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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: It's time to go into the vault. Today. We're going

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Speaker 1: to be going back to our first episode on aquatic

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Speaker 1: humanoids from January. This was almost exactly a year ago

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Speaker 1: that this first stired. Now why are why are we

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Speaker 1: doing so much ocean stuff lately, Robert, Oh, it's because

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Speaker 1: Transgenesis is coming out. That is a fiction sci fi podcast.

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Speaker 1: All ten episodes are gonna launch at once so that

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Speaker 1: you can you can binge them, you can, you can,

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Speaker 1: you can spread them out over your commute, you know,

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Speaker 1: however you want to do it. Wait, did you even

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Speaker 1: tell them who created Transgenesis? Oh? Well, I created Transgenesis.

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Speaker 1: Um I wrote and created, worked with Alexander Williams, one

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Speaker 1: of our producers here and Stuff to Blow your Mind. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum was also instrumental in the project, worked with

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Speaker 1: a number of different outside actors, but also a lot

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Speaker 1: of talent from within the Stuff network, including you, Joe,

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Speaker 1: you were there. It's right, I make a strange cameo.

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Speaker 1: So if you want, if you want to check that

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Speaker 1: show out, go and subscribe. You should be able to

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Speaker 1: look up Transgenesis all one word. You can also go

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Speaker 1: to Transgenesis dot show for more information. But again, this

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Speaker 1: is a science fiction show that then it deals with

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Speaker 1: the deep ocean. It deals with strange humanoid like creatures

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Speaker 1: in the deep ocean. But this is why we're going

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Speaker 1: back to these episodes on aquatic humanoids, because they deal

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Speaker 1: with with with creatures from the deep, creatures of myth

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Speaker 1: and legend, things such as the Triton's, things such as

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Speaker 1: mermaids and and other uh dwellers of the deep. I

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Speaker 1: think we talked about creature from the Black Lagoon, and

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Speaker 1: good we do. We do spend a good bit talking

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Speaker 1: about the creature and various gil men. We talked about

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Speaker 1: Lovecraft and in Smith and and we may even get

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Speaker 1: into the the aquatic a hypothesis. I'm having trouble room bread.

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Speaker 1: I think that comes and maybe in part two. All right,

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Speaker 1: all right, well, we hope you enjoy this classic episode

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Speaker 1: of stuff to blow your mind. First you will come

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Speaker 1: to the sirens, who enchant all who come near them

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Speaker 1: if anyone unwarily draws in too close. And here's the

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Speaker 1: singing of the sirens. His wife and children will never

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Speaker 1: welcome him home again, for they sit in a green

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Speaker 1: field and wabble him to death with the sweetness of

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Speaker 1: their song. There is a great heap of dead men's

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Speaker 1: bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them.

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Speaker 1: They meant the things on the little island with the

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Speaker 1: queer ruins, and it seems them awful pictures of frog

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Speaker 1: fish monsters. Was supposed to be pictures of these things?

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Speaker 1: Maybe they was the kind of critters has got all

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Speaker 1: the mermaids stories and such started. They had all kinds

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Speaker 1: of cities on the sea bottom, and his iron was

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Speaker 1: heaved up from there. Welcome to stuff to blow your

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Speaker 1: mind from How Stuffworks dot com. Hey, you welcome to

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Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb

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Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. And if you recognize what those

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Speaker 1: sources were, you probably can tell we're gonna be talking

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Speaker 1: about some mirror creatures, some sea folks, something like that today.

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Speaker 1: That's right. The first was from Homer's the Odyssey, the

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Speaker 1: Samuel Butler translation. The second was from HP Lovecraft The

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Speaker 1: Shadow Over in Smith. Now, there is always an alluring

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Speaker 1: quality to the idea that there's stuff happening down at

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Speaker 1: the bottom of the ocean that has more than just

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Speaker 1: an animal quality, but some kind of intelligence or organizing

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Speaker 1: principle to it. I think of in the George R.

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Speaker 1: Martin books, there's this character. Do you remember this guy, Robert,

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Speaker 1: who is like a court jester and the in stand

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Speaker 1: Barathians Court, who's always singing about what happens under the

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Speaker 1: bottom of the sea. No, I've forgotten about this. Well,

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Speaker 1: he like falls in the water at some point and

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Speaker 1: gets rescued, and after that he's always saying, like under

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Speaker 1: the sea that I don't remember what he says, but

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Speaker 1: it's like they have feet, you know, people people walk

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Speaker 1: upside down on their hands. And then he always says,

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Speaker 1: I know, I know, ho ho ho, And it's kind

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Speaker 1: of mysterious. Oh yeah, this does ring about now. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know, before even before we had proper mirrors, the uh,

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

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Speaker 1: was kind of the mirror world. Yeah, so any of

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Speaker 1: those stories where you wonder if there's actually some kind

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Speaker 1: of creature living on the other side of the mirror,

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Speaker 1: if that's another universe we're peering through. Into. All of

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Speaker 1: that applies to the water as well. Yeah, I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's interesting when you think of all the various specimens,

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Speaker 1: the Mermaids, the Gilman, the sirens. It's fascinating. The humans

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Speaker 1: have seemingly always dreamt up humanoids from the deep, not

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Speaker 1: just monsters, but humanoids. Yeah, I mean, because you can

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Speaker 1: certainly expand it and getting the whole realm of sea

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Speaker 1: monsters and various animal fish hybrids. But there's something particular

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Speaker 1: about those humanoid or partially humanoid creatures, a mirror world

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Speaker 1: beneath the waves, and people of some sort that occupied

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Speaker 1: the depths. Yeah, I mean, even before you had somebody

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Speaker 1: like Giordano Bruno imagining that there could be other planets

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Speaker 1: with surfaces like our planet that could have creatures dwelling

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Speaker 1: on them. You know, when people didn't really have that

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Speaker 1: conception of the sky, you could still definitely wonder about

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Speaker 1: something like that under the ocean. That was like sort

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Speaker 1: of the first outer space. It was the original alien world. Yeah, indeed,

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Speaker 1: and without a real means of exploring it or understanding it,

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

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

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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 a Chet Van Duzer

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Speaker 1: Sea 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 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 Kings

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Speaker 1: saga on the second early eighth century BC that clearly

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Speaker 1: depicts two Assyrian merment. And it's great because if you've

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: you look at other ancient writings, I mean, they're mentioned

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

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

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Speaker 1: described the gates of the Palace of the Sun as

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Speaker 1: containing all of these images of mer people. The dark

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Speaker 1: blue sea contains the gods melodious Triton shifting Proteus uh

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Speaker 1: Aegian 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 your two thousand one paper Hans Christian Andersen's

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Speaker 1: Fish out of Water, the Babylonians recognized gods 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 freshwater 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 good, pretty great,

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Speaker 1: that's amazing. And get this. The zig Rot, where people

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Speaker 1: would worship Inky, was known as House of the Subterranean Waters. Well,

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Speaker 1: that seems to sort of complete the Ziggurat trinity because

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

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

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Speaker 1: of the Tower of Babel. I think that name means

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

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Speaker 1: very regal sounding zigaratte. As if there's another kind of

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

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

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Speaker 1: it's gonna be a zigaratte, 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 our 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 ancient sea 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. So

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: the next episode we're going to focus more on the

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

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Speaker 1: the mythology and fiction episode, and the next one will

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Speaker 1: be the Science and Speculative Science episode. Now, Robert, one

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Speaker 1: of the first ones you mentioned was the sirens. That's right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean when we we had the reading from the

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Speaker 1: Odyssey at the start of the episode that refers to them.

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Speaker 1: But one thing you'll notice is that there was no

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Speaker 1: description of the sirens. Yeah, what do they look like? Well,

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Speaker 1: we don't know, because Homer never actually describes them. Uh.

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Speaker 1: They were later described though, as being half bird, much

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Speaker 1: like the Harpie, and later periods of development merged them

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Speaker 1: with the Northern mermaid in Christian Europe, but medieval Beast

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Speaker 1: Area's stuck to the bird hybridity though up through at

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Speaker 1: least twelve twenty, and then you had this gentleman Isidore

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Speaker 1: of Seville who lived of five sixty through sixty six,

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Speaker 1: and he attributed them with scales and webbed feet and

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Speaker 1: sometimes tales and wings as well. But from the Middle

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Speaker 1: Ages onward, that's where the sirens really took on the

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Speaker 1: mermaid look. And it's stuck. I'm trying to think of

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Speaker 1: depictions of them I've seen in movies, but I don't

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Speaker 1: think I have. The only thing that comes to mind is, oh, brother,

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Speaker 1: where art thou, but in that they're not hybrids. They're

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Speaker 1: just humans that are. But they are in a creek bed,

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Speaker 1: that's right. I feel like a lot of the depictions

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Speaker 1: that that I'm accustomed to, mainly through the Time Life

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Speaker 1: book series of myths and monsters and myths and legends,

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Speaker 1: and there was there were some siren images in there,

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Speaker 1: and a lot of them were just basically beautiful women

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Speaker 1: out on rocks, luring the the the wide eyed Greek

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Speaker 1: sailors to their doom. Now, of course, if you're not

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Speaker 1: familiar with the story, it's that the sirens would sing, right,

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Speaker 1: and that they're singing was so lovely that it would

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Speaker 1: drive men mad. And it would and they would want

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Speaker 1: to come ashore to meet the sirens, I guess, or

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Speaker 1: be drawn to the singing, but instead their vessels would

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Speaker 1: be dashed upon the rocks, right, Yeah. And various accounts

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Speaker 1: of the sirens that they vary, like maybe you'd starve

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Speaker 1: to death, or you perhaps you'd drown. I guess. The

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

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Speaker 1: a dangerous place, right, and if you go out upon

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Speaker 1: the ocean, you might meet your do I always thought

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Speaker 1: that what Odysseus does in the story of his encounter

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Speaker 1: with the sirens was an interesting sort of metaphor for

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: other men plug their ears, and he wants to hear it.

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Speaker 1: They're all the designated drivers. Yes, though in a sense

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Speaker 1: he's the designated driver because he is the only one

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Speaker 1: who can tell them when they're out of the sirens range.

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Speaker 1: But but yeah, they're they're all plugged up. He's the

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Speaker 1: one that's a that's their rope to the mast, begging

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Speaker 1: to be let free, and their industrict orders that the

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Speaker 1: more I begged, the more you need to wrote me

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Speaker 1: to the mast. Now another interesting uh individual or race,

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Speaker 1: depending on how you look at it, from Greek Mytholity,

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Speaker 1: the Triton. So Triton was originally a specific mirror person.

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Speaker 1: But Ariel's father, right is was that his name in

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Speaker 1: the cartoon in the Disney movie, wasn't it? I thought

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Speaker 1: you just saw a little mermaid themed show, and I did,

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Speaker 1: But it was at wiki Watchie, which is the long

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Speaker 1: running mermaid show there. And the underwater dancing is a

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Speaker 1: very limited storytelling medium. And I don't think her father

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Speaker 1: ever showed up. Okay, yeah, I think that's his name.

