Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: It's time to go into the vault. Today. We're going
Speaker 1: to be going back to our first episode on aquatic
Speaker 1: humanoids from January. This was almost exactly a year ago
Speaker 1: that this first stired. Now why are why are we
Speaker 1: doing so much ocean stuff lately, Robert, Oh, it's because
Speaker 1: Transgenesis is coming out. That is a fiction sci fi podcast.
Speaker 1: All ten episodes are gonna launch at once so that
Speaker 1: you can you can binge them, you can, you can,
Speaker 1: you can spread them out over your commute, you know,
Speaker 1: however you want to do it. Wait, did you even
Speaker 1: tell them who created Transgenesis? Oh? Well, I created Transgenesis.
Speaker 1: Um I wrote and created, worked with Alexander Williams, one
Speaker 1: of our producers here and Stuff to Blow your Mind. Uh.
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum was also instrumental in the project, worked with
Speaker 1: a number of different outside actors, but also a lot
Speaker 1: of talent from within the Stuff network, including you, Joe,
Speaker 1: you were there. It's right, I make a strange cameo.
Speaker 1: So if you want, if you want to check that
Speaker 1: show out, go and subscribe. You should be able to
Speaker 1: look up Transgenesis all one word. You can also go
Speaker 1: to Transgenesis dot show for more information. But again, this
Speaker 1: is a science fiction show that then it deals with
Speaker 1: the deep ocean. It deals with strange humanoid like creatures
Speaker 1: in the deep ocean. But this is why we're going
Speaker 1: back to these episodes on aquatic humanoids, because they deal
Speaker 1: with with with creatures from the deep, creatures of myth
Speaker 1: and legend, things such as the Triton's, things such as
Speaker 1: mermaids and and other uh dwellers of the deep. I
Speaker 1: think we talked about creature from the Black Lagoon, and
Speaker 1: good we do. We do spend a good bit talking
Speaker 1: about the creature and various gil men. We talked about
Speaker 1: Lovecraft and in Smith and and we may even get
Speaker 1: into the the aquatic a hypothesis. I'm having trouble room bread.
Speaker 1: I think that comes and maybe in part two. All right,
Speaker 1: all right, well, we hope you enjoy this classic episode
Speaker 1: of stuff to blow your mind. First you will come
Speaker 1: to the sirens, who enchant all who come near them
Speaker 1: if anyone unwarily draws in too close. And here's the
Speaker 1: singing of the sirens. His wife and children will never
Speaker 1: welcome him home again, for they sit in a green
Speaker 1: field and wabble him to death with the sweetness of
Speaker 1: their song. There is a great heap of dead men's
Speaker 1: bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them.
Speaker 1: They meant the things on the little island with the
Speaker 1: queer ruins, and it seems them awful pictures of frog
Speaker 1: fish monsters. Was supposed to be pictures of these things?
Speaker 1: Maybe they was the kind of critters has got all
Speaker 1: the mermaids stories and such started. They had all kinds
Speaker 1: of cities on the sea bottom, and his iron was
Speaker 1: heaved up from there. Welcome to stuff to blow your
Speaker 1: mind from How Stuffworks dot com. Hey, you welcome to
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. And if you recognize what those
Speaker 1: sources were, you probably can tell we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about some mirror creatures, some sea folks, something like that today.
Speaker 1: That's right. The first was from Homer's the Odyssey, the
Speaker 1: Samuel Butler translation. The second was from HP Lovecraft The
Speaker 1: Shadow Over in Smith. Now, there is always an alluring
Speaker 1: quality to the idea that there's stuff happening down at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the ocean that has more than just
Speaker 1: an animal quality, but some kind of intelligence or organizing
Speaker 1: principle to it. I think of in the George R.
