Roy Ward Baker’s The Monster Club (1981),

Overexposed: Art, Technology, and the Body shows how X-rays and other medical technologies changed the way we see the human body. One of the best examples is a 33-second clip from Roy Ward Baker’s The Monster Club (1981), shown on a monitor with headphones. The clip connects the science of seeing through the body with pop culture’s love of spectacle, transformation, and surprise.

In the clip, two men in suits watch a dancer in underwear perform under bright pink stage lights. As she takes off her clothes one piece at a time, their curiosity and desire grow, making us think about the act of looking. The X-ray becomes a way to show the urge to uncover what is hidden beneath the body’s surface. But when the lights change, it reveals a dancing skeleton instead of bare skin. The surprise turns the scene into a joke, and one man says, “Beautiful bones, don’t you think?” A glowing skeleton is usually a gag used when a character gets struck by lightning or electricity, so putting it in a striptease feels funny and original. It also turns a familiar movie joke into a comment on desire, visibility, and how much we can really see.

Overall, the exhibition works as the museum calls it: overexposed, because it uses a playful, easy-to-understand example to show the irony of our desire to look beneath the flesh. Instead of treating the subject in a dry or purely historical way, it makes the connection between technology, the body, and spectatorship feel lively and engaging. Its mix of humor, clarity, and thoughtful commentary is what makes it so effective. 

- Seunghwa Woo