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Speaker 1: First you will come to the sirens, who enchant all

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Speaker 1: who come near them. If anyone unwarily draws in too

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Speaker 1: close and hears the singing of the sirens, his wife

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Speaker 1: and children will never welcome him home again, for they

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Speaker 1: sit in a green field and wabble him to death

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Speaker 1: with the sweetness of their song. There is a great

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Speaker 1: heap of dead men's bones lying all around, with the

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Speaker 1: flesh still rotting off them. They meant the things on

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Speaker 1: the little island with the queer ruins, and it seems

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Speaker 1: them awful pictures of frog fish monsters were supposed to

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Speaker 1: be pictures of these things. Maybe they was the kind

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Speaker 1: of critters has got all the mermaids stories and such started.

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Speaker 1: They had all kinds of cities on the sea bottom,

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Speaker 1: and this island was heaved up from thar of my

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from How Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow

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Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: And if you recognize what those sources were, you probably

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Speaker 1: can tell we're gonna be talking about some mirror creatures,

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Speaker 1: some sea folks something like that today. That's right. The

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Speaker 1: first was from Homer's the Odyssey the Samuel Butler translation.

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Speaker 1: The second was from HP. Lovecraft The Shadow Over Ins

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Speaker 1: andet Now, there is always an alluring quality to the

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Speaker 1: idea that there's stuff happening down at the bottom of

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Speaker 1: the ocean that has more than just an animal quality,

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Speaker 1: but some kind of intelligence or organizing principle to it.

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Speaker 1: I think of in the George R. Martin books, there's

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Speaker 1: this character. Do you remember this guy Robert, who's like

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Speaker 1: a court jester and the in stanis Bathians court who's

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Speaker 1: always singing about what happens under the bottom of the sea. No,

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Speaker 1: I've forgotten about this. Well, he like falls in the

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Speaker 1: water at some point and gets rescued, and after that

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Speaker 1: he's always saying, like under the sea that I don't

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Speaker 1: remember what he says, but it's like they have feet,

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Speaker 1: you know, people people walk upside down on their hands.

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Speaker 1: And then he always says, I know, I know, ho

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Speaker 1: ho ho, And it's kind of mysterious. Oh yeah, this

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Speaker 1: does ring a bell. Now. Well, you know, before even

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Speaker 1: before we had proper mirrors, the uh, the ocean was

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Speaker 1: kind of the looking glass, right, it was kind of

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Speaker 1: the mirror world. Yeah, so any of those stories where

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Speaker 1: you wonder if there's actually some kind of creature living

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Speaker 1: on the other side of the mirror, if that's another

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Speaker 1: universe we're peering through into. All of that applies to

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Speaker 1: the water as well. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting when

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Speaker 1: you think of all the various specimens, the Mermaids, the Gilman,

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Speaker 1: the sirens. It's fascinating the humans have seemingly always dreamt

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Speaker 1: up humanoids from the deep, not just monsters, but humanoids. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, because you can certainly expand it and get

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Speaker 1: into the whole realm of sea monsters and various animal

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Speaker 1: fish hybrids. But there's something particular cular about those humanoid

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Speaker 1: or partially humanoid creatures that a mirror world beneath the waves,

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Speaker 1: and people of some sort that occupied to depths. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, even before you had somebody like Giordano Bruno

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Speaker 1: imagining that there could be other planets with surfaces like

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Speaker 1: our planet that could have creatures dwelling on them, you know,

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Speaker 1: when people didn't really have that conception of the sky,

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Speaker 1: you could still definitely wonder about something like that under

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Speaker 1: the ocean. That was like sort of the first outer space.

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Speaker 1: It was the original alien world. Yeah, indeed, and without

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Speaker 1: a real means of exploring it or understanding it. You

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Speaker 1: were just left with whatever happened to swim up with

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Speaker 1: within view, whatever happened to wash up dead and you know,

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Speaker 1: partially rotted away on the shoreline, whatever you were able

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Speaker 1: to pull up with with line or net. Dude, the

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Speaker 1: stuff that washes up dead on the beaches of the

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Speaker 1: Earth is terrifying and crazy now, even though we have

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Speaker 1: like photos and modern science. Can you imagine that happening

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Speaker 1: in a world where you know, the New Jersey beach

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Speaker 1: monster washes up, but it's in the Middle Ages in

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Speaker 1: China or something. Yeah, it's actually really fascinating to look back,

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Speaker 1: particularly at a lot of the sea monster illustrations and

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Speaker 1: old maps. There's a book by chet van Duzer Sea

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Speaker 1: Monsters of Medieval and Renaissance Maps and and he he.

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Speaker 1: It's filled with wonderful illustrations. But you get to look

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Speaker 1: at at all these various creatures. You know, that's some

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Speaker 1: fairly realistic. You can look at and say, well, that's

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Speaker 1: clearly supposed to be a walrus, that's supposed to be

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Speaker 1: a whale. It just has too many blowholes, and some

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Speaker 1: of them you look at and you realize, well, this

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Speaker 1: is essentially what you might see if you saw the

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Speaker 1: put partially decomposed body of a whale, something enormous, but

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Speaker 1: a little more beaked looking. Now. In that book, Van

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Speaker 1: Duzer points out that few maps survive from antiquity, but

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Speaker 1: there are map like mentions and map like artifacts, such

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Speaker 1: as there's an Assyrian freeze from the palace of King

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Speaker 1: Sargon the second early eighth century BC that clearly depicts

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Speaker 1: to Assyrian morment. And it's great because if you've ever

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Speaker 1: seen Assyrian reliefs or carvings before, they've they've all got

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Speaker 1: the same head, you know, it's all that same guy

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Speaker 1: with the same curly beard and the hat. And these

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Speaker 1: mermaids are like that too. Yeah, And then you you

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Speaker 1: look at other ancient writing. I mean, they're mentioned in

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Speaker 1: ovid Ovid's writing The Metamorphosis. Ovid lived forty three b

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Speaker 1: c E To seventeen or eighteen CE, and he described

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Speaker 1: the gates of the Palace of the Sun is containing

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Speaker 1: all of these images of mirror people. The dark blue

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Speaker 1: Sea contains the gods melodious triton shifting Proteus uh Aegean

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Speaker 1: crushing two huge whales, together his arms across their backs,

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Speaker 1: and Doris with her daughters, some seen swimming, some sitting

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Speaker 1: on rocks drying their sea green hair, some writing the

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Speaker 1: backs of fish. And you can you can keep going

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Speaker 1: back in time too. I mean, as Nancy Easterland pointed

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Speaker 1: out in her two thousand one paper Hans Christian Andersen's

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Speaker 1: Fish out of Water, the Babylonians recognized God's with fish

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Speaker 1: features or fish hybridity. Yeah, you can sort of see

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Speaker 1: this as an extension of the way that early creation

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Speaker 1: myths and ancient gods often had water aspects, like like

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Speaker 1: Tiamatta Nabsu, you know, the fresh water and the salt water,

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Speaker 1: or the idea of the creation stories which almost always

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Speaker 1: involve waters, right, you know, the chaos hover or the

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Speaker 1: being hovering out over the waters. Yeah, calling back to

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Speaker 1: our order out of Chaos episode. And we've talked about

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Speaker 1: inky as well before. The Sumerian water god, which is

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Speaker 1: sometimes described it's sometimes described as having a cloak of

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Speaker 1: a fish or scaled skin. Wait, a cloak of a

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Speaker 1: fish or a cloak made out of multiple fish or

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Speaker 1: one of the images I saw it looked like a

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Speaker 1: cloak of little fish icons like it like the cloak

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Speaker 1: was made out of fish emoticons. That's pretty great, that's amazing.

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Speaker 1: And get this, the ziggurat where people would worship Inky

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Speaker 1: was known as House of the Subterranean Waters. Well, that

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Speaker 1: seems to sort of complete the ziggurat trinity because we

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Speaker 1: we've talked about zigarattes before the Ziggurata Etemenanki, which was

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Speaker 1: sometimes believed to be associated with the historical idea of

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Speaker 1: the Tower of babel I think that name means something

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Speaker 1: like the house of the foundation of heaven and Earth,

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Speaker 1: very regal sounding zigguratte as if there's another kind of

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Speaker 1: zigguratte right now, additionally we have this is just kind

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Speaker 1: of a humble zigguratte. Yeah, there's no such thing. If

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Speaker 1: it's gonna be a zigguratte, it's gonna be a zigaratte. Now.

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Speaker 1: Additionally we have we have fish tailed gods and water

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Speaker 1: dragons found throughout the cultures of India, China, and Japan

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Speaker 1: and uh Nancy Nancy Easterland sums up a lot of

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Speaker 1: this nicely. She says, quote, some of the mythological sea

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Speaker 1: beings and deities such as Poseidon and the Sirens were

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Speaker 1: not originally associated with water and piicine anatomy, the sirens

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Speaker 1: were originally birds, indicating that divine power and womanly allure

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Speaker 1: became combined with the power and promise of the sea

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Speaker 1: when ancient cultures undertook maritime war and trade. So she

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Speaker 1: argues that the that mur folk and mermaids, all these creatures,

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Speaker 1: they're ultimately the descendants or in her words, the scale

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Speaker 1: down descendants, which I like because of scales. Uh, these

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Speaker 1: are just the scale down descendants of anciency gods. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that seems like one example of the principle that displaced

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Speaker 1: gods or or fading gods of older theologies often appear

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Speaker 1: in sort of lower status or demoted roles in newer

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Speaker 1: versions of religions. Yeah, the old trope of the former

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Speaker 1: pagan god becomes a demon in medieval Christian traditions. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So obviously we're talking about mr Folk water dwelling humanoids

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Speaker 1: of various kinds today, and this is going to be

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Speaker 1: the first part of a two part episode. The first

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Speaker 1: one here we want to discuss the sort of global

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Speaker 1: mr Folk mythology and all of the different ideas of

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Speaker 1: humanoids living in the deep and what that says about

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Speaker 1: us culturally and where where these ideas come from. And

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Speaker 1: then in the next stepisode, we're gonna focus more on

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Speaker 1: the science of aquatic humanoids. Yeah, so this is gonna

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Speaker 1: be the mythology and fiction episode and the next one

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Speaker 1: will be the science and speculative science episode. Now, Robert,

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Speaker 1: one of the first ones you mentioned was the sirens,

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Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, and when we we had the reading

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Speaker 1: from the Odyssey at the start of the episode that

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Speaker 1: refers to them. But one thing you'll notice is that

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Speaker 1: there was no description of the sirens. Yeah, what do

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Speaker 1: they look like? Well, we don't know, because Homer never

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Speaker 1: actually describes them. Uh. They were later described though, as

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Speaker 1: being half bird, much like the Harpie, and later periods

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Speaker 1: of development merged them with the Northern mermaid in Christian Europe,

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Speaker 1: but medieval best Area's stuck to the bird hybridity though

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Speaker 1: up through at least twelve twenty and then you had

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Speaker 1: this gentleman Isidore of Seville who lived of five sixty

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Speaker 1: through six thirty six CE, and he attributed them with

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Speaker 1: scales and webbed feet and sometimes tales and wings as well.

