Speaker 1: What city is this? One of the four inquired. Frank
Speaker 1: had difficulty guessing the speaker's gender with any certainty. Its clothes,
Speaker 1: some of which were sown to and through its skin,
Speaker 1: hid its private parts, and there was nothing in the
Speaker 1: dregs of its voice, or in its wilfully disfigured features
Speaker 1: that offered the least clue when it spoke. The hooks
Speaker 1: that transfixed the flaps of its eyes and were wed
Speaker 1: by an intricate system of chains, passed through flesh and bone,
Speaker 1: alike to similar hooks through the lower lip, were teased
Speaker 1: by the motion, exposing the glistening meat underneath. I asked
Speaker 1: you a question, dear, and you see the figure beside
Speaker 1: the first speaker demanded. Its voice, unlike that of its companion,
Speaker 1: was light and breathy, the voice of an excited girl.
Speaker 1: Every inch of its head had been tattooed with an
Speaker 1: intricate grid, and at every intersection of horizontal and vertical
Speaker 1: axes a jeweled pin driven through to the bone. Its
Speaker 1: tongue was similarly decorated. Do you even know who we are? Welcome?
Speaker 1: Stuff to blow your mind? A production of I Heart Radios.
Speaker 1: How stuff works? Hey, you welcome? To stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe
Speaker 1: McCormick and Robert. I guess you've been reading Clive Barker, right,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yes. Our cold open is is was a
Speaker 1: passage from the nineteen eighties six novella The hell Bound
Speaker 1: Heart by Clive Barker, which he himself adapted and directed
Speaker 1: in seven into the horror film we all know as
Speaker 1: Hell Raiser. Wait a minute, there was just one year
Speaker 1: gap in between writing the novella and making the movie. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Clive Barker was on a roll in the in the
Speaker 1: late eighties, like he was. I mean, he's still on
Speaker 1: a roll. He's one of these uh, these creators. It
Speaker 1: really has has not visibly slown down. Um, says Stephen King.
Speaker 1: Quote from that year he said, I've seen the future
Speaker 1: of horror, and did is Clive Parker? Yeah, yeah, quote
Speaker 1: quote the King. I think that that that quote was
Speaker 1: actually in the trailer for for Hell Razor, the film,
Speaker 1: as was I Am Pain? No, No, I think he doesn't.
Speaker 1: He doesn't declare that he is pain until three year
Speaker 1: possibly four. Um. I'm imagining a future crossover sequel. It's
Speaker 1: like Jetson's Meet the flint Stones, but it's Judge Dread
Speaker 1: meets Pinhead and they just alternate back and forth with
Speaker 1: I am the Law and I um but that that
Speaker 1: actually sounds like a great matchup. I actually I would
Speaker 1: be all surprised if it hasn't been done or at
Speaker 1: least pitch, because Judge Dread is thrown down with like
Speaker 1: Alien before, and I think he's met Batman. Pinhead's been
Speaker 1: in a number of comic books. You could see the
Speaker 1: the more nuanced side coming out of each because you
Speaker 1: discovered that in small ways, Judge Dread is also pain
Speaker 1: and Pinhead is also the Law. Yeah. Um, so I
Speaker 1: want to, you know, wax nostalgic for a moment here.
Speaker 1: I didn't get into hell Razor movies until probably not
Speaker 1: because I was too young for them really prior to that, wait,
Speaker 1: how old was that? Though? Oh, don't make me do
Speaker 1: math jo, but I was. I was like in junior
Speaker 1: higher or so uh in. And by that point, the
Speaker 1: first three films were already out and Doug Bradley's Pinhead
Speaker 1: was already cemented as a as a horror icon. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean he's up there with like Freddie and Jason
Speaker 1: at that point. Yeah, like in the Simpsons tree House
Speaker 1: of Horror episodes of the Shinning episode is so good,
Speaker 1: Pinhead is one of the horror icons that drags Homer
Speaker 1: out of the refrigerator. Oh yeah, it's like it's like
Speaker 1: Jason Freddie Pinhead and then just some werewolf or something.
Speaker 1: I think. So, yeah, it's like a quick scene, but
Speaker 1: like already by that point, I think it had been
Speaker 1: decided that this, uh, this this, this creature, this entity
Speaker 1: had a role in the Halloween pantheon of Hollywood. So
Speaker 1: you read the book before you saw the movie. Um,
Speaker 1: I think I read the book after I saw the movie.
Speaker 1: I remember reading it on a school trip. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's a it's it's short, it's a novella. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really it was really impressive at the time.
Speaker 1: As our colde open illustrates, it has a slightly different feel.
Speaker 1: It's the film hell Raiser is essentially the hell Bound Heart.
Speaker 1: It is, you know, Barker's own adaptation of it. But
Speaker 1: at the same time there are differences, and one of
Speaker 1: the key differences is, uh, this character of Pinhead, the
Speaker 1: hell Priest, whatever you want to call it, is just
Speaker 1: called lead Cinembyte and the first hell Raiser that the
Speaker 1: role played by Doug Bradley in the novella it is
Speaker 1: it has a slightly different flare to it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was reading some things about the production, and it seems
Speaker 1: to me that the reason Doug Bradley's pinhead became such
Speaker 1: an icon in the movie had to do with the
Speaker 1: practical necessities of filmmaking. And again it was something about
Speaker 1: like character, Like the other Cinabytes that appear in the
Speaker 1: film would have been given more dialogue, but they're makeup
Speaker 1: effects didn't allow it, right, because you have like the
Speaker 1: chatter and the butter being Cinobytes and the butterball butterball
Speaker 1: but being similar. But but yeah, that makes sense that
Speaker 1: the makeup prevented them from speaking. And Doug Bradley could speak,
Speaker 1: though he couldn't walk around very well. Apparently he had
Speaker 1: these black contact lenses in that made it hard for
Speaker 1: him to see, and he was afraid of tripping over
Speaker 1: the skirts of his of Cinabyte robe, so he didn't
Speaker 1: move very easily. But he could talk, and so he
Speaker 1: could say things like save your tears, it's a waste
Speaker 1: of good suffering. Yeah, he has a very commanding voice,
Speaker 1: whereas in the original develo, the character that would become
Speaker 1: Pinhead is described as this excited girl. And then the
Speaker 1: Cinobytes themselves come off They still come off his his
Speaker 1: grotesque in their own way, but they're more and they're
Speaker 1: more androgynous for starters. And then there is this there's more,
Speaker 1: this sense that they are not as demonic as they
Speaker 1: are justist other worldly, like they have lived in another
Speaker 1: realm of the senses for so long, uh, and that
Speaker 1: they just don't have anything in common with with human
Speaker 1: sense perception anymore. Right, they are they are explorers that
Speaker 1: go beyond the boundaries of pleasure and pain. And that's
Speaker 1: a lot of what we're gonna be talking about today
Speaker 1: when we get to the science portion of today's episode.
Speaker 1: But I know you're not done talking about hell Raiser, right,
Speaker 1: Oh no, And I do want to just remind everybody
Speaker 1: as far as The hell Bound Heart goes, you can
Speaker 1: you can find it for yourself on Amazon or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your book in all formats, including a dollar
Speaker 1: ninety nine e book and both an audio book production
Speaker 1: and a full blown like audio play production, so you
Speaker 1: have no excuse not to go in and grab a
Speaker 1: copy of it if you want to check it out.
Speaker 1: I also highly recommend the books of Blood. Uh. Those
Speaker 1: are some There's some really great short stories in those collections. Uh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I've always been a Clive Barker fan. I
Speaker 1: haven't read everything he's written, but it's just an unmatched creativity.
Speaker 1: They're both on the written written page, but behind the
Speaker 1: camera and visual art as well. Just before we came
Speaker 1: in here, I was having a conversation with our colleague
Speaker 1: Ben Bolan of stuff they don't want you to know
Speaker 1: and ridiculous history, and he was asking what my favorite
Speaker 1: Clive Barker was, and I had to admit I have
Speaker 1: not read any. For some reason, I just never gotten
Speaker 1: into Barker. He was very surprised because he knows I
Speaker 1: like horror fiction, but uh, I don't know. For some reason,
Speaker 1: I just never went there, Maybe because when I I
Speaker 1: don't know. When I first saw the movie Hell Raiser,
Speaker 1: I think this was like my freshman year of college.
Speaker 1: I found it actually very depressing. Well, I found it
Speaker 1: it was full of interesting imagery. I thought it was
Speaker 1: actually kind of original and imaginative, but something about the
Speaker 1: world it it pictured it seemed very bleak to me.
Speaker 1: It was like a world where nothing is good and
Speaker 1: everything goes to hell and there's nothing to care about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a bleak, brooding film. And and I can see
Speaker 1: why I was especially into it as like a brooding
Speaker 1: junior high student and as a you know, a teen
Speaker 1: spoke to you then yeah, I mean then also it
Speaker 1: it felt you know, it's a cool wid a rebel.
Speaker 1: I think too, because like Stephen King, I was stupid
Speaker 1: into Stephen King at the time. And Stephen King has
Speaker 1: certainly be you know, graphic, but but Barker always felt weirder,
Speaker 1: more counterculture in a way that really resonated with me.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's probably no better way to push
Speaker 1: back against small town southern Baptist upbringing than to to
Speaker 1: turn to and you know, the explosively creative worlds of
Speaker 1: an openly gay British horror writer. Well, and I will
Speaker 1: say it is uh despite its flaws. I mean, I
Speaker 1: will talk about how I just rewatched the movie Uh,
Speaker 1: and it did not match up with my memories at all.
Speaker 1: I found it. I have to admit I found it
Speaker 1: rather funny upon rewatching it, especially a lot of the
Speaker 1: line delivery by the Cinabites and it's over the top
Speaker 1: ponderousness that like, uh, there were a whole there was
Speaker 1: a lot of unintentional laughter. But I will say it
Speaker 1: is still a pretty imaginative concert up. It was like
Speaker 1: very original for its time. Let's now that we're speaking
Speaker 1: on on Pinhead's voice in the movie, let's have a
Speaker 1: quick uh splash from the trailer will tell your soul part.
