non- love is in the air at the Mutter museum :(

Because this blog is so open, I just want to reflect on the discussion and my immediate reaction to the Mutter Museum as well as the youtube advertisement for the museum. Firstly, I read Rosemarie Garland Thomas’s piece before viewing the museum’s site and this tainted my ideas towards the museum. I think that a showcase of different rocks found around the world is far less interesting than a skeleton display of conjoined twins. However, Thompson’s piece, “From Wonder to Error—A Genealogy of freak discourse in Modernity,” made me consider how these displays were illustrating the process of devaluing human life because of physical “differences”. This really hurt me to see how these skeletol remains weren’t seen as people, but more of a fascinating visual simply because of its “freakish” nature. “By its very presence, the exceptional body seems to compel explanation, inspire representation, and incite regulation” (Thompson 1), this point that Thompson makes in her piece gives a great perspective on why the Mutter museum is so popular. People like to look at bodies that are different and love to be able to categorize them. The Mutter Museum is a great place to fulfill those needs, its filled with freaky bodies labeled by respected and well known doctors. Of course everyone knows that science is the end all be all to every question in the universe, so once a scientist labels a weird body, then the rest of the population has the right to consider the body diseased or disordered because it has scalpalatosis eretacoctus (I just made that up like most doctors just make names up).
I just really feel awful about the entire non consenting bodies that science has deemed important to put on display at a museum who’s mission is preventative education for common people in effort to avoid death and disease…and I’m guessing “deformity”. The reason why I have internal conflict about this whole mission intertwined with this display of people who look different is because their physical reality cannot be prevented. Meaning the disease or “problems” that these bodies on represent are genetically passed on. This museum is a way for able bodies to confirm their superiority.
The confirmation of superiority really resonated in the youtube advertisement of the couple who displayed their love through a proposal in the Mutter museum. This video focused on a couple who were by American standards superior and encouraged to marry and reproduce more able bodies. This video clip that was meant to be romantic and innocent I’m sure, happened to portray the historical ideals of bodies that matter taking precedence over bodies that don’t. There were displays in the background of the recorded proposal that obviously could not speak up for itself. Obviously the framing of the video wanted you to focus on the newly engaged couple, yet they zoomed in on a display of a body without the ability to speak up. The bodies on display in the background are just there for entertainment or just for a learning experience instead of being able to be apart of the experience. This video reminded me of a photo we viewed earlier in the semester with the black body hanging on a tree and a large group of white people having a social gathering. The picture portrayed the white people happy and engaged in conversation while the black hanging body was nameless and essentially less human. The same sentiment I had in this photo for that hanging body is how I felt when I seen both the site for the Mutter museum and the youtube video for the engagement at the Mutter museum.
I believe that Mutter museum is another form of devaluing certain human bodies while confirming the superiority of others.