Seductive Bodies:

the Glamour of Death

between Myth and Tourism
MARXIANO MELOTTI
Marxiano Melotti
Abstract
The discovery of the mummy of Tutankhamun, one of the first great me-
dia events of archaeology, as well as the success of tzi, advertised treasure
of the Museum of Bolzano, or the ever green fascination of the anatomical
machines due to the Prince of Sansevero show an interesting aspect of the
tourism and society. Western culture seems to be invaded by the tourist cult
of death. Even the bodies of the victims of Pompeii, actually mere casts giv-
ing shape to the void, have been essential for the tourist success of the site,
as well as the pilgrimage to the uncorrupted corpse of Padre Pio, actually
covered by a silicon mask created by the experts of Madame Tussauds Mu-
seum, show some cultural dynamics where artefact prevails on reality, the
nothing over the object and emotion over the content. The global success
of the exhibitions Body Worlds, which display real human bodies, invites
us to reflect on the historical path of the musealisation of death and, in a
broader sense, of some dynamics of the present liquid society, where edu-
cation and entertainment, tourism and market, culture and leisure intertwine
and hybridize.
Seductive Bodies: the Glamour of the Death between Myth and Tourism
*
The bodies of the deceased erase the boundary-line between culture
and nature, art and life, vision and eyesight.
Seamus Heaney
1
In search of the otherness
Spectres, or rather corps, are haunting Europe. This is due to a travelling
exhibition: Body Worlds. The Original Exhibition of Real Human Bodies.
It displays, as one of the editors of its catalogue explains, something unusual:
anatomical specimens, produced and preserved according to a newprocess de-
veloped by Gunther von Hagens
2
. This collection, shown for the first time in
Germany in 1997, has increasingly expanded over the years and has become
a true mass phenomenon, with exhibitions simultaneously held in different
towns and hundreds of thousands of visitors all over the world
3
. The show, of
course, step by step, has received enthusiastic acceptance and vehement re-
jection: its undoubted educational value it teaches to overcome the taboo of
death and to better understand and treat our bodies is accompanied by a spec-
102
CRITICAL MATTERS
tacularization of death and, more
specifically, of the human bodies,
which should make us reflect on
the relationship of our society with
death.
But is it really necessary to
overcome this taboo? or, as also
the success of this exhibition
shows, has our society already sub-
stantially overcome it and, thanks
to the continuous bombardment of
strong images in films and televi-
sion, has become able to live death as an entertainment with a leisure dimen-
sion of cultural and tourist character? And, if so, does it really make sense en-
joying ourselves with death?
The death tourism has already developed on such a scale that some schol-
ars have even coined a term, dark tourism, to describe the tourist experiences
that, in various ways, have to do with death or, in a broader sense, with pain
4
:
visits to battlefields and concentration camps and trips to sites of natural dis-
asters or murders, not to mention some more sophisticated forms, apparently
not directly related to death, involving tours to places of extreme poverty or
danger, such as the favelas or some underground missile bases. Their common
denominator is the desire of seeing death: they are places that have hosted
or are hosting it or may cause it. Of course, in the history of the European cul-
ture, the world of death and the dead tends to be taboo: we get rid of the dead
bodies in a hurry, we relegate them in special places, we perform rites to give
sense to the detachment between the living and the dead and, above all, to de-
fine a clear and possibly insurmountable barrier between the two worlds.
However, also the exact opposite is true. In the Western world the death and
the dead have always been next to the living, and, in spite of what was said in
the presentation of von Hagens exhibition, seeing death or the dead is not at
all unusual, even in tourist activities. We can even say that tourism was born
with the death not only in metaphorical terms travelling to see beyond but
also in concrete terms: the ancient visited the shrines and tombs of heroes, just
like the grand tourists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries visited graves,
cemeteries and funerary monuments and the modern tourists continue to do.
Archaeological museums exhibit objects mostly coming from funerary en-
Marxiano Melotti
103
CRITICAL MATTERS
Dead bodies as a show: the exhibition Body Worlds
(Rome, 2012)
dowment and the archaeologi-
cal sites are, very often, traces
of places that no longer exist.
The archaeological and cul-
tural tourism are essentially
death tourism.
The same thing may be said
for the bodies of the past.
Von Hagen uses a technique
certainly rather innovative and
stages the bodies in a new
way, in athletic and extremely
vital attitudes that, by reversing the cultural image of the still and composed
dead body, can leave the public dazed. However, Europe, since medieval
times, is accustomed to interact with the mummified bodies of the Saints and,
as the success of the exhibitions of Padre Pios corpse shows, still has a great
interest in these practices. Similarly, the modern discovery of ancient Egypt
at the end of the eighteenth century introduced the Egyptian mummies into our
imagery, making them protagonists in exhibitions and museums. We might
even assert that exactly the collections of these mummies have popularized
some important museums.
Gunther von Hagen, however, goes further. His plastinated bodies lead
us into the heart of a more recent phenomenon, edutainment, i.e. the inter-
connection of education and entertainment: one of the most interesting aspects
of the post-modern culture. Von Hagen in fact organizes exhibitions, i.e. cul-
tural events of traditional character and traditionally oriented to education that
are also shows, belonging to the complex media dimension of contemporary
society. His bodies, without skin and with muscles, bones and internal organs
exposed, plastically modeled while playing a guitar, kicking a ball or playing
cards, make show. The body of a pregnant woman with the foetus inside it, as
well as the number of foetuses exhibited in their developmental order, are first
of all a show, which arouses discussions and debates affecting some of the
most delicate and controversial ethical, cultural and political issues, such as
abortion and euthanasia. And so they attract the public.
Similarly, the newspapers of the cities that temporarily house these exhi-
bitions, to tickle the public, highlight their most morbid and controversial as-
pects, with true or false notes. Hence the news that von Hagen for his creations
Marxiano Melotti
104
CRITICAL MATTERS
A tourist success. Egyptian Mummies in the British
Museum
would use corpses of executed Chinese or that, at his request, he would have
plastinated the corpse of Michael Jackson. It is the liquid culture of con-
temporary society, where history, ethical issues and gossip intertwine and hy-
bridize
5
. The post-modern aspect of these exhibitions was rightly pointed out
by a clever Italian observer, who has defined von Hagens commercial oper-
ation as an outlet of plastic resurrection
6
. In fact, von Hagen would have even
considered the possibility of selling plastinated anatomical parts as souvenirs.
Once more, culture, education and commercial aspects seem inseparable.
The success of the exhibition is definitely due to voyeurism: the morbid in-
terest in death that cultural tourism channels and makes socially acceptable.