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Speaker 1: But from the Middle Ages onward, that's where the sirens

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Speaker 1: really took on the mermaid look, and it's stuck. I'm

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Speaker 1: trying to think of depictions of them I've seen in movies,

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Speaker 1: but I don't think I have. The only thing that

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Speaker 1: comes to mind is, oh, brother, where art thou? But

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Speaker 1: in that they're not hybrids. They're just humans that are,

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Speaker 1: but they are in a creek bed, that's right. I

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Speaker 1: feel like a lot of the depictions that that I'm

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Speaker 1: accustomed to, mainly through the Time Life book series of

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Speaker 1: myths and monsters and myths and legends, and there was

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Speaker 1: there were some siren images in there, and a lot

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Speaker 1: of them were just basically beautiful women out on rocks,

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Speaker 1: luring the the the wide eyed Greek sailors to their doom. Now,

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Speaker 1: of course, if you're not familiar with the story, it's

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Speaker 1: that the sirens would sing, right, and that they're singing

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Speaker 1: was so lovely that it would drive men mad, and

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Speaker 1: it would and they would want to come ashore to

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Speaker 1: meet the sirens, I guess, or be drawn to the singing,

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Speaker 1: but instead their vessels would be dashed upon the rocks, right, Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And various accounts of the sirens that they vary, like

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Speaker 1: maybe you'd starve to death, or you perhaps drowned. I

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Speaker 1: guess the basic underlying reality of the myth is the

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Speaker 1: ocean is a dangerous place, right and if you go

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Speaker 1: out upon the ocean, you might meet your do I

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Speaker 1: always thought that what Odysseus does in the story of

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Speaker 1: his encounter with the sirens was an interesting sort of

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Speaker 1: metaphor for the ways some people experiment with mind altering substances,

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Speaker 1: which is that he has his men lash him to

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Speaker 1: the ship's mast so that he can't control you know,

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Speaker 1: he can't drive the ship into the rocks. But all

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Speaker 1: the other men plugged their ears, and he wants to

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Speaker 1: hear it. They're all the designated drivers. Yes, though in

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Speaker 1: a sense he's the designated driver because he is the

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Speaker 1: only one who can tell them when they're out of

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Speaker 1: the sirens range. But but but yeah, they're they're all

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Speaker 1: plugged up. He's the one that's a that's their rope

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Speaker 1: to the mast, begging to be let free, and their

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Speaker 1: under strict orders that the more I begged, the more

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Speaker 1: you need to wrote me to the mast. Now another

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Speaker 1: interesting uh, individual or race, depending on how you look

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Speaker 1: at it, from Greek mythology, the Triton so Triton was

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Speaker 1: originally a specific murr person. But Ariel's father, right is

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Speaker 1: Was that his name in the cartoon in the Disney movie,

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Speaker 1: wasn't it? I thought you just saw a little mermaid

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Speaker 1: themed show, and I did, but it was at Wiki Watchie,

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Speaker 1: which is the long running Mermaid show there, and the

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Speaker 1: underwater dancing is a very limited storytelling medium, and I

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Speaker 1: don't think her father ever showed up in it. Okay, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think that's his name. I remember this from childhood,

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Speaker 1: the guy with the big beard and the trident, the

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Speaker 1: mayor man king. He's King Triton. Okay, I definitely remember him,

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Speaker 1: but I didn't remember his name. Well. Uh. The Triton's

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Speaker 1: eventually became seen as just a class of murr people

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Speaker 1: in Greek myth. They were the sons of Poseidon and Amphathrite.

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Speaker 1: They had humanoid bodies covered in scales, and then they

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Speaker 1: had dolphin tales maddi green or yellow hair. They had

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Speaker 1: gills as well as pointed kind of elf ears, wide

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Speaker 1: mouths things, and then they typically would serve as escorts

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Speaker 1: for the Nereid sea nymphs as well as general attendants

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Speaker 1: for seed Avinity. And our old friend Hestiodd said that

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Speaker 1: they inhabited Golden palaces under the sea. Now it sounds

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Speaker 1: like King Triton, Yeah, exactly. It's it's that this is

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Speaker 1: key to so many of our our myths and legends

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Speaker 1: of my people. Now I'm wondering this is kind of

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Speaker 1: interesting that it's combining features of the House of ick Thos. Right,

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Speaker 1: it's got the scales and the fish like characteristics, but

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Speaker 1: then they've also got dolphin tales, So there's this melding

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Speaker 1: of aquatic mammals and fish. Well, of course you have

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Speaker 1: to remember that for the longest time this was not

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Speaker 1: a clear distinction, the idea that the dolphins were not fish.

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Speaker 1: So it makes sense that we just mesh it all

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Speaker 1: up under miscellaneous sea beasts. And also in medieval times,

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Speaker 1: Triton's were made the male counterparts of sirens, the male counterparts,

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Speaker 1: as in like they were the same species, or like

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Speaker 1: they were just friends or what My understanding is that

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Speaker 1: it's like they were of the same species of one

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Speaker 1: dares to get too technical with your your mythological people's

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Speaker 1: under the waves, and I think this will be very

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Speaker 1: interesting later on when we discuss modern treatments of mermaids

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Speaker 1: and fish people. Okay, so fangs, scales, dolphin tales, humanoid characteristics.

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Speaker 1: That's not enough hybridity for me. I want you to

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Speaker 1: mash in some more stuff. Well, you're in luck, Joe,

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Speaker 1: because there there's another creature to consider here, the atho centaur. Yes,

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Speaker 1: so you had something called a centauro triton, which is

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Speaker 1: basically what occurs when you have a triton that's depicted

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Speaker 1: with like like a definite dolphin esque hind quarters of ocation.

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Speaker 1: But then the ichio centaur takes the hybridity to a

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Speaker 1: whole another level. So we see this and around the

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Speaker 1: third century Common Era, and this is found in the

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Speaker 1: Natural history text Physiologists. Uh, and this each year the

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Speaker 1: ichthio centaur was said to have the torso and head

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Speaker 1: of a man, the four legs of a horse or

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Speaker 1: lion are the hind quarters of a dolphin, and unlike

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Speaker 1: the centaur o triton, they had scale. Now I'm so

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Speaker 1: imagining what kind of habitat this creature dwells in. When

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Speaker 1: would it be useful to have the four legs of

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Speaker 1: a horse and the tail of a dolphin. H Well,

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Speaker 1: I mean you could really tease that apart and get

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Speaker 1: into I guess the symbolic meaning of the things or

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Speaker 1: you you end up coming back to your idea of like,

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Speaker 1: here's something washed up on the beach, makes sense of it,

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Speaker 1: and well, this is kind of the story that ends

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Speaker 1: up spreading about it. There are no classical accounts of

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Speaker 1: the Ichthio centaur according to the resources I was looking at,

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Speaker 1: but that they remained a decorative motif, which is kind

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Speaker 1: of the ultimate fate of a lot of these, like

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Speaker 1: the mermaid and the uh and the triton and the

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Speaker 1: Ichthyo centaur, they become just part of medieval likenography going forward,

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Speaker 1: and they come to symbolize other things, the Mermaid particular

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Speaker 1: becoming to symbolize to sort of the the the evil

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Speaker 1: and monstrous nature of the female Uh sometimes depicted Uh,

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Speaker 1: I believe with a with a fish to show that

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Speaker 1: she is entrapping the Christian soul. Yeah. I often think

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Speaker 1: of the tradition of the mermaid as being one of temptation,

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Speaker 1: like that it it establishes kind of like a foolish

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Speaker 1: and weak willed sailor that will give in to the

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Speaker 1: temptation of the mermaid because he has not properly disciplined

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Speaker 1: his spirit to resist sin. It reminds me a lot

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Speaker 1: of the incubi and succubi legends we've discussed in the

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Speaker 1: podcast before, where the feet would be a giveaway, the

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Speaker 1: feet would be the feet of a beast, and therefore

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Speaker 1: any any rational believer would notice the feet of the

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Speaker 1: creature and just and cease to pursue this foolish pairing.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, that's an interesting parallel, like that they both

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Speaker 1: go back to this idea of the sinner as someone

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Speaker 1: who's oblivious to difference. Yeah, like they can't see all

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Speaker 1: the warning signs here, the main warning sign of course,

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Speaker 1: being that the individualist part fish. All right, well, maybe

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Speaker 1: we should take a quick break and then we come back.

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Speaker 1: We will discuss more aquatic humanoid legends from around the world. Alright,

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Speaker 1: we're back. So not every mirror person in mythology and

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Speaker 1: legend is a villain. Uh. Sometimes you see some that

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Speaker 1: that have beneficial aspects as well. There's, for instance, the

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Speaker 1: the the Neno of Japanese legend. This is essentially less

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Speaker 1: of a mermaid and more of just a fish with

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Speaker 1: a beautiful woman's face, and it's protective and warns of

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Speaker 1: misfortune on land and sea. And then there's also an

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Speaker 1: interesting one from the Micmac people of eastern Canada. They

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Speaker 1: were known as the halfway people. Uh, these particular mr

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Speaker 1: folk they had the upper bodies of a body of

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Speaker 1: a human and the lower body of a fish, and

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Speaker 1: they'd warn fishermen of coming storms or invoke storms if

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Speaker 1: they were distrest spected. Now I have to add another

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Speaker 1: North American or Canadian entry, a less fulkloric and more

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Speaker 1: of a one off. But I'm adding it because I've

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Speaker 1: seen this in person, Robert the Bant from Merman. You've

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Speaker 1: looked up images, right, I did. I was not familiar

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Speaker 1: with this, and I had, of course heard of the

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Speaker 1: Fiji Mermaid. And I've never been to Bath, but I'm

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Speaker 1: familiar with it. You know, you've talked about your adventures there,

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Speaker 1: and it does not seem like a likely mermaid destination. No,

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Speaker 1: not really. I mean, so this is Inland, Canada. This

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Speaker 1: is in Alberta and Bant National Park. So this is

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Speaker 1: a mountainous region, not a not a coastal region, but

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Speaker 1: it has lakes, and so in these lakes, I guess

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Speaker 1: one might expect to find some kind of hybrid humanoid

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Speaker 1: aquatic creature. And so inside this business in Banff in Alberta.

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Speaker 1: There is a little store called the Indian Trading Company,

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Speaker 1: and in the back of the store there is a

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Speaker 1: taxidermy creature that's half fish, half humanoid gremlin and it

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Speaker 1: looks like, I don't know how would you describe it.

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Speaker 1: Like the back of it just looks straight up like

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Speaker 1: a fish. It's a fish with the head cut off,

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Speaker 1: and then that fish just goes straight into some ribs

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Speaker 1: with with like human baby arms but with claws on them,

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Speaker 1: and a scary looking head that has hair. I mean

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Speaker 1: it looks like a taxidermine creation. I mean that is

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Speaker 1: what it is. Yes, it is a fish and probably

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Speaker 1: some sort of a small monkey that the remains of

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Speaker 1: which we're we're sewn together, yeah, or the I think

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Speaker 1: it's also possible that the top half of it could

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Speaker 1: just be artificial. I think it could be a crafted artifact.

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Speaker 1: According to a write up on Atlas Obscurity, it was

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Speaker 1: probably bought by a man named Norman Luxton, who is

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Speaker 1: the proprietor of the shop around nineteen fifteen, when it

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Speaker 1: was when it first showed up there. It's very much

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Speaker 1: in the traditional of like the P. T. Barnum kind

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Speaker 1: of thing that the Fiji mermaid. Yes, so some kind

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Speaker 1: of a side shoeoddity sort of thing. Yeah, except it

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Speaker 1: stays right here in this uh, in this store or

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Speaker 1: I don't know how long it's been totally stationary there.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, if you go to Bamp and you go

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Speaker 1: to the store and you go into the back room,

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Speaker 1: you will see lots of oddities. There is like a

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Speaker 1: giant taxidermy bear I think, and some moose heads and

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Speaker 1: other local stuff. But yeah, this thing is in a

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Speaker 1: glass case. It's got a mirror behind it, and they

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Speaker 1: sell postcards. It's like I saw them from Herman. Interesting.

