Opening book details…
Can I read Dead Bodies on Stage on EtoBox?
Dead Bodies on Stage by Beatrix Hesse is a Arts and Humanities article available to read on EtoBox.
What is Dead Bodies on Stage about?
The article examines the way the spectacle of the dead body has been presented on stage in the course of the twentieth century. In early twentiethcentury crime drama, a corpse may be presented as an aesthetic object. Increasingly, however, the presence of the corpse is exploited for semi-comic effect and suggested rather than shown. A particular plot motif evolving around the corpse on stage is the so-called busy body. In plays written after the abolition of censorship, the irreverent treatment of the dead human body occasionally creates a much stronger shock effect. In this respect, a major shift seems to have taken place since the 1990s: TV drama has increasingly tended to feature forensic pathologists as heroes. This indicates a profound change in attitudes to both death and the ideal of the integrity of the human body, which can also be discerned in Gunther von Hagens's Body Worlds exhibition.
Who reads Dead Bodies on Stage?
It is typically read by researchers, students, and practitioners in Arts and Humanities.
- Author
- Beatrix Hesse
- Publisher
- Walter de Gruyter GmbH
- Published
- 2013
- Language
- EN
- Field
- Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)