Corpse Porn

Sometimes I come up with a witty title before writing my blog entry. Other times, I have something to write, and leave the title until I am done. Today, my title was planned well in advance. Corpse Porn. It actually sounds like a goth/punk band. If you have such a band, and are in need of a name, e-mail me and we'll talk.

Corpse Porn. This is the result of living in a four channel universe. With one being French, the other with such poor reception that it is not even worth watching (I love you CBC, but your TV signal SUCKS!) and the third being so conservative that I have actually boycotted it - I am left with one mish mash of Canadian broadcasting. Please don't take this as a form of sulking or complaining! While it was painful to lose 1000 DTV channels, I did learn to appreciate the simplicity of a one channel existence. I do miss a few choice networks -mostly the Discovery Channel franchise and National Geographic TV. I used to have similar feelings towards TLC, but it has become a glut of automobile restoration and home renovation editted in slick reality TV style.

I happened to rue the day I lost National Geographic television to my mother. She informed me of a series which featured the excavated remains of an ancient Chinese burial site. Archeology, forensic anthropology, DNA analysis combined? I salivated and begged for a taste. Last weekend my mother delivered my first specimen, and thus began peddling in corpse porn. This is the series Riddles of the Dead complete with a British narrator to give the program a flare of authority and authenticity. The first installment did not disappoint and titilated my fondness for mystery, history and science in one slick package - a program featuring the Spanish Flu of 1918. My feminist sensibilites were slightly irritated by incessant references to "The Spanish Lady" who "swept" the globe killing all in her path. (It sounds like an old Hammer horror featuring Rosa the Spanish maid.)

I continued to watch in rapt fasination, entranced by the frequent images of corpses in various stages of decomposition. There were boney corpses and bloated corpses, maggoty corpses and oozing corpses, corpses in the dirt and in the morgue, drawings of corpses and photos of corpses, there were dirty and clean corpses, mummified and freshly found corpses, naked and clothed corpses, murdered and naturally expired corpses - corpses, corpses, corpses. I quickly realized that this was the point of the whole series - a forum to showcase corpses in ways that TV has never dared to show. Reality TV has moved out of American's bedrooms, boardroom and garages and into the graves.

My first experience of a full frontal maggoty corpse was rather shocking. I winced. (It's a good thing that no one has yet created Smell-TV.) But like any image that gets over exposure, the shock wears off, and all seems normal again. Eyes slighly glazed over, mesmerized and hypnotized, I wondered how some of those featured on the show would feel about being a corpse porn star. Am I participating in the exploitation of the dead? Have I objectified their deadness?
With a VHS tape and a half left, I anxiously anticipate my next smutt viewing.