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Speaker 1: I remember this from childhood, the guy with the big

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Speaker 1: beard and the trident. Okay, the mayor man king. He's

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Speaker 1: King Triton. Okay, I definitely remember him, but I didn't

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Speaker 1: remember his name. Well. Uh. The Triton's eventually became seen

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Speaker 1: as just a class of murr people in Greek myth.

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Speaker 1: They were the sons of Poseidon and Amphitrite. They had

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

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Speaker 1: tails matted green or yellow hair. They had gills as

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

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Speaker 1: and then they typically would serve as escorts for the

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

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Speaker 1: of Entity. And our old friend Hessiod said that they

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Speaker 1: inhabited golden palaces under the sea. Now it sounds like

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: that it's combining features of the house of Ichthos. 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 it just mesh it all up

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

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Speaker 1: 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. If 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 discussed modern treatments of mermaids

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Speaker 1: and fish people. Okay, so Fang's scales, dolphin tales, humanoid characteristics.

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Speaker 1: That's not enough hybrid City for me. I want you

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Speaker 1: to 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 a

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Speaker 1: theo centaur. Yes, so you had something called a centauro triton,

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Speaker 1: which is basically what occurs when you have a triton

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Speaker 1: that's depicted with like like a definite dolphin esque hind quarters.

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Speaker 1: But then the atho centaur takes the hybrid city to

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

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Speaker 1: the third century common Air. Uh. And this is found

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Speaker 1: in the natural history text Physiologists. Uh. And this creature,

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Speaker 1: the echio centaur, was said to have the torso and

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

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

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Speaker 1: unlike the centaur o tritan, they had scale. Now I'm

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

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

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Speaker 1: of a horse and the tail of a dolphin? 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 Ichthyo centaur. According to the resources I was looking

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Speaker 1: at button that they remained a decorative motif, which is

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

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Speaker 1: like the mermaid and the Uh and the triton and

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Speaker 1: the Ethio centaur, they become just part of medieval iconography

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Speaker 1: going forward, and they come to symbolize other things, the

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Speaker 1: Mermaid particular becoming to symbolize to sort of the the

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Speaker 1: the evil and monstrous nature of the female Uh sometimes

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Speaker 1: depicted Uh, I believe with a with a fish to

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Speaker 1: show that she is entrapping the Christian soul. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: often think of the tradition of the mermaid as being

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Speaker 1: one of temptation. Like that, it it establishes kind of

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Speaker 1: like a foolish and weak willed sailor that will give

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Speaker 1: in to the temptation of the mermaid because he has

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Speaker 1: not properly disciplined his spirit to resist sin. It reminds

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Speaker 1: me a lot of the incubi and succubi legends we've

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Speaker 1: discussed in the podcast before, where the feet would be

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Speaker 1: a giveaway. The feet would be the feet of a beast,

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Speaker 1: and therefore any any rational believer would notice the feet

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Speaker 1: of the creature and and just and cease to pursue

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Speaker 1: this foolish pairing. But that's an interesting parallel, like that

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Speaker 1: they both go back to this idea of the center

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

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Speaker 1: see all the warning signs here, the main warning sign

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Speaker 1: of course, being that the individual is part fish. All right, well,

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Speaker 1: maybe we should take a quick break and then we

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Speaker 1: come back. We will discuss more aquatic humanoid legends from

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Speaker 1: around the world. Alright, we're back. So not every mirror

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Speaker 1: person in mythology and legend is a villain. Sometimes you

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Speaker 1: see some that that have beneficial aspects as well. There's,

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Speaker 1: for instance, the the the Nno of Japanese legend. This

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Speaker 1: is essentially less of a mermaid and more of just

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Speaker 1: a fish with a beautiful woman's face, and it's protective

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Speaker 1: and warns of misfortune on land and sea. And then

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Speaker 1: there's also an interesting one from the Micmac people of

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Speaker 1: eastern Canada. They were known as the halfway people. Uh,

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Speaker 1: these particular mr folk they had the upper bodies of

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Speaker 1: a body of a human and a lower body of

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Speaker 1: a fish, and they'd warn fishermen of coming storms or

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Speaker 1: invoke storms if they were disrespected. Now I have to

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Speaker 1: add another North American or Canadian entry, a less fulkloric

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Speaker 1: and more of a one off. But I'm adding it

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Speaker 1: because I've seen this in person, Robert the Bant Merman.

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Speaker 1: You've looked up images, right, I did. I was not

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

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Speaker 1: the Fiji Mermaid, and I've never been to bath, but

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

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Speaker 1: adventures there, and it does not seem like a likely

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Speaker 1: mermaid destination. No, not really. I mean, so this is Inland, Canada.

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: humanoid aquatic creature. And so inside this business in ban

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Speaker 1: f in Alberta, there is a little store called the

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Speaker 1: Indian Trading Company, and in the back of the store

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Speaker 1: there is a taxidermy creature that's half fish, half humanoid

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Speaker 1: gremlin and it looks like, I don't know, how would

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Speaker 1: you describe it, Like the back of it just looks

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Speaker 1: straight up like a fish. It's a fish with the

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Speaker 1: head cut off, and then that fish just goes straight

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Speaker 1: into some ribs with with like human baby arms but

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Speaker 1: with claws on them, and a scary looking head that

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Speaker 1: has hair. I mean it looks like a taxidermied creation.

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Speaker 1: I mean that is what it is. Yes, it is

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Speaker 1: a fish and probably some sort of a small monkey

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Speaker 1: that the remains of which we were sewn together. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: or the I think it's also possible that the top

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Speaker 1: half of it could just be artificial. Think it could

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Speaker 1: be a crafted artifact. According to a write up on

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Speaker 1: Atlas Obscurity, it was probably bought by a man named

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Speaker 1: Norman Luxton, who is the proprietor of the shop around

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen when it was when it first showed up there.

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Speaker 1: It's very much in the traditional of like the P. T.

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

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Speaker 1: some kind of a side shoe oddity sort of thing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: except it stays right here in this uh, in this store.

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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

397
00:22:19,280 --> 00:22:21,840
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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00:22:24,160 --> 00:22:28,159
Speaker 1: sell postcards. It's like I saw them from Herman. Interesting.

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

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00:22:30,720 --> 00:22:34,200
Speaker 1: I finally get up to ban Now, speaking of Canadian

402
00:22:34,280 --> 00:22:37,040
Speaker 1: we can sort of extend that and think of French

403
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Speaker 1: traditions as well. There is a mermaid in French traditions

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Speaker 1: known as Melosne, and much like a kidna, the mother

405
00:22:46,000 --> 00:22:49,159
Speaker 1: of monsters in Greek myth, the French mermaid here boasts

406
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Speaker 1: a two pronged tale. Oh you know what that reminds

407
00:22:52,520 --> 00:22:55,760
Speaker 1: me of Dagon? Well yeah, I think you're gonna say Starbucks.

408
00:22:55,800 --> 00:22:59,399
Speaker 1: But yes. Also the movie, the Stewart Gordon movie Dagon

409
00:22:59,560 --> 00:23:01,439
Speaker 1: that came out in two thousand and one. It's kind

410
00:23:01,480 --> 00:23:03,920
Speaker 1: of a mixed bag. Not not a great movie, but

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

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00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:09,240
Speaker 1: love craft Ian like it's basically an adaptation of shadow

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Speaker 1: Over in Smith, but they lean into the mermaids a

414
00:23:11,920 --> 00:23:14,159
Speaker 1: little more. They lean into the sex and violence a

415
00:23:14,160 --> 00:23:16,680
Speaker 1: little more. Uh, it's worth checking out if you like

416
00:23:16,920 --> 00:23:21,760
Speaker 1: violent fish people movies. Yeah, but what about Starbucks Starbucks, Well,

417
00:23:22,840 --> 00:23:25,840
Speaker 1: just coffee basically. But but that that logo with the

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00:23:25,920 --> 00:23:29,919
Speaker 1: mermaid with the two pronged tail, uh, with going up

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

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

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

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

423
00:23:39,600 --> 00:23:41,560
Speaker 1: they're trying to get mad about it or not having

424
00:23:41,600 --> 00:23:44,840
Speaker 1: a Sanda hat or something. It would be interesting if

425
00:23:44,880 --> 00:23:46,639
Speaker 1: people started getting mad over that, is, like, why does

426
00:23:46,680 --> 00:23:48,959
Speaker 1: this mermaid have two tales instead of one? We want

427
00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:53,399
Speaker 1: an American Mermaid, not a French Mermaid. One tale, one country,

428
00:23:53,440 --> 00:23:56,639
Speaker 1: one tale. Well, they're probably, you know, pining for the

429
00:23:56,800 --> 00:24:02,159
Speaker 1: classic mermaid the have for the Danish Mermaid. Why is

430
00:24:02,280 --> 00:24:04,439
Speaker 1: this the classic? Well, you know, because when you when

431
00:24:04,480 --> 00:24:06,760
Speaker 1: you really think about mermaids, you think of, like Hans

432
00:24:06,840 --> 00:24:10,120
Speaker 1: Christian Andersen, you think of northern Europe. So to be clear,

433
00:24:10,200 --> 00:24:14,320
Speaker 1: Hans Christian Anderson is the author of the Little Mermaid

434
00:24:14,440 --> 00:24:18,520
Speaker 1: story that the Disney movie is loosely based on very loosely,

435
00:24:18,680 --> 00:24:21,359
Speaker 1: because in his version there's a lot more like blood

436
00:24:21,480 --> 00:24:24,280
Speaker 1: and cutting off feed and stuff. Oh yes, it's a

437
00:24:24,320 --> 00:24:27,359
Speaker 1: bit a bit more violent. But but over in denmarkt

438
00:24:27,440 --> 00:24:30,359
Speaker 1: they did have to have frew and uh, this is

439
00:24:30,440 --> 00:24:33,199
Speaker 1: a that that's a pretty helpful mermaid because it can

440
00:24:33,200 --> 00:24:36,320
Speaker 1: also tell the future, and it allegedly foretold the birth

441
00:24:36,800 --> 00:24:41,439
Speaker 1: of Danish King Christian the fourth of Denmark. So that's

442
00:24:41,480 --> 00:24:44,080
Speaker 1: a that's a beneficial mermaid for you, okay. And of

443
00:24:44,160 --> 00:24:46,280
Speaker 1: course I have to mention the monk fish. Are you

444
00:24:46,359 --> 00:24:48,560
Speaker 1: familiar with the monk fish or perhaps it's kin the

445
00:24:48,800 --> 00:24:51,600
Speaker 1: bishop fish. Well, I know of the monkfish, like the monkfish,

446
00:24:51,720 --> 00:24:54,040
Speaker 1: but you're not thinking of like the monkfish that you

447
00:24:54,080 --> 00:24:57,320
Speaker 1: would eat right. This is this was a creature widely

448
00:24:57,440 --> 00:25:01,639
Speaker 1: reported marine creature in Northern European w described in Ambrose

449
00:25:01,680 --> 00:25:05,239
Speaker 1: Pare's sixteenth century work on Monsters. It had the head

450
00:25:05,280 --> 00:25:08,240
Speaker 1: of a human, the tonstrated hair style of a monk,