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Speaker 1: Well that's this. I've got to check that out when

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Speaker 1: I finally get up to ban. Now, speaking of Canadian

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Speaker 1: we can sort of extend that and think of French

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Speaker 1: traditions as well. Uh, there is a mermaid in French

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Speaker 1: traditions known as Melo scene and much like a kidna,

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Speaker 1: the mother of monsters in Greek myth, the French mermaid

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Speaker 1: here boasts a two pronged tale. Oh you know what

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Speaker 1: that reminds me of Dagon? Well yeah, I thought you're

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Speaker 1: gonna say Starbucks, but yes, also the movie, the Stewart

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Speaker 1: Gordon movie Dagon that came out in two thousand and one.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of a mixed bag. Not not a great movie,

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Speaker 1: but there's some things to like about it. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: a love crafty in like it's basically an adaptation of

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Speaker 1: Shadow over in Smith, but they lean into the Mermaids

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Speaker 1: a little more. They lean into the sex and violence

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Speaker 1: a little more. Uh, it's worth checking out if you

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Speaker 1: like violent fish people movies. But what about Starbucks Starbucks, Well,

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00:21:14,680 --> 00:21:18,520
Speaker 1: it just coffee basically, But but that that logo with

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Speaker 1: the mermaid with the two pronged tail, uh, with going

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Speaker 1: up on each side of the creature, Like that's basically

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Speaker 1: melocene or a kid not, depending on how you want

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Speaker 1: to look at Robert. I hate to say it, but

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Speaker 1: I don't think anybody ever pays attention to that logo

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Speaker 1: unless they're trying to get mad about it or not

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Speaker 1: having a Sanda hat or something. It would be interesting

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Speaker 1: if people started getting mad over that, is, Like, why

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Speaker 1: does this mermaid have two tales instead of one? We

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Speaker 1: want an American Mermaid, not a French Mermaid. One tale,

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Speaker 1: one country, one tale. Well, they're probably you know, pining

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Speaker 1: for the classic Mermaid, the have for the Danish Mermaid.

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Speaker 1: Why is this the classic Well, you know, because when

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Speaker 1: you when you really think about mermaids, you think of

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Speaker 1: like Hans Christian Anderson, you think of Northern Europe. Oh, so,

396
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Speaker 1: to be clear, Hans Christian Anderson is the author of

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Speaker 1: the Little Mermaids story that the Disney movie is loosely

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Speaker 1: based on, very loosely because in his version there's a

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Speaker 1: lot more like blood and cutting off feed and stuff.

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Speaker 1: Oh yes, it's a bit a bit more violent. But

401
00:22:19,240 --> 00:22:21,320
Speaker 1: but over in Denmark they did have to have frou

402
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Speaker 1: and uh. This is a that's that's a pretty helpful

403
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Speaker 1: mermaid because it can also tell the future and it

404
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Speaker 1: allegedly foretold the birth of Danish King Christian the fourth

405
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Speaker 1: of Denmark. So that's a that's a beneficial mermaid for you.

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Speaker 1: And of course I have to mention the monk fish.

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Speaker 1: Are you familiar with the monk fish or perhaps it's

408
00:22:41,080 --> 00:22:43,600
Speaker 1: kin the bishop fish. Well, I know of the monkfish,

409
00:22:43,680 --> 00:22:46,040
Speaker 1: like the monkfish, but you're not thinking of like the

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Speaker 1: monkfish that you would eat, right. This is this was

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Speaker 1: a creature widely reported marine creature in Northern European waters,

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Speaker 1: described in Ambrose Pare's sixteenth century work on monsters. It

413
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Speaker 1: had the head of a human, the tonstered air style

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Speaker 1: of a monk, monks cow and cape, and two extremely

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Speaker 1: long flippers. It's it's a ridiculous looking creature. It looks

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Speaker 1: like you drew a monk as a fish, you know

417
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Speaker 1: what you're talking about. It sounds I've seen the medieval drawings.

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Speaker 1: But the cool thing is that there's a very strong

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Speaker 1: case to be made that these were based on descriptions

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Speaker 1: of dead giant squid, because you have this kind of

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Speaker 1: you know, thick, lumpy body that kind of tapers off

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00:23:29,000 --> 00:23:32,119
Speaker 1: on one end and then has what a number of

423
00:23:32,200 --> 00:23:36,320
Speaker 1: tentacles and then two very long additional arms. Uh. That

424
00:23:36,720 --> 00:23:39,720
Speaker 1: would have been the two extremely long flippers of the

425
00:23:39,800 --> 00:23:43,159
Speaker 1: monk fish. Yeah, I'm looking at the comparisons right now.

426
00:23:43,240 --> 00:23:45,720
Speaker 1: I can see why that would have been the case.

427
00:23:46,280 --> 00:23:48,159
Speaker 1: And there was also a Chinese variant of this, the

428
00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:53,240
Speaker 1: Hi Ho Shun, which was the sea Buddhist priest. So uh, again,

429
00:23:53,280 --> 00:23:55,640
Speaker 1: we're getting back to the idea of when when you're

430
00:23:55,720 --> 00:23:58,480
Speaker 1: talking about a mythical sea creature, there are a number

431
00:23:58,480 --> 00:24:00,119
Speaker 1: of different ways to look at it. You know, is

432
00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:02,879
Speaker 1: it a former god that's been demoted, is it a

433
00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:06,760
Speaker 1: dead sea animal that that someone has misinterpreted, and then

434
00:24:06,840 --> 00:24:09,160
Speaker 1: someone else has heard about that, and then that person

435
00:24:09,320 --> 00:24:13,200
Speaker 1: told another individual who illustrated and wrote it in in

436
00:24:13,280 --> 00:24:16,560
Speaker 1: a medieval baster area. It. Uh. These are just a

437
00:24:16,640 --> 00:24:20,960
Speaker 1: few of the possible excuses for many of these fantastic creatures.

438
00:24:21,280 --> 00:24:24,720
Speaker 1: So is there anything that seems to unite all of

439
00:24:24,840 --> 00:24:27,560
Speaker 1: the legends we've looked at so far? Or are aquatic

440
00:24:27,640 --> 00:24:32,320
Speaker 1: humanoids as diverse as real humans or as diverse as

441
00:24:32,359 --> 00:24:35,320
Speaker 1: other gods and monsters? Well, there's always the sense of

442
00:24:35,440 --> 00:24:39,640
Speaker 1: the familiar yet alien. Yeah, and the sense that it's uh, well,

443
00:24:39,760 --> 00:24:42,600
Speaker 1: lots of lots of monsters are familiar yet alien, but

444
00:24:42,680 --> 00:24:46,840
Speaker 1: that they come from another world. The aquatic humanoids do. Yes,

445
00:24:46,920 --> 00:24:50,080
Speaker 1: they are familiar yet yet foreign. They are something there.

446
00:24:50,160 --> 00:24:52,400
Speaker 1: There are people from the other side of the mirror. Yeah,

447
00:24:52,920 --> 00:24:54,560
Speaker 1: I've got another one. Maybe. Let me know what you

448
00:24:54,640 --> 00:24:58,639
Speaker 1: think about this. When I think of ocean dwelling humanoids

449
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:04,119
Speaker 1: in mythology in fiction, they don't usually seem to be

450
00:25:04,440 --> 00:25:07,879
Speaker 1: like party hard kind of gods or party hard monsters

451
00:25:08,040 --> 00:25:13,400
Speaker 1: or humanoids. They usually seem kind of sad. Ye, there's

452
00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:17,600
Speaker 1: a kind of melancholy that we associate with the underwater

453
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:20,320
Speaker 1: life and the ocean that may them from the sad

454
00:25:20,480 --> 00:25:23,040
Speaker 1: faces of fish is. I don't know if that's too

455
00:25:23,119 --> 00:25:25,880
Speaker 1: crazy of a stretch. When I look at fish faces,

456
00:25:26,840 --> 00:25:30,040
Speaker 1: I tend to project emotions on them, and those emotions

457
00:25:30,119 --> 00:25:33,200
Speaker 1: are never like happiness. Fish faces always look a little

458
00:25:33,200 --> 00:25:37,400
Speaker 1: bit sad, like they're disappointed in something, like they wish

459
00:25:37,480 --> 00:25:40,639
Speaker 1: things were going better. Well, it comes back to the

460
00:25:40,680 --> 00:25:42,600
Speaker 1: old saying a fish out of water as well, Right,

461
00:25:42,680 --> 00:25:44,919
Speaker 1: there's nothing more awkward than a creature that has been

462
00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:49,159
Speaker 1: taken from its natural habitat and thrown into another. The

463
00:25:49,280 --> 00:25:52,520
Speaker 1: fish out of water is a thing that is vulnerable,

464
00:25:52,760 --> 00:25:57,399
Speaker 1: perhaps doomed. Uh, it is in shock and uh. And

465
00:25:57,520 --> 00:25:59,680
Speaker 1: therefore I think we we do see that a lot

466
00:25:59,800 --> 00:26:04,119
Speaker 1: with our mur folk of various designs, in our our

467
00:26:04,200 --> 00:26:06,840
Speaker 1: myths and our fictions. Yeah, sad fish faces and also

468
00:26:07,080 --> 00:26:10,480
Speaker 1: also kind of a shadowy realm. Right. The the the

469
00:26:11,320 --> 00:26:16,359
Speaker 1: underwater world for these underwater humanoids is another world. But

470
00:26:16,480 --> 00:26:18,960
Speaker 1: it's the world that the sun is on the opposite

471
00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:22,120
Speaker 1: side of the barrier from, Like the sun is all ours,

472
00:26:22,680 --> 00:26:25,120
Speaker 1: and the sun they get is just what filters down

473
00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:29,040
Speaker 1: through the through the membrane of the water surface. Yeah,

474
00:26:29,200 --> 00:26:31,800
Speaker 1: but then sometimes there are depictures again the golden cities

475
00:26:31,880 --> 00:26:34,320
Speaker 1: of the Triton's. Yeah, I guess that's true. So there

476
00:26:34,400 --> 00:26:37,600
Speaker 1: is a sense of of the glorious, but also this

477
00:26:37,760 --> 00:26:40,680
Speaker 1: sense of just sort of alien hard work as well. Like,

478
00:26:41,480 --> 00:26:44,639
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe I'm projecting more about what what we

479
00:26:44,800 --> 00:26:49,640
Speaker 1: know from covering aquatic biology and just the the aquatic habitat,

480
00:26:49,720 --> 00:26:53,840
Speaker 1: knowing that it is such a place of of intense competition.