Speaker 1: That's just a sample though, because most of the original
Speaker 1: theatrical trailer is screaming. Okay, uh yeah, So I guess
Speaker 1: should we briefly discuss the plot of the movie. Yes,
Speaker 1: And for anybody who hasn't listened to a movie episode
Speaker 1: we've done before, we will get to you know, a
Speaker 1: lot more science and interpretation of of this particular you know,
Speaker 1: cinematic installment. But but first we do need to remind
Speaker 1: everybody about what's up in Hell Racer, because it's easy forget,
Speaker 1: especially if you've seen a lot of the sequels. Uh
Speaker 1: and and if you've seen some of the later sequels
Speaker 1: then then truly God help you. But the original plot
Speaker 1: line goes like this, do you have a creepy uncle? Well,
Speaker 1: did your creepy uncle ever say, have an affair with
Speaker 1: your mom and then use an antique puzzle box to
Speaker 1: open a dimensional rift in your grandma's house, summoning a
Speaker 1: weird sect of transdimensional Cincinnats in your uncle's quest for
Speaker 1: new extremes of pleasure. Well, that uncle is Frank Cotton,
Speaker 1: and yes, he's dragged away to the realm of the Cinabytes,
Speaker 1: so the order of the gash, and after a while
Speaker 1: manages to escape in a much reduced state um and
Speaker 1: works out a plot to reclaim his body. And that's
Speaker 1: essentially the plot line of hell Racers. Right, So you've
Speaker 1: got your core elements of this mysterious puzzle box that
Speaker 1: is just a normal kind of cube with some paintings
Speaker 1: on it. But if you manipulate it in the right way,
Speaker 1: press here and turn there and that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: it starts opening up. And then once it opens up,
Speaker 1: a familiar series of events unfolds where lights shine in
Speaker 1: through you know, cracks in the walls and stuff, uh,
Speaker 1: chains with hooks at the ends of them shoot out
Speaker 1: of the walls and grab you. And then the centabytes
Speaker 1: show up and they're these people usually with like shaved
Speaker 1: heads or just generally weird heads. Usually something has happened
Speaker 1: to their head. They're wearing black leather robes as if
Speaker 1: they're a combination of the there's sort of like S
Speaker 1: and M priests, and they show up and they're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's time to take you away to a dimension beyond sensation.
Speaker 1: It's time to experience pain and pleasure indivisible. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're you know, they're they're very much there's a
Speaker 1: boundary confusion with them, right, because they're both ghastly and
Speaker 1: beautiful in their own way. They're erotic and grotesque at
Speaker 1: the same time. Yeah. And the suggestion, I think it's
Speaker 1: explored much more in the book is that these creatures
Speaker 1: are there part of some weird, esoteric, other dimensional religious
Speaker 1: order that worships the exploration of the extremes of sensation
Speaker 1: right then, and so that they've gotten to the point
Speaker 1: where where they can no longer tell the difference between
Speaker 1: pleasure and pain. It's just sort of like experiences to
Speaker 1: the max all the time of whatever valence possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's more it's not like I'm gonna pull your
Speaker 1: skin off. Uh, It's more like, oh, I'm I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm rude, I'm being rude. I should pull your skin off.
Speaker 1: I should be a good host, and this is the
Speaker 1: natural thing to do. Yuh, though I feel like that.
Speaker 1: I think that's more there in the book, which again
Speaker 1: I haven't read, But in the movie it does come
Speaker 1: to feel more like they're there to punish you sometimes.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this conceit about them just being
Speaker 1: sort of experiment ers is really consistent in the film now.
Speaker 1: I mean, even in the first film, which is which
Speaker 1: is certainly the truest to the original source material, even
Speaker 1: in that you can tell that that Barker is leaning
Speaker 1: more into the idea of them as movie monsters, though
Speaker 1: it's still it's still Clive Barker's movie monsters, and Clive
Speaker 1: Barker is one of those creators who has always loved
Speaker 1: his monsters most of all, you know. But but still
Speaker 1: even in the film, you know, the cinemabytes are not
Speaker 1: the most important aspect of the plot. They're not the
Speaker 1: central antagonist. Even our heroine uh Kur Steve Cotton and
Speaker 1: her father Larry Cotton aren't as central to the plot
Speaker 1: as Frank the the individual who just described the uncle,
Speaker 1: and Chris Kirstie's mom Julia. It's ultimately about their dark
Speaker 1: love affair that ultimately transcends the boundaries of life and death. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, they're the characters at the heart of all this,
Speaker 1: and and they're the ones whose desires we most understand
Speaker 1: and even on some level sympathize with, even though they
Speaker 1: are you know, dark, desperate and depressing characters. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think the deal is Frank is just this guy who's
Speaker 1: seen it all. He's had every hedonistic pleasure of the
Speaker 1: flesh possible. He's he's you know, he's beyond good and evil.
Speaker 1: He has no morality left. He's just he's just like
Speaker 1: trying to to seek the next highest possible sensation. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he's usually got a knife out because he's just
Speaker 1: that kind of guy. Right. And then Julia, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, played by the the excellent Claire Higgins in
Speaker 1: this she's you know, by and large, the best performance
Speaker 1: in the film. There is one scene where I don't
Speaker 1: know if they did this on purpose, but the way
Speaker 1: they did her makeup and her hair, she looks exactly
Speaker 1: like David Bowie and his Aladdin sane persona. Oh I
Speaker 1: I didn't notice that. I have to look back at it.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, she's wonderful in it, and and in
Speaker 1: the same way her character. Her character is also like
Speaker 1: trapped in a life of of tedium and boredom. Like
Speaker 1: her husband is this boring guy who watched this boxing
Speaker 1: on television and and she just seems to be, you know,
Speaker 1: putting up with him. Uh. And and so thus comes
Speaker 1: her attraction to Frank. And even when Frank comes back
Speaker 1: from the dead uh in this you know, grotesque body. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, she still ends up helping him. Oh and
Speaker 1: of course helping him involves like killing a bunch of people.
Speaker 1: I think so he can It's not exactly clear he
Speaker 1: can basically drink their blood and thus reconstitute his original body. Yeah, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a little vague, and I like that it's vague.
Speaker 1: You know, weren't really sure exactly what the necromancy is
Speaker 1: of all this, but that that is the thing. Frank
Speaker 1: is essentially a necromancer. Uh and and has these these powers. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, looking back at the film, it's you really
Speaker 1: can't overstate the importance of Frank and Juliet. They are
Speaker 1: the core of the film. They are its main characters,
Speaker 1: and they are its main monsters. Yeah. The cinembytes show
Speaker 1: up mostly in the third act as a kind of
Speaker 1: almost as a kind of d S X machina. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is fitting because they are literally coming out of
Speaker 1: the machine, right d S xbox. And let's say a
Speaker 1: few other things I want to say about the film
Speaker 1: just rewatching it. Um, the music is fine, it's a
Speaker 1: bit dramatic, but I've long wanted to see a cut
Speaker 1: of it with the original score by post and cut
Speaker 1: Industrial Act Coil. This was the late Peter Christofferson of
Speaker 1: who was also in Throbbing Gristle, and the late John
Speaker 1: Balance was also in Psychic TV, so that they had
Speaker 1: conducted the original put together the original score for the film,
Speaker 1: and the replacement score that's more traditional and cinematic was
Speaker 1: supposedly a condition of additional funding that Barker Is eaved
Speaker 1: in order to finish the special effects in the film.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I would my musical taste lean far more
Speaker 1: Coil than they do traditional cinematic score. So, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: when what I've heard of it, it sounds really interesting.
Speaker 1: So that's that's that's one thought I have on it. Coil.
Speaker 1: If you're not familiar with them, they were. They were
Speaker 1: a big influence on the likes of say Trent resner
Speaker 1: Um and uh and of course Clive Barker was also
Speaker 1: an influence on Trent Resuer as well. Yeah, I'd say
Speaker 1: Nine Inch Nails is pretty thoroughly cinembyte music. Yeah, especially
Speaker 1: the early stuff. Let's see what else about this film, Oh,
Speaker 1: the costumes and the practical effects I think hold up
Speaker 1: very well. Yeah, they do. And I think this is
Speaker 1: this is definitely a film where you look at it
Speaker 1: and you I'm impressed by just how ambitious it really was,
Speaker 1: perhaps overly ambitious, especially given the small budget and the
Speaker 1: fact that Barker was, you know, adapting his own work
Speaker 1: here directing it as well, and this was his He'd
Speaker 1: done some screenwriting, but he had not directed anything previously.
Speaker 1: And it's really you know, it's they go for not
Speaker 1: only they have the cinabytes in there and all these effects,
Speaker 1: but also like a regeneration scene and additional demon monsters
Speaker 1: that you know, if you were being like maybe a
Speaker 1: little more careful with your budget, you might say, well,
Speaker 1: do we need this monster? We already have this monster.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can actually cut two whole monsters in two
Speaker 1: big practical effects from the film and use those funds elsewhere.
Speaker 1: But uh, still, you know it it mostly comes together.
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure the purpose served by the monster
Speaker 1: that's referred to as the Engineer, which doesn't look anything
Speaker 1: like an engineer. Instead, it's like a big sort of
Speaker 1: larva that crawls down the hallway with a scary mouth
Speaker 1: on the bottom part, chasing after people. Yeah, it's that's
Speaker 1: something that the engineers mentioned in the novella, but it's
Speaker 1: more it's like a being of light or something. It's
Speaker 1: it's not a monster. So that like that, I feel
Speaker 1: like comes off a little confusing in the picture, like
Speaker 1: what is this and how's it connected with everything? Now?
Speaker 1: I don't want to rag on the film too much,
Speaker 1: but I will say that one of the things that
Speaker 1: was funniest about it to me is that Pinhead, even
Speaker 1: in the first movie, I mean, I think he gets
Speaker 1: even more like this as the movies go on. Pinhead
Speaker 1: gets increasingly frettified, Like he becomes like a wise cracking,
Speaker 1: you know, making jokes at the camera kind of Freddy
Speaker 1: Krueger character. But even in the first movie, almost everything
Speaker 1: he says is this like threatening, lee pretentious kind of
Speaker 1: line that could be a quote on the VHS box cover.