451
00:25:08,920 --> 00:25:14,160
Speaker 1: monks cow and cape, and two extremely long flippers. It's

452
00:25:14,400 --> 00:25:16,920
Speaker 1: it's a ridiculous looking creature. It looks like you drew

453
00:25:17,320 --> 00:25:19,680
Speaker 1: a monk as a fish. It's what we're talking about

454
00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:23,680
Speaker 1: it sounds I've seen the medieval drawings. But the cool

455
00:25:23,760 --> 00:25:25,480
Speaker 1: thing is that there's a very strong case to be

456
00:25:25,600 --> 00:25:29,840
Speaker 1: made that these were based on descriptions of dead giant squid,

457
00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:34,240
Speaker 1: because you have this kind of you know, thick, lumpy

458
00:25:34,400 --> 00:25:36,879
Speaker 1: body that kind of tapers off on one end and

459
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:40,280
Speaker 1: then has what a number of tentacles and then two

460
00:25:40,520 --> 00:25:45,320
Speaker 1: very long additional arms that would have been the two

461
00:25:45,400 --> 00:25:48,320
Speaker 1: extremely long flippers of the monk fish. Yeah, I'm looking

462
00:25:48,440 --> 00:25:51,800
Speaker 1: at the comparisons right now, I can see why that

463
00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:54,159
Speaker 1: would have been the case. And there was also a

464
00:25:54,280 --> 00:25:56,800
Speaker 1: Chinese variant of this, the Hi Ho Shun, which was

465
00:25:57,119 --> 00:26:01,080
Speaker 1: the sea Buddhist priest. So again we're getting back to

466
00:26:01,119 --> 00:26:04,040
Speaker 1: the idea of when when you're talking about a mythical

467
00:26:04,119 --> 00:26:06,320
Speaker 1: sea creature, there are a number of different ways to

468
00:26:06,400 --> 00:26:08,320
Speaker 1: look at it. You know, is it a former god

469
00:26:08,440 --> 00:26:11,480
Speaker 1: that's been demoted. Is it a dead sea animal that

470
00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:14,800
Speaker 1: that someone has misinterpreted, and then someone else has heard

471
00:26:14,840 --> 00:26:18,280
Speaker 1: about that, and then that person told another individual who

472
00:26:18,640 --> 00:26:22,760
Speaker 1: illustrated and wrote it in in a medieval baster area. Yet, uh,

473
00:26:23,240 --> 00:26:25,359
Speaker 1: these are just a few of the possible excuses for

474
00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:29,879
Speaker 1: many of these fantastic creatures. So is there anything that

475
00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:33,199
Speaker 1: seems to unite all of the legends we've looked at

476
00:26:33,359 --> 00:26:36,920
Speaker 1: so far? Or are aquatic humanoids as diverse as real

477
00:26:37,040 --> 00:26:41,479
Speaker 1: humans or as diverse as other gods and monsters. Well,

478
00:26:41,480 --> 00:26:44,520
Speaker 1: there's always the sense of the familiar yet alien. Yeah,

479
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:47,600
Speaker 1: and the sense that it's uh, well, lots of lots

480
00:26:47,640 --> 00:26:50,320
Speaker 1: of monsters are familiar yet alien, but that they come

481
00:26:50,400 --> 00:26:54,879
Speaker 1: from another world. The aquatic humanoids do. Yes, they're familiar

482
00:26:55,040 --> 00:26:57,840
Speaker 1: yet yet foreign. They are something, they're there are people

483
00:26:57,920 --> 00:27:00,399
Speaker 1: from the other side of the mirror. Yeah, I've got

484
00:27:00,440 --> 00:27:02,240
Speaker 1: another one. Maybe, let me know what you think about this.

485
00:27:03,080 --> 00:27:07,679
Speaker 1: When I think of ocean dwelling humanoids in mythology and fiction,

486
00:27:09,040 --> 00:27:12,880
Speaker 1: they don't usually seem to be like party hard kind

487
00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:17,280
Speaker 1: of gods or party hard monsters or humanoids. They usually

488
00:27:17,480 --> 00:27:22,520
Speaker 1: seem kind of sad. There's a kind of melancholy that

489
00:27:22,640 --> 00:27:26,000
Speaker 1: we associate with the underwater life and the ocean that

490
00:27:26,119 --> 00:27:29,399
Speaker 1: may come from the sad faces of fish is. I

491
00:27:29,440 --> 00:27:31,720
Speaker 1: don't know if that's too crazy of a stretch. When

492
00:27:31,760 --> 00:27:36,040
Speaker 1: I look at fish faces, I tend to project emotions

493
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:38,960
Speaker 1: on them, and those emotions are never like happiness. Fish

494
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:42,440
Speaker 1: faces always look a little bit sad, like they're disappointed

495
00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:46,359
Speaker 1: in something, like they wish things were going better. Well,

496
00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:48,679
Speaker 1: it comes back to the old saying a fish out

497
00:27:48,720 --> 00:27:51,199
Speaker 1: of water as well, Right, there's nothing more awkward than

498
00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:53,480
Speaker 1: a creature that has been taken from its natural habitat

499
00:27:53,520 --> 00:27:57,520
Speaker 1: and thrown into another. The fish out of water is

500
00:27:57,560 --> 00:28:02,920
Speaker 1: a thing that is vulnerable, perhaps doomed. Uh, it is

501
00:28:02,960 --> 00:28:05,600
Speaker 1: in shock and uh. And therefore I think we we

502
00:28:05,720 --> 00:28:08,760
Speaker 1: do see that a lot with our mur folk of

503
00:28:09,800 --> 00:28:12,560
Speaker 1: various designs, in our our myths and our fictions. Yeah,

504
00:28:12,680 --> 00:28:16,199
Speaker 1: sad fish faces and also also kind of a shadowy realm. Right.

505
00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:21,440
Speaker 1: The the the underwater world for these underwater humanoids is

506
00:28:21,720 --> 00:28:25,240
Speaker 1: another world, but it's the world that the sun is

507
00:28:25,280 --> 00:28:28,080
Speaker 1: on the opposite side of the barrier from. Like the

508
00:28:28,160 --> 00:28:31,040
Speaker 1: sun is all ours, and the sun they get is

509
00:28:31,119 --> 00:28:34,440
Speaker 1: just what filters down through the through the membrane of

510
00:28:34,520 --> 00:28:37,800
Speaker 1: the water surface. Yeah. But then sometimes there are depictures

511
00:28:37,800 --> 00:28:40,600
Speaker 1: again the golden cities of the Triton's Yeah, I guess

512
00:28:40,640 --> 00:28:43,719
Speaker 1: that's true. So there is a sense of of the glorious,

513
00:28:43,840 --> 00:28:46,720
Speaker 1: but also the sense of just sort of alien hard

514
00:28:46,800 --> 00:28:50,280
Speaker 1: work as well. Like, I mean, maybe I'm projecting more

515
00:28:50,320 --> 00:28:55,440
Speaker 1: about what what we know from covering aquatic biology and

516
00:28:55,520 --> 00:28:57,720
Speaker 1: just the the aquatic habitat, knowing that it is such

517
00:28:58,080 --> 00:29:02,040
Speaker 1: a place of of intent competition. You know, when I

518
00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:07,120
Speaker 1: think of the the ultimate melancholy underwater humanoids, I got

519
00:29:07,200 --> 00:29:11,040
Speaker 1: to go to the Universal Monster movies, it's the gill Man. Yeah,

520
00:29:11,320 --> 00:29:13,960
Speaker 1: the gil Man. I mean, I imagine most of the

521
00:29:14,040 --> 00:29:18,360
Speaker 1: people listening to this podcast grew up with the gil Man, right,

522
00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:21,240
Speaker 1: creature from the Black Lagoon nine four, part of the

523
00:29:21,360 --> 00:29:24,960
Speaker 1: classic Universal Monster movie canon. Except the gil Man was

524
00:29:25,120 --> 00:29:27,760
Speaker 1: different from a lot of the others in that unlike

525
00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:32,280
Speaker 1: Dracula or Frankenstein, which had been the subject of novels

526
00:29:32,440 --> 00:29:34,760
Speaker 1: of horror and science fiction at the time, the gill

527
00:29:34,800 --> 00:29:38,600
Speaker 1: Man was the synthesis of many of these human mr

528
00:29:38,720 --> 00:29:41,840
Speaker 1: fult kind of traditions, was not from like a novel

529
00:29:42,000 --> 00:29:45,440
Speaker 1: that existed, right. It's uh, there are other interesting facts

530
00:29:45,440 --> 00:29:48,800
Speaker 1: about it too, like, for instance, unlike Frankenstein or Dracula

531
00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:52,240
Speaker 1: or the Mummy, the gil Man was a was a

532
00:29:52,360 --> 00:29:55,120
Speaker 1: product of the natural world. It was just a product

533
00:29:55,200 --> 00:29:57,280
Speaker 1: of the natural world that no longer had a place

534
00:29:57,440 --> 00:29:59,960
Speaker 1: in the modern world. And that's why it often gets

535
00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:03,120
Speaker 1: classed as a science fiction movie instead of a horror movie. Yeah,

536
00:30:03,200 --> 00:30:06,880
Speaker 1: so the science discusses is rather rather sketchy. Oh, the

537
00:30:06,960 --> 00:30:09,600
Speaker 1: science is even better in the sequel, Revenge of the Creature.

538
00:30:09,640 --> 00:30:11,360
Speaker 1: We should get to that in a few minutes. Yeah.

539
00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:14,680
Speaker 1: I grew up with it with this Sponster like I'm

540
00:30:14,720 --> 00:30:16,400
Speaker 1: sure you did. I remember having I had the little

541
00:30:16,440 --> 00:30:18,600
Speaker 1: glow in the dark figurine of it. As a kid,

542
00:30:19,240 --> 00:30:22,240
Speaker 1: I had these Universal trading cards that had been my

543
00:30:22,400 --> 00:30:25,880
Speaker 1: dad's that had all these universal monsters and some horrible

544
00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:28,920
Speaker 1: jokes on them. You people at home, Robert has brought

545
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:31,320
Speaker 1: these cards in. I think we should read a couple

546
00:30:31,360 --> 00:30:33,360
Speaker 1: of the jokes on the back of them. Okay, you

547
00:30:33,480 --> 00:30:37,560
Speaker 1: go for it, Joe, I'll play along. Okay, joke on

548
00:30:37,640 --> 00:30:39,400
Speaker 1: the first one. This so the first one shows the

549
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:42,480
Speaker 1: gil Man. On the front, it said, did you say

550
00:30:42,560 --> 00:30:47,880
Speaker 1: fish for dinner? Anyone I know? And then on the

551
00:30:47,920 --> 00:30:51,360
Speaker 1: back it's got this first ghost Colin, we just had

552
00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:56,600
Speaker 1: a baby. Second ghost Colin, Congratulations, was it a ghoul

553
00:30:57,120 --> 00:31:00,080
Speaker 1: or a boy? See? That's that's some that's some it

554
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:02,480
Speaker 1: up crypt keeper humor right there. That's that's pretty good.