But, paradoxically, such a museum display of the body reduces, if not can-
cels completely, the impact of the dark show. Von Hagens plastinated bod-
ies, with their labels and date of creation, become sculptures and eventually
loose their macabre otherness. All the more so, since the sophisticated tech-
nique of plastination adopted ends up making bodies so real that, according
to many visitors, they seem to be made in plastic. This is a paradox of the im-
age society, which takes the artifice as its model and nourish itself with un-
precedented forms of hybrid authenticity. In short, Von Hagen has created his
own fortune using edutainment as a mirror, but this mirror has eventually de-
stroyed the strength and uniqueness of its exhibitions, by assimilating them to
the usual models of traditional cultural and educational tourism.
But whence comes this interest in the world of death? The answer, as al-
ways, is to be found in the great classics. There-
fore, it is worth dwelling upon one of the found-
ing texts of the European culture, where we
find some basic elements of our imagery:
Homers Odyssey.
Ulysses, in the most dramatic moment of his
journey, had to visit the world of the dead. It
was the so-called nekuia ()
7
. After ten
years of travels to worlds unknown, always at
the borders of civilization, he must cross the last
threshold and visit the world of the dead. He
must see the dead and talk with them. It was the
only way to find his way and to return to his is-
land, his home and his wife; briefly, to return
completely to the civilized world.
Marxiano Melotti
105
CRITICAL MATTERS
Body, Death and Tourism: the poster of
Body Worlds
The Odyssey, in fact, is the story of a grand rite of passage, where the en-
counter with distant peoples and monstrous creatures is a metaphor for the need
of all individuals to get in touch with the otherness to acquire knowledge, to
discover their own identity and to be eventually re-aggregated to their own world
with a newlevel of awareness and a newsocial role
8
. The poememphasizes the
importance of travel and contact with the otherness for knowledge.
Ulysses meets the Cyclops, Circe, the Sirens etc. But this is not enough to
let him regain his identity. He must make the extreme trip, he must pass the last
test. So he faces a partly real and partly dreamlike journey to the world of death.
The journey toward death, and in this case looking at it, is a fundamental rite
of passage with a strong identity value and an important educational meaning.
The death, the other side of our existence, completes the pre-existing knowl-
edge with that of the other world.
The trip is quite interesting. Ulysses meets souls that are both tangible and
intangible. They are ethereal and dreamlike creatures, but at the same time are
bodies that drink blood. Homer, in short, raises these questions: how to repre-
sent the contact with the dead? howto make it material a dreamlike experience?
This trip one of the first representations of the need of the living to interact
with the dead breaks a taboo. After death the bodies of the deceased get out
of our world and must remain outside it in order to give sense both to them-
selves and to us. The funeral is a ritual of detachment marking this separation.
The return of the dead represents the rupture of an order and of a balance.
The dead who return can only be ghosts or spirits to be exorcised or, in some
cases, extraordinary beings to be honoured and venerated or adored.
This is the case of the Christian religion. At its basis there is the return of
a body from the world of the dead: an exceptional and unrepeatable event that
testifies the both human and divine nature of that body and founds its cult.
Ulysses journey is also a metaphor and a model of an important ritual experi-
ence that European culture has always emphasized: the initiatory journey into the
other world, the search of contact with the beyond, which can take the formof a rite
of passage or, in our world, of tourism and, in particular, archaeological tourism.
Fromthis point of view, Gunther von Hagens exhibition may be considered the cul-
mination of a cultural experience inspired to a centuries-old collective need.
The relationship with death and with the bodies of the dead, however, en-
tails an ambiguous and conflicting relationship: it attracts and repels, it brings
an important knowledge but at the same time is dangerous and contaminant,
and therefore must be absolutely avoided or exorcised.
Marxiano Melotti
106
CRITICAL MATTERS
Mummies. From eternity to tourism
The presence of dead bodies in our world is conceivable only in quite spe-
cific forms. This is, in particular, the case of the mummies. The body of the de-
ceased is crystallized in a space between the worlds: it is in our world (you can
see it, you can touch it) but, at the same time, it is already in the afterlife.
Yet, in the Egyptian world this did not imply a reversal of the balance: the
body of the deceased remained materially and eternally present in the world,
but in a special space: the city of the dead, the cemetery, the grave dug in the
rock or, for the happy few, enclosed in inaccessible pyramids.
With the mummy there was a technical contact, when it was created, and
a ritual contact, when it was honoured and then locked up in its special space,
but there were no permanent experiential contacts.
Archaeology and tourism have somehow altered this relationship. When,
starting from the eighteenth century and with greater intensity between the end
of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century, French and English ar-
chaeologists began to dig and open the ancient tombs in Egypt, they re-
brought the mummified bodies to our world.
The success of the Egyptian civilization in popular culture owes much to
the mummies. Let us think about the tours in the early nineteenth-century
Britain of an Italian archaeologist and adventurer, Giovanni Battista Belzoni
9
:
together with treasures, relics and casts of works of art, he brought with him
some mummies, which attracted a huge crowd. Ancient Egypt was soon re-
thought and defined as the mysterious
civilization of death.
Obviously, these findings were im-
pressive for their deep symbolic value.
After two or three thousand years,
through the dead we could go back in
contact with the living of that time.
These bodies created a sort of direct
channel with the culture of the ancient
Egypt and, in particular, with its people,
regarded as an alive whole of men,
women and children: something much
stronger than a contact through other ar-
chaeological finds.
Of course, even in this new use, the
Marxiano Melotti
107
CRITICAL MATTERS
A new business. Mummies for sale
mummies have maintained their primary function of powerful communication
tools between the worlds (in this case between the modern world and the an-
cient world), but in our secularized age they have lost their ritual function and
have entered the new contexts of science, museums and tourism. From sub-
jects of a ritual existence inside the tomb, they have become serial objects
of scientific research and tourist gaze.
On the other hand, in our world, even the emotional relationship remains
stuck and neutralized in a dimension of aesthetic use, in museums or tourist ac-
tivities. Moreover, the mummification itself involves a process of transfor-
mation of the body of the deceased into a sort of monument, and this changes
its status. The mummified body appears frozen in time and becomes alien to
the transformations that affect the existence of the living.
The mummified body, in our culture, becomes a sort of work of art, a mon-
ument to the otherness, which, acquiring the harmless traits of the archaeo-
logical finds and historical evidence, fascinates and perhaps inspires some fears,
but in fact does not really frighten.
This special neutral relationship that we have established with the mum-
mies (which move between fascination and repulsion, acceptance and rejection,
but are firmly inserted in paths of aesthetic enjoyment in museums and tourism)
is endangered by the return of the ritual dimension in the new multicultural so-
ciety. An example: the mummified bodies of so-called primitive people,
which are displayed in our museums or
come to light during new excavations,
more and more often are claimed by the
members of those populations as bod-
ies and persons and are no longer re-
garded only as anthropological docu-
ments or archaeological finds
10
. In these
cases, the old cultural constructions that
have led us to neutralize the symbolic
value of the corpses and to accept them
as social objects, even usable in leisure
contexts, suddenly vanish and let us to
rediscover the taboo of death and to
feel horror for their display in museums
and tourist use.