Speaker 1: It's all stuff like will tear your soul apart, or
Speaker 1: the box you opened it, we came, or of course, uh,
Speaker 1: the the inimitable I am pain. Yeah yeah yeah. Like Freddie,
Speaker 1: he has a lot of catch phrases and sort of
Speaker 1: quote ready samples. Uh. And I've heard him in a
Speaker 1: number of different DJ nixes as well, throwing a little
Speaker 1: pinhead right. Uh. He also reminds me a bit of
Speaker 1: nineties pro wrestlers in that regard. You know, he's like
Speaker 1: the rock you know, he has the Rocks. I guess
Speaker 1: more post nineties, but still, you know, he has his
Speaker 1: his catchphrases that he lashes out with. You can imagine
Speaker 1: macho man Randy Savage saying the box you opened it,
Speaker 1: we came. I actually just learned that Doug Bradley serves
Speaker 1: as the authority figure in the indie British occult themed
Speaker 1: wrestling promotion Blackcraft Wrestling. I don't know what that means. Well,
Speaker 1: look it up, beild it exists. Um. It's like clearly
Speaker 1: he's doing kind of like a he's not in a
Speaker 1: wrestling ring. He's like showing up like they're doing a
Speaker 1: green screen thing and he's you know, making matches and whatnot.
Speaker 1: But it's it's Doug Bradley being Doug Bradley. But like
Speaker 1: he officiates a match by saying you're suffering, will be
Speaker 1: legendary even in hell. Now I will say that in
Speaker 1: the I think it's by the fourth win. He does
Speaker 1: have a line about pain that that is I think
Speaker 1: it's actually pretty good, where he says, uh, quote what
Speaker 1: you think of as pain is only a shadow. Pain
Speaker 1: has a face. Allow me to show it to you.
Speaker 1: Allow me to show it to you, and uh and
Speaker 1: like that that line I think is pretty good. Like
Speaker 1: he gets at some of the the intangible aspects of
Speaker 1: pain and the how difficult it is to understand another
Speaker 1: individual's pain or relate your own. But of course this
Speaker 1: is and this is from hell Raiser Inferno. Then he
Speaker 1: goes on to say, uh, uh, gentleman, I am pain,
Speaker 1: and he kind of he kind of ruins the moment.
Speaker 1: You know, it can go so far. He can't help
Speaker 1: but go for the catchphrase, ladies and gentlemen, I am pain.
Speaker 1: So in summary, uh, this is what I'll say about
Speaker 1: how Razor. Uh. It's a it's a film I have
Speaker 1: a lot of nostalgia for and having rewatched it in
Speaker 1: the past, week, I'd say that that more things work
Speaker 1: than don't work. And then it's still like it's it's
Speaker 1: astounding that that that everyone is able to put this
Speaker 1: film together and then ultimately, like clearly it resonated, even
Speaker 1: though like my personal taste, I like the cinobites of
Speaker 1: the novella more like Pinhead worked, like Pinhead became a staple,
Speaker 1: like Pinhead is part of American popular culture now. A
Speaker 1: couple of years ago I went through the process. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I decided I needed to do this, but
Speaker 1: I watched all of the Hell Raiser sequels. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's a journey people need to go on. There.
Speaker 1: There are fleeting pleasures throughout them, like Part three has
Speaker 1: some pretty funny stuff. Part four has some funny moments.
Speaker 1: Part three is kind of like peak Freddie uh hell Raised,
Speaker 1: like they realized, like, oh, this is what we've created.
Speaker 1: We've created this this this this horror creature that you
Speaker 1: know the masses are into. Let's give him the film
Speaker 1: that this core character deserves. Of course, Part four is
Speaker 1: Pinhead goes to Space, which is I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: hard to sniff it that. Yeah, that that film is
Speaker 1: notoriously a mess, but then it also just has so
Speaker 1: many like crazy things in it it's hard to completely
Speaker 1: dismiss it. I kept wanting to see I think I
Speaker 1: may have said this on the show before, but Rachel
Speaker 1: and I have frequently talked about how there needs to
Speaker 1: be a crossover again, franchise crossover, but not with Judge Shred.
Speaker 1: This should be Hell Raisor, and then the air bud
Speaker 1: sequels they cross over. So you've got like Golden Retriever
Speaker 1: puppies and they're playing with the box and it's called
Speaker 1: hell Buddies, and so the cinebytes come out and they're
Speaker 1: ready to do all their hooks and stuff, but then
Speaker 1: they're conquered by the cuteness of the puppies. So it's like,
Speaker 1: I am all right, Well on that note, let's take
Speaker 1: our first break, and when we come back, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about puzzle boxes. Than alright, we're back, alright,
Speaker 1: So we know that Hell Razor starts with a mysterious
Speaker 1: puzzle box. It's this box that, uh, it can be opened,
Speaker 1: but how you open it is apparently not obvious, and
Speaker 1: people just fiddle around with it until they figure out
Speaker 1: the secret, and then they end up unleashing the hooks,
Speaker 1: the chains, the cinabytes and so forth. Yeah, the first
Speaker 1: film and all subsequent films, they are generally gonna be
Speaker 1: some scenes with somebody fiddling with the box. And it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to It seems to adhere to unreal physics,
Speaker 1: which is fitting. It is a magical box that opens
Speaker 1: a magical doorway through which magical beings then enter um.
Speaker 1: So you know, I don't take any issue with that
Speaker 1: at all, But uh, of course, in the idea itself
Speaker 1: is just irresistible. We love myths about boxes that should
Speaker 1: not be opened, or the idea of a box that
Speaker 1: resists opening is also tremendous as well, an enclosure born
Speaker 1: of human ingenuity that must be solved via human ingenuity
Speaker 1: as well. Oh yeah, I mean, I think it's a
Speaker 1: wonderful conceit for opening a story like this, that there
Speaker 1: is this thing it requires effort. It suggests that there's
Speaker 1: kind of a that there's a beyond normal amount of interest.
Speaker 1: Right people seek out this box when they're they're board
Speaker 1: with all of the sensations of Earth and they want
Speaker 1: to go beyond. They want to see what of other
Speaker 1: level they can reach. They have to find this secret artifact. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, ultimately, I think we all have puzzle
Speaker 1: boxes like that in our lives that we're trying to unravel. Right.
Speaker 1: But one of the interesting things here is that, of
Speaker 1: course Clive Barker's not just creating this out of nothing.
Speaker 1: He's he's drawing on inspirations. One of the inspirations is
Speaker 1: clearly and you know especially I think they flesh this
Speaker 1: out a little bit uh in the fourth film, uh,
Speaker 1: playing on the tradition of philosophical toys, uh, the that
Speaker 1: captivated to audiences in the eighteenth century. And we've talked
Speaker 1: about some of these on the show before, like the
Speaker 1: pooping duck, various automatons, wind up clockwork devices. They don't
Speaker 1: really do anything. I mean, they don't you know, fulfill
Speaker 1: a purpose. They do things, but those things that they
Speaker 1: do are merely to amuse us or to make us
Speaker 1: think about, you know, the biomechanical nature of the world,
Speaker 1: or God as a clockmaker, that sort of thing. Sure,
Speaker 1: a machine that poses a question. Yeah, and they're also testaments,
Speaker 1: of course, to the creator's talents. How could someone so
Speaker 1: gifted with machinery make a musical box such as this?
Speaker 1: But then there's a there's another legacy of boxes that
Speaker 1: he's drawing out, and that is the puzzle box, particularly
Speaker 1: the puzzle boxes of the Victorian period. And I have
Speaker 1: to admit I really wasn't familiar with with these at all,
Speaker 1: Like even you know, having seen the hell Raiser movies,
Speaker 1: I never looked into anything anything beyond the you know,
Speaker 1: the wind up clockwork stuff. But there's a tradition of woodworking,
Speaker 1: uh trick boxes, puzzle boxes, and they're pretty pretty phenomenal.
Speaker 1: So one example I came across from said to be
Speaker 1: from the year nineteen hundred, is a wooden book money box.
Speaker 1: So it looks like a book that you would have
Speaker 1: on a shelf, like a hard bound book, but it's
Speaker 1: made out of wood. If you pick it up, take
Speaker 1: it off the shelf, you see that there's a coin
Speaker 1: slot in top in the top of it. So it's
Speaker 1: not being too secretive, like I put money into this,
Speaker 1: But then how do you get the money out? Well,
Speaker 1: to do that you have to know the trick, and
Speaker 1: these older trick boxes there generally there's just one way
Speaker 1: to do it. So on this one, you slide part
Speaker 1: of the book spine aside and that allows you to
Speaker 1: slide another little panel and that opens the box and
Speaker 1: you can get the money inside. Uh. It's clever, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of the woodworking version of the various clockwork marvels
Speaker 1: that we were discussing earlier. But then it ends up
Speaker 1: coming to it into its own in the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: because it's during this period that you have woodworkers both
Speaker 1: in Europe, particularly in England and Switzerland, but also in Japan.
Speaker 1: They really begin pushing the boundaries of what's possible with
Speaker 1: a wooden puzzle box, and the Japanese puzzle boxes seemed
Speaker 1: to be some of the most impressive. They typically look
Speaker 1: like ornate wooden boxes with no visible hinges or lids,
Speaker 1: and then they may require as few as three or
Speaker 1: more than a hundred moves to open. So sliding, yeah,
Speaker 1: like sliding this little panel, like first of all, finding
Speaker 1: the panels to figure out like which what does a
Speaker 1: piece of wood that moves here, and then sliding it
Speaker 1: to the side, sliding something else to the side, doing
Speaker 1: all these little tricks in order to open up the
Speaker 1: old him an interior of the box. Um. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and this was according to wood Smith's Shop, which is
Speaker 1: a video series from wood Smith Magazine Episode twelve o
Speaker 1: four is on YouTube. These guys Chris and Phil host
Speaker 1: it and uh you know they're they're going for the
Speaker 1: hell Raiser audience by the way, Yeah, they're They're exactly
Speaker 1: what you might imagine when you think of like sort
Speaker 1: of I'm guessing like Midwestern um perhaps um, you know,
Speaker 1: would wood wood workers, Uh you know that. But they
Speaker 1: show off one of these boxes and the craftsmanship is amazing.
