Races, lyrics by Tom Minton. In this evening’s performance, the role of Pinky was played by Jonathan, and the role of the Brain was played by Daddy.
Brain: Neo-cortex, frontal lobe
Pinky: Brainstem! Brainstem!
Brain: Hippocampus, neural node
Right hemisphere.
Brain: Pons and cortex visual
Pinky: Brainstem! Brainstem!
Brain: Sylvian fissure, pineal
Left hemisphere.
Brain: Cerebellum left!
Cerebellum right!
Synapse, hypothalamus
Striatum, dendrite.
Brain: Axon fibers, matter gray
Pinky: Brainstem! Brainstem!
Brain: Central tegmental pathway
Temporal lobe.
Brain: White core matter, forebrain, skull
Pinky: Brainstem! Brainstem!
Brain: Central fissure, cord spinal
Parietal.
Brain: Pia mater!
Meningeal vein!
Medulla oblongata and lobe limbic
Micro-electrodes…
Pinky: Naaarf!
P+B : THE BRAIN!!!
I love the Brainstem song but Yakko’s World is better.
Everybody! “United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Peru!”
& etc…
I just love that song!!! I think I’ll be humming it all day long!
I read about the Bodyworks exhibit in a novel about a year ago, and wondered why I’d never heard about the actual exhibit; so when it came to town, I was excited about getting tickets but also apprehensive because of all the information and emotion that had surrounded its description in the story.
The only friend interested in going is a my best friend’s husband, who’s a surgeon. He may bring quite different remarks to it than a regular person. I’m concerned though that it’s going to freak me out — the reality of it, that all we really ARE is meat with consciousness.
I’ll hide behind Dr. Rick if I feel queasy.
He said to me, “And let’s go out for dinner afterwards” but I’m guessing I’ll have to take a raincheck on that… what if I can never look at friends, salespeople or my cat again without superimposing a plastinated cadaver on the image of them??? What if I can never eat again. Oh wait a minute, that’d be a good thing…
I bet the conversation on YOUR trip would have been worth hearing.
Loris
Nah, your dinner will be fine. I hope I didn’t overstate how I feel on this: Bodyworks simply has the impact that any well-crafted exhibition or show should have. Makes ya think and by the end your head is buzzing.
Some of our conversation was worth hearing. This majority of the show is set in an open concourse, so conversation tapered off as we all went at our own pace. I wish Tamiko had been nearby when I was in the part that dealt with her subject area. We did have some nice communal discussion try to guess what the heck the parotid glands did. It turns out it’s the largest of the salivary glands. Must be important, considering how much of your face it takes up.
I remember laughing at how sheep have tongues bigger than their brains, evolved and bred to appreciate the taste of grass (the show features a split-down-the-middle example of a sheep if you don’t believe me). But given how much of our heads are devoted to keeping things mouth-watering, I’m just gonna shut my big monkey mouth.
I’d be the first to admit that Randy Rogel’s “Wakko’s World” is a better song. But the Brain’s design was stolen from my head and I thought that he deserved a song that only he could sing. (This marked the very first occasion Brain sang in Animaniacs) Years later, “Brainstem” became popular in certain medical schools as a learning device covering the rudimentary structures of the human brain.