481
00:26:54,200 --> 00:26:57,920
Speaker 1: You know, when I think of the the ultimate melancholy

482
00:26:58,119 --> 00:27:01,800
Speaker 1: underwater humanoids, like I go to the Universal Monster movies,

483
00:27:02,400 --> 00:27:05,159
Speaker 1: it's the gil Man. Yeah, the gil Man. I mean,

484
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:08,280
Speaker 1: I imagine most of the people listening to this podcast

485
00:27:09,400 --> 00:27:11,879
Speaker 1: grew up with the gil Man, right, creature from the

486
00:27:11,880 --> 00:27:15,200
Speaker 1: Black Lagoon nine fifty four, part of the classic Universal

487
00:27:15,280 --> 00:27:18,720
Speaker 1: Monster movie canon. Except the gil Man was different from

488
00:27:18,760 --> 00:27:22,960
Speaker 1: a lot of the others in that unlike Dracula or Frankenstein,

489
00:27:23,080 --> 00:27:25,920
Speaker 1: which had been the subject of novels of horror and

490
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:28,280
Speaker 1: science fiction at the time, the gil Man was the

491
00:27:28,480 --> 00:27:32,760
Speaker 1: synthesis of many of these human mr fult kind of traditions,

492
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:37,000
Speaker 1: was not from like a novel that existed. It's uh,

493
00:27:37,280 --> 00:27:39,400
Speaker 1: there are other interesting talks about it too, like, for instance,

494
00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:44,160
Speaker 1: unlike Frankenstein or Dracula or the Money, the gil Man

495
00:27:44,480 --> 00:27:47,240
Speaker 1: was a was a product of the natural world. It's

496
00:27:47,280 --> 00:27:49,400
Speaker 1: just a product of the natural world that no longer

497
00:27:49,480 --> 00:27:52,040
Speaker 1: had a place in the modern world. And that's why

498
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:54,919
Speaker 1: it often gets classed as a science fiction movie instead

499
00:27:54,960 --> 00:27:58,159
Speaker 1: of a horror movie. Yeah, that the science discusses is

500
00:27:58,280 --> 00:28:00,800
Speaker 1: rather rather sketchy. Oh they this is even better in

501
00:28:00,880 --> 00:28:03,040
Speaker 1: the sequel, Revenge of the Creature. We should get to

502
00:28:03,119 --> 00:28:05,879
Speaker 1: that in a few minutes. Yeah. I grew up with

503
00:28:06,040 --> 00:28:08,119
Speaker 1: it with this monster, like I'm sure you did. I

504
00:28:08,160 --> 00:28:09,960
Speaker 1: remember having I had the little glow in the Dark

505
00:28:10,040 --> 00:28:13,440
Speaker 1: figurine of it. As a kid, I had these Universal

506
00:28:13,520 --> 00:28:16,560
Speaker 1: trading cards that had been my dad's that had all

507
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:19,680
Speaker 1: these universal monsters and some horrible jokes on them. You

508
00:28:19,840 --> 00:28:23,040
Speaker 1: people at home, Robert has brought these cards in. I

509
00:28:23,119 --> 00:28:24,800
Speaker 1: think we should read a couple of the jokes on

510
00:28:24,840 --> 00:28:26,960
Speaker 1: the back of them. Okay, you go for it, Joe,

511
00:28:28,400 --> 00:28:31,280
Speaker 1: I'll play along. Okay, joke on the first one. So

512
00:28:31,400 --> 00:28:33,640
Speaker 1: the first one shows the gil Man. On the front

513
00:28:33,760 --> 00:28:37,480
Speaker 1: it said, did you say fish for dinner? Anyone I know?

514
00:28:40,280 --> 00:28:43,240
Speaker 1: And then on the back it's got this first ghost Colin,

515
00:28:43,560 --> 00:28:48,200
Speaker 1: we just had a baby. Second ghost colon, congratulations, Was

516
00:28:48,320 --> 00:28:51,960
Speaker 1: it a ghoul or a boy? See? That's that's some

517
00:28:52,320 --> 00:28:54,640
Speaker 1: that's some straight up crypt keeper humor right there. That's

518
00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:57,120
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. I got an even better one. So

519
00:28:57,440 --> 00:29:01,120
Speaker 1: the front is the creature, but that's from the third movie.

520
00:29:01,160 --> 00:29:03,400
Speaker 1: The creature walks among us when he sort of gets

521
00:29:03,400 --> 00:29:07,000
Speaker 1: turned into a regular human, and the back has a

522
00:29:07,120 --> 00:29:11,920
Speaker 1: joke that says, what's a cowardly skeleton? I don't know, Joe,

523
00:29:11,960 --> 00:29:19,920
Speaker 1: what's the cowardly skeleton? A boned chicken? That's probably a

524
00:29:20,120 --> 00:29:22,400
Speaker 1: joke that we would get if this were the early

525
00:29:22,520 --> 00:29:27,240
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, but I do not get it. But chicken,

526
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:33,400
Speaker 1: oh man. That there's this whole world of butchery jokes

527
00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:36,800
Speaker 1: that we just said don't have access to. But it's great,

528
00:29:36,840 --> 00:29:39,040
Speaker 1: you know, because this is a joke that no longer

529
00:29:39,120 --> 00:29:42,280
Speaker 1: fits into our time. And that's basically the idea of

530
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:45,560
Speaker 1: the creature, and I think one of the it's telling

531
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:49,160
Speaker 1: that the creature continues to be celebrated despite the fact

532
00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:50,960
Speaker 1: that there has not really been a creature from the

533
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:54,720
Speaker 1: Black Liogoon movie since the original trilogy. But he's taken

534
00:29:54,760 --> 00:29:58,880
Speaker 1: on this sort of outsider icon status. Yeah, I'm really

535
00:29:59,080 --> 00:30:02,560
Speaker 1: mortified for the time when they come into remake Creature

536
00:30:02,560 --> 00:30:05,080
Speaker 1: from the Black Lagoon. I don't want it. I don't

537
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 1: I don't think we're ready. Yeah, that really. I mean

538
00:30:07,760 --> 00:30:11,640
Speaker 1: Gamma del Toro's The Shape of Water, which just came

539
00:30:11,680 --> 00:30:15,680
Speaker 1: out Christmas. That's really the best possible creature from the

540
00:30:15,720 --> 00:30:19,360
Speaker 1: Black Lagoon remake, even though it's not officially Creature from

541
00:30:19,360 --> 00:30:21,200
Speaker 1: the Black log Right. No, I'm talking about like the

542
00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:25,120
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise Mummy Universe remakes where it would be like

543
00:30:25,520 --> 00:30:29,000
Speaker 1: what Benedict's cumber Batch as the Gilman and then take

544
00:30:29,040 --> 00:30:30,960
Speaker 1: a good go man who would play the lugs who

545
00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:34,160
Speaker 1: show up in the Lagoon and start poking and with stuff. Oh,

546
00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:36,600
Speaker 1: I don't know. Just you can just point a scatter

547
00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:40,240
Speaker 1: gun at an IMDb page. I guess you get some candidates.

548
00:30:40,520 --> 00:30:44,000
Speaker 1: So when did you first see the Gillman on screen? Um?

549
00:30:44,480 --> 00:30:46,360
Speaker 1: You know, I think before I saw any of the movies.

550
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:50,000
Speaker 1: I was introduced to it in two. It came from Hollywood.

551
00:30:50,480 --> 00:30:52,640
Speaker 1: That's a great one. Yeah. So basically just a bunch

552
00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:56,560
Speaker 1: of old movie trailers, uh, stitched together with some at

553
00:30:56,640 --> 00:31:00,240
Speaker 1: times delightful jokes at times cringeworthy jokes and very as

554
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:05,800
Speaker 1: a celebrity guest spots from like Cheech and Chong, Dan Ackroyd,

555
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:09,680
Speaker 1: John Candy, they were principles on this project. They highlight

556
00:31:09,800 --> 00:31:13,200
Speaker 1: a great brain attack scenes. Yes, yeah, there's a whole

557
00:31:13,240 --> 00:31:17,160
Speaker 1: section on guerilla movies. It's it's, it's, it's. It's a

558
00:31:17,160 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 1: wonderful film. It's hard to find these days because I

559
00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:21,640
Speaker 1: think that some of the rights issues prevented from being

560
00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:24,600
Speaker 1: properly distributed. Yeah, but you don't see the gil Man

561
00:31:24,800 --> 00:31:28,560
Speaker 1: showing up in repeated uses throughout other films the same

562
00:31:28,600 --> 00:31:30,880
Speaker 1: way you do like Bell of the Ghostias version of

563
00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:36,160
Speaker 1: Dracula or the Frankenstein Monster exactly. Now. One of the

564
00:31:36,240 --> 00:31:38,480
Speaker 1: things though about the Gilman, to really to bring it

565
00:31:38,520 --> 00:31:40,400
Speaker 1: back to some of these themes we're discussing here, though,

566
00:31:41,120 --> 00:31:44,680
Speaker 1: is that that outsider aspect, you know, the the idea

567
00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:48,400
Speaker 1: that there's something sympathetic and yet other, or depending on

568
00:31:48,480 --> 00:31:51,160
Speaker 1: how you're looking at it, threatening and yet other. And

569
00:31:51,280 --> 00:31:54,240
Speaker 1: when you start teasing the gil Man apart, there's some

570
00:31:54,360 --> 00:31:59,800
Speaker 1: really unsettling dimensions to the creature. The same can certainly

571
00:32:00,200 --> 00:32:04,760
Speaker 1: said of HP Lovecraft's story The Shadow Over in Smith

572
00:32:04,840 --> 00:32:09,200
Speaker 1: which which is which of course was published before The

573
00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:12,440
Speaker 1: Creature came to our cinemas. Uh. And it's kind of

574
00:32:12,760 --> 00:32:16,960
Speaker 1: like a proto creature short story. It's got a quatic humanoids, right,

575
00:32:17,040 --> 00:32:19,240
Speaker 1: it does. It has a whole race of aquatic humanoids

576
00:32:19,360 --> 00:32:24,760
Speaker 1: that end up interbreeding with this rural uh fishing and

577
00:32:24,960 --> 00:32:29,040
Speaker 1: trade community. Uh. And and that is like the horror

578
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:31,400
Speaker 1: of the piece. It's the idea that they're fish people

579
00:32:31,800 --> 00:32:35,120
Speaker 1: and humans are breeding with them. And you know, I

580
00:32:35,280 --> 00:32:38,160
Speaker 1: I first read this story, I read it in n

581
00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:42,520
Speaker 1: for the first time, and uh and I remember being like, really, um,

582
00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:45,200
Speaker 1: just blown over by it. I thought it was just

583
00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:51,920
Speaker 1: such a creepy, um atmospheric tale. And uh, it's it's

584
00:32:51,920 --> 00:32:55,120
Speaker 1: a little more disturbing the more one reads about it,

585
00:32:55,160 --> 00:32:58,440
Speaker 1: and the one the more one knows about Lovecraft and

586
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:04,400
Speaker 1: his his uh sentiments towards other people's and other races. Yeah,

587
00:33:04,640 --> 00:33:09,440
Speaker 1: Lovecraft was very imaginative, but he was not a nice person. No. Uh.

588
00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:12,200
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes excuses are made from this is a

589
00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:17,000
Speaker 1: guy that lived nineteen thirty seven, and some people defended

590
00:33:17,040 --> 00:33:18,360
Speaker 1: by saying, oh, you know, he was a product of

591
00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:21,480
Speaker 1: his time, as as we all are. But he was

592
00:33:21,520 --> 00:33:24,880
Speaker 1: definitely a man with some very problematic views on race,

593
00:33:25,040 --> 00:33:29,160
Speaker 1: especially from modern modern readers. Absolutely, I mean, even if

594
00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:31,720
Speaker 1: we're to leave out his personal letters and so forth,

595
00:33:32,080 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 1: his fiction often falls back on the trend of championing

596
00:33:34,960 --> 00:33:38,080
Speaker 1: a white English culture over everything else, and we see

597
00:33:38,120 --> 00:33:42,040
Speaker 1: the other races sometimes depicted as is just outright monstrous.

598
00:33:42,440 --> 00:33:44,800
Speaker 1: You often get the sense for him that any non

599
00:33:45,080 --> 00:33:50,080
Speaker 1: Anglo ethnic groups are sort of allied with the monsters. Yeah,

600
00:33:50,120 --> 00:33:55,320
Speaker 1: there's something like threatening and debilitative about them in his work. Um,

601
00:33:55,880 --> 00:33:58,000
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot to unpack in in Smith

602
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:00,680
Speaker 1: and again, in many ways, it is a tremendous short story.