An important moment in the
Marxiano Melotti
108
CRITICAL MATTERS
The birth of a myth. Howard Carter in the tomb
of Tutankhamun
process of tourist reinvention of
death was certainly the discov-
ery in 1922 of the Tomb of Tu-
tankhamen by Howard Carter.
This tomb, with its magnificent
treasures and its rich sarcophagi,
immediately exerted a disruptive
effect on the collective imagery
11
.
Within a few weeks that tomb be-
came object of tourist pilgrim-
ages, which obliged Carter to sus-
pend his excavations. A series of
accidents and fatalities that accompanied the works started the myth of the
Curse of Tutankhamen, due to one of the first campaign of media marketing
a myth which, after a century, is still periodically fed by entertainment lit-
erature, films and television programmes and does not seem to lose its ef-
fectiveness
12
. Since then, the popular image of Egypt is linked to the world
of mummies and sarcophagi and to their supposed magical power a sort of
modern, secularized version, due to media and tourism, of the symbolic and
ritual power of the dead in the ancient world.
But we must avoid the mistake of thinking about a modern world over-
whelmed by the myth of Tut and the magic of the Egyptian mummies. For a long
while tens of thousands mummies were used in British houses as low-cost fuel.
In fact, there is an interesting dualism: on the one hand, the fascination for the
world of death and the transformation of the bodies into museum pieces, with
media coverage of the mummies as a channel of communication with the past;
and, on the other hand, the detachment and estrangement fromthese mummies,
if not the suspicion and contempt for them. This clearly shows that the myth of
the mummies is a cultural construction with specific functions, which works only
in certain contexts of aesthetic, educational and museum use.
We are now in a new space: that of tourism, where some symbolic and ex-
periential elements of the traditional and religious culture persist (such as the
rites of passage and the search for the otherness), but other elements have
vanished or were weakened and placed in a new leisure context.
The dark side of the Enlightenment
In the history of the use and display of the human body, we must recall the
Marxiano Melotti
109
CRITICAL MATTERS
The birth of a myth. Howard Carter in the tomb of
Tutankhamun
Prince of Sansevero, whose anatomical machines are sometimes mentioned
as illustrious antecedents of Von Hagens work.
He lived in Naples, which, thirty years before the French Revolution, was
a culturally vibrant town, in spite of its contradictions. As for the issue con-
cerned, then Naples had a very special relationship with the world of death and
spirits and was pervaded by cults, beliefs and superstitions (which in part per-
sist) linked to the dead and their mortal remains.
The Prince was a typical exponent of the cultured aristocracy of the late
eighteenth century: a pre-Enlightenment intellectual, an alchemist, a Mason,
a Rosicrucian, almost totally immersed in a magical-scientific atmosphere
13
.
Now all this may appear ridiculous, but then it seemed to be dangerously rev-
olutionary. But, first and foremost, he was an inventor, who is still remembered
for his useless inventions, such as the blue colour for the fireworks and a
floating horse-drawn coach. Anyhow, he was one of the first researchers in-
terested in leisure, amusement and entertainment.
In 1763, with the help of an anatomist, Giuseppe Salerno, he created two
anatomical machines: two human bodies, a male and a female, with an ap-
parently intact circulatory system, which, according to some people, he ob-
tained with a technique somehow similar to Von Hagens. Near the body of the
woman originally there was even a small body of a foetus, still attached to
the placenta through the umbilical cord. In fact, Von Hagens was not the first
to pay a particular attention to the female body and motherhood, combining sci-
entific curiosity and voyeurism.
These machines were impressive creatures,
without a clear status (skeletons, mummies,
sculptures?). Their use was primarily aesthetic,
satisfying the intellectual pleasure of artifice and
technique. However they were also a scientific
challenge to faith. In a context that had begun to
become secularized, Sansevero gave a secular
answer to the Catholic worship of relics.
Obviously, these two creations had a strong
impact on the collective imagery; all the more so
because (unlike the Christian relics and the Egypt-
ian mummies) they did not come from an un-
known elsewhere in space and time, but froma lab-
oratory situated in the city, in the basement of a
Marxiano Melotti
110
CRITICAL MATTERS
An "anatomical machine" created
by the Prince of Sansevero
patrician palace.
Sansevero, disliked by the Church, was accused of creating these two ma-
chines by injecting a metalizing substance in bodies still living. In addition, the
popular voice blamed him for using them in his magic and Masonic rituals.
With these allegations the two machines got out of the area of scientific ex-
periments to become judicial evidence of a supposed double murder and were
relocated within the traditional area of religious and magic practices. Europe
was not yet ready to accept a use of death for merely recreational and aesthetic
purposes.
The casts and the invention of Pompeii
From this point of view, it is quite interesting what then began to happen
in the nearby Pompeii. As well-known, this ancient Roman town was buried
by an eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. After centuries of neglect, its remains
were identified in the eighteenth century and in 1748 the excavations began.
During them, the remains of the victims of that eruption came to light period-
ically and this started an interesting process of popular and media reinvention
14
.
It is worth recalling the discovery in 1768 of the remains of eighteen bod-
ies. One of them was immediately presented by the press as a wealthy Roman
matron, killed by the eruption while she was secluded with a gladiator, her se-
cret lover.
This combination of love and death and archaeology and gossip was im-
mediately successful and drew the attention of the general public. To the fas-
cination for death, which, as we have already said, has a profound initiatory
value, it added an element of erotic character, which helped to make the con-
tact with the world of death even more attractive.
Also voyeurism played an important role. We can recall a significant ex-
ample: in 1772 the remains of a female body and the shape of the ash and lapilli
compressed where once there was her breast suggested to cut the ground and
to make a mould of it. This strange object was placed in a museum. Its intrin-
sically morbid significance was clearly showed in 1852 by a French writer,
Thophile Gautier. In one of his tales, he gave a name to that body, Arria Mar-
cella, and imagined the story of a tourist who visited the museum and, excited
by that breast, felled in love with the non-existent girl and travelled to Pom-
peii in search of her, between dream and reality, body and ghost
15
.
In 1863, in Italy, which two years before had become a kingdom of re-
spectable extension thanks to the annexation of the former Kingdom of the Two
Marxiano Melotti
111
CRITICAL MATTERS
Sicilies, including the area of Pom-
peii, the new director of the excava-
tions, Giuseppe Fiorelli, recreated the
archaeological site of Pompeii and
transformed it into a site of tourist
interest with the introduction of an
admission fee. Moreover, he divided
the archaeological area into blocks
and attributed unambiguous names to
their streets and houses, giving it the
form of a museum-city. The open
area, which was placed in spatial con-
tinuity with the surrounding country-
side and was romantically endowed
with ruins in permanent excavation,
became a real site: a symbolically
closed and special space allowing the magical and initiatory contact with the
world of death and with the past, of course after the payment of a bourgeois
ticket.
