Note: This was a course assignment for Death and the Maiden
The more things change, the more they stay the same was the refrain going through my mind as I read the assigned articles this week. The key themes of the objectification of women and the curiosity that impels us, as humans, to want to see inside our bodies.
Objectification of Women
Millais’ depicted Ophelia laying in a stream with her arms outstretched surrounded by greenery. His Ophelia is fully clothed, but even in death it is her beauty that calls to us and one could imagine she is laying there in the cold awaiting a man’s embrace. Steck’s 1895 version of Ophelia is similarly romantic as she is depicted underwater with her hands clasped in front of her chest (Romanska, 2005, p. 36). While these images of Ophelia were more romantic than seductive, other images of dead women were seemingly designed to titillate. Fuseli’s depiction of a “Sleeping Women and the Furies” shows a passive woman, with her breasts on full display (Romanska, 2005, p. 35) and Delacroix’ “Odalisque Reclining on a Divan” depicts a fully nude woman reclining while a figure watches her (Romanska, 2005, p. 35). All of these images, whether seductive or romantic, depict a woman as a passive object for men to leer at and fantasize about. In the 1800s, as Dijkstra, pointed out a sick wife was a status symbol as only a rich man could afford to care for the emotional and physical needs of an invalid. Additionally, women were viewed as intrinsically weak and incapable of independent existence (Romanska, 2005, p. 37). One has to wonder, if possessing a painting of a dead woman was the ultimate status symbol as, unlike a living woman, she could never get well.
Fast forward to the late 1900s and women were still being objectified and a dead woman was still considered erotic. However, now instead of just witnessing a dead woman’s corpse, men had the opportunity to witness a portrayal of women being raped and murdered through the magic of video. While there is a debate about whether or not actual snuff films have been created and the idea of a woman really being murdered for titillation is obviously disturbing (Hagin, 2010), it is also disturbing to think that people would be sexually aroused by the idea of a woman being “snuffed” as part of the sex act. Part of the allure of snuff films is that they depicts bad girls, i.e. promiscuous women, being killed for their defiance (Donovan, 2004, p. 28). Men can relate to the “hero” of these films because the “hero” was seduced by a bad woman and ultimately had to take action to rid the world of the depraved female. While Christians and other moralists protested against snuff films, as well as less brutal forms of pornography, as debauchery, feminists protested against such films on the basis that they objectified women (Donovan, 2004, p. 35). I should note that while the 1976 film Snuff, which was the initial focus of much of the ire about snuff films, was proven to be a hoax (Hagin, 2010), there have been instances of films depicting the sexually-based death of women being marketed (Donovan, 2004).
Poe was probably imagining paintings such as Millais’ “Ophelia” when he posited that the death of a beautiful woman is poetic and not the brutal rape and murder of a woman. However, the gentle “Ophelia” and the brutal “Snuff” are inextricably connected as both objectify women and as Dijkstra theorized both marginalize and stigmatize women . In viewing images such as these, men are led to believe that they have dominion over women and it is their job to punish women who do not meet society’s standards for virtuous femininity (Bronfen, 2017, p. 59).
Under the Skin
Curiosity has been a human trait for millennia. It has led us to explore what is over the next ridge, what is under the sea, and what is in the heavens above. It has also led to an exploration of the human body that has taken various forms over the centuries. Plastination is only the most recent means to explore the human body. Plastination is a technique invented by Gunther von Hagens in 1977 to replace the fluid in a human body with resin. Plastinated bodies are used for education and are exhibited in the Body Works exhibit with their skin peeled back to show voyeors what the inside of a human body really looks like (Martinez, 2012). When Body Worlds first debuted, detractors said it was in bad taste and insulted the dead and some cities only allowed a censored version of the exhibit to be displayed. There was also a controversy over the origins of some corpses, which led von Hagens to return seven corpses to China (Harding, 2004).
Two centuries before plastination, Clemente Susini created the “Anatomical Venus,” a life size replica of a human female that could be dismembered into dozens of parts. The Anatomical Venus has several sisters including “The Slashed Beauty” and “The Dissected Graces” that also allow people to gaze into the body of a woman (Ebenstein, 2012, p. 346). Similar to the plastinated corpses of the 20th and 21st centuries, these anatomical bodies were designed to not only inform, but also to titillate and captivate. These waxen beauties were not only the objectification of women, they were also designed to explore the mysteries of how women were weaker than men. Of how the woman’s anatomy made them passive, childlike, and prone to hysteria (Ebenstein, 2012, p. 349).
As I stated at the beginning of this post, the more things change, the more things stay the same and one Body Worlds exhibit proves that axiom partially true as it eroticizes death. The Body Wolds Exhibit “Cycles of Life” poses plastinated corpses in sexual positions (Connolly, 2009). However, there was one key difference between Ophelia, the Venuses, and other artwork which has eroticized and objectified women and that is that Body Worlds included both men and women in sexual positions. The only thing I’m uncertain of is if this represents progress or not.
References
Bronfen, E. (2017). The Most Poetic Topic. In E. Bronfen, Over her dead body (pp. 59-75). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Connolly, K. (2009, May 6). Fury at exhibit of corpses having sex. Retrieved from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/06/german-artist-sex-death
Donovan, P. (2004). The Market in Snuff Films. In P. Donovan, No Way of Knowing : Crime, Urban Legends and the Internet (pp. 27-60). New York: Routledge.
Ebenstein, J. (2012). Ode to an Anatomical Venus. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 346-352.
Hagin, B. (2010). Killed Because of Lousy Ratings: The Hollywood History of Snuff. Journal of Popular Film and Television, 44-51.
Harding, L. (2004, January 23). Von Hagens forced to return controversial corpses to China. Retrieved from the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jan/23/arts.china
Martinez, B. (2012, October 10). Gunther von Hagens (1945- ). Retrieved from The Embryo Project Encyclopedia: https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/gunther-von-hagens-1945#:~:text=Von%20Hagens%20invented%20the%20plastination,fluid%20and%20replacement%20with%20resin.
National Library of Medicine. (2019, July 8). The Visible Human Project. Retrieved from National Library of Medicine: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/visible_human.html
Romanska, M. (2005). NecrOphelia Death, femininity and the making of modern aesthetics. Performance Research, 35-53.