555
00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:05,440
Speaker 1: I got an even better one. So the front is

556
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:08,720
Speaker 1: the creature, but it's from the third movie. The creature

557
00:31:08,760 --> 00:31:10,960
Speaker 1: walks among us when he sort of gets turned into

558
00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:15,000
Speaker 1: a regular human, and the back has a joke that says,

559
00:31:15,960 --> 00:31:19,320
Speaker 1: what's a cowardly skeleton? I don't know, Joe, what's a

560
00:31:19,360 --> 00:31:27,080
Speaker 1: cowardly skeleton? A boned chicken? See that. That's probably a

561
00:31:27,240 --> 00:31:29,560
Speaker 1: joke that we would get if this were the early

562
00:31:29,680 --> 00:31:37,960
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, But I do not get it. Chicken. Oh man,

563
00:31:38,240 --> 00:31:41,040
Speaker 1: there's this whole world of butchery jokes that we just

564
00:31:41,120 --> 00:31:44,120
Speaker 1: said don't have access to. But it's great, you know,

565
00:31:44,120 --> 00:31:46,760
Speaker 1: because this is a joke that no longer fits into

566
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:50,320
Speaker 1: our time, and that's basically the idea of the creature,

567
00:31:50,520 --> 00:31:52,960
Speaker 1: And I think one of the it's telling that the

568
00:31:53,040 --> 00:31:56,560
Speaker 1: creature continues to be celebrated despite the fact that there

569
00:31:56,640 --> 00:31:58,680
Speaker 1: has not really been a creature from the Black Liogoon

570
00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:02,160
Speaker 1: movie since the original trilogy, but he's taken on this

571
00:32:02,280 --> 00:32:07,560
Speaker 1: sort of outsider icon status. Yeah. I'm really mortified for

572
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:09,920
Speaker 1: the time when they come into remake Creature from the

573
00:32:09,960 --> 00:32:12,640
Speaker 1: Black Lagoon, I don't want it. I don't I don't

574
00:32:12,640 --> 00:32:15,440
Speaker 1: think we're ready. Yeah that really, I mean Gama de

575
00:32:15,600 --> 00:32:20,040
Speaker 1: Toro's The Shape of Water, which just came out Christmas.

576
00:32:20,720 --> 00:32:24,320
Speaker 1: That's really the best possible creature from the Black Lagoon remake,

577
00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:27,360
Speaker 1: even though it's not officially creature from the Black Looking right. No,

578
00:32:27,440 --> 00:32:30,840
Speaker 1: I'm talking about like the Tom Cruise Mummy Universe remakes,

579
00:32:30,920 --> 00:32:34,280
Speaker 1: where it would be like a Benedict's cumber Batch as

580
00:32:34,360 --> 00:32:36,920
Speaker 1: the Gilman and then take a good go man who

581
00:32:36,960 --> 00:32:39,120
Speaker 1: would play the lugs who show up in the Lagoon

582
00:32:39,200 --> 00:32:41,680
Speaker 1: and start poking in with stuff. Oh, I don't know.

583
00:32:41,840 --> 00:32:44,360
Speaker 1: Just you can just point a scatter gun at an

584
00:32:44,400 --> 00:32:48,080
Speaker 1: IMDb page, I guess get some candidates. So when did

585
00:32:48,160 --> 00:32:51,760
Speaker 1: you first see the Gillman on screen? Um? You know,

586
00:32:51,880 --> 00:32:53,800
Speaker 1: I think before I saw any of the movies. I

587
00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:57,160
Speaker 1: was introduced to it in two. It came from Hollywood.

588
00:32:57,640 --> 00:32:59,880
Speaker 1: That's a great one. Yeah. Basically just a bunch of

589
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:04,080
Speaker 1: old movie trailers, uh, stitched together with some at times

590
00:33:04,160 --> 00:33:09,360
Speaker 1: delightful jokes, at times cringeworthy jokes, and various celebrity guest

591
00:33:09,400 --> 00:33:13,680
Speaker 1: spots from like Cheech and Chong, Dan Ackroy, John Candy.

592
00:33:13,720 --> 00:33:17,440
Speaker 1: They were principles on this project. They highlight a great

593
00:33:17,680 --> 00:33:20,760
Speaker 1: brain attack scenes. Yes, yeah, there's a whole section on

594
00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:24,880
Speaker 1: guerrilla movies. It's It's, It's, it's a it's a wonderful film.

595
00:33:24,920 --> 00:33:26,280
Speaker 1: It's hard to find these days because I think that

596
00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:30,520
Speaker 1: some of the rights issues prevented from being properly distributed. Yeah,

597
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:32,640
Speaker 1: but you don't see the gil Man showing up in

598
00:33:32,840 --> 00:33:36,200
Speaker 1: repeated uses throughout other films the same way you do

599
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:39,800
Speaker 1: like Bello, the Ghosties version of Dracula, or the Frankenstein

600
00:33:39,920 --> 00:33:44,800
Speaker 1: Monster exactly. Now. One of the things though about the Gilman,

601
00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:46,239
Speaker 1: to really to bring it back to some of these

602
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:50,440
Speaker 1: themes we're discussing here, though, is that that outsider aspect,

603
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:54,360
Speaker 1: you know, the the idea that there's something sympathetic and

604
00:33:54,480 --> 00:33:56,360
Speaker 1: yet other, or depending on how you're looking at it,

605
00:33:56,440 --> 00:34:00,240
Speaker 1: threatening and yet other. And when you start teasing the

606
00:34:00,320 --> 00:34:04,080
Speaker 1: gil Man apart, there's some really unsettling dimensions to the creature.

607
00:34:05,760 --> 00:34:10,560
Speaker 1: The same can certainly be said of HP Lovecraft's story

608
00:34:10,640 --> 00:34:13,880
Speaker 1: The Shadow Over in Smith which which is which of

609
00:34:14,120 --> 00:34:18,880
Speaker 1: course was published before The Creature came to our cinemas. Uh,

610
00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:22,280
Speaker 1: And it's kind of like a proto creature short story.

611
00:34:22,719 --> 00:34:24,759
Speaker 1: It's got a quatic humanoids, right, it does. It has

612
00:34:24,800 --> 00:34:28,319
Speaker 1: a whole race of aquatic humanoids that end up interbreeding

613
00:34:28,440 --> 00:34:34,200
Speaker 1: with this rural uh fishing and trade community. Uh. And

614
00:34:34,440 --> 00:34:37,000
Speaker 1: and that is like the horror of the piece. It's

615
00:34:37,040 --> 00:34:40,080
Speaker 1: the idea that they're fish people and humans are breeding

616
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:44,520
Speaker 1: with them. And you know, I I first read this story,

617
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:47,200
Speaker 1: I read it in nine for the first time, and

618
00:34:47,520 --> 00:34:51,200
Speaker 1: uh and I remember being like, really, um, just blown

619
00:34:51,280 --> 00:34:53,280
Speaker 1: over by it. I thought it was just such a creepy,

620
00:34:53,880 --> 00:34:59,439
Speaker 1: um atmospheric tale. And uh, it's a it's a little

621
00:34:59,480 --> 00:35:02,440
Speaker 1: more disturbing the more one reads about it, and the

622
00:35:02,520 --> 00:35:07,040
Speaker 1: one the more one knows about Lovecraft and his his

623
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:12,360
Speaker 1: uh sentiments towards other people's and other races. Yeah, Lovecraft

624
00:35:12,520 --> 00:35:16,600
Speaker 1: was very imaginative, but he was not a nice person. No. Uh.

625
00:35:17,400 --> 00:35:19,360
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes excuses are made from this is a

626
00:35:19,360 --> 00:35:24,160
Speaker 1: guy that lived nineteen thirty seven, and some people defended

627
00:35:24,200 --> 00:35:25,520
Speaker 1: by saying, oh, you know, he was a product of

628
00:35:25,560 --> 00:35:29,040
Speaker 1: his time, as as we all are. But he's definitely

629
00:35:29,120 --> 00:35:32,680
Speaker 1: a man with some very problematic views on race, especially

630
00:35:32,760 --> 00:35:36,319
Speaker 1: from modern modern readers. Absolutely, yeah, I mean, even if

631
00:35:36,360 --> 00:35:38,880
Speaker 1: we're to leave out his personal letters and so forth,

632
00:35:39,239 --> 00:35:42,000
Speaker 1: his fiction often falls back on the trend of championing

633
00:35:42,120 --> 00:35:45,239
Speaker 1: a white English culture over everything else. And we see

634
00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:49,200
Speaker 1: the other races sometimes depicted as is just outright monstrous.

635
00:35:49,600 --> 00:35:51,960
Speaker 1: You often get the sense for him that any non

636
00:35:52,239 --> 00:35:57,239
Speaker 1: Anglo ethnic groups are sort of allied with the monsters. Yeah,

637
00:35:57,280 --> 00:36:01,120
Speaker 1: there's something like threatening and debility of about them in

638
00:36:01,280 --> 00:36:04,360
Speaker 1: his work. Um, you know, there's a lot to unpack

639
00:36:04,600 --> 00:36:06,520
Speaker 1: in in Smith and again in many ways it is

640
00:36:06,520 --> 00:36:10,680
Speaker 1: a tremendous short story. It was highly influential. But as

641
00:36:11,080 --> 00:36:14,400
Speaker 1: Evan Lampi discusses in his paper in praise of the

642
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:17,320
Speaker 1: in Smith Look Nautical Terror and the Specter of Atlantic

643
00:36:17,440 --> 00:36:20,719
Speaker 1: History and HP Lovecrafts fiction, you can compare it to

644
00:36:20,960 --> 00:36:24,600
Speaker 1: Lovecrafts earlier story, The Dunwich Horror, which presents a town

645
00:36:24,719 --> 00:36:29,360
Speaker 1: with a quote degraded population of ignorant, backward, physically stunted villagers.

