# Artist to eat stillborn dead baby as performance art- Why is this even legal to show? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 30, 2002, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artist-to-eat-stillborn-dead-baby-as-performance-art-why-is-this-even-legal-to-show/145725 "2002-12-30T18:52:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![IzzyR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/2acd7d/32.png) [@IzzyR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IzzyR)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2002, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artist-to-eat-stillborn-dead-baby-as-performance-art-why-is-this-even-legal-to-show/145725/61 "2002-12-31T17:38:13Z")
[Artist Eats Baby](http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=573&ncid=573&e=5&u=/nm/20021231/od_nm/baby_dc) > [@](#): > > LONDON (Reuters) - A British television station defended a show in which a Chinese performance artist apparently eats a dead baby, calling it a “thought-provoking film about extreme art in China.” > > Channel 4, which upset viewers with a dissection of a human corpse last month, plans to air the documentary in which artist Zhu Yu shows off photographs of himself washing a dead stillborn baby in a sink and putting its dismembered parts in his mouth. > > Politicians and media critics have condemned the plans but the Broadcasting Standards Commission said it could not address a program before it was shown. > [@](#): > > The show’s presenter, a Sunday Times newspaper art critic, calls the work “suffering for your art on a messianic scale.” > > He added: “I expected to be horrified by him, but I found him peaceful, monastic and even charming. When the cameras were switched off he admitted he’d vomited twice before going through his baby performance. But it was crucial to do it, so he forced himself.” > > The presenter, who interviews the artist in his apartment, calls him “China’s most notorious contemporary cannibal,” and says he actually ate the baby’s flesh. ---
**Author:** ![Daoloth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/82dd89/32.png) [@Daoloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daoloth)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2002, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artist-to-eat-stillborn-dead-baby-as-performance-art-why-is-this-even-legal-to-show/145725/62 "2002-12-31T20:05:44Z")
The Reuters article seems pretty convincing. I’m thinking Snopes and the _Register_ may be wrong on this one. ---
**Author:** ![hammerbach](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/73ab20/32.png) [@hammerbach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hammerbach)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2002, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artist-to-eat-stillborn-dead-baby-as-performance-art-why-is-this-even-legal-to-show/145725/63 "2002-12-31T21:50:12Z")
Brief hijack… It is not only not a new thing to invoke cannibalism/infanticide for publicity and/or political reasons, it is a fairly old thing. For example : Jonathan Swift’s 1729 satire, "[A Modest Proposal](http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html) ", subtitled “For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being A burden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public”. This was an example in which the aim was political change via satire of the sledgehammer type. I highly recommend this work for any aspiring satirist. Perhaps, then, there IS some artistic content here, despite the nausea factor. (I am, of course, trying to give the benefit of the doubt.) Unfortunately, with the rather indirect view of this subject in particular, and my lack of cultural background in common with the “artist”, I am unable to see it. ---
**Author:** ![raygirvan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ac91a4/32.png) [@raygirvan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raygirvan)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2002, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artist-to-eat-stillborn-dead-baby-as-performance-art-why-is-this-even-legal-to-show/145725/64 "2002-12-31T21:56:19Z")
_astro Blood Libel: Eating Children_ It’s worth remembering the source quoted in this thread: www.tibet.ca (Tibetans with a grievance about Tibet being occupied by China). However justified their cause, the blood libel is a very ancient propaganda line. Re Zhu Yu: it occurred to me that one difficulty with this issue is that most media sources are jumping to two conclusions: either it’s all fake (i.e. fake baby made of duck meat) or it’s all true (i.e. cannibalism). Given that all we’re seeing is still photos, what if the truth is somewhere in between: a real baby, but the eating is simulated? It’s not unknown for artists to use cadaver material, even in the West, and on [chinese-art.com](http://chinese-art.com) for a while his group have been openly on record as doing so. Presumably this means they are not doing anything illegal within their local jurisdiction. ---