Speaker 1: Like woodworking, I feel, is an area that I often
Speaker 1: take for granted, Like I see a finished piece of furniture,
Speaker 1: be it something from Ikea or something you know, in
Speaker 1: a more robust and I don't really think about all
Speaker 1: the skill that went into making it. And perhaps that's
Speaker 1: why things like wooden puzzle boxes exist to show you
Speaker 1: just how much skill is involved in turning uh you know,
Speaker 1: raw wood into something that serves the purpose. Well, there's
Speaker 1: something counter into do about it, because we don't usually
Speaker 1: think of woodworking as is being concerned with moving parts.
Speaker 1: Most often, woodworking is you know, design and crafting of
Speaker 1: static elements, maybe with very few moving parts, or some
Speaker 1: things that maybe there's a hinge or something on a cabinet,
Speaker 1: but these combined elements of of course, the kind of
Speaker 1: beautiful static art and design of woodworking with the kinds
Speaker 1: of interlocking mechanisms you'd more often see in machinery and metalworking. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So you know, I can, I can describe them a
Speaker 1: little bit, but I really you should look up some
Speaker 1: videos of people manipulating these boxes and then hopefully, you know,
Speaker 1: get your hands on a wooden puzzle box of your own,
Speaker 1: because there are still people making them. There's an individual
Speaker 1: by the name of Kegan Sound that's with a K
Speaker 1: K A G A N S O U N D
Speaker 1: at Kegan sound dot com. You can look him up.
Speaker 1: He's apparently one of the foremost wooden puzzle box makers
Speaker 1: in the world, and he's he's something of a modern
Speaker 1: day Lema che And if you will wait, well that's
Speaker 1: from the fourth movie, right, we find out that the
Speaker 1: creator of the box is somebody named Lamar shand I
Speaker 1: think it's also revealed in the novella If okay, it's
Speaker 1: it's the Lament configuration or the La marchand Box. Yes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are also people that are apparently making puzzle boxes
Speaker 1: out of Lego blox, which makes sense now some of
Speaker 1: you might say, well, hey, how about the Rubik's cute
Speaker 1: uh or no rubis invention. I would say, like, if
Speaker 1: you do it just right, it opens up and there's
Speaker 1: something inside. Well, that's the thing. It doesn't have an interior,
Speaker 1: so it's not it's a puzzle cube, not a true
Speaker 1: puzzle box. There is no inside to the Rubi's cube.
Speaker 1: It will not open up new realms of pleasure and sensation. No,
Speaker 1: that's not true. If you solve it, you get all
Speaker 1: the faces, solid colors, Hoaks shoot out of the walls.
Speaker 1: That's how you get the hooks. Um. Yeah. I should
Speaker 1: also point out that it's not always completely clear in
Speaker 1: the hell Raiser books that the Lament configuration has an
Speaker 1: interior either, But there are shots in the film that
Speaker 1: establish an interior to the box, and it's interior is
Speaker 1: described in the novella. So there are scenes in the
Speaker 1: movie that I can imagine would have worked a lot
Speaker 1: better in fiction when you didn't have to see them staged.
Speaker 1: And one of them is the scene where the box
Speaker 1: is solved in order to fix the problem, you know,
Speaker 1: where the cinemabytes are sent back to their realm because
Speaker 1: Kirsty Swanson like does the right things with the box.
Speaker 1: I mean, it just looks funny when she's messing with
Speaker 1: the box while the house is falling apart and Pinhead
Speaker 1: is saying, no, don't do that. Yeah. Yeah. It's the
Speaker 1: problems of translating the novella to to the film because
Speaker 1: in the novella the box is also not described as
Speaker 1: being really ornate, even it's really more has more in
Speaker 1: common in the book with the these wooden puzzle boxes
Speaker 1: we've described. Now, you know the the here's another area
Speaker 1: to consider, So that the box of Lament is largely
Speaker 1: positioned as a thing that must be solved in order
Speaker 1: to open a gate, to reveal a secret. But we
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't forget that the cinepytes are also presented, especially
Speaker 1: in the novella, as explorers. Uh there's a sense of
Speaker 1: curiosity to them. Uh they're truly spaced out on sensation,
Speaker 1: you might say. And uh so I'm wondering might we
Speaker 1: consider the Lament configuration as a means of exploration as well,
Speaker 1: because certainly puzzle boxes are used in various animal studies
Speaker 1: by scientists, typically with a food reward at the center.
Speaker 1: I believe we've discussed the sorts of boxes in the
Speaker 1: study of Corvid's where they'll be like generally, you know,
Speaker 1: there's food in the middle of the box. There may
Speaker 1: be some tools, or they have to make their own tool,
Speaker 1: what have you. But they have to come up with
Speaker 1: a way to free the prize from the box, which
Speaker 1: is ultimately what Frank's trying to do with the Lament configuration. Now,
Speaker 1: another noteworthy puzzle box from science history is a Thorndyke's
Speaker 1: puzzle box. Uh. This is the work of an American
Speaker 1: psychologist who is working at the same time as as
Speaker 1: pav Lav and in the same area, you know, looking
Speaker 1: at animals and their problem solving ability using their behavior,
Speaker 1: and he used this on cats in particular to test
Speaker 1: their learning and problem solving abilities. They're essentially cages that
Speaker 1: can be exited by performing at the correct task, hitting
Speaker 1: the right mechanism, etcetera, in order to to step out
Speaker 1: of the cage and get your food. Uh and uh.
Speaker 1: In His main observation from all of this was that
Speaker 1: a cat would behave radically the first time use that
Speaker 1: you put them in the box the first time they
Speaker 1: were in there for the experiment, but then they would
Speaker 1: learn so in subsequent experiments they wouldn't. They would waste
Speaker 1: less and less time in the box. They would just
Speaker 1: realize like, oh, I'm in here again. I pushed this button.
Speaker 1: Then I get out and I can get my food.
Speaker 1: And then Thorndyke's work would lead to another noteworthy box,
Speaker 1: Skinner's Box, in which the animal has to engage a
Speaker 1: mechanism in order to be fed within the box, the
Speaker 1: work of BF Skinner. So later installments of the hell
Speaker 1: Raiser franchise explored to some degree the idea of the
Speaker 1: boxes a place or thing that may contain us, but
Speaker 1: for the most part not so much. But the the
Speaker 1: idea of the puzzle boxes a means of exploring human desire.
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of an interesting idea to consider. Well,
Speaker 1: it makes me wonder if the box is also being
Speaker 1: used to test us somehow. If it is being used
Speaker 1: to test us, then to test the humans that you know,
Speaker 1: play with it. Obviously the people doing the testing would
Speaker 1: be the cinobytes, right, So maybe we should turn to
Speaker 1: the cinobytes and think a little bit about about pain, experience, sensation,
Speaker 1: and flagellation. Absolutely all right, So let's just start with
Speaker 1: the word cinobyte, because this this really gets into a
Speaker 1: lot of what we're going to discuss here. A cinnobyte
Speaker 1: is merely a member of a religious group living together
Speaker 1: in a monastic community. There are plenty of cinnobytes. Technically,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of cinnabytes in the world today, and
Speaker 1: they have They have nothing to do with the hell
Speaker 1: Raiser movie. If you've never seen it written out. It
Speaker 1: is not spelled like cinnabun uh. It is c e
Speaker 1: n o. They had. The word apparently emerged in the
Speaker 1: fifteenth century, and it comes from the late Latin colonobita.
Speaker 1: If I'm saying that correctly, Basically you have the Greek
Speaker 1: coin cohen plus bios life, so it basically means the
Speaker 1: monastic life. Now, one obviously does see certain levels of
Speaker 1: self inflicted pain, however, in monastic history. So religious rights
Speaker 1: of flagellation or blood lighting can be found throughout Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist,
Speaker 1: Native American, and other religious rights. We we've covered some
Speaker 1: of these on the show before. There there are plenty
Speaker 1: of religious rights of pain that can be found in
Speaker 1: the world and in human history, just as there are
Speaker 1: various secular rights of pain that can be found today.
Speaker 1: Within the realms of say performance art or even you
Speaker 1: know b D s M for instance, uh the later
Speaker 1: of which served as partial inspiration for Clive Barker, and
Speaker 1: likewise Barker's work, while enough influencing B D s M
Speaker 1: to some degree as well. Oh that's not surprising. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I was looking around, yeah, for more historical ideas
Speaker 1: about pain and pleasure indivisible as the as Pin says,
Speaker 1: they explore, and I came across a book by the
Speaker 1: American psychologist James H. Luba, who lived eighteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: to nineteen forty six, who focused a lot of his
Speaker 1: work on the psychology of religion. And this book was
Speaker 1: called The Psychology of Religious Mysticism. And in this book
Speaker 1: there's part where he's in the middle of a section
Speaker 1: about narcotics, consciousness, and mysticism, and Luba begins to discuss
Speaker 1: the idea of pleasure in pain or enjoyment in suffering,
Speaker 1: which is a major theme of of this movie and
Speaker 1: of the novel. And his hypothesis is that quote, the
Speaker 1: apparent paradox of people seeking and enjoying pain becomes intelligible
Speaker 1: when one takes into account the passion for vivid consciousness Uh.
Speaker 1: And so he of course is this is in the
Speaker 1: context of religious experience. So he mentions members of self
Speaker 1: flagellating Muslim sex of the quote, painful ascetic practices of
Speaker 1: the yogi, or the violent dancing frenzies of the mind ads.
Speaker 1: He says as those quote all may yield a sense
Speaker 1: of new or increased life. Now what does he mean
Speaker 1: by that? Well, he explains further by quoting a letter
Speaker 1: from Gothold Ephraim Lessing to Moses Mendelssohn, which in which
Speaker 1: Lesson writes, quote, were agreed in this, my dear friend,
Speaker 1: that all passions are either vehement cravings or vehement loathings.