This innovation marks the transition of the area from the Grand Tour of the
pre-Romantic and Romantic age to the modern cultural tourism. Fiorelli gave
the newly united Italy a large archaeological site of great national and identity
interest. But, of course, that good intention had to be followed by some con-
crete outcomes. Realizing that the peculiarity of Pompeii was its special rela-
tionship with death and, above all, the way travellers, poets and scholars rep-
resented the area, he thought to nurture this collective idea of Pompeii with
new and even more intriguing images. Thus he instrumentally introduced his
casts, well aware of their impact on tourism. He had the intuition of representing
death in a space which was already partially based on represented authen-
ticity. In fact, he transformed the site into a museum of death, by crystallizing
its image in that of a large crypt. This made Pompeii a real city of death: an
operation where the images of the bodies have played a key role.
This voyeuristic tension of tourism or, rather, of society, but grasped and
channelled by tourism in a special way is a constitutive element of our pres-
ent. Perhaps, the most telling examples of this relationship are exactly the Pom-
peii bodies: the casts, which, according to the collective construction con-
solidated in the last two centuries, we are used to consider as the bodies of its
Marxiano Melotti
112
CRITICAL MATTERS
The fascination of death. Casts in the archaeo-
logical site of Pompeii
ancient inhabitants. The success of Pompeii in the collective imagery largely
depends on these strange objects. But they are not bodies: they are neither
corpses nor mummies. They are simply casts obtained by filling the vacuum
left by the bodies buried by the volcano ash and lapilli and later decomposed
in the ground
16
. These casts, often of twisted and disquieting shapes, which
seem to have fixed in a timeless dimension men, women, children and animals
in their desperate struggle against death, are artefacts due to the imagination
and to the subtle entrepreneurial spirit of an archaeologist.
The highly dramatic aspect of the casts, which immediately entered the pub-
lic image of Pompeii, was due to the contraction of the muscles caused by the
very high temperature of the ash cloud that invested the bodies
17
. However, we
must not underestimate Fiorellis operation, which was attentively built pay-
ing great attention to media and tourism: something that today appears quite
normal and would go unnoticed, since we are totally accustomed to this kind
of use of the darkest interests of tourism by advertising and even cultural mar-
keting.
Among the first casts made in 1863 there was one of a female body, found
with a silver ring and gold earrings, which soon acquired fame as a prostitute
or, because of the effect on the belly of what has been interpreted as the skirt
gathered up about the hips, as the pregnant woman. So, the same cast ac-
quired a strong identity in the collective imagery, now responding to the titil-
lating model of the Arria Marcellas sensual breast and now proceeding in the
wake of the gloomy pregnant body created by Sansevero. In the 1875 the preg-
nant woman disappeared and was substituted by the cast of a young and beau-
tiful victim of the eruption, as was defined by the famous Italian archaeolo-
gist Amedeo Maiuri
18
. As
has been noticed, novelty
and physical beauty be-
came the keys to the pop-
ularity of the casts, which
define a new era in the
history of the interpreta-
tions of Pompeii
19
.
The apparent bodies
actually are masks of the
vacuum or, if you prefer,
masks of death. Techni-
Marxiano Melotti
113
CRITICAL MATTERS
The musealisation of the bodies. Cast in the Antiquarium of
Pompeii. Photo by G. Sommier (1834-1914)
cally, however, in spite of the attention that has been paid to them and their dis-
play in museums, they are not archaeological finds. They are the visualization
of what we want to see, when going into an archaeological site. They are ex-
pression of our desire of contact with death, of our voyeuristic tension and of
a subtle form of sublimated necrophilia, which have transformed the non-finds
into bodies. They are, at the same time, real and non-real, present and absent:
virtual images of the body and death, which, in spite of their immaterial ori-
gin, are terribly concrete
20
.
This form of relative authenticity is an example of hybrid identity in
which the body, nothingness, mask, real and virtual objects coexist and appear
inseparable.
What are the bodies of Pompeii? And why we have shaped them? They are
masks of death, which satisfy our fantasies and our need to see beyond and to
have contact with the afterlife world.
Bodies in Tour
Outside the site, people that the mass media have increasingly accustomed
to see the death, need much more. Thus the world-wide travelling exhibitions
of the bodies of Pompeii, to regain attraction, must use special effects. In the
Archaeological Museum of Naples, where one of these travelling exhibitions
started its tour, the tourists were greeted by a tremor intended to suggest the
sound of an eruption and to create an empathic anxiety for the impending
tragedy, which actually had taken place almost two thousand years before.
In contrast, in Chicago the local organizers chose to emphasize not so much
the image of human bodies, but rather that of a dog still tied, abandoned by the
owner (at least according to the popular myth-making) and mummified in
the lapilli. If the autopsy vision of what seems to be a human corpse can be so
strong as to scare or, on the contrary, so banal as to loose its interest, the sight
of a helpless little dog always works. The pet society of the contemporary
affluent Western world is readily moved by an animal, while it is often much
colder and more distrustful in the case of a human, whose death could raise a
troublesome sense of guilt.
In New York, in 2011, the humans returned to be protagonists in a show-
style exhibition (Pompeii: Life and Death in the Shadow of Vesuvius). Vis-
itors, after watching interesting but harmless everyday objects, were wel-
comed and closed in a tight dark space, a real decantation chamber, where,
among the plays of light, sound effects and tremors, were initiated into the most
Marxiano Melotti
114
CRITICAL MATTERS
tragic secrets of the dead
town, to be admitted af-
terwards to the special
world of the next room.
Here, in an atmosphere of
suffused light and sounds,
they could see the bodies,
sculpturally lying on
podiums apparently
pending in a scattered
way. The death and its
masks appeared in a
seemingly hyper-emo-
tional and experiential
way, which was however
rather anaesthetized. In
fact, masks, casts and
bodies became sculp-
tures, deserving aesthetic
enjoyment. But we are in
a post-modern society,
where even the concept
(and the experience) of
authenticity has under-
gone a deep process of re-
definition. In order to cre-
ate a stronger and more
immersive emotional at-
mosphere, the organiser needed a great number of bodies and, probably for the
impossibility of displaying a large number of original casts, filled the room
of new casts, which were casts of casts. This way the public, in search of dark
emotions, received its sacrifice offering. The most interesting aspect of the
whole exhibition was probably the location: not a traditional museum, but an
event space, Discovery Times Square, where, together with the archaeologi-
cal exhibition on Pompeii, hosted an exhibition on Henry Potter, the hero of
the renowned series of novels and movies presenting a different but equally
effective kind of contact with the otherness. Today the lure of dead is a pop-
Marxiano Melotti
115
CRITICAL MATTERS
Emotional tourism. Casts of victims of Vesuvius eruption in
Pompeii
The emotional gaze. Cast of a dog in Pompeii. Photo by G.
