What's that Word that's used When you are Using Someone for Profit?

And can you exploit a dead person?

Bodies, the Exhibit? (I won't link, you'll see why.) I went the the Seattle showing. From an artistic and possibly medical point of view? Very informative.

From a gut-feeling? It made me very sad.

The website spoke in vague generalities, giving you all kinds of factoid information that seemed super informative in that trivial-pursuit kind of way. But once I scraped away all the floral language I understood that all these bodies came from China and that this exhibit was in no way tied or associated with anything medicinal. Looking at the bodies and body parts and the way they'd been posed and the people they'd hired to care for the "exhibits" made it obvious that every bit, from the laser lights to the bone-shaped ice trays at the gift store, was for raking in as much money as possible.

This part may not be true but it's what I imagine taking place:

- People died.

- Their families sold their bodies to this corporation (not science, mind, but a corporation out to make loads of cash).

- The corporation then plasticized the corpses and molded the muscles and tendons into people running and shooting darts and playing football.

And by their sizes and again, my imagination (possibly overactive), I think the fellow swinging the tennis racket, well, I totally got the feeling that he had never even set eyes on one when he was alive.

Because really? I totally understand donating your body to science and your organs to others and all that stuff. I was a pink-dotter when I had a license that had the dots, but what scenario do you imagine occurring to "give" your body over to a company? It's more like sell...and it wouldn't be you doing it but maybe your relatives...that maybe can't afford to bury you...(I did mention my overactive imagination) and that made me really want nothing to do with this exhibit and it's fake nod to the wonders of science and the body.

It's the Holden Caulfield inside of me I suppose...but I hate this kind of fakery. Disneyland, Renaissance Faires, Roadside Attractions, even Casinos are honest with you. The main goal is to part you from your money as they entertain you. You paying to get a learning experience with the kids running around in fake lab coats giving you BS stories about the "attractions?" That was kinda hard to swallow.

The website, and some of the kids in the coats, were happy to tell you about the process used to create what was there. And truthfully? It is amazing that this process exists. We are definitely living in the future and all that noise. I just wish we lived in an honest one.

Now, if you're an artist and don't feel like digging up and dissecting corpses to figure out the skeletal and muscular structures? Go. It's useful and informative. And some of the bodies and especially the circulatory systems? Amazing. Just don't over-think it, the way I did.