Speaker 1: And also that in every vehement craving or loathing, we
Speaker 1: acquire an increased consciousness of our reality, and that this
Speaker 1: consciousness cannot but be pleasurable. Consequently, all our passions, even
Speaker 1: the most painful, are as passions pleasurable. Uh, which is
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. Explore more in a second. But that
Speaker 1: I just realized that made me think of a passage
Speaker 1: in The Brothers Karamazov that's all about, uh, a character
Speaker 1: talking about the pleasure one takes in taking offense. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I remember being like Wow, how have I never
Speaker 1: read this before? It's so true that, like, in getting
Speaker 1: mad about something unfair that has happened to you or
Speaker 1: somebody who's been mean to you or something, there is
Speaker 1: so often this feeling of like almost joy in the
Speaker 1: way that you get worked up about it. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and there's a difference to like there's certainly there's righteous anger.
Speaker 1: There's a situation where like if you feel like you've
Speaker 1: been wronged and you're you're having been wronged is a
Speaker 1: part of a larger problem in the culture in the world,
Speaker 1: then yeah, you can get in this area of righteous anger.
Speaker 1: But I think more of what you're talking about here
Speaker 1: are the petty things in life, you know, where it's
Speaker 1: like the server at a restaurant doesn't bring you your
Speaker 1: appetizer first, and you you have been wrong and you
Speaker 1: just start getting excited about how mad you are, and
Speaker 1: on some lie, like you're probably not thinking, oh I
Speaker 1: feel so alive, I'm so angry at the server, but
Speaker 1: in a way that is happening. But yeah, So what
Speaker 1: does Luba think is going on with these these passions
Speaker 1: being pleasurable even when they're painful. Uh. He writes that
Speaker 1: it's because these heightened states of awareness and passion triggered
Speaker 1: by pain offer an escape from a sort of baseline
Speaker 1: form of consciousness characterized by tedium, insensibility and normal fatigue. Thus,
Speaker 1: for some people, normal states of consciousness become so boring,
Speaker 1: so exhausting and tedious, that the self infliction of pain
Speaker 1: actually unlocks a state of mind that is to them
Speaker 1: preferable by contrast, And and this becomes an important distinction
Speaker 1: in Luba's idea here. It's that religious ecstasy in the
Speaker 1: self infliction of pain is not actually an enjoyment directly
Speaker 1: of the pain itself, but an enjoyment of a kind
Speaker 1: of rapturous and highly aware state of mind that's brought
Speaker 1: about by the infliction of pain. Quote. Not the pain
Speaker 1: nor the wound does the martyr enjoy, but the exaltation
Speaker 1: that come with the quivering of the flesh. The quivering
Speaker 1: of the flesh. Oh, you're a fan too, No, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's so it's interesting. I'll come back to hell Raiser
Speaker 1: in just a second. I mean, first, I would point
Speaker 1: out that, of course this is in the sort of
Speaker 1: like William James E in cast of like broad observational psychology,
Speaker 1: which it doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong, but it does
Speaker 1: mean that it should be thought of more like interesting
Speaker 1: philosophical writings based on observations rather than conclusions derived from
Speaker 1: rigorously controlled experiments. But again, it's not say he's wrong,
Speaker 1: it's just that it's not really science by modern standard.
Speaker 1: It's more like philosophy and cultural criticism. He could be
Speaker 1: onto something there, uh, And I do think those observations
Speaker 1: maybe onto something. It's funny that it lines up so
Speaker 1: well with the character of Frank in Hell Raiser, a
Speaker 1: man who again in the movie, we we see a
Speaker 1: couple of scenes of him appearing disgusted by normal hedonistic pleasure.
Speaker 1: Like all of the regular pleasures of the flesh that
Speaker 1: seemed to have they failed for him. They don't work anymore.
Speaker 1: Everything's boring. So according to Luba's framework here, it could
Speaker 1: make sense for him to join a self flagellating order
Speaker 1: devoted to the mortification of the flesh, because maybe pain
Speaker 1: will unlock higher states of conscious awareness and excitation that
Speaker 1: he wants to reach, but for which the bridges of
Speaker 1: normal pleasure have collapsed. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a
Speaker 1: solid read on on Frank's character for sure, you know,
Speaker 1: but Also, Julia is the sort of flip side of
Speaker 1: that coin. She's the tedium side of it. She is
Speaker 1: she lives this life of boredom and perhaps some level
Speaker 1: of contempt for her boring husband as well, um and
Speaker 1: ends up being sucked into this world of of intense
Speaker 1: sensation as just as Frank has. But I think in
Speaker 1: all this one thing we get to is that it
Speaker 1: starts to become complicated to try to define and understand pain.
Speaker 1: I think because when you ask what is pain, it's
Speaker 1: something we all know about. You know, there's no aating
Speaker 1: whether there is such a thing as pain. But when
Speaker 1: you try to come up with a rigorous definition of
Speaker 1: it that applies to every case, that becomes difficult. I
Speaker 1: think it goes back to that quote from the help
Speaker 1: Priest himself. What we think of pain is a shadow,
Speaker 1: but pain has a face. M who just but actually
Speaker 1: like for us to actually define the lines of that face. Uh,
Speaker 1: It's it's extremely difficult and a huge part of that.
Speaker 1: And this is something we've talked about in the show before.
Speaker 1: It's like the difficulty in even discussing pain. Like I
Speaker 1: can talk about my pain, you can talk about your pain,
Speaker 1: but it becomes very difficult for us to properly understand
Speaker 1: each other's pain. Uh, and but properly related. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there are some contexts in which I think it's simpler
Speaker 1: than others. But even in the simpler ones, say like
Speaker 1: regular no susceptive body pain that you would feel in
Speaker 1: the context of, you know, getting pricked with a needle
Speaker 1: or something in a clinical setting. Even then, if we
Speaker 1: look to like us to approximation type answers within the
Speaker 1: medical world, you can get definitions like this one, which
Speaker 1: is cited by the International Association for the Study of Pain. Quote.
Speaker 1: Pain is an unpleasant, sensory and emotional experience that is
Speaker 1: associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in
Speaker 1: such terms. Okay, so that's kind of complicated. It's got
Speaker 1: multiple clauses in there. But also one of the things
Speaker 1: that's difficult about that you immediately hit a snag with
Speaker 1: the idea that pain is explicitly and necessarily described as unpleasant,
Speaker 1: and this very definition would of course, I think that
Speaker 1: would apply to most cases. I mean most cases when
Speaker 1: people say they're in pain, they think of that as
Speaker 1: bad and they wanted to stop right Well, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean part of it. You have the problem with our
Speaker 1: our language. Uh. For instance, in in yoga, I practice yoga,
Speaker 1: and something that's often touched on by the teachers is
Speaker 1: that is the distinction between discomfort and pain. Like you
Speaker 1: should work with discomfort, like discomfort is part of the practice.
Speaker 1: But if you are feeling pain, then that means you
Speaker 1: need to back off because you don't want to go
Speaker 1: into that third area of injury of damage. But a
Speaker 1: lot of times it can be hard to tell the
Speaker 1: difference between discomfort and pain. I mean, are they distinct
Speaker 1: classes of things or is that a gradient with you know,
Speaker 1: them being at two different sides of a scale. Uh.
Speaker 1: And of course, the very definition that says that pain
Speaker 1: is necessarily unpleasant would seem to rule out the existence
Speaker 1: of pleasure in pain. It would either mean that nobody
Speaker 1: actually does take pleasure in pain, and I think lots
Speaker 1: of anecdotal evidence would seem to disagree with that, right,
Speaker 1: or that painful sensations that bring about pleasure are not
Speaker 1: actually technically pain. But in that case, what are they?
Speaker 1: What would you call them? I mean, it's a great
Speaker 1: man once said pain don't hurt, So what are we
Speaker 1: to make of that? Okay, so you quote Roadhouse and
Speaker 1: he said, but I think that position in a way
Speaker 1: is inco parent he so he says, pain don't hurt,
Speaker 1: but then he spends the rest of the movie trying
Speaker 1: to prevent the villain from inflicting pain on people. It's true,
Speaker 1: I've got a real beef with Roadhouse, But I wonder
Speaker 1: if that quote, like part of it is that what
Speaker 1: he's trying to say is that for him, physical pain
Speaker 1: does not have, at least in this case, an emotional context.
Speaker 1: But I think it's in a way, it's like a
Speaker 1: lot of things in the Roadhouse, Like maybe it's accidentally
Speaker 1: clever because because it is getting at that distinction, like
Speaker 1: for for human beings, pain is both sensory, like purely sensory,
Speaker 1: but also it has this enormous emotional context, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that it pain is a physical sensation. You know, there's
Speaker 1: no susception in the nerves in the flesh, and so
Speaker 1: it detects something that is an injury, could indicate an
Speaker 1: injury or something like that. But then it also is
Speaker 1: a motivation. It triggers avoidance behaviors. Yeah, Like in the
Speaker 1: the yoga example for instance, like the pain is there
Speaker 1: to tell me, hey, this thing you're doing to your arm,
Speaker 1: uh is not in your normal practice. You should you
Speaker 1: should be aware that if this continues, worst things could occur. Injury,
Speaker 1: damage could occur. Again, that's normal functioning, not getting into
Speaker 1: you know, disorders of pain. But again yeah, for humans,
Speaker 1: pain is a complex topic. Uh, physical sensation, but also
Speaker 1: this emotional realm as well. And there are seemingly dimensions
Speaker 1: of pain that are beyond the scope of less cognitively
Speaker 1: advanced organisms. You know, not saying animals don't feel pain,
Speaker 1: but and their animals do not necessarily have this emotional
Speaker 1: context to their their suffering as well. Yeah, certainly not
Speaker 1: in the same way. I mean, you can see that
Speaker 1: a painful stimulus might cause a retreat or avoidance behaviors,
Speaker 1: and say a crab, but it's hard to believe that
Speaker 1: a crab has the full spectrum of human like fear
Speaker 1: and emotions that that you would get from feeling a
Speaker 1: painful wound, which raises an interesting question. Would a being
Speaker 1: more cognitively advanced than a human being have a greater
Speaker 1: potential for suffering and pain? And maybe would that explain
Speaker 1: something about the nature of many gods and myth and legend. Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean This shows up in existing works of theology.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's something that's often used to
Speaker 1: develop the Christian mythos, which is of course has a
Speaker 1: big theology of the suffering of God. It says that
Speaker 1: God came down into human form, was crucified on the
Speaker 1: cross in the form of Jesus Christ, and then descended
Speaker 1: into hell for three days, and then was resurrected. And
Speaker 1: in order to emphasize the immensity of the sacrifice, Christian
Speaker 1: theologians often point out that this isn't just like a
Speaker 1: human suffering, it's God himself suffering. And since God's state
Speaker 1: of holiness and perfection was already infinitely greater than humans,
Speaker 1: it follows that when he descends to suffering and death,
Speaker 1: that suffering is infinitely greater of an insult than it
Speaker 1: would be to a normal human. So the parts of
Speaker 1: our brain that respond a pleasure also react two sensations
Speaker 1: of pain. This also further complicates things, and the line
Speaker 1: between the two is sometimes a bit of a blur.
