New British TV show suggests watching putrefaction of a corpse

The issue of death will remain tabooed for a long time

The world media are currently discussing yet another entertainment scandal. One of British television channels is about to launch the new show, in which the viewers will have a possibility to watch decay and decomposition of a human body. The idea of the new TV show provoked a very harsh reaction in the British society, not to mention special organizations, which observe television ethics.

Questions regarding the devaluation of traditional human values have become more frequent in recent years. The head of the Moscow-based center for political technologies, Aleksey Zudin expressed his opinion on the matter.

”The aspiration to push boundaries and break taboos has been the eternal subject in the development of the human civilization. Modern television tries not to ignore it either. The notorious sexual revolution became a crucial point at this point, although it would be correct to refer to it as the moral revolution. It took ages to create those taboos, but people started breaking them easily. It was not only about the elimination of traditional sexual taboos, it was happening in other spheres of human life too: the language of both everyday and official communication has become more open as a result of that reform.

”Moral principles – both recent ones and the ones, which, as one could presume, appeared in the very beginning of the human civilization – are under attack nowadays. As it turned out, however, the moral liberation also has its bearable limits. When the society touched upon issue of legalizing unconventional sex, I discovered for myself that I was taking a conservative position on the matter. However, it seemed to me before that I could only welcome the withdrawal of many far-fetched taboos in the field. When the first reality show appeared on the Russian television, I had a feeling that it was unpleasant for me to watch it. The story about a German man organizing exhibitions of corpses had a very strong and sick impression on me too.

”People have always been guided by one of the strongest human feelings – curiosity. As a result, the conception of what can and cannot be done in the modern society has been diffused. Let us not hurry and say that it is disgusting, immoral and revolting. At the end of the day, one has to understand that it would be better not to do certain things. A human being is supposed to keep to a certain social norm in his or her behavior, although it is not ruled out that this norm will have to be broken first.

”The historic time has gathered speed in recent years: the number of changes has increased a lot in global scale. I personally do not sympathize with this idea much, because I realize that the acceleration will not last forever. It will definitely end someday, when something happens. If the speed is high and can hardly be controlled, it brings up the idea that there is something wrong with the breaks, and the rush will eventually lead to an accident. However, it is only one of the variants. According to another version, people are now changing and entering a certain new state. It is an open secret that culture and art can sense and even model the future, preparing individuals to face it. No one has been able to explain the phenomenon yet. It is not ruled out, though, that we are about to experience the anthropological leap of the human race towards the new development stage.

”Humans have learnt to replace almost all organs, except for the brain, although it might become quite possible in the future too. One can see extremely interesting things happening in the field of biotechnologies. The cloning dispute has attracted global attention. I personally would not give up such experiments as a bad job and say that it is a hideous idea to clone humans. Needless to say that everything that humans invent may have a double meaning and use.

”A lot of things that one can see in up-to-date social life and culture have always existed before: various predilections, untraditional sex, experiments with health and psychology and a whole bouquet of misdeeds. The moral revolution has made it possible for humans to face moral norms and decide if they are useful or useless. However, everything that has something in common with death and the issue of death as it is will remain tabooed for a long time due to anthropological reasons. Life is considered the biggest value in the modern human civilization. People will strongly denounce and reject all attempts to displace the value of life.

”Moral and social norms have always been tested. I think that the value of life will pass all kinds of tests. Furthermore, people start realizing the value of all living beings. Ecology and vegetarianism have become extremely popular in recent years, for instance. One may definitely say that the value of all living beings casts doubts on the value of human life. However, I would interpret the current phenomenon as the expansion of humanism.

”A constructive process always accompanies a destructive process. It can be seen fully on television, which undoubtedly takes one of the central roles in present-day mass culture. Television is the best indicator of the society, and our attitude to TV will always be changeable. A certain part of the Russian youth rejects television nowadays, which is a positive issue, for it pushes the development of independent thinking as opposed to the passive aspect of being a TV viewer.”