646
00:36:29,840 --> 00:36:36,880
Speaker 1: This again encapsulating his Lovecrafts anxieties concerning not only other races,

647
00:36:36,920 --> 00:36:41,400
Speaker 1: but even just like other like classes of people within

648
00:36:41,480 --> 00:36:45,520
Speaker 1: the United States. But Lampy points out the quote the

649
00:36:45,560 --> 00:36:48,040
Speaker 1: fall of dun which is a result of racial decline

650
00:36:48,080 --> 00:36:50,480
Speaker 1: brought on by isolation, which is a source of terror

651
00:36:50,520 --> 00:36:53,279
Speaker 1: in the narrative, But in in Smith it's not isolation

652
00:36:53,360 --> 00:36:57,640
Speaker 1: but contact with distant lands via Atlantic commerce, that serves

653
00:36:57,680 --> 00:37:01,640
Speaker 1: as their undoing. So Lampy says quote in Smith's degradation

654
00:37:01,880 --> 00:37:04,919
Speaker 1: is a result of its worldliness, not its isolation. Even

655
00:37:04,960 --> 00:37:07,440
Speaker 1: if the city became a backwater, it looked out to

656
00:37:07,520 --> 00:37:10,080
Speaker 1: the Atlantic for much of its history, open to the world,

657
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:13,120
Speaker 1: its ideas, and its people. So in some ways, the

658
00:37:13,239 --> 00:37:17,799
Speaker 1: creatures from the sea here are standing in for contact

659
00:37:17,920 --> 00:37:21,239
Speaker 1: and intercourse with other cultures, right, Yeah, And and that

660
00:37:21,360 --> 00:37:23,560
Speaker 1: sort of works for the sea because the sea is

661
00:37:23,719 --> 00:37:27,239
Speaker 1: traditionally like a way for cultures to come together. It's

662
00:37:27,280 --> 00:37:31,080
Speaker 1: the you know, the trade routes through the sea. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

663
00:37:31,120 --> 00:37:35,280
Speaker 1: And then that's what what makes the story so so ikey,

664
00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:36,839
Speaker 1: if you read it with all of this in mind,

665
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:40,360
Speaker 1: is that it's a tale that's describing the adoption of

666
00:37:40,360 --> 00:37:44,360
Speaker 1: of of other cultures, and certainly with the the the

667
00:37:44,520 --> 00:37:48,000
Speaker 1: interbreeding with other cultures as being something that is inherently

668
00:37:48,120 --> 00:37:54,879
Speaker 1: monstrous that the white Anglo Saxon people should not venture out,

669
00:37:56,200 --> 00:38:00,279
Speaker 1: either you know, mentally or certainly physically or sexually. Yeah.

670
00:38:00,360 --> 00:38:05,000
Speaker 1: This is a really troubling strain in Lovecraft's work, especially

671
00:38:05,080 --> 00:38:08,919
Speaker 1: since Lovecraft is so popular with so many people today,

672
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:12,320
Speaker 1: like for his monsters and his settings and stuff that

673
00:38:12,960 --> 00:38:15,040
Speaker 1: I feel like this is sort of like the part

674
00:38:15,080 --> 00:38:17,439
Speaker 1: of him that nobody really wants to think about. Yeah,

675
00:38:17,440 --> 00:38:18,919
Speaker 1: I mean it can be difficult because, like I said,

676
00:38:18,920 --> 00:38:22,160
Speaker 1: I grew up loving Lovecraft's work, and I still have

677
00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:25,880
Speaker 1: have a strong affinity for for for the love crafting

678
00:38:25,880 --> 00:38:28,160
Speaker 1: and vibe, but you know, for the weird fiction world

679
00:38:28,200 --> 00:38:30,120
Speaker 1: and many of the older writers from the day. But

680
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:32,640
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't stick your hand in the sand

681
00:38:33,440 --> 00:38:37,400
Speaker 1: regarding the sensibilities that are they're not only president in

682
00:38:37,440 --> 00:38:40,440
Speaker 1: the individual behind the stories, but in the works themselves.

683
00:38:41,520 --> 00:38:44,200
Speaker 1: And so we got here from Creature from the Black Lagoon.

684
00:38:44,280 --> 00:38:46,920
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if this is leading to to you thinking

685
00:38:47,080 --> 00:38:49,320
Speaker 1: that some of the same themes can be ported it

686
00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:51,800
Speaker 1: over to Creature from the Black Lagoon. Well, you know,

687
00:38:51,960 --> 00:38:54,279
Speaker 1: I didn't used to think so. I used to think

688
00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:57,320
Speaker 1: that the Creature from the Black Lagoon was was somehow

689
00:38:57,960 --> 00:39:02,080
Speaker 1: separate from from any real world concerns. You know. It's

690
00:39:02,160 --> 00:39:04,720
Speaker 1: kind of this. I mean, it's rated G for for goodness,

691
00:39:04,760 --> 00:39:08,040
Speaker 1: say the first one anyway, maybe the other two as well,

692
00:39:08,080 --> 00:39:10,640
Speaker 1: but I distinctly remember saying the G rating on the

693
00:39:10,719 --> 00:39:13,719
Speaker 1: first film. It's essentially a Disney movie just with a

694
00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:16,759
Speaker 1: murderous monster in it. Well, but before we get into

695
00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:20,560
Speaker 1: any racial aspects of the Creature from the Black logan,

696
00:39:20,560 --> 00:39:24,040
Speaker 1: we should probably just take a moment to enjoy the

697
00:39:24,600 --> 00:39:27,480
Speaker 1: existence of the film on its own. Narrits quote from

698
00:39:27,640 --> 00:39:32,200
Speaker 1: Q magazine about Creature from the Black Lagoon. This horrendous

699
00:39:32,239 --> 00:39:37,080
Speaker 1: pseudoscience fiction melodrama revolves wildly in three dimensions and with

700
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:41,479
Speaker 1: considerable excitement around a poor ancestral fish that never quite

701
00:39:41,600 --> 00:39:44,680
Speaker 1: made the grade to man. All Right, Well, that's that's

702
00:39:44,719 --> 00:39:49,200
Speaker 1: pretty accurate, I guess. I mean, it's it's generally it's

703
00:39:49,239 --> 00:39:51,640
Speaker 1: often looked. It looked at is one of the lesser

704
00:39:51,760 --> 00:39:55,200
Speaker 1: of the universal movies, though, even though the monster itself

705
00:39:55,280 --> 00:39:58,160
Speaker 1: is pretty great. Yeah, it might be the best universal

706
00:39:58,239 --> 00:40:01,839
Speaker 1: monster in terms of makeup and stuff. Uh well, I don't.

707
00:40:01,840 --> 00:40:05,320
Speaker 1: I mean, it's that's debatable. I guess it's more ambitious

708
00:40:05,480 --> 00:40:08,960
Speaker 1: makeup wise than I mean, Carlos Frankenstein is a pretty

709
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:12,640
Speaker 1: amazing makeup creation, It's true. But does Frankenstein begin with

710
00:40:12,719 --> 00:40:15,520
Speaker 1: the big bang? No, it doesn't, And Creature from the

711
00:40:15,560 --> 00:40:19,200
Speaker 1: Black Lagoon sure does. It starts with a big explosion.

712
00:40:19,360 --> 00:40:22,080
Speaker 1: It's sort of the inverse of bride of the Monster. Uh.

713
00:40:22,160 --> 00:40:24,440
Speaker 1: Starts with the big explosion, and their idea of what

714
00:40:24,560 --> 00:40:27,719
Speaker 1: the big bang is is that it involved literally exploding

715
00:40:27,840 --> 00:40:31,000
Speaker 1: chunks of rock. Yes, yeah, it looks like a like

716
00:40:31,120 --> 00:40:34,440
Speaker 1: a like a mining detonation. And they get into this

717
00:40:34,560 --> 00:40:38,040
Speaker 1: whole narrative about how the creature is a product of

718
00:40:38,400 --> 00:40:42,120
Speaker 1: the Devonian period from sixty million years ago. Okay, that's

719
00:40:42,160 --> 00:40:45,200
Speaker 1: pretty old, the age of the trilobytes. Yeah, that's when

720
00:40:45,239 --> 00:40:47,719
Speaker 1: they went extinct, I think, right, yeah, yeah, and uh,

721
00:40:47,840 --> 00:40:50,080
Speaker 1: and of course you get the dunk last as back then,

722
00:40:50,239 --> 00:40:51,920
Speaker 1: that's right. And then they spend a lot of time

723
00:40:51,960 --> 00:40:54,880
Speaker 1: talking about the lungfish. Uh. They sort of throw a

724
00:40:55,000 --> 00:40:57,399
Speaker 1: lot of science at the screen early on to try

725
00:40:57,440 --> 00:41:01,000
Speaker 1: and trick you into thinking that this is a like

726
00:41:01,080 --> 00:41:04,279
Speaker 1: a scientifically accurate picture. Now, it was really released in

727
00:41:04,400 --> 00:41:06,440
Speaker 1: three D. Did you ever see it in three D? Robert?

728
00:41:06,480 --> 00:41:08,359
Speaker 1: I never did, But that's right. They filmed the first

729
00:41:08,400 --> 00:41:10,560
Speaker 1: two of these films in three D, but a lot

730
00:41:10,640 --> 00:41:12,759
Speaker 1: of people, even when it very first came out, saw

731
00:41:12,880 --> 00:41:16,279
Speaker 1: it flat because it was at the very end of

732
00:41:16,440 --> 00:41:19,080
Speaker 1: the early fifties three D craze that it was released,

733
00:41:19,160 --> 00:41:22,480
Speaker 1: so it was already becoming pass a. I actually rewatched

734
00:41:22,560 --> 00:41:24,360
Speaker 1: this movie last night, and if you ever get a

735
00:41:24,440 --> 00:41:28,000
Speaker 1: chance to check out the Universal Monster Movies set the

736
00:41:28,120 --> 00:41:31,480
Speaker 1: remaster of Creature, it's got a great commentary track by

737
00:41:31,600 --> 00:41:35,080
Speaker 1: horror scholar Tom Weaver, and I just wanted to mention

738
00:41:35,120 --> 00:41:37,920
Speaker 1: a few things I learned from it, some really interesting highlights.

739
00:41:38,080 --> 00:41:41,440
Speaker 1: Um one of them was where did this story come from? Like?

740
00:41:41,600 --> 00:41:44,480
Speaker 1: What what is the origin of the creature? So, the

741
00:41:44,560 --> 00:41:46,680
Speaker 1: producer of Creature from the Black Lagoon was this guy

742
00:41:46,760 --> 00:41:49,640
Speaker 1: named William Alland, who was the He was the producer

743
00:41:49,719 --> 00:41:51,960
Speaker 1: of the film. He was a Universal producer at the time,

744
00:41:52,440 --> 00:41:54,560
Speaker 1: and he made his start as an actor working with

745
00:41:54,800 --> 00:41:58,480
Speaker 1: Orson Wells in the Orson Wells Theater Group. He was

746
00:41:58,640 --> 00:42:02,960
Speaker 1: part of the Infamous or the World's Radio Broadcast. But

747
00:42:03,080 --> 00:42:06,080
Speaker 1: he was also friends with Wells and so sometimes sometime

748
00:42:06,120 --> 00:42:09,080
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties, during the filming of Citizen Kane,

749
00:42:09,080 --> 00:42:12,000
Speaker 1: Aland was an actor in Citizen Kane as well. He

750
00:42:12,200 --> 00:42:15,200
Speaker 1: was he was the reporter who was hunting down the

751
00:42:15,320 --> 00:42:19,200
Speaker 1: meaning of the word rosebud and so Aland was over

752
00:42:19,320 --> 00:42:21,800
Speaker 1: at Wells house for a dinner party. Also in attendance

753
00:42:21,880 --> 00:42:24,440
Speaker 1: was Dolores del Rio, who was a Mexican actress who

754
00:42:24,560 --> 00:42:27,560
Speaker 1: was Orson Welles partner at the time, and a Mexican

755
00:42:27,640 --> 00:42:31,040
Speaker 1: cinematographer named Gabrielle figaroa who would go on to a

756
00:42:31,120 --> 00:42:33,800
Speaker 1: really stellar career. He was the cinematographer of things like