Speaker 1: For instance, two thousand thirteen study from the University of
Speaker 1: Oslo found that quote the brain changed how it processed
Speaker 1: moderate pain according to the context of what the alternative
Speaker 1: was if the pain was less than anticipated, then the
Speaker 1: brain transformed the sensation into something comforting or even pleasurable. Likewise,
Speaker 1: there was a two thousand fourteen study from Northern Illinois
Speaker 1: University that linked sado masochism the altered states of mind
Speaker 1: that can be obtained their linked them with with those
Speaker 1: states of mind you might achieve through yoga or meditation,
Speaker 1: you know, which which I think a lot of that
Speaker 1: makes sense. You were talking about, like just a feeling
Speaker 1: alive in the moment of sensation, be that sensation, you know,
Speaker 1: painful or pleasurable. Like there is a is essentially a
Speaker 1: built in mindfulness exercise to that. In the same way
Speaker 1: that if you focus on your breath you are living
Speaker 1: entirely or at least more so in the body then
Speaker 1: you are normally Likewise, if you uh, you know, if
Speaker 1: you you accidentally prick your finger, you're you're living in
Speaker 1: the moment of that that that that finger prick, Like
Speaker 1: there's probably not a lot else on your mind in
Speaker 1: that single instance. Oh. In fact, that this actually comes
Speaker 1: up in the study I want to talk about in
Speaker 1: a minute that has to do with how pain. Pain
Speaker 1: has been shown to alter or mediate our perception of
Speaker 1: our identity excellent. Uh. The same two thousand fourteen study,
Speaker 1: the researchers uh, and you know, they suspected that pain
Speaker 1: inflicted in consensual sado masochism alters blood flow in the brain,
Speaker 1: particularly to the dorso lateral prefrontal cortex, which plays into
Speaker 1: our ability to distinguish self from other. As such, intense
Speaker 1: pain may result in feelings of oneness with you know,
Speaker 1: the other individual or with humanity or the universe, which
Speaker 1: it is interesting to think about. That is really interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean that gets back into stuff we talked about
Speaker 1: in our episodes on psye adelics, of course, with the uh,
Speaker 1: the sort of self other distinction that is sometimes dissolved
Speaker 1: by changes in brain chemistry. But of course we know
Speaker 1: that not all changes in brain brain chemistry have to
Speaker 1: come from ingesting chemicals from outside the body, right right,
Speaker 1: um man, I quite again, I do want to underline
Speaker 1: the consensual aspect of that study. They are talking about
Speaker 1: consensual acts of salomaschism here, of course. Yeah. Now, I
Speaker 1: figured it would be worth talking about other interesting scientific
Speaker 1: research that offers complications in our understanding and experience of pain.
Speaker 1: One thing that I came across that was really interesting
Speaker 1: to me. Is something that is known. It's it's a
Speaker 1: cognitive heuristic known as the peak end phenomenon. And so
Speaker 1: this is a psychological memory bias that says that people
Speaker 1: don't in their memories mentally characterize and experience by taking
Speaker 1: an average of the entire duration of the experience. Rather,
Speaker 1: they mentally care aaracterize and experience according to memories of
Speaker 1: a couple of little things, and they tend very often
Speaker 1: to be moments of peak intensity of the experience and
Speaker 1: then the final moments of the experience. And this has
Speaker 1: been found to apply to both pleasurable and painful experiences.
Speaker 1: Of course, not all experiences. No psychological phenomenon applies to everything,
Speaker 1: but to a lot in which it very often has
Speaker 1: strange consequences. It's been documented a lot of times now,
Speaker 1: but one important early study is by Daniel Kaneman, Barbara Frederickson,
Speaker 1: Charles Schrieber, and Donald Radelmeyer published in Psychological Science in
Speaker 1: called when more pain is preferred to less adding a
Speaker 1: better end. So in this study it was pretty simple,
Speaker 1: You've got to test conditions that both induce pain. Again,
Speaker 1: like most studies are pretty much all good studies, this
Speaker 1: is going to be non threatening pain, but it will
Speaker 1: be uncomfortable. And what it is here is a plunge
Speaker 1: your hand into cold water and holding it there. So
Speaker 1: in test one, you plunge your hand into cold water,
Speaker 1: which was fifteen degrees celsius, and you hold it there
Speaker 1: for one minute. And then in test too, you do
Speaker 1: exactly the same thing, plunge into the fifteen degree celsius
Speaker 1: cold water, hold it there for one minute, but then
Speaker 1: you also have to hold it for an additional thirty
Speaker 1: seconds as the temperature in the water is gradually slightly increased,
Speaker 1: though it's still cold, more cold than is comfortable. A
Speaker 1: majority of people, a significant majority of people chose when
Speaker 1: they had the choice to repeat one of the two tests,
Speaker 1: chose to repeat the second test rather than the first,
Speaker 1: meaning they'd rather the discomfort go on longer if the
Speaker 1: final moments of the discomfort were slightly less intense. And
Speaker 1: other studies have found versions of this in different context.
Speaker 1: It does seem that we are willing to experience more
Speaker 1: pain or discomfort for a long, longer period of time
Speaker 1: if the last few moments of the pain are not
Speaker 1: as bad, and this seems to suggest that there's some
Speaker 1: way that as we form memories of painful or unpleasant experience,
Speaker 1: those memories can be formed in such a way that objectively,
Speaker 1: more pain chronologically measured seems like less pain because the
Speaker 1: ending of it wasn't quite as bad, and the ending
Speaker 1: seems to matter the most to us. But this also
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense if you think of of pain as
Speaker 1: the signal warning you about something that may happen about
Speaker 1: you know, continued stressing of this particular muscle, or continued
Speaker 1: exposure to a dangerous element such as heat or cold.
Speaker 1: Oh that's very interesting. I hadn't so, I'd seen it
Speaker 1: mainly interpreted, like what's causing this? The main interpretation I
Speaker 1: had seen had been recency bias. Of course, you know
Speaker 1: we tend to uh no, well, again, there are two things.
Speaker 1: It's the peak intensity of the experience and the end.
Speaker 1: So focusing on the end of the experience, it would
Speaker 1: be the recency bias. Right is, the things that happen
Speaker 1: more recently seem more salient to us. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that also makes sense, especially for registering pain, because pain
Speaker 1: is a lot about what could happen. It's supposed to
Speaker 1: be giving you warnings that are useful information in order
Speaker 1: for you to protect your body. Right. But then again,
Speaker 1: at the same time as we're discussing and will continuous
Speaker 1: discuss the human pain is complex, so there are other
Speaker 1: elements that I guess may skew that sort of thing. Oh,
Speaker 1: of course. Yeah, so so that's that's an interesting possibility too.
Speaker 1: And I should note that, of course, like a lot
Speaker 1: of psychological phenomenon, the peak in phenomenon doesn't always apply
Speaker 1: at every instance, but it's a general rule. It seems
Speaker 1: like we followed this an awful lot. But if more
Speaker 1: pain objectively measured seems in our minds like less pain,
Speaker 1: at least in retrospect, then what is pain like? What
Speaker 1: is the real pain? What is the real thing that
Speaker 1: we want to try to lessen and avoid? Or in
Speaker 1: some of these rare cases where people are enjoy or
Speaker 1: taking enjoyment and pain, what is the kind they want
Speaker 1: to experience? More pain in the memory or pain in
Speaker 1: in the in the moment sensation, since those things don't
Speaker 1: always necessarily match up. Yeah, that's true. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing that I feel like this
Speaker 1: happens anytime we look at pain, or you really think
Speaker 1: about pain, is that it seems like our our language
Speaker 1: of pain is severely lacking, Like we just don't have
Speaker 1: the proper vocabulary to get it all the different nuances here. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I mean it raises all kinds of questions, like I mean,
Speaker 1: even for yourself, if you're not trying to make a
Speaker 1: judgment for other people, assuming pain is something you want
Speaker 1: to avoid in this context, would you rather have less
Speaker 1: pain in the moment or less pain in your memory
Speaker 1: of an experience? I don't know how to like, I
Speaker 1: really don't know how to answer that, right, And this
Speaker 1: is and this is the total human dimension of pain,
Speaker 1: like the memory of pain. And this is the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that yeah, you know, some animals are gonna
Speaker 1: have to deal with a certain animals is gonna have
Speaker 1: to deal with to some level. But but humans and
Speaker 1: pain and memory and the ability to to mentally time
Speaker 1: travel back to that pain and then to to likewise,
Speaker 1: you know, imagine encountering that pain in the future like
Speaker 1: that defines so much of what we do. Absolutely, now
Speaker 1: I've got another study to talk about with pain. But
Speaker 1: should we take a break first and then come back.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Thank alright, we're back. We're continuing to
Speaker 1: spin off of hell Raiser and the hell Bound Heart
Speaker 1: and discuss the nature of pain, pleasure and pain indivisible
Speaker 1: as the cinnabytes would say. So, one study I came
Speaker 1: across that I thought had some interesting bits, and it
Speaker 1: was called The Positive Consequences of Pain, a Biopsychosocial Approach
Speaker 1: by Bastion, Jetton, Hornsey, and Lechness from the Social Psychology
Speaker 1: Review in and here this is a big review article.