603
00:34:00,720 --> 00:34:05,840
Speaker 1: It was highly influential. But as Evan Lampi discusses in

604
00:34:05,920 --> 00:34:08,400
Speaker 1: his paper in praise of the In Smith, look Nautical

605
00:34:08,600 --> 00:34:11,840
Speaker 1: Terror and the Specter of Atlantic History and HP Lovecrafts fiction,

606
00:34:12,760 --> 00:34:15,919
Speaker 1: you can compare it to Lovecraft's earlier story The Dunwich Horror,

607
00:34:16,239 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 1: which presents a town with a quote degraded population of ignorant, backward,

608
00:34:20,719 --> 00:34:26,719
Speaker 1: physically stunted villagers. This again en capsuling his Lovecrafts uh

609
00:34:27,560 --> 00:34:30,400
Speaker 1: anxieties concerning not only other races, but even just like

610
00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:36,239
Speaker 1: other like classes of people within the United states. But

611
00:34:37,040 --> 00:34:39,360
Speaker 1: Lampy points out the quote the fall of Dunwich is

612
00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:42,319
Speaker 1: a result of racial decline brought on by isolation, which

613
00:34:42,360 --> 00:34:44,360
Speaker 1: is a source of terror in the narrative, but in

614
00:34:44,480 --> 00:34:48,160
Speaker 1: in Smith, it's not isolation, but contact with distant lands

615
00:34:48,280 --> 00:34:52,839
Speaker 1: via Atlantic commerce that serves as their undoing. So Lampey says,

616
00:34:52,920 --> 00:34:56,400
Speaker 1: quote in Smith's degradation is a result of its worldliness,

617
00:34:56,480 --> 00:34:59,279
Speaker 1: not its isolation. Even if the city became a backwater,

618
00:34:59,560 --> 00:35:01,960
Speaker 1: it looked out to the Atlantic for much of its history,

619
00:35:02,080 --> 00:35:05,000
Speaker 1: open to the world, it's ideas and its people. So

620
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:07,960
Speaker 1: in some ways the creatures from the sea here are

621
00:35:08,200 --> 00:35:13,399
Speaker 1: standing in for contact and intercourse with other cultures, right yeah.

622
00:35:13,520 --> 00:35:15,719
Speaker 1: And and that sort of works for the sea because

623
00:35:15,800 --> 00:35:19,279
Speaker 1: the sea is traditionally like a way for cultures to

624
00:35:19,320 --> 00:35:22,000
Speaker 1: come together. It's the you know, the trade routes through

625
00:35:22,080 --> 00:35:25,040
Speaker 1: the sea. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then that's what what

626
00:35:25,239 --> 00:35:28,759
Speaker 1: makes the story so so ikey, if you read it

627
00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:30,719
Speaker 1: with all of this in mind, is that it's a

628
00:35:30,800 --> 00:35:35,080
Speaker 1: tale that's describing the adoption of of of other cultures,

629
00:35:35,560 --> 00:35:39,240
Speaker 1: and certainly with the the the interbreeding with other cultures

630
00:35:39,280 --> 00:35:44,719
Speaker 1: as being something that is inherently monstrous, that the white

631
00:35:44,800 --> 00:35:49,719
Speaker 1: Anglo Saxon people should not venture out, either you know,

632
00:35:50,000 --> 00:35:53,560
Speaker 1: mentally or certainly physically or sexually. Yeah, this is a

633
00:35:53,719 --> 00:35:58,880
Speaker 1: really troubling strain and Lovecraft's work, especially since Lovecraft is

634
00:35:59,040 --> 00:36:02,040
Speaker 1: so pop peeler with so many people today like for

635
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:06,160
Speaker 1: his monsters and his settings and stuff, that I feel

636
00:36:06,200 --> 00:36:08,200
Speaker 1: like this is sort of like the part of him

637
00:36:08,239 --> 00:36:10,440
Speaker 1: that nobody really wants to think about. Yeah, I mean

638
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:12,040
Speaker 1: it can be difficult because, like I said, I grew

639
00:36:12,120 --> 00:36:15,360
Speaker 1: up loving Lovecraft's work and I still have have a

640
00:36:15,400 --> 00:36:19,280
Speaker 1: strong affinity for for for the love crafting and vibe,

641
00:36:19,320 --> 00:36:21,319
Speaker 1: but you know, for the weird fiction world and many

642
00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:23,839
Speaker 1: of the older writers from the day. But I mean,

643
00:36:23,880 --> 00:36:27,680
Speaker 1: you can't stick your hand in the sand regarding the

644
00:36:27,760 --> 00:36:30,920
Speaker 1: sensibilities that are they're not only president in the individual

645
00:36:31,160 --> 00:36:34,560
Speaker 1: behind the stories, but in the works themselves. And so

646
00:36:34,680 --> 00:36:37,279
Speaker 1: we got here from Creature from the Black Lagoon. I'm

647
00:36:37,280 --> 00:36:40,000
Speaker 1: wondering if this is leading to to you thinking that

648
00:36:40,200 --> 00:36:42,399
Speaker 1: some of the same themes can be poured it over

649
00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:44,840
Speaker 1: to Creature from the Black Lagoon. Well, you know, I

650
00:36:45,080 --> 00:36:47,200
Speaker 1: didn't used to think so. I used to think that

651
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:51,240
Speaker 1: the Creature from the Black Lagoon was was somehow separate

652
00:36:51,400 --> 00:36:55,120
Speaker 1: from from any real world concerns. You know, it's kind

653
00:36:55,160 --> 00:36:57,560
Speaker 1: of this, I mean, he's ready to g for for goodness,

654
00:36:57,600 --> 00:37:00,880
Speaker 1: say the first one anyway, maybe the other two as well,

655
00:37:00,920 --> 00:37:03,480
Speaker 1: but I distinctly remember seeing the g rating on the

656
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:06,560
Speaker 1: first film. It's essentially a Disney movie, just with a

657
00:37:06,680 --> 00:37:09,600
Speaker 1: murderous monster in it. Well, but before we get into

658
00:37:09,760 --> 00:37:13,279
Speaker 1: any racial aspects of the Creature from the Black Wood,

659
00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:16,640
Speaker 1: and we should probably just take a moment to enjoy

660
00:37:16,840 --> 00:37:20,080
Speaker 1: the existence of the film on its own. Narrits quote

661
00:37:20,160 --> 00:37:24,279
Speaker 1: from Q magazine about Creature from the Black Lagoon. This

662
00:37:24,480 --> 00:37:29,800
Speaker 1: horrendous pseudoscience fiction melodrama revolves wildly in three dimensions and

663
00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:33,960
Speaker 1: with considerable excitement around a poor ancestral fish that never

664
00:37:34,080 --> 00:37:37,200
Speaker 1: quite made the grade to man. All right, Well, that's

665
00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:41,240
Speaker 1: that's pretty accurate, I guess. I mean it's it's generally

666
00:37:41,880 --> 00:37:43,800
Speaker 1: it's often looked, it looked at is one of the

667
00:37:44,160 --> 00:37:47,720
Speaker 1: lesser of the universal movies, though, even though the monster

668
00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:50,279
Speaker 1: itself is pretty great. Yeah, it might be the best

669
00:37:50,480 --> 00:37:54,319
Speaker 1: universal monster in terms of makeup and stuff. Uh, well,

670
00:37:54,400 --> 00:37:57,040
Speaker 1: I don't. I mean, it's that's debatable. I guess it's

671
00:37:57,040 --> 00:38:00,480
Speaker 1: certainly is more ambitious makeup wise than I mean, Harlow's

672
00:38:00,520 --> 00:38:04,120
Speaker 1: Frankenstein is a pretty amazing makeup creation, it's true. But

673
00:38:04,239 --> 00:38:07,440
Speaker 1: does Frankenstein begin with the Big Bang? No, it doesn't,

674
00:38:07,520 --> 00:38:10,200
Speaker 1: and Creature from the Black Lagoon sure does. It starts

675
00:38:10,239 --> 00:38:13,320
Speaker 1: with a big explosion. It's sort of the inverse of

676
00:38:13,400 --> 00:38:16,280
Speaker 1: Bride of the Monster. Uh, starts with the big explosion.

677
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:18,480
Speaker 1: And their idea of what the big Bang is is

678
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:22,319
Speaker 1: that it involved literally exploding chunks of rock. Yes, yeah,

679
00:38:22,800 --> 00:38:25,520
Speaker 1: it looks like a like a like a mining detonation.

680
00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:29,200
Speaker 1: And they get into this whole narrative about how the

681
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:32,840
Speaker 1: creature is a product of the Devonian period from sixty

682
00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:36,080
Speaker 1: million years ago. Okay, that's pretty old, the age of

683
00:38:36,120 --> 00:38:40,000
Speaker 1: the trilobytes. Yeah, that's when they went extinct, I think, right, yeah, yeah,

684
00:38:40,120 --> 00:38:42,240
Speaker 1: and uh, and of course you get the dunk least

685
00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:44,360
Speaker 1: as back then, that's right. And then they spend a

686
00:38:44,400 --> 00:38:47,160
Speaker 1: lot of time talking about the long fish. Uh. They

687
00:38:47,200 --> 00:38:49,280
Speaker 1: sort of throw a lot of science at the screen

688
00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:52,920
Speaker 1: early on to try and trick you into thinking that

689
00:38:53,040 --> 00:38:56,000
Speaker 1: this is a like a scientifically accurate picture. Now, it

690
00:38:56,120 --> 00:38:58,319
Speaker 1: was really released in three D? Did you ever see

691
00:38:58,360 --> 00:39:00,400
Speaker 1: it in three D? Robert I never did, but the fight.

692
00:39:00,480 --> 00:39:02,839
Speaker 1: They filmed the first two of these films in three days.

693
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:04,879
Speaker 1: But a lot of people, even when it very first

694
00:39:04,920 --> 00:39:08,200
Speaker 1: came out, saw it flat because it was at the

695
00:39:08,360 --> 00:39:11,120
Speaker 1: very end of the early fifties three D craze that

696
00:39:11,200 --> 00:39:13,520
Speaker 1: it was released, so it was already becoming pass a

697
00:39:14,360 --> 00:39:16,759
Speaker 1: I actually rewatched this movie last night, and if you

698
00:39:16,800 --> 00:39:19,080
Speaker 1: ever get a chance to check out the Universal Monster

699
00:39:19,320 --> 00:39:23,000
Speaker 1: Movies set the remaster of Creature, it's got a great

700
00:39:23,080 --> 00:39:27,120
Speaker 1: commentary track by horror scholar Tom Weaver, and I just

701
00:39:27,200 --> 00:39:29,160
Speaker 1: wanted to mention a few things I learned from it,

702
00:39:29,280 --> 00:39:32,680
Speaker 1: some really interesting highlights. Um one of them was where

703
00:39:32,719 --> 00:39:35,160
Speaker 1: did this story come from? Like? What what is the

704
00:39:35,239 --> 00:39:38,480
Speaker 1: origin of the creature? So the producer of Creature from

705
00:39:38,480 --> 00:39:41,000
Speaker 1: the Black Lagoon was this guy named William Aland who

706
00:39:41,200 --> 00:39:43,040
Speaker 1: was the He was the producer of the film. He

707
00:39:43,120 --> 00:39:45,719
Speaker 1: was a Universal producer at the time, and he made

708
00:39:45,760 --> 00:39:48,520
Speaker 1: his start as an actor working with Orson Wells in

709
00:39:48,560 --> 00:39:51,759
Speaker 1: the Orson Wells Theater Group, and he was part of

710
00:39:51,880 --> 00:39:56,120
Speaker 1: the infamous War the World's radio broadcast. But he was

711
00:39:56,160 --> 00:39:59,080
Speaker 1: also friends with Wells and so sometimes sometime in the

712
00:39:59,160 --> 00:40:02,400
Speaker 1: nineteen forty during the filming of Citizen Kane. Aland was

713
00:40:02,480 --> 00:40:05,560
Speaker 1: an actor in Citizen Kane as well. He was he

714
00:40:05,719 --> 00:40:08,600
Speaker 1: was the reporter who was hunting down the meaning of

715
00:40:08,680 --> 00:40:12,600
Speaker 1: the word rosebud and so Aland was over at Wells

716
00:40:12,680 --> 00:40:15,240
Speaker 1: House for a dinner party. Also in attendance was Dolores

717
00:40:15,320 --> 00:40:18,080
Speaker 1: del Rio, who was a Mexican actress who was Orson

718
00:40:18,160 --> 00:40:21,600
Speaker 1: Welles partner at the time, and a Mexican cinematographer named

719
00:40:21,680 --> 00:40:24,880
Speaker 1: Gabrielle figaroa who would go on to a really stellar career.