757
00:42:33,880 --> 00:42:37,360
Speaker 1: The Pearl and John Houston's Night of the Iguana. And

758
00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:41,560
Speaker 1: during this dinner party the story goes. Figaro starts in

759
00:42:41,680 --> 00:42:46,000
Speaker 1: on this bizarre story about a half man, half fish

760
00:42:46,200 --> 00:42:49,880
Speaker 1: creature that lived in the Amazon River near a certain village,

761
00:42:50,239 --> 00:42:53,719
Speaker 1: and according to Figaro's telling, once a year, the fishman

762
00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:56,480
Speaker 1: would come up out of the river and claim one

763
00:42:56,760 --> 00:42:59,360
Speaker 1: maiden from the village as its victim, and then it

764
00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:01,879
Speaker 1: would retreat eat into the water, and the village would

765
00:43:01,880 --> 00:43:05,520
Speaker 1: be safe again until it emerged the next year. Apparently,

766
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:08,560
Speaker 1: at first the other guests thought Figaro was kidding, but

767
00:43:08,680 --> 00:43:11,640
Speaker 1: he insisted, and he started getting worked up because he

768
00:43:11,719 --> 00:43:14,520
Speaker 1: wasn't being taken seriously, and he claimed the story was

769
00:43:14,600 --> 00:43:17,200
Speaker 1: absolutely true, and that he'd seen a photo of the

770
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:21,359
Speaker 1: Amazon fishman. So this was early forties, and despite how

771
00:43:21,440 --> 00:43:23,480
Speaker 1: awkward of a dinner it must have been, apparently the

772
00:43:23,520 --> 00:43:25,919
Speaker 1: story must have stuck in the deep inside the mind

773
00:43:25,960 --> 00:43:29,239
Speaker 1: of William alland and about ten years later, when he

774
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:31,640
Speaker 1: was a producer at Universal, he decided to make a

775
00:43:31,840 --> 00:43:35,680
Speaker 1: version of the Amazon Fishman story into a new entry

776
00:43:35,760 --> 00:43:38,279
Speaker 1: in the Universal Monster movie canon. So he wrote up

777
00:43:38,320 --> 00:43:41,000
Speaker 1: this three page treatment of the film, which was supposed

778
00:43:41,040 --> 00:43:42,640
Speaker 1: to start not with the big Bang, but with a

779
00:43:42,760 --> 00:43:47,640
Speaker 1: reenactment of his dinner conversation with Figaro, followed by an

780
00:43:47,680 --> 00:43:50,960
Speaker 1: expedition to the Amazon with a fishman creature, and of

781
00:43:51,080 --> 00:43:53,359
Speaker 1: course he wanted to have a gorgeous blonde that would

782
00:43:53,440 --> 00:43:56,439
Speaker 1: get kidnapped by the fishman. Uh. And then the rest

783
00:43:56,520 --> 00:43:58,600
Speaker 1: of the story was basically just a rip off of

784
00:43:58,719 --> 00:44:01,680
Speaker 1: the plot of King Kong, but with a fishman instead

785
00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:03,839
Speaker 1: of a giant ape. So they'd capture and bring him

786
00:44:03,840 --> 00:44:06,680
Speaker 1: back to civilization, he'd escape and you know, run him

787
00:44:06,760 --> 00:44:10,320
Speaker 1: up in the cities. And there's this basically the territory

788
00:44:10,440 --> 00:44:13,480
Speaker 1: they explore in the three Creature of movies. Yeah, if

789
00:44:13,520 --> 00:44:16,040
Speaker 1: you put together the first Creature from the Black Lagoon

790
00:44:16,280 --> 00:44:18,680
Speaker 1: and the second movie, Revenge of the Creature that came

791
00:44:18,680 --> 00:44:21,560
Speaker 1: out in nineteen fifty five the following year together, they

792
00:44:21,600 --> 00:44:23,759
Speaker 1: are the plot of King Kong. Now, one of the

793
00:44:23,800 --> 00:44:25,359
Speaker 1: other things I love about the creature from the Black

794
00:44:25,440 --> 00:44:29,839
Speaker 1: Lagoon is that you had. This is a product of Florida. Yeah,

795
00:44:30,280 --> 00:44:32,800
Speaker 1: and I've I've now been to some of these locations

796
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:35,760
Speaker 1: in Florida that are tied to it, such as Wakula Springs,

797
00:44:36,280 --> 00:44:39,640
Speaker 1: which I mentioned on the show before a Fabulous Destination.

798
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:41,840
Speaker 1: That's where they shot a lot of the underwater stuff.

799
00:44:42,160 --> 00:44:45,040
Speaker 1: I think maybe all of the underwater stuff. Well if

800
00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:47,440
Speaker 1: I'm if memory serves, they certainly did all of the

801
00:44:47,560 --> 00:44:49,960
Speaker 1: underwater stuff in the third movie there. I'm not as

802
00:44:49,960 --> 00:44:52,000
Speaker 1: sure about the first one because there are a number

803
00:44:52,000 --> 00:44:53,920
Speaker 1: of different spring locations that are used in some of

804
00:44:53,960 --> 00:44:56,960
Speaker 1: these these films. Uh. And then they're tied into other

805
00:44:57,320 --> 00:45:01,960
Speaker 1: like weird Florida places like the wiki Watchie Mermaid Show. Uh.

806
00:45:02,440 --> 00:45:06,000
Speaker 1: Julie Adams stunt double from the first film was a

807
00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:10,319
Speaker 1: Mermaid swimmer at the wiki watch Mermaid Show. Oh yeah.

808
00:45:10,360 --> 00:45:12,440
Speaker 1: That's a great fact about the movie is that anytime

809
00:45:12,480 --> 00:45:15,360
Speaker 1: you see the characters above water, they're played by different

810
00:45:15,400 --> 00:45:18,080
Speaker 1: actors than the people who played them below water. So

811
00:45:18,320 --> 00:45:21,080
Speaker 1: like the Gilman above water was one actor they had

812
00:45:21,160 --> 00:45:24,480
Speaker 1: in in I guess in Hollywood, and then below the

813
00:45:24,560 --> 00:45:29,000
Speaker 1: water the Gilman was always this other guy, Rico Browning. Yes, Yeah,

814
00:45:29,239 --> 00:45:31,640
Speaker 1: a fascinating figure who's also come up on the on

815
00:45:31,719 --> 00:45:36,719
Speaker 1: the podcast before because he worked briefly with John C. Lily.

816
00:45:37,719 --> 00:45:40,160
Speaker 1: But crazy. Yeah, it was a crazy story there. Go

817
00:45:40,200 --> 00:45:41,680
Speaker 1: back and listen to that episode if you want the

818
00:45:41,719 --> 00:45:43,680
Speaker 1: details on that. But he was also tied to Wiki

819
00:45:43,760 --> 00:45:47,080
Speaker 1: Watchee and I really had quite a career outside of

820
00:45:47,760 --> 00:45:49,920
Speaker 1: of the Creature from the Black Cagoon. Yeah. Did you

821
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:53,239
Speaker 1: know that Rico Browning directed the underwater scenes that go

822
00:45:53,360 --> 00:45:58,000
Speaker 1: on for thirty seven hours in Thunderball? I I read

823
00:45:58,040 --> 00:46:00,480
Speaker 1: that the other day, but I wasn't aware of it obviously, know.

824
00:46:00,719 --> 00:46:02,960
Speaker 1: Oh my god, when is the last time you saw Thunderball?

825
00:46:03,080 --> 00:46:05,920
Speaker 1: I was a child watching on TVs. Okay, Yeah, it's

826
00:46:05,960 --> 00:46:08,359
Speaker 1: one of those Sean Connery bonds, so it has parts

827
00:46:08,440 --> 00:46:10,840
Speaker 1: that are kind of fun. But the underwater fight scenes

828
00:46:10,960 --> 00:46:16,640
Speaker 1: are just in term and um bowl go on forever.

829
00:46:17,600 --> 00:46:20,520
Speaker 1: But there. I'm sure they're very well choreographed, especially for

830
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:23,240
Speaker 1: the time. I mean, shooting underwater back in the fifties

831
00:46:23,280 --> 00:46:25,239
Speaker 1: and sixties was not easy. Yeah, I mean, if you

832
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:27,360
Speaker 1: accept them on their own terms, they're they're kind of marvelous.

833
00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:30,360
Speaker 1: It's just they don't necessarily match up to to modern

834
00:46:30,440 --> 00:46:33,440
Speaker 1: cinematic pacing standards. I guess another thing that's kind of

835
00:46:33,520 --> 00:46:36,840
Speaker 1: interesting to me about the Creature from the Black Calagoon

836
00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:39,359
Speaker 1: that Weaver mentioned in his commentary is that creature has

837
00:46:39,400 --> 00:46:43,560
Speaker 1: a lot of monsters I view shots, and this is

838
00:46:43,800 --> 00:46:47,680
Speaker 1: contrasted to some of the earlier Universal Monster movies and

839
00:46:47,960 --> 00:46:50,680
Speaker 1: some of the other movies that Alan and Jack Arnold

840
00:46:50,760 --> 00:46:53,280
Speaker 1: had done. I'm not sure if that says anything interesting

841
00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:55,440
Speaker 1: about how they thought of the creature, but there is

842
00:46:55,520 --> 00:46:59,239
Speaker 1: a lot in how the story was created and in

843
00:46:59,360 --> 00:47:02,120
Speaker 1: how it's owned that does to me make the creature

844
00:47:02,280 --> 00:47:07,320
Speaker 1: kind of a sad, melancholy, sympathetic sort of character. Unlikes

845
00:47:07,360 --> 00:47:12,040
Speaker 1: a Dracula, who is a predatory demon who arrives to

846
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:15,799
Speaker 1: you know, to to consume people's souls and kill them

847
00:47:15,880 --> 00:47:18,400
Speaker 1: and turn them into his servants. The Creature from the

848
00:47:18,440 --> 00:47:22,400
Speaker 1: Black Lagoon is a is a sad creature who who

849
00:47:22,520 --> 00:47:25,400
Speaker 1: never really I mean like he lives in the Black Lagoon.

850
00:47:26,719 --> 00:47:30,080
Speaker 1: People come and invade his territory and then they start

851
00:47:30,239 --> 00:47:34,719
Speaker 1: messing with him and attacking him, and and he fights back. Now,

852
00:47:34,800 --> 00:47:37,200
Speaker 1: of course, he does try to kidnap Julie Adams, the

853
00:47:37,280 --> 00:47:40,160
Speaker 1: leading lady in the movie, presumably because he's wowed by

854
00:47:40,239 --> 00:47:42,719
Speaker 1: her beauty. Um, and so it's a King Kong kind

855
00:47:42,760 --> 00:47:45,239
Speaker 1: of thing. You know, he falls in love and wants

856
00:47:45,280 --> 00:47:47,520
Speaker 1: to carry her off to his cave. But you often

857
00:47:47,560 --> 00:47:49,280
Speaker 1: get the sense in the Creature from the Black Lagoon

858
00:47:49,360 --> 00:47:52,440
Speaker 1: movies that the real villains are like the human heroes.