Speaker 1: So it's like looking at existing literature to collect examples
Speaker 1: of ways that pain has been documented to have some
Speaker 1: positive effects. And of course you can't list all of them,
Speaker 1: and and maybe some of these are better held up
Speaker 1: by evidence than others. But these are the things that
Speaker 1: the broad categories that they found some evidence of. One
Speaker 1: is might be pretty straightforward, but it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: Pain often enhances subsequent pleasure by providing a contrasting experience.
Speaker 1: Pain causes people to rate pleasurable experiences in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of the pain as more pleasurable than they otherwise would. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like an example of this that ties in directly with
Speaker 1: some of the methods used in these experiments is that
Speaker 1: if you go to ah too certain saunas, there will
Speaker 1: be a cold water pool like a chilling water pool
Speaker 1: in which you may immerse all or parts of your
Speaker 1: body and then in and then once you've overcome with
Speaker 1: the displeasure of that, then you may go and climb
Speaker 1: into the hot tub, and then the hot tub will
Speaker 1: be more pleasurable for the discomfort that you have had
Speaker 1: in the cold top. Yeah. I don't know to what
Speaker 1: extent this plays a role in the mythology of the cinabytes,
Speaker 1: because it seems like they're sort of pursuing pain for
Speaker 1: its own sake in some cases, like they're not always
Speaker 1: following it up with a nice sauna or something. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we never see them just giving a nice gentle bag massage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the hooks shoot out the hooks and then it's like, ah,
Speaker 1: but then after that you get to go have some
Speaker 1: ice cream. Okay. Another thing from their list is they
Speaker 1: say there's evidence that pain increases sensory sensitivity. It's sort
Speaker 1: of increases our sampling rate of sensations from the physical world.
Speaker 1: In some cases, this can be good. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: this makes sense, right if your if your body is
Speaker 1: receiving or resonating with the signal that something something is
Speaker 1: potentially damaging the body, then it makes sense that the
Speaker 1: century awareness is also ratcheted up in order to take
Speaker 1: in what may be harming the body. Right. Another one
Speaker 1: they point out pretty interesting is that pain sometimes blocks
Speaker 1: or a aviates our sense of guilt, which could otherwise
Speaker 1: prevent us from experiencing pleasure. Robert, I think you had
Speaker 1: some details on a study that looked into this, right, yes,
Speaker 1: I do. This is a study. This one came before
Speaker 1: the other one. This is from two thousand and eleven,
Speaker 1: but it's also from brock Bastion, the lead author of
Speaker 1: the other study. A real um, you know Hollywood leading
Speaker 1: man name. Uh it sounds like an action here. Uh
Speaker 1: So basically M. Brock Bastion of the University of Queensland,
Speaker 1: Australia set out to understand, uh, you know, what's going
Speaker 1: on with pain in this situation. Bastion's team recruited young
Speaker 1: male and female test subjects under the guise of a
Speaker 1: mental and physical acuity study. The researchers asked the test
Speaker 1: subjects to write a personal essay about a time in
Speaker 1: which they ostracize someone, and the aim here was to
Speaker 1: make them feel guilty or immoral. Meanwhile, a control group
Speaker 1: wrote personal essays about a routine memory. You know, nothing painful,
Speaker 1: just a memory. And the searchers instructed both the immoral
Speaker 1: volunteers and the control group to hold their hands in
Speaker 1: a bucket of ice water for as long as they
Speaker 1: could stand it, and others dip their hands in a
Speaker 1: soothing bucket of warm water. So the question is would
Speaker 1: immoral test subjects punish themselves with longer dips in the
Speaker 1: cold water? The the individuals who just had to write
Speaker 1: a personal essay about a time that they were awful,
Speaker 1: would and then would they feel better afterwards? And the
Speaker 1: answer ends up being yes on both counts. Uh. Those
Speaker 1: who were primed to feel shame about past actions dip
Speaker 1: their hands in the cold water for longer durations, and
Speaker 1: they described the dip as more painful and express reduced
Speaker 1: feelings of guilt afterwards. So Rockbastion argues that this experiment
Speaker 1: illustrates our culturally altered understanding of pain. We've come to
Speaker 1: process it not only is negative and environmental feedback, but
Speaker 1: is justice and punishment. So on a psychological level, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a little bit of self inflected pain rebalances
Speaker 1: the scales. Uh. Now, I would say, on one hand,
Speaker 1: this is the kind of like intuition confirming social psychology research.
Speaker 1: That always makes me think, like, I'd like to see
Speaker 1: that replicated, you know, a few times. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: assuming that the results hold up, that that is interesting
Speaker 1: that like the pain would have this this effect on
Speaker 1: our self critical judgments, which also, of course gives another
Speaker 1: explanation of why self infliction of pain rituals might be
Speaker 1: so common in certain religious orders, especially people who take
Speaker 1: sins of the flesh very seriously. Yeah, we we see,
Speaker 1: we see and read about an example of self flagellation
Speaker 1: in m Burdo Echo is the name of the rose. Yes,
Speaker 1: and of course in that in the movie adaptation, Uh,
Speaker 1: the girl is played by the same actor who would
Speaker 1: play a Cinabyte in the fourth Hell Racer movie. Really,
Speaker 1: so there's your vital on Burdo Echo Hell Razor connection.
Speaker 1: Love it? Okay? A few more things mentioned in this study. H.
Speaker 1: So one thing they say is that pain there's some
Speaker 1: evidence that pain quote brings cognitive resources online, so it
Speaker 1: helps increase our cognitive effective control of ourselves. Uh, they
Speaker 1: say that pain that this one was interesting and we
Speaker 1: hinted at it earlier. They say that pain enables identity
Speaker 1: management and one example they give here is that physical
Speaker 1: pain in the body can sometimes interrupt what the authors
Speaker 1: call quote high level awareness of a symbolically mediated, temporarily
Speaker 1: extended identity. In other words, the kind of thinking about
Speaker 1: oneself that leads to negative, repetitive introspection, worry, self consciousness.
Speaker 1: That physical pain increases awareness of the immediate physical body
Speaker 1: and decreases the immediate salience of these kinds of worries.
Speaker 1: That the negative introspection about oneself, and this this horrible
Speaker 1: symbolic entity known as a person tied up in this
Speaker 1: idea of the soul, which really we should we so
Speaker 1: we should thank the cinnabytes for tearing the soul apart,
Speaker 1: like in the movie It. You know, it comes off
Speaker 1: as more this threat. Right, I'm gonna tell you you're
Speaker 1: going to tear your soul apart. What really we should
Speaker 1: be saying the saying thank you. That's the kind of
Speaker 1: ego loss I've been searching for. That's why I picked
Speaker 1: up the limit configuration. Right, That's how you finally achieve
Speaker 1: the higher state of consciousness. Yeah, okay, and a couple
Speaker 1: of other things they mentioned. This one I think is
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward, but it's true. Pain can be interpreted as
Speaker 1: demonstrating virtue such as courage, toughness, dedication. The symbolic value
Speaker 1: of withstanding pain can sometimes override the physical discomfort of
Speaker 1: the pain itself, though at the same time worth pointing out,
Speaker 1: that's a great way to wind up in that that
Speaker 1: third category of injured if you were just you know,
Speaker 1: like I'm too I'm too masculine. Uh, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: too powerful to listen to the pain signal. Well, now
Speaker 1: you have the injury and damage signal, and you have
Speaker 1: to deal with that, right, yes. And they also note
Speaker 1: several ways in which it appears that pain promotes affiliation
Speaker 1: between people, you know. They say, the expression of pain
Speaker 1: can sometimes increase empathy and care for others, and the
Speaker 1: expressions of pain can trigger social connections, and they can
Speaker 1: strengthen bonding and solidarity. And in the later you know
Speaker 1: how raizor movies. This this holds true, right because once
Speaker 1: the cinebytes are done with you, like you are one
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah, I guess that's true. Now, I do
Speaker 1: want to stress on a briefly serious note that while
Speaker 1: we're talking about these uh possibly recognized psychological benefits of
Speaker 1: different kinds of pain, we should stress that none of
Speaker 1: the potential benefits of pain should be interpreted as excuses
Speaker 1: to continue practices of actual self injury uh, you know,
Speaker 1: meaning like the deliberate damaging of your body tissues such
Speaker 1: as cutting or burning, if you are practicing self injury
Speaker 1: or considering it, uh, including of course non suicidal self injury.
Speaker 1: This is not something to deal with on your own.