Sommier (ca. 1874)
ular diversion, which
can assume different
shapes: the liquidity
of present society, in
which many phenomena
tend to lose their bound-
aries and seemto merge,
produces a range of new
indefinite experiences
where culture and mer-
chandising, history and
romance, reality and at-
mosphere, death and art are mixed and variously interconnected. In this new
frame the magic word is edutainment, the liquid connector linking education
and entertainment.
If the artistic sublimation transforms bodies and casts into sculptures and
makes the masks objects and findings, we can say that the imaginative
process of moulding and masking of nothing started by Fiorelli has found its
followers, inspired by the visceral post-modern need of going beyond. Fiorellis
technique has recently been replaced by another one, involving the use of trans-
parent resins. This allows us to see inside the mass that gives consistency to
the vacuum and to observe the world of death even more closely and to catch
a glimpse of the intimate nature of what each mask hides: skeletons, bones and
skulls. The interest shown by the public for this technique is indicative of a cul-
tural transformation: the visual habit to death somehow makes less effective
and less interesting the contact with the cast that, for its sculptural aspect, can
be decoded as a simple sculpture. In other words, the audience, which is already
educated by movies and television news and shows with a strong voyeuristic
orientation, looks for something more. Here even archaeology absorbs the CSI
model and offers the visitor of museums and the consumer of cultural products
experience of forensic laboratory. We enter into the cast and see the bones, or
to return to the mummy of Tutankhamun, on live television we submit the
corpse of a pharaoh died thousands of years ago to TAC and analyses of
forensic pathology worthy of a TV show, in order to solve the riddle of a mys-
terious death and, perhaps, to find a murderer.
This is also the media-oriented setting deliberately implemented by the Mu-
seum of Bolzano, in order to maintain the success of the mummy of tzi, the
Marxiano Melotti
116
CRITICAL MATTERS
The Mummy goes to the doctor. Analyses on the body of tzi
man from ice (according to the official definition approved by the Province),
one of the worlds most famous human remains, comparable to the well-
known mummies of ancient Egypt
21
. The body of this Copper-Age hunter,
merchant, metal seeker, shaman-and headman (according to the elastic inter-
pretation by the curators of the Museum), dead perhaps murdered more than
4,000 years ago among the ices of the Schnalstal and found in 1991, is at the
centre of an exciting scientific research that since the beginning, thanks to the
press, has become fictional. The mummy underwent deep and well-publicized
analyses and the visitors of the Archaeological Museum can see the video en-
doscopy and relive the exciting journey inside the mummy
22
. After an inter-
national tour, the mummy now rests in the Museum that exhibits it, as the gem
of its collection, in a particular cold store, with a small and elegant window,
which allows visitors to peep inside
23
. Actually, it is only a special show-
case, but it entails an estranging effect. The design recalls a furnace and gives
the impression of looking at a dead body in the process of cremation. In short,
even in this case, the cultural use of the past moves ambiguously between ed-
ucation and entertainment, bordering necrophiliac voyeurism.
The Sleeping Beauty
Another interesting case is the Capuchin Crypt in Palermo: an incredible un-
derground space, created in the late sixteenth century, which houses eight thou-
sand mummified bodies: men, women and children; standing and lying; fully
dressed and divided according to their gender and social class.
This cemetery lies beneath a church. We are therefore in a religious and fu-
nerary context, where the presence and contemplation of death is not surpris-
ing. The relatives of the deceased and the believers could go down to these cat-
acombs to implement their nekuia.
As in Pompeii, the coming of tourism changed the situation. The bodies of
the crypt became one of the most famous spots of the Grand Tour. But the
tourist gaze of the secularized travellers changed the meaning of those
mummies, which, at least for them, were only a macabre show.
Once more here we see the usual dynamics: cultural tourism, in contact with
death, implements its intrinsic initiatory value, but, at the same time, it acts as
a socially acceptable pretext for satisfying voyeurism.
In the same years when in Pompeii some special creations became fa-
mous, in Palermo there was the creation of the mummy of a two-years-old
Marxiano Melotti
117
CRITICAL MATTERS
young girl, Rosalia Lombardo, who died of pneumonia in 1920.
Thanks to a special technique (which was identified only in 2009) an em-
balmer, Alfredo Salata, created an extraordinary image: a sort of doll, soon
dubbed The Sleeping Beauty. Its success was amazing and it became object
of a macabre pilgrimage, where faith and tourism, as well as morbidity and af-
fection, were indistinguishable. The same nickname given to this body, of
which we have now only the head, is extremely significant. The reference to
the world of fairy tales attenuates the deep meaning of this macabre voyeurism
and somehow makes it more acceptable: looking at the embalmed head of the
little girl becomes like listening to a fairy tale. On the other hand, the reference
to the fairy tales, which often have the same structure as the initiatory tales,
where the heroes face adventures taking them temporarily in another world, ac-
tivates the initiatory mechanism of nekuia. The body of the Sleeping Beauty,
uniting sleep and death, takes us into the other world, from which, however,
at the end of the visit, we can awaken.
The Silicon Saint
In Italy, the main centre of the Roman Catholic culture, the cult of the saints
and the relics is very important and has a long-standing history
24
. It is interesting
to see the change that this cult has recently undergone. Even faith has been in-
corporated into some typical processes of contemporary post-modern society:
the construction of forms of relative authenticity and hybrid identities, the
research of media coverage with its effects, and the transformation of many ex-
Marxiano Melotti
118
CRITICAL MATTERS
Morbid gaze between faith and tourism. The Capuchin Crypt in Palermo
periences into tourist ac-
tivities.
An incisive example
of this process is the cult
of Padre Pio (Father
Pius), a Capuchin friar
who lived in Southern
Italy in the last century
and was beatified in
1999 and canonized in
2002. Some years later,
in 2008, on the occasion
of the public exposition of his body (an event that had a world-wide TV cov-
erage), the organizers decided to show the face of Padre Pio or, rather, some-
thing similar to it. Really, what could be seen was its mask: precisely, according
to the official records, a thin flesh-coloured silicone mask.
Of course this choice aroused many ironies as well as lively disputes. An
Irish blogger, for example, entitled his comment Padre Pio, the Silicon Saint
and came to write that his mask was only a rubber Halloween mask
25
. Crit-
icisms came even from some declared faithful of Padre Pio. In his blog an Ital-
ian believer wrote: Of the holy friars body we will not see even a shred of
flesh (...). We want to see it at all costs. But who decides (for us) have stated
that we must see nothing
26
. The protest in this case was not so much against
the mask as against the concealment of the body.