859
00:47:52,880 --> 00:47:54,839
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, I think this is something

860
00:47:54,880 --> 00:47:58,480
Speaker 1: I picked up on as a kid, is especially the

861
00:47:58,600 --> 00:48:01,239
Speaker 1: more I learned about in and ultimately when I saw

862
00:48:01,520 --> 00:48:04,680
Speaker 1: the third film, Uh, the creature walks among us because

863
00:48:04,719 --> 00:48:07,759
Speaker 1: in this one they've captured the creature horribly burned it

864
00:48:07,880 --> 00:48:11,200
Speaker 1: in the process, and then they treat the creature and

865
00:48:11,280 --> 00:48:16,640
Speaker 1: there's this there's this hokey scientific explanation basically Lamarckian evolution

866
00:48:16,800 --> 00:48:19,839
Speaker 1: where the creatures scales fall away and it has human

867
00:48:19,920 --> 00:48:24,640
Speaker 1: flesh underneath and it's becoming more man like. And they're

868
00:48:24,640 --> 00:48:27,760
Speaker 1: all these two sad scenes of the this now land

869
00:48:27,920 --> 00:48:32,680
Speaker 1: creature standing in this little enclosed area surrounded by barbed wire,

870
00:48:33,160 --> 00:48:35,160
Speaker 1: longing for the sea, but it can't even go back

871
00:48:35,239 --> 00:48:37,319
Speaker 1: to the sea because it will drown if it does.

872
00:48:38,440 --> 00:48:41,920
Speaker 1: And uh, in all these films, it's like the especially

873
00:48:42,040 --> 00:48:46,680
Speaker 1: the white leads in the film, like they're never really

874
00:48:46,800 --> 00:48:50,600
Speaker 1: in peril, like they're always in control. The creature just

875
00:48:50,960 --> 00:48:54,279
Speaker 1: lumbers about and uh, and the only reason it's able

876
00:48:54,320 --> 00:48:57,719
Speaker 1: to grab the lady is because she just stands there

877
00:48:57,800 --> 00:49:01,919
Speaker 1: and screams instead of like walking away from it. Right. Yeah,

878
00:49:02,000 --> 00:49:05,080
Speaker 1: Generally the human lead characters in these films are just

879
00:49:05,239 --> 00:49:08,759
Speaker 1: not very sympathetic that they're usually just coming into this

880
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:11,520
Speaker 1: monster's domain or not. I mean, it's a creature. They're

881
00:49:11,560 --> 00:49:15,279
Speaker 1: coming into the creature's domain. And they're in the second movie,

882
00:49:15,320 --> 00:49:18,920
Speaker 1: they even they fish for the creature with dynamite. They

883
00:49:18,960 --> 00:49:22,200
Speaker 1: throw dynamite into the black lagoon. It blows him up

884
00:49:22,320 --> 00:49:25,040
Speaker 1: and he floats to the surface stunned, and then they

885
00:49:25,160 --> 00:49:26,799
Speaker 1: take him and they put him in a tank at

886
00:49:26,880 --> 00:49:29,640
Speaker 1: Sea World and chain him to the bottom. And there's

887
00:49:29,640 --> 00:49:32,520
Speaker 1: a great scene where somebody goes, I hope that chain holds,

888
00:49:32,600 --> 00:49:35,279
Speaker 1: and the other guy goes, I wouldn't worry about that chain.

889
00:49:37,760 --> 00:49:40,880
Speaker 1: So you see him like suffering and struggling and pulling

890
00:49:40,920 --> 00:49:43,279
Speaker 1: at his chain, and eventually he gets free and this

891
00:49:43,520 --> 00:49:46,520
Speaker 1: is and then runs around and yet again, it's like

892
00:49:46,640 --> 00:49:49,040
Speaker 1: the heroes of the movie or the real villains It

893
00:49:49,160 --> 00:49:52,440
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of the late great Gil Scott.

894
00:49:52,480 --> 00:49:54,680
Speaker 1: Heron had a bit kind of a stand up bit,

895
00:49:54,880 --> 00:49:57,920
Speaker 1: like a spoken word bit that he did talking about Jaws,

896
00:49:58,080 --> 00:50:00,719
Speaker 1: and he was saying, like, why why you upset about

897
00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:04,480
Speaker 1: Jaws attacking people? You're going where Jaws is, like you

898
00:50:04,520 --> 00:50:06,880
Speaker 1: should you should only be upset if Jaws is attacking

899
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:09,439
Speaker 1: people in the city where you are, Like you've gone

900
00:50:09,440 --> 00:50:11,760
Speaker 1: where you're not supposed to be. So of course there's Jaws.

901
00:50:12,160 --> 00:50:13,640
Speaker 1: All right. I think we need to take a quick

902
00:50:13,680 --> 00:50:16,000
Speaker 1: break and then when we come back, we'll discuss more

903
00:50:16,120 --> 00:50:19,320
Speaker 1: about aquatic humanoid legends and the creature from the Black Lagoon.

904
00:50:20,800 --> 00:50:24,240
Speaker 1: Thank thank alright, we're back, all right. So I mentioned

905
00:50:24,280 --> 00:50:27,240
Speaker 1: earlier that I used to to think of the creature

906
00:50:27,280 --> 00:50:31,239
Speaker 1: as being this mostly pure thing that was untouched by

907
00:50:31,280 --> 00:50:34,719
Speaker 1: the concerns of the real world. But then I was

908
00:50:34,840 --> 00:50:40,320
Speaker 1: turned onto the commentary of Robin R. Means Coleman, particularly

909
00:50:40,400 --> 00:50:44,560
Speaker 1: in particular, there was an episode of the NPR podcast

910
00:50:44,680 --> 00:50:48,439
Speaker 1: Code Switch about the movie get Out, and they talked

911
00:50:48,440 --> 00:50:51,840
Speaker 1: about some of the history of African Americans and horror movies.

912
00:50:52,320 --> 00:50:55,560
Speaker 1: So I ended up looking up Coleman's book It's titled

913
00:50:55,640 --> 00:50:59,040
Speaker 1: a horror noir Blacks in American horror film from an

914
00:50:59,120 --> 00:51:02,880
Speaker 1: eight nine to the present and uh and she She

915
00:51:03,280 --> 00:51:06,879
Speaker 1: shares the following read on the creature quote. The gil

916
00:51:06,960 --> 00:51:10,080
Speaker 1: Man is calng and Gus from the Birth of a

917
00:51:10,200 --> 00:51:14,840
Speaker 1: Nation rolled into one impossible body. Bodily, the monster resembled

918
00:51:14,880 --> 00:51:18,880
Speaker 1: a racist caricature. Its lips are large and exaggerated, Its

919
00:51:18,920 --> 00:51:22,120
Speaker 1: skin is dark, It is seemingly feeble minded. Its movements

920
00:51:22,160 --> 00:51:26,200
Speaker 1: are shambling, except for a swift adept move it displays

921
00:51:26,239 --> 00:51:30,080
Speaker 1: when stealing away with a white woman. And side note,

922
00:51:30,080 --> 00:51:32,560
Speaker 1: if anyone's not Fameric. Gus, who she mentions here, is

923
00:51:32,600 --> 00:51:35,719
Speaker 1: the antagonist from the nineteen fift movie The Birth of

924
00:51:35,760 --> 00:51:38,680
Speaker 1: the Nation. The film attributed to the revival of the

925
00:51:38,760 --> 00:51:41,880
Speaker 1: klu kox Klan terrorist organization in the United States. In it,

926
00:51:42,000 --> 00:51:44,880
Speaker 1: the Clan served as heroes as they lynch an African

927
00:51:44,920 --> 00:51:48,400
Speaker 1: American named Gus portrayed by a white actor in black face,

928
00:51:48,680 --> 00:51:51,440
Speaker 1: who chases a white woman off of a bridge. Coleman

929
00:51:51,520 --> 00:51:54,560
Speaker 1: refers to this as the first real racial horror movie,

930
00:51:55,640 --> 00:51:58,120
Speaker 1: and as Coleman points out, the creature from the Black Cogoon.

931
00:51:58,800 --> 00:52:02,040
Speaker 1: The film features a white female researcher who is only

932
00:52:02,120 --> 00:52:04,400
Speaker 1: there to scream and serve as the object of desire.

933
00:52:05,040 --> 00:52:08,120
Speaker 1: A team of local Brazilians who only serve to perish.

934
00:52:08,239 --> 00:52:12,560
Speaker 1: In the first portion of the film, Yeah, Uh, only

935
00:52:12,640 --> 00:52:15,279
Speaker 1: and then only the white scientific elite are able to

936
00:52:15,520 --> 00:52:19,360
Speaker 1: best the creature. And uh, and certainly best that they do. That.

937
00:52:19,440 --> 00:52:21,200
Speaker 1: These guys are supposed to be scientists, but instead of

938
00:52:21,280 --> 00:52:24,680
Speaker 1: studying it, they just destroy it. Uh, for the crime

939
00:52:24,800 --> 00:52:28,279
Speaker 1: of making eyes at this white woman. Yeah. Again, that's

940
00:52:28,320 --> 00:52:30,000
Speaker 1: what we've been saying. I mean that they just show

941
00:52:30,120 --> 00:52:33,880
Speaker 1: up in its lagoon and then they start attacking it essentially,

942
00:52:34,400 --> 00:52:37,680
Speaker 1: and we're it's like we're supposed to feel bad for them.

943
00:52:38,360 --> 00:52:41,239
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, there's always this ambiguity in

944
00:52:41,760 --> 00:52:44,600
Speaker 1: the monster movies of old, like King Kong, Creature from

945
00:52:44,600 --> 00:52:47,640
Speaker 1: the Black Calagoon, where you get the sense that maybe

946
00:52:47,680 --> 00:52:50,120
Speaker 1: you're supposed to feel some sympathy for the creature. It's

947
00:52:50,160 --> 00:52:53,680
Speaker 1: not quite clear how much. Yeah, and then I mean

948
00:52:53,719 --> 00:52:56,640
Speaker 1: this additional um like racial read on everything just makes

949
00:52:56,680 --> 00:52:59,640
Speaker 1: everything all the more problematic. She argues that the film

950
00:52:59,680 --> 00:53:02,560
Speaker 1: presents a world in which the white race alone has

951
00:53:02,640 --> 00:53:05,480
Speaker 1: evolved and the rest are static. She points to the

952
00:53:05,560 --> 00:53:09,399
Speaker 1: work of Patrick Gander, who argues that the film isn't

953
00:53:09,480 --> 00:53:14,480
Speaker 1: just about reinforcing white superiority and non white inferiority. It's

954
00:53:14,520 --> 00:53:18,600
Speaker 1: a film that taps into racist fears of desegregation. Quote

955
00:53:18,680 --> 00:53:21,880
Speaker 1: as the Black Monster, in leaving its proper place in

956
00:53:21,960 --> 00:53:24,759
Speaker 1: the water and attempting to integrate among those on land,

957
00:53:25,200 --> 00:53:29,200
Speaker 1: is a Darwinian reminder of why segregation is necessary. So