Speaker 1: Martin books, there's this character. Do you remember this guy, Robert,
Speaker 1: who is like a court jester and the in stand
Speaker 1: Barathians Court, who's always singing about what happens under the
Speaker 1: bottom of the sea. No, I've forgotten about this. Well,
Speaker 1: he like falls in the water at some point and
Speaker 1: gets rescued, and after that he's always saying, like under
Speaker 1: the sea that I don't remember what he says, but
Speaker 1: it's like they have feet, you know, people people walk
Speaker 1: upside down on their hands. And then he always says,
Speaker 1: I know, I know, ho ho ho, And it's kind
Speaker 1: of mysterious. Oh yeah, this does ring about now. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, before even before we had proper mirrors, the uh,
Speaker 1: the ocean was kind of the looking glass, right, it
Speaker 1: was kind of the mirror world. Yeah, so any of
Speaker 1: those stories where you wonder if there's actually some kind
Speaker 1: of creature living on the other side of the mirror,
Speaker 1: if that's another universe we're peering through. Into. All of
Speaker 1: that applies to the water as well. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's interesting when you think of all the various specimens,
Speaker 1: the Mermaids, the Gilman, the sirens. It's fascinating. The humans
Speaker 1: have seemingly always dreamt up humanoids from the deep, not
Speaker 1: just monsters, but humanoids. Yeah, I mean, because you can
Speaker 1: certainly expand it and getting the whole realm of sea
Speaker 1: monsters and various animal fish hybrids. But there's something particular
Speaker 1: about those humanoid or partially humanoid creatures, a mirror world
Speaker 1: beneath the waves, and people of some sort that occupied
Speaker 1: the depths. Yeah, I mean, even before you had somebody
Speaker 1: like Giordano Bruno imagining that there could be other planets
Speaker 1: with surfaces like our planet that could have creatures dwelling
Speaker 1: on them. You know, when people didn't really have that
Speaker 1: conception of the sky, you could still definitely wonder about
Speaker 1: something like that under the ocean. That was like sort
Speaker 1: of the first outer space. It was the original alien world. Yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: and without a real means of exploring it or understanding it,
Speaker 1: you were just left with whatever happened to swim up
Speaker 1: with within view, whatever happened to wash up dead and
Speaker 1: partially rotted away on the shoreline whatever you were able
Speaker 1: to pull up with with line or net. Dude, the
Speaker 1: stuff that washes up dead on the beaches of the
Speaker 1: Earth is terrifying and crazy. Now, even though we have
Speaker 1: like photos and modern science. Can you imagine that happening
Speaker 1: in a world where you know, the New Jersey beach
Speaker 1: monster washes up, but it's in the Middle Ages, in
Speaker 1: China or something. Yeah, it's actually really fascinating to look back,
Speaker 1: particularly at a lot of the sea monster illustrations and
Speaker 1: old maps. There's a book by a Chet Van Duzer
Speaker 1: Sea Monsters of Medieval and Renaissance Maps, and and he he.
Speaker 1: It's filled with wonderful illustrations. But you get to look
Speaker 1: at at all these various creatures. You know that some
Speaker 1: fairly realistic you can look at and say, well, that's
Speaker 1: clearly supposed to be a walrus. That's supposed to be
Speaker 1: a whale. It just has too many blowholes. And some
Speaker 1: of them you look at and you realize, well, this
Speaker 1: is essentially what you might see if you saw the
Speaker 1: put partially decomposed body of a whale. Something enormous but
Speaker 1: a little more beaked looking. Now. In that book, Van
Speaker 1: Duzer points out that few maps survive from antiquity, but
Speaker 1: there are map like mentions and map like artifacts, such
Speaker 1: as there's an Assyrian freeze from the Palace of Kings
Speaker 1: saga on the second early eighth century BC that clearly
Speaker 1: depicts two Assyrian merment. And it's great because if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen Assyrian reliefs or carvings before, they've they've all
Speaker 1: got the same head, you know, it's all that same
Speaker 1: guy with the same curly beard and the hat. And
Speaker 1: these mermaids are like that too. Yeah, And then you
Speaker 1: you look at other ancient writings, I mean, they're mentioned
Speaker 1: in ovid Ovid's writing The Metamorphosis. Ovid lived forty three
Speaker 1: b c E To seventeen or eighteen CE, and he
Speaker 1: described the gates of the Palace of the Sun as
Speaker 1: containing all of these images of mer people. The dark
Speaker 1: blue sea contains the gods melodious Triton shifting Proteus uh
Speaker 1: Aegian crushing two huge whales together his arms across their backs,
Speaker 1: and Doris with her daughters, some seen swimming, some sitting
Speaker 1: on rocks drying their sea green hair, some writing the
Speaker 1: backs of fish. And you can you can keep going
Speaker 1: back in time too. I mean, as Nancy Easterland pointed
Speaker 1: out in your two thousand one paper Hans Christian Andersen's
Speaker 1: Fish out of Water, the Babylonians recognized gods with fish
Speaker 1: features or fish hybridity. Yeah, you can sort of see
Speaker 1: this as an extension of the way that early creation
Speaker 1: myths and ancient gods often had water aspects, like like
Speaker 1: Tiamatta Nabsu, you know, the freshwater and the salt water,
Speaker 1: or the idea of the creation stories which almost always
Speaker 1: involve waters, right, you know, the chaos hover or the
Speaker 1: being hovering out over the waters. Yeah, calling back to
Speaker 1: our Order out of Chaos episode. And we've talked about
Speaker 1: Inky as well before. The Sumerian water god, which is
Speaker 1: sometimes described it's sometimes described as having a cloak of
Speaker 1: a fish or scaled skin. Wait, a cloak of a
Speaker 1: fish or a cloak made out of multiple fish or
Speaker 1: one of the images I saw it looked like a
Speaker 1: cloak of little fish icons like it, like the cloak
Speaker 1: was made out of fish emoticons. That's good, pretty great,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. And get this. The zig Rot, where people
Speaker 1: would worship Inky, was known as House of the Subterranean Waters. Well,
Speaker 1: that seems to sort of complete the Ziggurat trinity because
Speaker 1: we we've talked about zigarattes before, the Ziggaratta Etemenanki, which
Speaker 1: was sometimes believed to be associated with the historical idea
Speaker 1: of the Tower of Babel. I think that name means
Speaker 1: something like the house of the foundation of heaven and Earth,
Speaker 1: very regal sounding zigaratte. As if there's another kind of
Speaker 1: zigatte right now, additionally we have this is just kind
Speaker 1: of a humble ziggaratte. Yeah, there's no such thing. If
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a zigaratte, it's gonna be a zigaratte. Now.