720
00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:27,480
Speaker 1: He was the cinematographer of things like The Pearl and

721
00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:31,160
Speaker 1: John Houston's Night of the Iguana. And during this dinner

722
00:40:31,200 --> 00:40:35,400
Speaker 1: party the story goes. Figaro starts in on this bizarre

723
00:40:35,680 --> 00:40:40,359
Speaker 1: story about a half man, half fish creature that lived

724
00:40:40,400 --> 00:40:43,600
Speaker 1: in the Amazon River near a certain village, and, according

725
00:40:43,680 --> 00:40:46,959
Speaker 1: to Figaro is telling, once a year the fishman would

726
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:49,920
Speaker 1: come up out of the river and claim one maiden

727
00:40:50,040 --> 00:40:52,520
Speaker 1: from the village as its victim, and then it would

728
00:40:52,560 --> 00:40:55,080
Speaker 1: retreat into the water and the village would be safe

729
00:40:55,080 --> 00:40:58,959
Speaker 1: again until it emerged the next year. Apparently, at first

730
00:40:59,040 --> 00:41:02,239
Speaker 1: the other guests thought Figaro was kidding, but he insisted

731
00:41:02,440 --> 00:41:05,000
Speaker 1: and he started getting worked up because he wasn't being

732
00:41:05,080 --> 00:41:08,399
Speaker 1: taken seriously, and he claimed the story was absolutely true

733
00:41:08,480 --> 00:41:11,120
Speaker 1: and that he'd seen a photo of the Amazon fishman.

734
00:41:12,000 --> 00:41:14,719
Speaker 1: So this was early forties, and despite how awkward of

735
00:41:14,760 --> 00:41:16,839
Speaker 1: a dinner it must have been, apparently the story must

736
00:41:16,880 --> 00:41:19,680
Speaker 1: have stuck in the deep inside the mind of William Alland.

737
00:41:20,320 --> 00:41:22,800
Speaker 1: And about ten years later, when he was a producer

738
00:41:22,840 --> 00:41:25,320
Speaker 1: at Universal, he decided to make a version of the

739
00:41:25,400 --> 00:41:29,280
Speaker 1: Amazon Fishman story into a new entry in the Universal

740
00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:31,880
Speaker 1: Monster movie canon. So he wrote up this three page

741
00:41:31,920 --> 00:41:34,279
Speaker 1: treatment of the film, which was supposed to start not

742
00:41:34,400 --> 00:41:36,400
Speaker 1: with the big bang, but with a reenactment of his

743
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:41,279
Speaker 1: dinner conversation with Figaroa, followed by an expedition to the

744
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:44,560
Speaker 1: Amazon with a fishman creature, and of course he wanted

745
00:41:44,600 --> 00:41:47,120
Speaker 1: to have a gorgeous blonde that would get kidnapped by

746
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:49,799
Speaker 1: the fishman. Uh. And then the rest of the story

747
00:41:49,960 --> 00:41:52,000
Speaker 1: was basically just a rip off of the plot of

748
00:41:52,080 --> 00:41:55,279
Speaker 1: King Kong, but with a fishman instead of a giant ape.

749
00:41:55,320 --> 00:41:57,799
Speaker 1: So they'd capture him, bring him back to civilization, he'd

750
00:41:57,920 --> 00:42:00,120
Speaker 1: escape and you know, run him up in the at

751
00:42:00,120 --> 00:42:04,120
Speaker 1: ease and it's this basically the territory they explore in

752
00:42:04,360 --> 00:42:07,040
Speaker 1: the three Creature of movies. Yeah, if you put together

753
00:42:07,160 --> 00:42:10,080
Speaker 1: the first Creature from the Black Lagoon and the second movie,

754
00:42:10,239 --> 00:42:12,440
Speaker 1: Revenge of the Creature that came out in nineteen fifty

755
00:42:12,520 --> 00:42:15,120
Speaker 1: five the following year, together, they are the plot of

756
00:42:15,239 --> 00:42:17,200
Speaker 1: King Kong. Now. One of the other things I love

757
00:42:17,200 --> 00:42:19,480
Speaker 1: about the Creature from the Black Lagoon is that you

758
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:23,600
Speaker 1: had this is a product of Florida. Yeah, and I've

759
00:42:23,760 --> 00:42:26,200
Speaker 1: I've now been to some of these locations in Florida

760
00:42:26,239 --> 00:42:28,600
Speaker 1: that they are tied to it, such as Wakoula Springs,

761
00:42:29,120 --> 00:42:32,480
Speaker 1: which I mentioned on the show before of a fabulous destination.

762
00:42:32,680 --> 00:42:35,000
Speaker 1: That's where they shot a lot of the underwater stuff. Yeah,

763
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:37,879
Speaker 1: I think maybe all of the underwater stuff. Well, if

764
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:40,320
Speaker 1: I'm if memory serves, they certainly did all of the

765
00:42:40,400 --> 00:42:42,799
Speaker 1: underwater stuff in the third movie there. I'm not as

766
00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:44,839
Speaker 1: sure about the first one because there are a number

767
00:42:44,840 --> 00:42:46,759
Speaker 1: of different spring locations that are used in some of

768
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:49,799
Speaker 1: these these films. Uh. And then they're tied into other

769
00:42:50,160 --> 00:42:54,799
Speaker 1: like weird Florida places like the wiki Watchie uh Mermaid Show. Uh.

770
00:42:55,280 --> 00:42:58,840
Speaker 1: Julie Adams stunt double from the first film was a

771
00:42:59,000 --> 00:43:03,160
Speaker 1: mermaid swimmer at the wiki watchy Mermaid Show. Oh yeah,

772
00:43:03,200 --> 00:43:05,280
Speaker 1: that's a great fact about the movie is that anytime

773
00:43:05,320 --> 00:43:08,200
Speaker 1: you see the characters above water, they're played by different

774
00:43:08,239 --> 00:43:10,920
Speaker 1: actors than the people who played them below water. So

775
00:43:11,160 --> 00:43:13,920
Speaker 1: like the Gilman above water was one actor they had

776
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:17,680
Speaker 1: in in I guess in Hollywood, and then below the water,

777
00:43:17,960 --> 00:43:21,839
Speaker 1: the Gilman was always this other guy, Rico Browning. Yes, yeah,

778
00:43:22,120 --> 00:43:24,480
Speaker 1: a fascinating figure who's also come up on the on

779
00:43:24,560 --> 00:43:29,560
Speaker 1: the podcast before because he worked briefly with John C. Lily.

780
00:43:30,560 --> 00:43:33,000
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was a crazy story there. I go

781
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:34,520
Speaker 1: back and listen to that episode if you want the

782
00:43:34,560 --> 00:43:36,520
Speaker 1: details on that. But he was also tied to Wiki

783
00:43:36,600 --> 00:43:39,920
Speaker 1: Watchee and I really had quite a career outside of

784
00:43:40,600 --> 00:43:42,759
Speaker 1: of the Creature from the Black Cagoon. Yeah. Did you

785
00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:46,080
Speaker 1: know that Rico Browning directed the underwater scenes that go

786
00:43:46,200 --> 00:43:50,839
Speaker 1: on for thirty seven hours in Thunderball? I I read

787
00:43:50,880 --> 00:43:53,279
Speaker 1: that the other day, but I wasn't aware of it previously. No,

788
00:43:53,520 --> 00:43:55,800
Speaker 1: Oh my god, when was the last time you saw Thunderball?

789
00:43:55,920 --> 00:43:58,759
Speaker 1: I was a child watching on TVs. Okay, yeah, it's

790
00:43:58,800 --> 00:44:01,200
Speaker 1: one of those Sean Connery on so it has parts

791
00:44:01,280 --> 00:44:03,680
Speaker 1: that are kind of fun, but the underwater fight scenes

792
00:44:03,800 --> 00:44:10,919
Speaker 1: are just in termn uh bull go on forever. But there.

793
00:44:10,960 --> 00:44:13,759
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're very well choreographed, especially for the time.

794
00:44:13,800 --> 00:44:16,640
Speaker 1: I mean, shooting underwater back in the fifties and sixties

795
00:44:16,760 --> 00:44:18,560
Speaker 1: was not easy. Yeah, I mean, if you accept them

796
00:44:18,600 --> 00:44:20,359
Speaker 1: on their own terms, they're they're kind of marvelous. It's

797
00:44:20,400 --> 00:44:23,800
Speaker 1: just they don't necessarily match up to to modern cinematic

798
00:44:23,880 --> 00:44:26,800
Speaker 1: pacing standards. I guess another thing that's kind of interesting

799
00:44:26,880 --> 00:44:29,800
Speaker 1: to me about the Creature from the Black Calagoon that

800
00:44:29,920 --> 00:44:32,279
Speaker 1: Weaver mentioned in his commentary is that creature has a

801
00:44:32,360 --> 00:44:37,359
Speaker 1: lot of monsters I view shots, and this is contrasted

802
00:44:37,719 --> 00:44:40,840
Speaker 1: to some of the earlier Universal Monster movies and some

803
00:44:40,960 --> 00:44:43,960
Speaker 1: of the other movies that Alan and Jack Arnold had done.

804
00:44:44,400 --> 00:44:46,600
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that says anything interesting about how

805
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:48,719
Speaker 1: they thought of the creature, but there is a lot

806
00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:52,680
Speaker 1: in how the story was created and in how it's

807
00:44:52,719 --> 00:44:55,360
Speaker 1: filmed that does to me make the creature kind of

808
00:44:55,480 --> 00:45:01,040
Speaker 1: a sad, melancholy, sympathetic sort of character, unlike say Dracula,

809
00:45:01,200 --> 00:45:05,400
Speaker 1: who is a predatory demon who arrives to you know,

810
00:45:05,560 --> 00:45:09,000
Speaker 1: to to consume people's souls and kill them and turn

811
00:45:09,080 --> 00:45:11,960
Speaker 1: them into his servants. The Creature from the Black Lagoon

812
00:45:12,760 --> 00:45:16,040
Speaker 1: is a is a sad creature who who never really

813
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:19,799
Speaker 1: I mean, like he lives in the Black Lagoon. People

814
00:45:19,920 --> 00:45:23,400
Speaker 1: come and invade his territory and then they start messing

815
00:45:23,480 --> 00:45:27,560
Speaker 1: with him and attacking him, and and he fights back. Now,

816
00:45:27,640 --> 00:45:30,040
Speaker 1: of course he does try to kidnap Julie Adams, the

817
00:45:30,120 --> 00:45:33,040
Speaker 1: leading lady in the movie, presumably because he's wowed by

818
00:45:33,080 --> 00:45:35,560
Speaker 1: her beauty. Um, and so it's a King Kong kind

819
00:45:35,600 --> 00:45:38,080
Speaker 1: of thing. You know, he falls in love and wants

820
00:45:38,160 --> 00:45:40,359
Speaker 1: to carry her off to his cave. But you often

821
00:45:40,400 --> 00:45:42,120
Speaker 1: get the sense in the Creature from the Black Lagoon

822
00:45:42,200 --> 00:45:45,280
Speaker 1: movies that the real villains are like the human heroes.

