When Social Moods Collide: Freaky, Fascinating Corpse Show

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BREAKING NEWS
October 1, 2006
Body Worlds Returning
New Exhibit Will Feature All Different Poses For Corpses
Some thought the Body Worlds exhibit that appeared at the Museum of Science and Industry last year was freaky, others thought it was fascinating. But anyone who missed it is now getting a second chance, because a new edition of the exhibit is coming to Chicago.

“Body Worlds 2” will be on display at the museum beginning on Jan. 17 of next year. This time, the skinless human corpses will be in a series of new poses, including yoga, skateboarding, soccer and baseball.

A total of 800,000 people saw the first Body Worlds exhibit at the museum. The traveling exhibits feature body parts and entire bodies preserved through a process called “plastination.” It was created by anatomist Gunther von Hagens, who invented the preservation technique.

The first exhibit was considered a significant increase in attendance last year at the Museum of Science and Industry, and it was even considered a dating hot spots. In its closing days, the exhibit was kept open 24 hours a day.
cbs2chicago.com

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When Social Moods Collide: Freaky, Fascinating Corpse Show

Category: ART

By: Pete Kendall, October 3, 2006

Years ago, The Elliott Wave Theorist identified “deliberately ugly or ‘dead’ patterns and structures” as the expression of a negative mood in public art. As the current decline gathered steam, death literally became a medium. A pioneering preservation technique called “plastination” was used to produce an odorless, extraordinarily preserved corpse. “At least one person a day faints at the exhibition,” reports its proud proprietor.
The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast, September 2002

skinless basketball player

This past weekend I visited Gunther von Hagens' "BODY WORLDS 2: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies. " I won't go into the details of the glamorized 'works' (actual skinned human bodies put in various athletic poses) of Mr. von Hagens that were so proudly displayed with his signature at the base of each one. But I will tell you this: That place was PACKED!!! Young and old. If that isn't infatuation with the morbid, I don't know what is. I could not stay in there for very long because it became upsetting to me.

The process called Plastination was invented by von Hagens in 1977. Judging by the prolific collection, he has been very busy since then. VERY busy. Upon further research I discovered he has been raking in the money with his shocking exhibits.Not that there was any doubt before, but after seeing that enormous crowd of people through a set of Socionomic eyes, I offer another emphatic confirmation that the BEAR market is 100% on!!!!
--Gene

It appears to be another representation of a mixed social mood that we talked about back in May (see entries of May 2 and May 21) when the stock markets were also near new highs in what we still believe is a countertrend bear market rally. As our note from September 2002 indicates, Hagens' human sculptures certainly made a classic bear market appearance as the entry above was within a month of the Dow's October 2002 low (for the full version see additional references below). They are pretty ghoulish. However, at least some of the "Body Worlds" popularity stems from an interest in human anatomy, which is indicative of a scientific mindset and more typical of a bull market. One museum review observes that the exhibit “seriously blurs the line between medical marvels and horror movie special effects.” In September 2002, we commented on plastination’s emergence as a new bear market medium, but the subjects place them in some poses, such as the basketball player above, that are very life-like and even outright bullish expressions. So, it has bull and bear elements, the perfect draw for the current mood in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average is at an all-time high but social mood on the whole remains comfortably within the confines of a long-term bear market. It’s a strange “smash hit” produced by a rare confluence of extreme social mood forces.

Additional References
September 2002, EWFF
The widespread allusion to death is important. Years ago, The Elliott Wave Theorist identified “deliberately ugly or ‘dead’ patterns and structures” as the expression of a negative mood in public art. As the current decline gathered steam, death literally became a medium. It emerged as a form of avant garde expression last year when a collection of “corpse art” was put on display in Berlin by an anatomy professor. A pioneering preservation technique called “plastination” was used to produce an odorless, extraordinarily preserved corpse. “At least one person a day faints at the exhibition,” reports its proud proprietor. This year, the collection moved to London, where it has become a popular tourist attraction. HBO’s “mordant hit series” is Six Feet Under, a drama about a dysfunctional family of undertakers. “They do amazing things with dead bodies on Six Feet Under,” says Newsweek. It praises the show as “one of the smartest, funniest and deepest shows on television.” Every episode begins with someone dying. The New York Post reported September 18 that another “violently disturbing sculpture popped up last week in the middle of [Rockefeller] Center’s busy underground concourse right in front of the ice-skating rink. It depicts a naked woman, limbs flailing, face contorted, at the exact moment her head smacks pavement following her leap from the flaming World Trade Center.” The sentiment surrounding its appearance is unlikely to mark a bottom, though, because once word of the Tumbling Woman hit the newspapers, public outrage led to its removal. Poor taste is a hallmark of a bear market. Tastes today are poor enough to inspire but not yet support such a display. By the end of the decline, works that are at least as ugly as the junk that got banished in the first half of the 1980s will occupy public spaces across the country.

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