**Author:** ![Daoloth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/82dd89/32.png) [@Daoloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daoloth)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2002, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artist-to-eat-stillborn-dead-baby-as-performance-art-why-is-this-even-legal-to-show/145725/65 "2002-12-31T23:47:41Z")
[Here](http://www.jesus21.com/poppydixon/sex/chinese_eating_fetuses.html) is an interesting article on the alleged pracitce of Chinese people eating fetuses. Apparently some Representatives believe in it: “…latest health fad in the southern boom town of Shenzhen to be the consumption of human fetuses, which are believed to improve complexions and general health. Unlike the serving of endangered reptiles, a human embryo as food trade is not illegal or underground in China.”- Rep. Mark Souder, R Indiana, 1995 ---
**Author:** ![raygirvan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ac91a4/32.png) [@raygirvan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raygirvan)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artist-to-eat-stillborn-dead-baby-as-performance-art-why-is-this-even-legal-to-show/145725/66 "2003-01-03T03:40:55Z")
I saw most of the documentary this evening, and it was interesting. Interviews with various artists suggested various motivations pretty common to artists anywhere: political protest, gender issues, life and death, and, in some cases, a desire to push the boundaries and shock people. They had a political satirist who painted Maoist-style compositions, but featuring uniformed babies; a graffiti artist (again, political protest); a guy who dripped hot wax on himself; a woman who photographed her menstruation; a guy who photographed himself in women’s clothing; another woman who went topless on the Great Wall (in reference to her mother, who had taking to going naked after becoming deranged following social ostracism); a couple of guys who marinaded a human penis in wine and drank it (the wine, that is); Zhu Yu the (supposed) baby eater; a married couple who made compositions with frozen cadavers (and had celebrated their engagement by passing their blood through dead conjoined twins); and a woman who made a curtain from living frogs, snakes and lobsters (as a comment on the struggle of life). The programme made clear a number of cultural aspects of China that made it a little more comprehensible. For instance, cadavers seem more readily available to artists than in the West. The human penis wine seemed to be an extension of the reality that traditional remedy shops sell bull penis wine. The lobster curtain, the artist pointed out, had to be set against the fact that baskets of living lobsters are commonly seen outside restaurants. What to conclude? I’m not sure. On the one hand, my gut feeling, from a Western viewpoint, was that many of the installations evidenced a certain callousness about animals and human remains. On the other, I wouldn’t take much convincing that similar callousness probably happens here, but it’s just kept behind the scenes (e.g. are battery hens any worse than baskets of lobsters?) A problem of cultural relativity. ---
**Author:** ![IzzyR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/2acd7d/32.png) [@IzzyR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IzzyR)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artist-to-eat-stillborn-dead-baby-as-performance-art-why-is-this-even-legal-to-show/145725/67 "2003-01-03T15:27:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by raygirvan \* > Re Zhu Yu: it occurred to me that one difficulty with this issue is that most media sources are jumping to two conclusions: either it’s all fake (i.e. fake baby made of duck meat) or it’s all true (i.e. cannibalism). Given that all we’re seeing is still photos, what if the truth is somewhere in between: a real baby, but the eating is simulated? I don’t know why you say that. Reuters refers unequivocally to a dead baby, but hedges on whether he actually eats it. See also [Artist Defends Baby-Eating](http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=573&ncid=573&e=6&u=/nm/20030103/od_nm/baby_dc) ---
**Author:** ![raygirvan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ac91a4/32.png) [@raygirvan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raygirvan)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artist-to-eat-stillborn-dead-baby-as-performance-art-why-is-this-even-legal-to-show/145725/68 "2003-01-03T19:11:27Z")
IzzyR: At the time I posted, the story hadn’t fully broken; despite the Reuters item you posted, most commentators so far had not questioned the fact of his “eating” whatever it was. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artist-to-eat-stillborn-dead-baby-as-performance-art-why-is-this-even-legal-to-show/145725.md?page=3)