Speaker 1: This is something that's important to talk to people about,
Speaker 1: talk to friends of family members or mental health professional
Speaker 1: if at all possible. There are other ways to get
Speaker 1: relief from the underlying shoes that lead to this coping mechanism,
Speaker 1: and they're far less dangerous absolutely. Um. Now, on the
Speaker 1: on the same nime, you know, we do have listeners
Speaker 1: who who have you know, taken part in b D
Speaker 1: s M. We've also heard from listeners who have done
Speaker 1: hook suspension. But I think it's it's very important to
Speaker 1: note like these are these are avenues that one should
Speaker 1: you know, enter into with safety in mind. And also
Speaker 1: if you you know, if you go into any of
Speaker 1: these things, you know safety is going to be a
Speaker 1: part all of those ventures, like how to essentially utilize
Speaker 1: pain without leading to that area of damage. Um of
Speaker 1: you know, of injury or certainly infection. Um, so certainly
Speaker 1: do your research. It's also worth stressing that some levels
Speaker 1: of physical pain that the pain is not always the
Speaker 1: right word, can certainly be acquired through exercise. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I just want to say one of the
Speaker 1: studies I was looking at, though, it was very clear
Speaker 1: to say that I think at the time exercise had
Speaker 1: not been found to be like a an empirically re
Speaker 1: viable way of curing self injury pattern behavior. Uh that
Speaker 1: anecdotally it was often reported by patients that exercise was
Speaker 1: had been substituted for self injury. Yeah, I would say that,
Speaker 1: Like basically, if you if you were inspired by anything
Speaker 1: you heard here and you want to try something, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, the cold water I think is a
Speaker 1: great avenue to consider. But also yeah, just you know,
Speaker 1: most levels of exercise, you know you hear about like
Speaker 1: feeling the burn, right, um, you know, experiencing some level
Speaker 1: of discomfort during a workout, and perhaps the soreness that
Speaker 1: you would experienced in the following forty eight hours. Like
Speaker 1: you know, that's a I think that's that's an area
Speaker 1: where one might pursue some of what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: and that comes with a lot of added benefits for
Speaker 1: your life and your mental health as well. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you're doing it right, yeah, you're not injuring
Speaker 1: yourself in the process. Like so much of what we're
Speaker 1: talking about, like it really resonates with with my own
Speaker 1: yoga practice, is that you know that, like I can
Speaker 1: feel myself, you know, putting myself into this this level
Speaker 1: of discomfort, staying clear of the area of injury, and
Speaker 1: in doing so, like feeling this heightened state of existence,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, like I feel more in tune with
Speaker 1: my body and my surrounding and with the people in
Speaker 1: the room with me that are also engaging in this, uh,
Speaker 1: in this practice, that are also experiencing the same thing. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I would I would say, yeah, don't don't
Speaker 1: do what what pinhead does, go to a yoga studio instead. Well,
Speaker 1: I would be curious in your yoga practice, do you
Speaker 1: find the reduction of the negative aspects of self self
Speaker 1: into respection and the ability to self regulate your identity
Speaker 1: processes through this the discomfort brought about in yoga. Absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's one of the main reasons I do it
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting and maybe I gotta
Speaker 1: give yoga to try one of these days. Well, you
Speaker 1: gotta give it more one try, because I hated it
Speaker 1: the first time I did so. Anywhere in talent that
Speaker 1: does like horror yoga, like horror themed yoga. There's our
Speaker 1: former co host, Christian would go to a death metal yoga.
Speaker 1: I've heard of that. It's not the same. Yeah, you want,
Speaker 1: you want a full horror themed yoga, pumpkin head yoga. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Well, there's there's so many forms of yoga.
Speaker 1: I feel like there is room for that that brand
Speaker 1: of yoga as well. Okay, I think we may have
Speaker 1: done it for pain here, but I think we could
Speaker 1: briefly talk about skinless critters. Do you want to do that? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah. Frank in the film spends a lot of
Speaker 1: time skinless. You know, it comes back as a shriveled corpse,
Speaker 1: and then he's able to drink enough blood to regenerate,
Speaker 1: but then he needs to acquire a new skin. He
Speaker 1: keeps thinking he's going to get skin, but then he never.
Speaker 1: Like one victim after another, he's like, he's got to
Speaker 1: have skin. This time, he's almost there, and then still
Speaker 1: no skin, right and in the second movie, which which
Speaker 1: I have seen in a long time, but I remember
Speaker 1: as being fun, uh grotesque. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: remember fun remember fun. But basically it's like it's Ernest
Speaker 1: goes to Hell. They go to Hell. It's not well,
Speaker 1: they go to Hell. Yes, but Earnest. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's quite an Earnest movie. Um, but No. In that film,
Speaker 1: we we encounter Frank again and we encounter Julia, and
Speaker 1: Julia now also has this skinless and has to acquire
Speaker 1: a skin, and at one point she's able to slip
Speaker 1: away by sort of uh you know, being like like
Speaker 1: sort of leaving her skin behind, shedding her skin, and uh.
Speaker 1: It is interesting to to then look to the natural
Speaker 1: world and see that we do see a practice like
Speaker 1: this as a defense mechanism in certain organisms. We've talked
Speaker 1: about autatonomy before on the show, the amazing biological ability
Speaker 1: to shed part of one's body to facilitate a skate
Speaker 1: from a predator, the most classic example being a lizard
Speaker 1: shedding its tail. Yeah, you sort of give the predator
Speaker 1: a consolation prize, yeah, or a distraction. There are a
Speaker 1: few different interpretations of it. Right, It's a compromise. It
Speaker 1: gets the tail, you get to survive. But there's also
Speaker 1: there are also two species of African spiny mice that
Speaker 1: slouch off portions of their furry flesh when they're grabbed
Speaker 1: by a predator. Uh So, so you know, it's one
Speaker 1: thing to see this in a lizard, but here's a
Speaker 1: here's a mammal that does it. And it's it's flesh.
Speaker 1: It's not a limb that it's going to regrow. It's
Speaker 1: just a big portion of its skin that pulls aside.
Speaker 1: So as I saw explained in Nature, Uh, these self
Speaker 1: flaying mice simply slip out of portions of their own
Speaker 1: hide and rapidly regrow complete suits of hair, follical skin,
Speaker 1: sweat glands for and even cartilage to fill in the gaps.
Speaker 1: And and we see some of that regenerative power in
Speaker 1: Julia Cotton in hell Raiser too. But Frank he'd never
Speaker 1: seemed to have quite learned that ability on his own.
Speaker 1: Now he had to steal his brother's skin. Now we
Speaker 1: find another rather uh skilled skin shucker, if you will,
Speaker 1: in the form of a particular gecko species from Madagascar.
Speaker 1: Uh these are fish scaled geckos. I'm gonna attempt the
Speaker 1: species name. This is where when we need uh mark
Speaker 1: Mandinka in the studio. But it's a gecko Lepis megallepis.
Speaker 1: And basically they have these giant, kind of oversized looking
Speaker 1: fish scales on their body and uh and and basically
Speaker 1: if something tries to capture them, they shed the skin.
Speaker 1: And it actually makes it difficult to study them because
Speaker 1: you have to researchers have to collect specimens with special
Speaker 1: cotton based traps, and even these are are not quite
Speaker 1: delicate enough to prevent injury. Like they'll basically shed some
Speaker 1: of their skin at the drop of a hat. It's
Speaker 1: a bumber. You need to find a way to calm
Speaker 1: them down before you catch them. Yeah. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: but basically they're they're like I don't want to be
Speaker 1: caught period. Yeah, you know, so there's a lot like
Speaker 1: Frank in that that situation. Frank does not want to
Speaker 1: be recaptured by the cinepipes. Uh. And of course, not
Speaker 1: only are these both of these these these these different
Speaker 1: animals of the mice and the geckos, not only are
Speaker 1: they interesting in their own right, uh, this is another
Speaker 1: one of those areas as with you know, lizards regrowing
Speaker 1: their tails and other regenerative uh powers in nature, Like,
Speaker 1: there is a potential here to to figure out how
Speaker 1: to employ regenerative medical UM technology in humans down the
Speaker 1: line salamander research. Yeah, yeah, that's sort of thing. So
Speaker 1: you know, we could reach the I don't know about
Speaker 1: regrowing a human's complete skin, but certainly we're getting into
Speaker 1: that area of possibility. But the skin comes off really
Speaker 1: easily in Hell Raiser. I don't know if you've noticed this,
Speaker 1: And in a lot of horror films, um, well, there
Speaker 1: are two things that happened way too easily. First of all,
Speaker 1: someone can be impaled on something super easily. And then
Speaker 1: also and in person's entire skin can be pulled off,
Speaker 1: you know, with relative ease. So as far as impaling
Speaker 1: and stabbing and stuff goes, horror movies seem to forget
Speaker 1: that people have bones. You ever noticed that. It's like
Speaker 1: where are the bones? Somebody trips and a table leg
Speaker 1: all the way through the body, like just straight through, yeah,
Speaker 1: right through all the bones in the chest, through the heart,
Speaker 1: everything is if the human body is made out of
Speaker 1: balsa wood. Robert, this has been mighty fun to discuss today,
Speaker 1: But I noticed hooks and chains emerging from the studio
Speaker 1: walls too. That's the sign that we have to call
Speaker 1: it there. Obviously, we we could continue to talk about
Speaker 1: the nature of pain here. Uh. So hey, if you want,
Speaker 1: if you want more, check out some of our past
Speaker 1: episodes on pain. Uh and I'm sure we'll come back
Speaker 1: around to pain in the future. There are a number
Speaker 1: of things we've touched on here that we could flesh
Speaker 1: out in a future episode. Unintended yes, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: when you're talking hell Raiser, all puns are intended. So uh.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes,
Speaker 1: where can you find well, you can find them Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. That's our website. You
Speaker 1: can also find them wherever you get your podcasts. Uh.
Speaker 1: And hey, if you're on that thing they call Facebook,
Speaker 1: you can find the Facebook group for Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind. It's the Stuff to Blow your Mind discussion module.
Speaker 1: That's a fun place to interact with other listeners and
Speaker 1: uh and occasionally the hosts themselves. Huge thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producers Seth Nicholas Johnson. Thanks Joe, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is Seth hopping in real quick. Just to say
Speaker 1: a quick thank you to Annie Reese for providing the
Speaker 1: voice of our cinembytes at the beginning of there the
Speaker 1: lead Cinebytes the Proto pinhead Um. If you want to
Speaker 1: hear more from Annie doing awesome things with her voice,
Speaker 1: you should listen to her podcasts that Sminty Stuff Mom
Speaker 1: Never Told You and Savor all this month. Just like
Speaker 1: we're doing our Halloween themed episodes, they're doing their Halloween
Speaker 1: themed episodes and they're all really great. There's some stuff
Speaker 1: on female monsters, the feminism of the Alien franchise, female
Speaker 1: serial killers, the Winchester House. Um, let's see apple cider,
Speaker 1: the turnips. You know turnips were the original jack lanterns.
Speaker 1: Just saying these are all really cool things that you
Speaker 1: will learn if you go listen to uh Annie on
Speaker 1: her other podcasts, Sminty and Sabor go do that. Everyone
Speaker 1: All right? Back to you, Joe. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio
Speaker 1: is at the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows by bid. Nine is
Speaker 1: no