The most Tim Burton sight these eyes ever did see came back in 2011 when I joined the high school Sports Medicine class on a citybound field trip to “Bodies: The Exhibition.”
“Bodies” first set up shop in the Empire State in 2005, and closed its doors in 2016 after a decade woven in corpse-based controversy.
Upon arrival, The New York Times called this unique foray into plastination entertainment “Extraordinary!” Soon thereafter, Premier Exhibitions—who operated the Bodies exhibit—were taken to task.
A congressional inquiry was called. Gov. Andrew Cuomo launched an investigation. Premier CEO Arnie Geller resigned. Compelled, the exhibit's owners admitted the origins of the dead at their disposal were "murky."
Were these bodies the byproduct of black market organ-running? Much was made of the exhibit's profuse inability to deny reports that its cadavers were not just unclaimed Chinese citizens donated to science; rather, they just may have been the remains of executed prisoners.
Considering this a glaring human rights violation, the concrete jungle ultimately pulled out for the count—though the similarly-conceited “Body Worlds” saw a brief revival there in 2019.
Alas, the show goes on elsewhere. International traveling tours are still in action. As is the Las Vegas leg.
In the age of the Internet, it’s still impressively one of the few "absolutely no public photography" enterprises.
When I attended, I was bowled over by the commitment to mood-lightening whimsy amidst the utter macabre. A naked nervous system display of a deceased, yet intriguingly preserved body staged as a baseball player equipped with a glove made up of...innards.
It was warped as hell. There was nothing quite like it.
For every arm of this singular smorgasbord of a tour wrapped in my memory like chains, countless other images from that day have Dobie Gray drifted away.
Granted, I was 15. My brain was a vast sea of displaced priorities. Case in point: I recall flirting with a girl on that beyond mannequinsane trip. Sue me. Did I mention I was 15? I wonder if she remembers too.
Imagine a movie meet-cute set here? “The Fault in Our Stars,” hold our beer; a latter-day Ferris Bueller just got the girl while staring down a spooky scary skeletal spectacle. And it's not even Halloween.
Oh, to be young and at an anatomical amusement park instead of Fourth Period lunch. 10 a.m. was always too early for cardboard pizza and smiley fries anyway.