823
00:45:45,719 --> 00:45:47,680
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, I think this is something

824
00:45:47,719 --> 00:45:51,600
Speaker 1: I picked up on as a kid, especially the more

825
00:45:51,680 --> 00:45:55,719
Speaker 1: I learned about and unultimately when I saw the third film, Uh,

826
00:45:55,800 --> 00:45:58,560
Speaker 1: the creature walks among us because in this one they've

827
00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:01,360
Speaker 1: captured the creature horror really burned it in the process,

828
00:46:02,080 --> 00:46:05,120
Speaker 1: and then they treat the creature and there's this there's

829
00:46:05,160 --> 00:46:11,080
Speaker 1: this hokey scientific explanation basically Lamarckian evolution where the creatures

830
00:46:11,120 --> 00:46:13,680
Speaker 1: scales fall away and it has human flesh underneath, and

831
00:46:13,760 --> 00:46:17,960
Speaker 1: it's becoming more man like. And they're all these just

832
00:46:18,120 --> 00:46:22,680
Speaker 1: sad scenes of the this now land creature standing in

833
00:46:22,760 --> 00:46:26,600
Speaker 1: this little enclosed area surrounded by barbed wire, longing for

834
00:46:26,680 --> 00:46:28,239
Speaker 1: the sea, but it can't even go back to the

835
00:46:28,280 --> 00:46:31,719
Speaker 1: sea because it will drown, and it does. And uh.

836
00:46:32,640 --> 00:46:36,479
Speaker 1: In all these films, it's like the especially the white

837
00:46:36,640 --> 00:46:40,200
Speaker 1: leads in the film, like they're never really in peril,

838
00:46:40,320 --> 00:46:44,640
Speaker 1: like they're always in control. The creature just lumbers about

839
00:46:45,200 --> 00:46:47,840
Speaker 1: and uh. And the only reason it's able to grab

840
00:46:48,640 --> 00:46:51,320
Speaker 1: the lady is because she just stands there and screams

841
00:46:51,600 --> 00:46:55,360
Speaker 1: instead of like walking away from it. Yeah, generally the

842
00:46:55,960 --> 00:46:58,560
Speaker 1: human lead characters in these films are just not very

843
00:46:58,640 --> 00:47:02,640
Speaker 1: sympathetic that they're usually just coming into this monster's domain

844
00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:04,799
Speaker 1: or not. I mean, it's a creature. They're coming into

845
00:47:04,840 --> 00:47:08,279
Speaker 1: the creature's domain. And they're in the second movie, they

846
00:47:08,360 --> 00:47:12,000
Speaker 1: even they fish for the creature with dynamite. They throw

847
00:47:12,080 --> 00:47:15,200
Speaker 1: dynamite into the black lagoon. It blows him up and

848
00:47:15,360 --> 00:47:18,160
Speaker 1: he floats to the surface, stunned, and then they take

849
00:47:18,280 --> 00:47:19,879
Speaker 1: him and they put him in a tank at Sea

850
00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:22,520
Speaker 1: World and chain him to the bottom. And there's a

851
00:47:22,600 --> 00:47:25,360
Speaker 1: great scene where somebody goes, I hope that chain holds,

852
00:47:25,440 --> 00:47:28,120
Speaker 1: and the other guy goes, I wouldn't worry about that chain.

853
00:47:30,600 --> 00:47:33,680
Speaker 1: So you see him like suffering and struggling and pulling

854
00:47:33,760 --> 00:47:36,120
Speaker 1: at his chain, and eventually he gets free and this

855
00:47:36,360 --> 00:47:39,360
Speaker 1: is and then runs around and yet again it's like

856
00:47:39,480 --> 00:47:41,920
Speaker 1: the heroes of the movie or the real villains. It

857
00:47:42,000 --> 00:47:45,280
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of the late great Gil Scott

858
00:47:45,320 --> 00:47:47,520
Speaker 1: Heron had a bit kind of a stand up bit,

859
00:47:47,719 --> 00:47:50,760
Speaker 1: like a spoken word bit that he did talking about Jaws,

860
00:47:50,920 --> 00:47:53,280
Speaker 1: and he was saying, like, why why are you upset

861
00:47:53,320 --> 00:47:57,040
Speaker 1: about Jaws attacking people? You're going where Jaws is, like

862
00:47:57,280 --> 00:47:59,200
Speaker 1: you should you should only be upset if Jaws is

863
00:47:59,239 --> 00:48:01,800
Speaker 1: attacking people in the city where where you are, Like

864
00:48:01,880 --> 00:48:03,640
Speaker 1: you've gone where you're not supposed to be. So of

865
00:48:03,719 --> 00:48:05,920
Speaker 1: course there's Jaws. All right. I think we need to

866
00:48:05,960 --> 00:48:07,879
Speaker 1: take a quick break and then when we come back,

867
00:48:07,960 --> 00:48:11,280
Speaker 1: we'll discuss more about aquatic humanoid legends and the creature

868
00:48:11,320 --> 00:48:15,799
Speaker 1: from the Black Lagoon. Thank alright, we're back, al right.

869
00:48:15,840 --> 00:48:18,520
Speaker 1: So I mentioned earlier that I used to to think

870
00:48:18,680 --> 00:48:22,320
Speaker 1: of the creature as being this mostly pure thing that

871
00:48:22,520 --> 00:48:25,960
Speaker 1: was untouched by the concerns of the real world. But

872
00:48:26,160 --> 00:48:30,320
Speaker 1: then I was turned onto the commentary of Robin R.

873
00:48:30,480 --> 00:48:35,120
Speaker 1: Means Coleman, particularly in particular, there was an episode of

874
00:48:35,600 --> 00:48:39,799
Speaker 1: the NPR podcast Code Switch about the movie get Out,

875
00:48:40,040 --> 00:48:42,160
Speaker 1: and they talked about some of the history of of

876
00:48:42,320 --> 00:48:45,279
Speaker 1: African Americans and horror movies. So I ended up looking

877
00:48:45,400 --> 00:48:49,480
Speaker 1: up Coleman's book. It's titled a Horror Noir Blacks in

878
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:52,880
Speaker 1: American Horror Film from an eighteen nineties to the present

879
00:48:53,640 --> 00:48:56,960
Speaker 1: and uh and she she shares the following read on

880
00:48:57,320 --> 00:49:00,719
Speaker 1: the creature quote. The gil Man is cal long and

881
00:49:00,920 --> 00:49:03,560
Speaker 1: Gus from the Birth of the Nation rolled into one

882
00:49:03,600 --> 00:49:08,960
Speaker 1: impossible body. Bodily, the monster resembled a racist caricature. Its

883
00:49:09,040 --> 00:49:12,120
Speaker 1: lips are large and exaggerated, Its skin is dark. It

884
00:49:12,239 --> 00:49:15,560
Speaker 1: is seemingly feeble minded. Its movements are shambling, except for

885
00:49:15,640 --> 00:49:19,400
Speaker 1: a swift, adept move it displays when stealing away with

886
00:49:19,480 --> 00:49:23,520
Speaker 1: a white woman in side note, if anyone's not familiar Gus,

887
00:49:23,760 --> 00:49:26,080
Speaker 1: who she mentions here, is the antagonist from the nineteen

888
00:49:26,160 --> 00:49:29,200
Speaker 1: fift movie The Birth of the Nation. Uh. The film

889
00:49:29,280 --> 00:49:31,960
Speaker 1: attributed to the revival of the klu Klux Klan terrorist

890
00:49:32,080 --> 00:49:35,000
Speaker 1: organization in the United states. In it, the clan served

891
00:49:35,040 --> 00:49:38,080
Speaker 1: as heroes as they lynch an African American named Gus

892
00:49:38,440 --> 00:49:41,440
Speaker 1: portrayed by a white actor in black face, who chases

893
00:49:41,480 --> 00:49:44,080
Speaker 1: a white woman off of a bridge. Coleman refers to

894
00:49:44,200 --> 00:49:48,000
Speaker 1: this as the first real racial horror movie, and, as

895
00:49:48,080 --> 00:49:51,000
Speaker 1: Coleman points out, the Creature from the Black Cogoon, the

896
00:49:51,080 --> 00:49:54,399
Speaker 1: film features a white female researcher who is only there

897
00:49:54,440 --> 00:49:57,239
Speaker 1: to scream and serve as the object of desire, a

898
00:49:57,320 --> 00:50:00,320
Speaker 1: team of local Brazilians who only serve to p irish,

899
00:50:00,440 --> 00:50:04,720
Speaker 1: and the first portion of the film, yeah, uh, only

900
00:50:04,800 --> 00:50:07,440
Speaker 1: and then only the white scientific elite are able to

901
00:50:07,680 --> 00:50:11,200
Speaker 1: best the creature. And uh, and certainly best that they

902
00:50:11,280 --> 00:50:13,000
Speaker 1: do that. These guys are supposed to be scientists, but

903
00:50:13,000 --> 00:50:16,120
Speaker 1: instead of studying it, they just destroy it. Uh, for

904
00:50:16,320 --> 00:50:20,239
Speaker 1: the crime of making eyes at this white woman. Yeah. Again,

905
00:50:20,280 --> 00:50:21,800
Speaker 1: that's what we've been saying. I mean that they just

906
00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:25,280
Speaker 1: show up in its lagoon and then they start attacking

907
00:50:25,400 --> 00:50:28,680
Speaker 1: it essentially, and we're it's like we're supposed to feel

908
00:50:29,000 --> 00:50:31,800
Speaker 1: bad for them. I don't know, I mean, there's always

909
00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:36,080
Speaker 1: this ambiguity in the monster movies of old, like King Kong,

910
00:50:36,280 --> 00:50:39,319
Speaker 1: creature from the Black Calagoon, where you get the sense

911
00:50:39,400 --> 00:50:42,040
Speaker 1: that maybe you're supposed to feel some sympathy for the creature,

912
00:50:42,120 --> 00:50:45,640
Speaker 1: it's not quite clear how much. Yeah, and then I

913
00:50:45,719 --> 00:50:48,480
Speaker 1: mean this additional um like racial read on everything just

914
00:50:48,600 --> 00:50:51,600
Speaker 1: makes everything all the more problematic. She argues that the

915
00:50:51,600 --> 00:50:54,560
Speaker 1: film presents the world in which the white race alone

916
00:50:54,600 --> 00:50:57,560
Speaker 1: has evolved and the rest are static. She points to

917
00:50:57,600 --> 00:51:01,239
Speaker 1: the work of Patrick Gonder, who argues that the film

918
00:51:01,320 --> 00:51:06,160
Speaker 1: isn't just about reinforcing white superiority and non white inferiority.

919
00:51:06,480 --> 00:51:10,040
Speaker 1: It's a film that taps into racist fears of desegregation.