958
00:53:29,440 --> 00:53:31,680
Speaker 1: and I would argue that this is all the more

959
00:53:31,840 --> 00:53:35,440
Speaker 1: unsettling if you go into the third Creature movie and

960
00:53:35,520 --> 00:53:38,120
Speaker 1: watch it with these scenes of this this even more

961
00:53:38,320 --> 00:53:43,200
Speaker 1: human looking creature, like just behind barbed wire, just trapped,

962
00:53:43,360 --> 00:53:46,040
Speaker 1: treated treated like an animal, even as you have these

963
00:53:46,120 --> 00:53:50,239
Speaker 1: two characters that are engaging in these monologues about the

964
00:53:50,840 --> 00:53:53,560
Speaker 1: It's the jungle versus the Stars, about how how we

965
00:53:53,640 --> 00:53:56,600
Speaker 1: need to be kinder to the creature instead of violent

966
00:53:56,719 --> 00:54:00,719
Speaker 1: towards it. It's it's it's a very flawed and handled film,

967
00:54:00,800 --> 00:54:04,040
Speaker 1: in my opinion. But it's interesting how that this this

968
00:54:04,239 --> 00:54:07,480
Speaker 1: read of this racial read of the Creature um which

969
00:54:07,680 --> 00:54:09,480
Speaker 1: some of you might not care for, but I think

970
00:54:09,520 --> 00:54:12,279
Speaker 1: on one hand, it meshes with with with what was

971
00:54:12,320 --> 00:54:14,560
Speaker 1: going on in the Shadow over in Smith. I think

972
00:54:14,600 --> 00:54:16,799
Speaker 1: it also echoes a lot of these ideas that we've

973
00:54:16,800 --> 00:54:20,120
Speaker 1: already discussed of the the aquatic humanoid as being this

974
00:54:20,520 --> 00:54:24,040
Speaker 1: this other, this uh this uh this creature that I mean,

975
00:54:24,080 --> 00:54:26,960
Speaker 1: think to the triton and the siren. Like the siren

976
00:54:27,080 --> 00:54:30,040
Speaker 1: is beautiful and desirable. The triton, though the masculine version

977
00:54:30,160 --> 00:54:32,840
Speaker 1: is to be feared, is more more brutal. And that

978
00:54:33,120 --> 00:54:36,680
Speaker 1: that lines up with with various racist depictions in which

979
00:54:36,840 --> 00:54:40,560
Speaker 1: the female of another race is is an exotic object

980
00:54:40,600 --> 00:54:43,720
Speaker 1: of desire and then the male counterpart part is depicted

981
00:54:43,760 --> 00:54:46,600
Speaker 1: as something brutish. I'm not trying to ruin a classic

982
00:54:46,680 --> 00:54:50,760
Speaker 1: film for anybody, but I do think this, this read

983
00:54:51,080 --> 00:54:54,000
Speaker 1: is really worth considering. We need to start thinking about

984
00:54:54,480 --> 00:54:57,440
Speaker 1: about the era that the film came from and uh,

985
00:54:57,640 --> 00:55:00,600
Speaker 1: the attitudes of the of the time, uh, and what

986
00:55:00,760 --> 00:55:04,080
Speaker 1: that the film is supposed to say to a modern viewer. Yeah,

987
00:55:04,120 --> 00:55:06,680
Speaker 1: I think that is a totally valid interpretive. Lens I.

988
00:55:06,719 --> 00:55:09,160
Speaker 1: I don't know of any evidence that this is what

989
00:55:09,360 --> 00:55:12,719
Speaker 1: the filmmakers consciously had in mind. I think it's probably not,

990
00:55:13,000 --> 00:55:15,440
Speaker 1: but that you can certainly see how these sorts of

991
00:55:15,560 --> 00:55:19,600
Speaker 1: themes come out from, you know, the unconscious forces that

992
00:55:19,719 --> 00:55:24,160
Speaker 1: guide our creativity, right, very much so. So as we

993
00:55:24,640 --> 00:55:27,560
Speaker 1: begin to close out this episode, let's let's return into

994
00:55:27,640 --> 00:55:31,920
Speaker 1: some of the trends that we've identified and skirted around.

995
00:55:32,120 --> 00:55:35,719
Speaker 1: Uh were concerning the various myths and fictions of aquatic humanoids,

996
00:55:35,760 --> 00:55:37,440
Speaker 1: like what do they what do they represent? What do

997
00:55:37,560 --> 00:55:43,120
Speaker 1: they convey? Obviously the mirror world, that's right, Yeah, the

998
00:55:43,239 --> 00:55:45,919
Speaker 1: unknown depths as well as the dangers of the sea.

999
00:55:47,360 --> 00:55:51,040
Speaker 1: The feature we so often see in legends of monsters,

1000
00:55:51,120 --> 00:55:56,160
Speaker 1: which is hybridity, bringing together different features of different animals

1001
00:55:56,239 --> 00:55:59,719
Speaker 1: and humans. Yeah, and just mysterious biology as well, animals

1002
00:56:00,360 --> 00:56:03,160
Speaker 1: again washing up on the beach, and also humans with

1003
00:56:03,360 --> 00:56:08,520
Speaker 1: birth defects such as uh siren o'melia, which is a

1004
00:56:08,600 --> 00:56:11,240
Speaker 1: birth defect that involves the fusing of the legs together.

1005
00:56:11,760 --> 00:56:14,600
Speaker 1: It's a really depressing topic, but I have I was,

1006
00:56:14,760 --> 00:56:17,520
Speaker 1: I have read a couple of papers making the argument

1007
00:56:17,600 --> 00:56:22,400
Speaker 1: that some mermaid legends might be based on these defects. Also,

1008
00:56:22,520 --> 00:56:25,680
Speaker 1: we've mentioned mermaids as harbingers of doom as well as

1009
00:56:26,600 --> 00:56:29,719
Speaker 1: sources of divine aid. There's the idea that it's the

1010
00:56:29,880 --> 00:56:33,320
Speaker 1: erotic other, it's the monstrous other, that the evil or

1011
00:56:33,400 --> 00:56:36,800
Speaker 1: monstrous feminine and uh, and just the idea too, that

1012
00:56:36,920 --> 00:56:39,719
Speaker 1: it can be depicted as a racial other to that

1013
00:56:39,880 --> 00:56:43,400
Speaker 1: does not belong in our world. It's amazing that water

1014
00:56:43,680 --> 00:56:47,680
Speaker 1: has so much power to carry so much symbolic weight

1015
00:56:47,920 --> 00:56:50,719
Speaker 1: and and to project so many different symbolic meanings. Like

1016
00:56:50,719 --> 00:56:54,680
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about the way it's this mirror world in

1017
00:56:54,760 --> 00:56:57,279
Speaker 1: the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but then also the

1018
00:56:57,440 --> 00:57:00,239
Speaker 1: way in shadow over in Smith that can reper reason

1019
00:57:00,360 --> 00:57:03,680
Speaker 1: the idea of commerce with the rest of the planet. Yeah. Yeah,

1020
00:57:03,760 --> 00:57:05,719
Speaker 1: and you see again. You you can think of the

1021
00:57:05,800 --> 00:57:08,840
Speaker 1: Golden cities and which people are said to live, or

1022
00:57:08,920 --> 00:57:13,040
Speaker 1: you can just think of dark, depressing depths. Um. Yeah,

1023
00:57:13,200 --> 00:57:16,120
Speaker 1: it's a it's it's just put a proof positive again

1024
00:57:16,200 --> 00:57:19,160
Speaker 1: that there there are no simple monsters, no matter how

1025
00:57:19,240 --> 00:57:23,240
Speaker 1: shallow you think a particular fictional or even mythological creature.

1026
00:57:23,800 --> 00:57:26,240
Speaker 1: Maybe when you start teasing it apart, there's there's a

1027
00:57:26,320 --> 00:57:28,360
Speaker 1: lot going on there. There's a whole legacy that it's

1028
00:57:28,360 --> 00:57:31,440
Speaker 1: built upon. What's the name of the cathulic city, the

1029
00:57:31,560 --> 00:57:34,560
Speaker 1: city under the under the ocean where he's where he

1030
00:57:34,680 --> 00:57:37,600
Speaker 1: hangs out. I believe it's really a or something to

1031
00:57:37,680 --> 00:57:40,920
Speaker 1: that effect. I wonder how that compares to the to

1032
00:57:41,040 --> 00:57:43,720
Speaker 1: the Golden Palace of Triton. I'm thinking it's might be

1033
00:57:43,800 --> 00:57:46,920
Speaker 1: a little darker, a little less less well lit, a

1034
00:57:46,960 --> 00:57:52,120
Speaker 1: little less golden. Totally random thought. Have you ever seen

1035
00:57:52,240 --> 00:57:55,760
Speaker 1: the coins that are the currency of Iceland? No, do

1036
00:57:55,920 --> 00:57:58,120
Speaker 1: they have mermaids on them? Now, I haven't made it

1037
00:57:58,200 --> 00:58:00,680
Speaker 1: to the mermaid coins. Maybe it really high value they do.

1038
00:58:01,240 --> 00:58:04,080
Speaker 1: But the coins, I remember, they are great compared to

1039
00:58:04,160 --> 00:58:07,480
Speaker 1: our coins because our coins have like politicians on them,

1040
00:58:07,920 --> 00:58:10,240
Speaker 1: and their coins have all the children of Dagon, so

1041
00:58:10,320 --> 00:58:13,840
Speaker 1: they've got crab coins, they've got trout coins, like all

1042
00:58:13,920 --> 00:58:17,000
Speaker 1: of the sea creatures make it onto the currency. That

1043
00:58:17,120 --> 00:58:19,640
Speaker 1: has to be better for teaching kids about money. Like

1044
00:58:19,760 --> 00:58:22,640
Speaker 1: my my son would would would be far more into

1045
00:58:22,720 --> 00:58:24,880
Speaker 1: coins if they each had a cool animal on them.

1046
00:58:25,320 --> 00:58:29,040
Speaker 1: So take note, uh, Nations of the World. Alright, Well,

1047
00:58:29,120 --> 00:58:31,160
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to close out this episode,

1048
00:58:31,440 --> 00:58:33,560
Speaker 1: but there is going to be a follow up episode

1049
00:58:33,640 --> 00:58:36,600
Speaker 1: in which we will discuss some of the science of

1050
00:58:36,960 --> 00:58:39,800
Speaker 1: aquatic humanoids. Uh. And if you don't think there's any

1051
00:58:39,840 --> 00:58:42,960
Speaker 1: science there, well just tune in and you'll be surprised.

1052
00:58:43,520 --> 00:58:45,960
Speaker 1: In the meantime, check out all the previous episodes of

1053
00:58:45,960 --> 00:58:47,760
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's Stuff to Blow your

1054
00:58:47,800 --> 00:58:50,840
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. That's where you'll find the podcast. You'll

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Speaker 1: name it big. Thanks as always to our audio producers

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Speaker 1: Alex Williams and Tory Harrison. And if you want to

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Speaker 1: us a question, anything at all, you can email us

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