The invisible mask located on the face of Padre Pio gave authenticity to
the experience: it prevented us from seeing the real face, creating a barrier
with reality, but it putted us in touch with the world of death, allowing us to
see it. The fact that the official site carefully specifies that the mask was thin
reveals a latent embarrassment for this mix of nature and nurture (in this case,
of technology) and between the sacred and the profane
27
.
At the same time it also suggests the symbolic function of passage of the
mask: regardless of its material, it allows us to look beyond. However, even
here we face a hybrid reality: paradoxically, the artificial mask gives identity
and authenticity to a real body. As we grasp from the newspapers that have cov-
ered the event, the believers were stricken by the rosy colour and by the vi-
tal look of the face, interpreted as evidence of holiness, although due only to
the mask.
Marxiano Melotti
119
CRITICAL MATTERS
The silicon Saint. The mask of Padre Pio
A particular reflection deserves the use of silicone. Beyond its instrumen-
tal use due to its well-known qualities, we cannot forget its symbolic value in
the present society. The industry of beauty, connected with the new culture of
wellness, has largely built its fortunes on this substance.
One of the most interesting aspects of this operation is the company en-
trusted with the mask: Madame Tussauds Museum. This brings us back to the
heart of the society of reproduction and virtual reality already treated by Ben-
jamin and Baudrillard
28
.
The Church, to affirm the authenticity of the body exposed, turned to a
wax museum, using the tools of the culture of leisure and entertainment. With
the intention of stressing the uniqueness of the Saints body, it actually created
the conditions for its multiplication. In fact, simulacra of Padre Pio are now
housed in many wax museums, where they appear to be more authentic or, at
least, less fake, since each copy carries the same mask as the original. More-
over, we must recall that Padre Pio is not only an object of popular worship;
he is also a hero of contemporary media culture and, thanks to quite consid-
erable financial investments, the village where he lived, San Giovanni Rotondo,
has been transformed into a powerful attraction for tourism, with all its induced
activities.
A different model
In our society the widespread consumption of films and television pro-
grammes has led us to metabolize the view of death, blood and violence. We
live in a state of anaesthetized horror in which the macabre is news, show
and even marketing tool. Horror only lasts for the short time allowed by the
television news.
We have learned to live together with the most shocking images thanks to
a new aesthetic of death that exorcises them.
Let us think at the bodies falling or diving from the Twin Towers on 9/11,
at charred bodies of the American soldiers burned on the Baghdad bridge, at
the bodies of the victims of the tsunami, floating on the sea, decomposed and
inflated by water and putrefaction: all images published full-page in the news-
papers and transmitted and re-transmitted by television
29
.
But there is another way of representing the horror, which is perhaps even
more effective: absence. In a society based on the images and an aesthetic cult
of the body, absence of images and lack of bodies create anxiety and fear.
This is the case of the concentration camps turned into museums; this is the
Marxiano Melotti
120
CRITICAL MATTERS
case of the Holocaust
museums, where the
presence of absence is
overwhelming and dis-
quieting and the bodies
of the victims are pres-
ent in their absence. Ob-
jects, photographs,
spaces become signs
and metaphor of the
missing bodies. Once
more, we find a sort of
nekuia: an initiatory
journey into the world
of death.
A quite peculiar case is the 921 Earthquake Museum of Taiwan. In 1999 a
terrible earthquake devastated the island, destroying roads, buildings and
schools. The government decided to transform one of the schools destroyed into
a museum. Memory, mourning, prevention, education and tourism are here
closely intertwined, in an interesting experiment of serious edutainment.
In that school there were no casualties. But the pillars shattered and the
school desks piled recall the tragedy and give material consistency to the ab-
sent bodies of the victims of any past and future earthquake.
This museum is a good example of an educational relationship with death
and disasters that responds quite well to the emotional needs of contemporary
society. It satisfies the morbid impulses that lurk in each of us. But, at the same
time, it teaches us without the usual sensationalism and cynicism of the mass
media to accept death and to respect the human body.
References
Baudrillard J., Simulacres et Simulation, Galile, Paris 1981.
Bauman Z., Liquid Modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge 2000.
Belzoni G.B., Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries Within the
Pyramids, Temples, Tombs and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia and of a
Journey to the Coast of the Red Sea, in search of the ancient Berenice; and
another to the Oasis of Jupiter Ammon, John Murray, London 1820.
Marxiano Melotti
121
CRITICAL MATTERS
A school collapsed. Site of the 919 Earthquake Museum of
Taiwan
Benjamin W., Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzier-
barkeit, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. 1955.
Bock, Padre Pio, the Silicon Saint, http://bocktherobber.com/2008/04/padre-
pio-the-silicon-saint (26/04/2008).
Brown M.F. and Bruchac M.M., Nagpra from the Middle Distance: Legal Puz-
zles and Unintended Consequences, in J.H. Merryman (ed.), Imperialism,
Art and Restitution, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2006,
pp. 193-217.
Burns L., Gunther von Hagens Body Worlds: Selling beautiful education, in
The American Journal of Bioethics, 7, 4, 2007, pp. 12-23.
Cantarella E., Sopporta Cuore. La scelta di Ulisse, Feltrinelli, Milano, 2013.
Capecelatro G., Un sole nel labirinto. Storia e leggenda di Raimondo di San-
gro, Principe di Sansevero, Il Saggiatore, Milano 2000.
Chamberlain A.T. and Parker Pearson M., Earthly Remains. The History and
Science of Preserved Human Bodies, The British Museum Press, London
2001.
Dwyer E., Science or Morbid Curiosity? The Casts of Giuseppe Fiorelli and
the Last Days of Romantic Pompeii, in V.C. Gardner Coates and J.L. Seydl
(eds), Antiquity Recovered. The Legacy of Pompeii and Herculaneum, The
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2007, pp. 171-188.
Fleckinger A., tzi, lUomo venuto dal ghiaccio, Folio, Bolzano - Wien 2007.
Frayling C., The Face of Tutankhamun, Faber, London 1992.
Gardner Coates V.C., Lapatin K., Seydl J.L. (eds), The Last Days of Pompeii.
Decadence, Apocalypse, Resurrection, Getty Publications, Los Angeles
2012.
Hales S. and Paul J. (eds), Pompeii in the Public Imagination. From its Re-
discovery to Today, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2011.
Heaney S., The man and the bog, in B. Coles, J. Coles and M. Schou Jorgensen
(eds), Bog Bodies, Sacred Sites and Wetland Archaeology, Warp, Exeter
1999, pp. 3-6.
