Shadow Boxing

A Blog that Probes the Mind's Dark Secrets

by Katherine Ramsland

Head Shots

A day in the park, with body parts

Published on January 20, 2012 by Katherine Ramsland in Shadow Boxing

First, a human head turned up in a plastic bag. Then a hand, another hand, and two feet. A man had been murdered, dismembered and dumped in the Hollywood hills for the animals. A pair of dogs found the head in a bag on a hiking trail on Tuesday and began to play. Their owners caught up, looked inside the bag, and supposedly thought it was a movie prop, so they took photos. One even posed with a big smile for the cellphone camera. Was this innocent fun or a morbid joke at a victim's expense?

In truth, a decomposing head in a plastic bag would possess some telltale signals that it was real, such as a distinct odor. I won't go into the gory details, but the claim that they mistook this grisly item for a prop is fishy. In fact, these photos went straight to an agency that started offering exclusives for $5000. None of the participants in this sordid tale seemed to think they were violating a victim's privacy and dignity. Instead, they saw an opportunity to make a buck.

Have we become so used to body parts on TV fiction that we've lost the shock value of seeing one up close? What about the obvious fact that this person was murdered? How could someone take the time to pose for a photo with a mutilated victim -- even smile for the camera -- rather than appreciate the enormity of a violated human being or the social importance of respect for the dead?

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As humans, we possess a morbid curiosity about death, especially deaths that involve extreme circumstances. But with the prevalence of grim voyeurism on the Internet, we've found increasingly more social reinforcement for being openly brazen about it. Pulling our darker impulses into the open -- those things we generally suppress in order to be "civilized" -- can go in one of two directions. We'll get healthier or we'll get unhealthier.

Having seen many cultural manifestations of the acceptance and rejection of death, I do think that we Americans could relax a bit about corpses. On the other hand, there's nothing funny for families of murder victims in this story about a pair of dogwalkers treating part of a disarticulated person as an interesting souvenir. Their lack of respect might merely say something distatsteful about them, but given how often we've seen examples of disrespect for the dead over the past year, it could also be a visible symptom of how we're evolvng.