920
00:51:10,440 --> 00:51:13,920
Speaker 1: Quote as the Black Monster, in leaving its proper place

921
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:16,919
Speaker 1: in the water and attempting to integrate among those on land,

922
00:51:17,360 --> 00:51:21,360
Speaker 1: is a Darwinian reminder of why segregation is necessary. So

923
00:51:21,560 --> 00:51:23,839
Speaker 1: and I would argue that this is all the more

924
00:51:24,000 --> 00:51:27,600
Speaker 1: unsettling if you go into the third Creature movie and

925
00:51:27,680 --> 00:51:30,279
Speaker 1: watch it with these scenes of this, this even more

926
00:51:30,480 --> 00:51:35,360
Speaker 1: human looking creature, like just behind barbed wire, just trapped,

927
00:51:35,520 --> 00:51:38,200
Speaker 1: treated treated like an animal, even as you have these

928
00:51:38,280 --> 00:51:42,400
Speaker 1: two characters that are engaging in these monologues about the

929
00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:45,719
Speaker 1: it's the jungle versus the Stars, about how how we

930
00:51:45,800 --> 00:51:48,760
Speaker 1: need to be kinder to the creature instead of violent

931
00:51:48,880 --> 00:51:52,600
Speaker 1: towards it. It's it's it's a very flawed and mishandled

932
00:51:52,640 --> 00:51:55,920
Speaker 1: film in my opinion. But it's interesting how that this

933
00:51:56,160 --> 00:51:59,200
Speaker 1: this read of this racial read of the creature um

934
00:51:59,440 --> 00:52:01,480
Speaker 1: which some of you might not care for, but I

935
00:52:01,520 --> 00:52:04,200
Speaker 1: think on one hand, it meshes with with with what

936
00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:06,440
Speaker 1: was going on in the Shadow of Rin Smith. I

937
00:52:06,560 --> 00:52:08,759
Speaker 1: think it also echoes a lot of these ideas that

938
00:52:08,800 --> 00:52:12,120
Speaker 1: we've already discussed of the the aquatic humanoid as being

939
00:52:12,239 --> 00:52:15,880
Speaker 1: this this other, this uh, this uh, this creature that

940
00:52:15,960 --> 00:52:18,520
Speaker 1: I mean, think to the Triton and the siren, Like

941
00:52:18,640 --> 00:52:21,200
Speaker 1: the siren is beautiful and desirable. The triton, though the

942
00:52:21,280 --> 00:52:24,440
Speaker 1: masculine version is to be feared, is more more brutal.

943
00:52:24,800 --> 00:52:28,160
Speaker 1: And that that lines up with with various racist depictions

944
00:52:28,440 --> 00:52:31,759
Speaker 1: in which the female of another race is is an

945
00:52:31,800 --> 00:52:35,319
Speaker 1: exotic object of desire and then the male counterpart part

946
00:52:35,400 --> 00:52:38,279
Speaker 1: is depicted as something brutish. I'm not trying to ruin

947
00:52:38,320 --> 00:52:41,840
Speaker 1: a classic film for anybody, but I do think this,

948
00:52:42,280 --> 00:52:45,560
Speaker 1: this read is really worth considering. We need to start

949
00:52:45,640 --> 00:52:48,680
Speaker 1: thinking about about the era that the film came from,

950
00:52:49,120 --> 00:52:51,960
Speaker 1: and uh, the attitudes of the of the time. Uh,

951
00:52:52,040 --> 00:52:54,040
Speaker 1: and and and what that the film is supposed to

952
00:52:54,080 --> 00:52:56,840
Speaker 1: say to a modern viewer. Yeah, I think that is

953
00:52:56,880 --> 00:52:59,560
Speaker 1: a totally valid interpretive lens. I. I don't know of

954
00:52:59,600 --> 00:53:02,920
Speaker 1: any of ths that this is what the filmmakers consciously

955
00:53:03,040 --> 00:53:05,800
Speaker 1: had in mind. I think it's probably not, but that

956
00:53:05,960 --> 00:53:08,399
Speaker 1: you can certainly see how these sorts of themes come

957
00:53:08,440 --> 00:53:14,000
Speaker 1: out from, you know, the unconscious forces that guide our creativity, right,

958
00:53:14,400 --> 00:53:17,759
Speaker 1: very much so, So as we begin to close out

959
00:53:17,840 --> 00:53:20,120
Speaker 1: this episode, let's let's return to just some of the

960
00:53:20,320 --> 00:53:25,280
Speaker 1: trends that we've identified and skirted around. Uh, were concerning

961
00:53:25,280 --> 00:53:28,040
Speaker 1: the various myths and fictions of aquatic humanoidse like what

962
00:53:28,160 --> 00:53:30,200
Speaker 1: do they what do they represent? What do they convey?

963
00:53:32,080 --> 00:53:35,760
Speaker 1: Obviously the mirror world, that's right, Yeah, Uh, the unknown

964
00:53:35,840 --> 00:53:39,560
Speaker 1: depths as well as the dangers of the sea, the

965
00:53:39,640 --> 00:53:43,440
Speaker 1: feature we so often see in Legends of Monsters, which

966
00:53:43,520 --> 00:53:47,800
Speaker 1: is hybridity, you can bringing together different features of different

967
00:53:47,840 --> 00:53:51,160
Speaker 1: animals and humans. Yeah, and just mysterious biology as well,

968
00:53:51,360 --> 00:53:54,640
Speaker 1: animals again washing up on the beach, and also humans

969
00:53:55,280 --> 00:53:59,719
Speaker 1: with birth defects such as uh siren o'melia, which is

970
00:54:00,640 --> 00:54:03,360
Speaker 1: a birth effect that involves the fusing of the legs together.

971
00:54:03,920 --> 00:54:06,719
Speaker 1: It's a really depressing topic. But I have I was,

972
00:54:06,920 --> 00:54:09,680
Speaker 1: I have read a couple of papers making the argument

973
00:54:09,760 --> 00:54:14,520
Speaker 1: that some mermaid legends might be based on these defects. Also,

974
00:54:14,680 --> 00:54:17,839
Speaker 1: we've mentioned mermaids as harbingers of doom as well as

975
00:54:18,760 --> 00:54:21,799
Speaker 1: sources of divine aid. There's the the idea that it's

976
00:54:21,840 --> 00:54:25,320
Speaker 1: the erotic other, it's the monstrous other, that the evil

977
00:54:25,440 --> 00:54:28,799
Speaker 1: or monstrous feminine. And uh, and just the idea too

978
00:54:28,920 --> 00:54:31,600
Speaker 1: that it can be depicted as a racial other to

979
00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:34,840
Speaker 1: that does not belong in our world. It's amazing that

980
00:54:35,200 --> 00:54:39,040
Speaker 1: water has so much power, to carry so much symbolic

981
00:54:39,600 --> 00:54:42,759
Speaker 1: weight and and to project so many different symbolic meanings.

982
00:54:42,800 --> 00:54:46,160
Speaker 1: Like I'm thinking about the way it's this mirror world

983
00:54:46,800 --> 00:54:49,040
Speaker 1: in the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but then also

984
00:54:49,400 --> 00:54:52,360
Speaker 1: the way in shadow over in Smith that can represent

985
00:54:52,520 --> 00:54:55,799
Speaker 1: the idea of commerce with the rest of the planet. Yeah. Yeah,

986
00:54:55,880 --> 00:54:58,360
Speaker 1: and you see again, you can think of the Golden

987
00:54:58,440 --> 00:55:01,120
Speaker 1: Cities and which Merrorpy Bowler said to live, or you

988
00:55:01,160 --> 00:55:05,520
Speaker 1: can just think of dark, depressing depths. Um, yeah, it's

989
00:55:05,600 --> 00:55:08,279
Speaker 1: a it's it's it's just put a proof positive again

990
00:55:08,360 --> 00:55:11,279
Speaker 1: that there there are no simple monsters, no matter how

991
00:55:11,400 --> 00:55:15,400
Speaker 1: shallow you think a particular fictional or even mythological creature,

992
00:55:15,920 --> 00:55:18,400
Speaker 1: maybe when you start teasing it apart, there's there's a

993
00:55:18,480 --> 00:55:20,520
Speaker 1: lot going on there. There's a whole legacy that it's

994
00:55:20,520 --> 00:55:23,600
Speaker 1: built upon. What's the name of the Cathulu city, the

995
00:55:23,719 --> 00:55:26,719
Speaker 1: city under the under the ocean where he's where he

996
00:55:26,800 --> 00:55:29,759
Speaker 1: hangs out. I believe it's really a or something to

997
00:55:29,800 --> 00:55:33,080
Speaker 1: that effect. I wonder how that compares to the to

998
00:55:33,200 --> 00:55:35,880
Speaker 1: the Golden Palace of Triton. I'm thinking it's might be

999
00:55:35,920 --> 00:55:39,080
Speaker 1: a little darker, a little less less well lit, a

1000
00:55:39,120 --> 00:55:44,279
Speaker 1: little less golden. Totally random thought. Have you ever seen

1001
00:55:44,400 --> 00:55:47,920
Speaker 1: the coins that are the currency of Iceland? No? Do

1002
00:55:48,040 --> 00:55:50,279
Speaker 1: they have mermaids on them? Yeah? I haven't made it

1003
00:55:50,360 --> 00:55:52,800
Speaker 1: to the mermaid coins. Maybe it really high value they do.

1004
00:55:53,360 --> 00:55:56,239
Speaker 1: But the coins, I remember, they are great compared to

1005
00:55:56,280 --> 00:55:59,640
Speaker 1: our coins because our coins have like politicians on them,

1006
00:56:00,120 --> 00:56:02,400
Speaker 1: and their coins have all the children of Dagon, so

1007
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:06,000
Speaker 1: they've got crab coins, they've got trout coins, like all

1008
00:56:06,080 --> 00:56:08,920
Speaker 1: of the sea creatures make it onto the currency, and

1009
00:56:09,120 --> 00:56:11,600
Speaker 1: that has to be better for teaching kids about money.

1010
00:56:11,760 --> 00:56:14,560
Speaker 1: Like my my son would would would be far more

1011
00:56:14,600 --> 00:56:17,040
Speaker 1: into coins if they each had a cool animal on them.

1012
00:56:17,480 --> 00:56:21,200
Speaker 1: So take note, uh, Nations of the World. Alright, Well,

1013
00:56:21,280 --> 00:56:23,280
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to close out this episode,

1014
00:56:23,600 --> 00:56:25,720
Speaker 1: but there is going to be a follow up episode

1015
00:56:25,800 --> 00:56:28,759
Speaker 1: in which we will discuss some of the science of

1016
00:56:29,120 --> 00:56:31,960
Speaker 1: aquatic humanoids. Uh. And if you don't think there's any

1017
00:56:32,000 --> 00:56:35,120
Speaker 1: science there, well, just tune in and you'll be surprised.

1018
00:56:35,680 --> 00:56:38,120
Speaker 1: In the meantime, check out all the previous episodes of

1019
00:56:38,120 --> 00:56:39,920
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's Stuff to Blow your

1020
00:56:39,960 --> 00:56:43,000
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. That's where you'll find the podcast. You'll

1021
00:56:43,040 --> 00:56:45,280
Speaker 1: find blog posts, you'll find links out to our various

1022
00:56:45,320 --> 00:56:49,640
Speaker 1: social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram, you

1023
00:56:49,760 --> 00:56:53,040
Speaker 1: name it big. Thanks as always to our audio producers

1024
00:56:53,080 --> 00:56:55,600
Speaker 1: Alex Williams and try Harrison. And if you want to

1025
00:56:55,680 --> 00:56:57,640
Speaker 1: get in touch with us directly to let us know

1026
00:56:57,760 --> 00:56:59,680
Speaker 1: what you think about this episode or any other, to

1027
00:57:00,040 --> 00:57:02,279
Speaker 1: us future topics, or just to say hi or ask

1028
00:57:02,360 --> 00:57:05,200
Speaker 1: us a question, anything at all, you can email us

1029
00:57:05,280 --> 00:57:08,359
Speaker 1: at Blow the Mind at how stuff Works dot com

1030
00:57:18,880 --> 00:57:21,320
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does

1031
00:57:21,360 --> 00:57:28,880
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com. B