Jacobelli L., Introduction, in Th. Gautier, Arria Marcella. Ricordo di Pompei,
Flavius, Pompei 2007.
James T.G.H., Howard Carter: the Path to Tutankhamun, Kegan Paul, New
York 1992.
Kritz W., Foreword to G. von Hagens and A. Whalley (eds), Gunther von Ha-
gens Body Worlds. The Original Exhibition of Real Human Bodies, Arts
and Sciences, Heidelberg 2009.
Marxiano Melotti
122
CRITICAL MATTERS
Lennon J. and Foley M., Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disas-
ter, Continuum, London 2000.
Liveley K., Delusion and Dream in Thophile Gautiers Arria Marcella; Sou-
venir de Pompi, in S. Hales and J. Paul, Pompeii in the Public Imagina-
tion, q.v., pp. 105-117.
Maiuri A., Pompei. I nuovi scavi e la villa dei misteri, Libreria dello Stato,
Roma 1931.
Manseau P., Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the Worlds Holy Dead, St. Mar-
tins Press, New York 2010.
Marchant J., The Shadow King: The Bizarre Afterlife of King Tuts Mummy,
Da Capo Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2013.
Melotti M., I riti di passaggio, in Antichit classica, Garzanti, Milano 2000,
pp. 719-720.
Melotti M., Crossing Worlds: Space, Myths and Passage Rites in Ancient Greek
Culture, in K. Mustakallio et al. (eds), Hoping for Continuity. Childhood,
Education and Death in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Acta Instituti Ro-
mani Finlandiae 33, Roma, 2005, pp. 203-241.
Melotti M., Il fascino indiscreto delle catastrofi. Impatto mitico e mediatico
dello tsunami sullimmaginario collettivo, in La Critica Sociologica,
158, 2006, pp. 88-107.
Melotti M., Nascita di un mito. Il turismo a Pompei tra amore e morte, in L.
Jacobelli (ed.), Pompei, la costruzione di un mito. Arte, letteratura e aned-
dotica nellimmagine turistica di Pompei, Bardi, Roma 2008, pp. 95-116.
Melotti M., Fantasie ibride. Il corpo e la maschera nella rete globale, in P.
Sisto, P. Totaro (eds), Il Carnevale e il Mediterraneo, Progedit, Bari 2010,
pp. 57-88.
Melotti M., The Plastic Venuses. Archaeological Tourismand Post-Modern So-
ciety, Cambridge Scholars, Newcastle 2011.
Nicoletti G., LIkea del post-mortem, La Stampa, 30/08/2011.
Ogden D., Greek and Roman Necromancy, Princeton University Press, Prince-
ton - Oxford 2001.
Pagano M., I calchi in archeologia: Ercolano e Pompei, in A. DAmbrosio,
P.G. Guzzo, M. Mastroroberto (eds), Storie di uneruzione. Pompei, Er-
colano, Oplontis, Electa, Milano 2003, pp. 120-125.
Page D.L., Folktales in Homers Odyssey, Harvard University Press, Cam-
bridge, Mass. 1973.
Sharpley R. and Stone P.R., Life, Death and Dark Tourism: Future Research
Marxiano Melotti
123
CRITICAL MATTERS
Directions and Concluding Comments, in R. Sharpley and P.R. Stone, The
Darker Side of Travel, q.v., 2009, pp. 247-251.
Sharpley R. and Stone P.R. (eds), The Darker Side of Travel. The Theory and
Practice of Dark Tourism, Channel View, Bristol 2009.
Simone, Padre Pio e la maschera di cera, in
http://popimmersion.blogspot.com/2008/04/padre-pio-e-la-mashera-di-
cera.html, April 2008.
Walter T., Body Worlds: Clinical detachment or anatomical awe?, in Soci-
ology of Health and Illness, 26, 4, 2004, pp. 464-488.
Zatterin M., Il gigante del Nilo. Storia e avventure del Grande Belzoni, Il
Mulino, Bologna 2008.
Marxiano Melotti studies the continuity and discontinuity between the an-
cient and the modern world, with special reference to the re-discovery and val-
orisation of the past in the contemporary societies and, particularly, in the me-
dia. The relationships between tourism, world heritage and cultural identity are
among his main interests. He works on the relationships between religious rites,
cultural memory and tourism.
He is professor of Sociology and History of Educational Processes at Nic-
col Cusano University of Human Sciences (Rome) and professor of Tourism
and Heritage in the Master of Bicocca University in Magodhoo (Maldives). He
was Visiting professor at the Universities of Tampere (Finland), Gandia
(Spain) and Viseu (Portugal) and professor in the International Master in Eco-
nomics and Administration of Cultural Heritage at the University of Catania.
He is also the Secretary General of the Foundation for the Italian Institute
of Human Sciences (SUM), which organizes cultural events, seminars and con-
ferences connected with cultural heritage and promotes the Observatory on the
Italian Culture.
Among his published works, there are the books The Plastic Venuses. Ar-
chaeological Tourism and Post-Modern Society (Cambridge Scholars, New-
castle 2011), Turismo archeologico (Bruno Mondadori, Milano 2008), Mediter-
raneo tra miti e turismo (Cuem, Milano 2007).
On these themes he gave lectures in Italy and other countries (the United
States, Australia, Brazil, China, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Spain, Finland, Por-
tugal, Greece and Monaco).
*
This essay elaborates the text of a lecture given in Helsinki in 2013 at Heureka, the
Marxiano Melotti
124
CRITICAL MATTERS
Finnish Science Centre, on the occasion of the exhibition Gunther von Hagens
Body Worlds. I thank Mikko Millikoski, Research Director of Eureka.
Notes
1
S. Heaney, The man and the bog, in B. Coles, J. Coles and M. Schou Jorgensen (eds),
Bog Bodies, Sacred Sites and Wetland Archaeology, Warp, Exeter 1999, pp. 3-6.
2
W. Kritz, Foreword to G. von Hagens and A. Whalley (eds), Gunther von Hagens
Body Worlds. The Original Exhibition of Real Human Bodies, Arts and Sciences,
Heidelberg 2009. You can see also the site www.bodyworlds.com.
3
On this exhibition see T. Walter, Body Worlds: Clinical detachment or anatomical
awe?, in Sociology of Health and Illness, 26, 4, 2004, pp. 464-488; L. Burns, Gun-
ther von Hagens Body Worlds: Selling beautiful education, in The American
Journal of Bioethics, 7, 4, 2007, pp. 12-23; R. Sharpley and P. Stone, Life, Death
and Dark Tourism: Future Research Directions and Concluding Comments, in R.
Sharpley and P.R. Stone, The Darker Side of Travel. The Theory and Practice of
Dark Tourism, Channel View, Bristol 2009, pp. 247-248.
4
On dark tourism see J. Lennon and M. Foley, Dark Tourism: The Attraction of
Death and Disaster, Continuum, London 2000; R. Sharpley and P.R. Stone, The
Darker Side of Travel. The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism, Channel View,
Bristol 2009.
5
On the concept of liquid society see Z. Bauman, Liquid Modernity, Polity Press,
Cambridge 2000.
6
G. Nicoletti, LIkea del post-mortem, La Stampa, 30/08/2011.
7
Homer, Odyssey, book 11. On the ritual meaning of katabasis in ancient world see
D. Ogden, Greek and Roman Necromancy, Princeton University Press, Princeton and
Oxford 2001.
8
On the meaning of the contact with the otherness in Odyssey see D.L. Page, Folk-
tales in Homers Odyssey, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1973, and
E. Cantarella, Sopporta Cuore. La scelta di Ulisse, Feltrinelli, Milano 2013. On pas-
sage rites in the ancient world see M. Melotti, Crossing Worlds: Space, Myths and
Passage Rites in Ancient Greek Culture, in K. Mustakallio et al. (eds), Hoping for
Continuity. Childhood, Education and Death in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Acta
Instituti Romani Finlandiae 33, Roma 2005, pp. 203-241; M. Melotti, I riti di pas-
saggio, in Antichit classica, Garzanti, Milano 2000, pp. 719-720.
9
G. B. Belzoni, Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries Within the Pyr-
amids, Temples, Tombs and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia and of a Journey to the
Marxiano Melotti
125
CRITICAL MATTERS
Coast of the Red Sea, in search of the ancient Berenice; and another to the Oasis
of Jupiter Ammon, John Murray, London 1820; M. Zatterin, Il gigante del Nilo. Sto-
ria e avventure del Grande Belzoni, Il Mulino, Bologna 2008.
10
On the debate and redefinition of values connected to native artefacts see M.F.
Brown and M.M. Bruchac, Nagpra from the Middle Distance: Legal Puzzles and Un-
intended Consequences, in J.H. Merryman (ed.), Imperialism, Art and Restitution,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2006, pp. 193-217; and the chapter
The Ethics of Display and Ownership in A.T. Chamberlain, M. Parker Pearson,
Earthly Remains. The History and Science of Preserved Human Bodies, The British
Museum Press, London 2001, pp. 180-188.
11
M. Melotti, The Plastic Venuses. Archaeological Tourism and Post-Modern Soci-
ety, Cambridge Scholars, Newcastle 2011.
12
On the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun and on some aspects of the related
myth-making process see: T.G.H. James, Howard Carter: the Path to Tutankhamun,
Kegan Paul, New York 1992; C. Frayling, The Face of Tutankhamun, Faber, Lon-
don 1992; J. Marchant, The Shadow King: The Bizarre Afterlife of King Tuts
Mummy, Da Capo Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2013.
13
On the intriguing figure of Sansevero see G. Capecelatro, Un sole nel labirinto. Sto-
ria e leggenda di Raimondo di Sangro, Principe di Sansevero, Il Saggiatore, Milano
2000.
14
On the myth-making of Pompeii and the role of death in this process see: M.
Melotti, Nascita di un mito. Il turismo a Pompei tra amore e morte, in L. Jacobelli
(ed.), Pompei, la costruzione di un mito. Arte, letteratura e aneddotica nellimmagine
turistica di Pompei, Bardi, Roma 2008, pp. 95-116; S. Hales and J. Paul (eds), Pom-
peii in the Public Imagination. From its Rediscovery to Today, Oxford University
Press, Oxford 2011; V.C. Gardner Coates, K. Lapatin, J.L. Seydl (eds), The Last Days
of Pompeii. Decadence, Apocalypse, Resurrection, Getty Publications, Los Ange-
les 2012.
15
L. Jacobelli, introduction to Th. Gautier, Arria Marcella. Ricordo di Pompei, Flav-
ius, Pompei 2007. See also K. Liveley, Delusion and Dream in Thophile Gautiers
Arria Marcella; Souvenir de Pompi, in S. Hales and J. Paul, Pompeii in the Pub-
lic Imagination, q.v., pp. 105-117.
16
On the casts in Pompeii: M. Pagano, I calchi in archeologia: Ercolano e Pompei,
in A. DAmbrosio, P.G. Guzzo, M. Mastroroberto (eds), Storie di uneruzione. Pom-
pei, Ercolano, Oplontis, Electa, Milano 2003, pp. 120-125; E. Dwyer, Science or
Morbid Curiosity? The Casts of Giuseppe Fiorelli and the Last Days of Romantic
Pompeii, in V.C. Gardner Coates and J.L. Seydl (eds), Antiquity Recovered. The
Marxiano Melotti
126
CRITICAL MATTERS
Legacy of Pompeii and Herculaneum, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles,
2007, pp. 171-188.
17
A.T. Chamberlain, M. Parker Pearson, Earthly Remains. q.v., pp. 150-153.
18
A. Maiuri, Pompei. I nuovi scavi e la villa dei misteri, Libreria dello Stato, Roma
1931.
19
E. Dwyer, Science or Morbid Curiosity?, q.v., p. 183.
20
M. Melotti, Fantasie ibride. Il corpo e la maschera nella rete globale, in P. Sisto,
P. Totaro (eds), Il Carnevale e il Mediterraneo, Progedit, Bari 2010, pp. 57-88.
21
These are the words of the President of the Ente Musei Provinciali dellAlto Adige
in the introduction Il fascino dellUomo venuto dal ghiaccio in the guidebook ed-
ited by the Bolzano Museum: A. Fleckinger, tzi, lUomo venuto dal ghiaccio, Fo-
lio, Bolzano - Wien 2007, p.7.
22
Ibidem, p. 39.
23
Ibidem, p. 106.
24
On cults of relics and bodies, see P. Manseau, Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the
Worlds Holy Dead, St. Martins Press, New York 2010.
25
Bock, Padre Pio, the Silicon Saint, http://bocktherobber.com/2008/04/padre-pio-the-
silicon-saint (26/04/2008).
26
Simone, Padre Pio e la maschera di cera, in
http://popimmersion.blogspot.com/2008/04/padre-pio-e-la-mashera-di-cera.html,
aprile 2008.
27
M. Melotti, Fantasie ibride, q.v.
28
W. Benjamin, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit,
Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1955; J. Baudrillard, Simulacres et Simulation, Galile, Paris
1981.
29
On the voyeuristic character of the media coverage of this tragedy see M. Melotti,
Il fascino indiscreto delle catastrofi. Impatto mitico e mediatico dello tsunami sul-
limmaginario collettivo, in La Critica Sociologica, 158, 2006, pp. 88-107.
Marxiano Melotti
127
CRITICAL MATTERS