Speaker 1: Additionally we have we have fish tailed gods and water
Speaker 1: dragons found throughout the cultures of India, China, and Japan.
Speaker 1: And uh Nancy Nancy Easterland sums up a lot of
Speaker 1: this nicely. She says, quote, some of the mythological sea
Speaker 1: beings and deities, such as Poseidon and the Sirens were
Speaker 1: not originally associated with water and piicine anatomy. The sirens
Speaker 1: were originally birds, indicating that divine our and womanly allure
Speaker 1: became combined with the power and promise of the sea
Speaker 1: when ancient cultures undertook maritime war and trade. So she
Speaker 1: argues that the that mur folk and mermaids, all these creatures,
Speaker 1: they're ultimately the descendants or in her words, the scale
Speaker 1: down descendants, which I like because of scales. Uh, these
Speaker 1: are just the scale down descendants of ancient sea gods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that seems like one example of the principle that displaced
Speaker 1: gods or or fading gods of older theologies often appear
Speaker 1: in sort of lower status or demoted roles in newer
Speaker 1: versions of religions. Yeah, the old trope of the former
Speaker 1: pagan god becomes a demon in medieval Christian traditions. So
Speaker 1: obviously we're talking about mr Folk water dwelling humanoids of
Speaker 1: various kinds today, and this is going to be the
Speaker 1: first part of a two part episode. The first one
Speaker 1: here we want to discuss the sort of global mr
Speaker 1: Folk mythology and all of the different ideas of humanoids
Speaker 1: living in the deep and what that says about us
Speaker 1: culturally and where these ideas come from. And then in
Speaker 1: the next episode we're going to focus more on the
Speaker 1: science of aquatic humanoids. Yeah, so this is gonna be
Speaker 1: the mythology and fiction episode, and the next one will
Speaker 1: be the Science and Speculative Science episode. Now, Robert, one
Speaker 1: of the first ones you mentioned was the sirens. That's right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean when we we had the reading from the
Speaker 1: Odyssey at the start of the episode that refers to them.
Speaker 1: But one thing you'll notice is that there was no
Speaker 1: description of the sirens. Yeah, what do they look like? Well,
Speaker 1: we don't know, because Homer never actually describes them. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were later described though, as being half bird, much
Speaker 1: like the Harpie, and later periods of development merged them
Speaker 1: with the Northern mermaid in Christian Europe, but medieval Beast
Speaker 1: Area's stuck to the bird hybridity though up through at
Speaker 1: least twelve twenty, and then you had this gentleman Isidore
Speaker 1: of Seville who lived of five sixty through sixty six,
Speaker 1: and he attributed them with scales and webbed feet and
Speaker 1: sometimes tales and wings as well. But from the Middle
Speaker 1: Ages onward, that's where the sirens really took on the
Speaker 1: mermaid look. And it's stuck. I'm trying to think of
Speaker 1: depictions of them I've seen in movies, but I don't
Speaker 1: think I have. The only thing that comes to mind is, oh, brother,
Speaker 1: where art thou, but in that they're not hybrids. They're
Speaker 1: just humans that are. But they are in a creek bed,
Speaker 1: that's right. I feel like a lot of the depictions
Speaker 1: that that I'm accustomed to, mainly through the Time Life
Speaker 1: book series of myths and monsters and myths and legends,
Speaker 1: and there was there were some siren images in there,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them were just basically beautiful women
Speaker 1: out on rocks, luring the the the wide eyed Greek
Speaker 1: sailors to their doom. Now, of course, if you're not
Speaker 1: familiar with the story, it's that the sirens would sing, right,
Speaker 1: and that they're singing was so lovely that it would
Speaker 1: drive men mad. And it would and they would want
Speaker 1: to come ashore to meet the sirens, I guess, or
Speaker 1: be drawn to the singing, but instead their vessels would
Speaker 1: be dashed upon the rocks, right, Yeah. And various accounts
Speaker 1: of the sirens that they vary, like maybe you'd starve
Speaker 1: to death, or you perhaps you'd drown. I guess. The
Speaker 1: basic underlying reality of the myth is the ocean is
Speaker 1: a dangerous place, right, and if you go out upon
Speaker 1: the ocean, you might meet your do I always thought
Speaker 1: that what Odysseus does in the story of his encounter
Speaker 1: with the sirens was an interesting sort of metaphor for
Speaker 1: the ways some people experiment with mind altering substances, which
Speaker 1: is that he has his men lash him to the
Speaker 1: ship's mast so that he can't control you know, he
Speaker 1: can't drive the ship into the rocks. But all the
Speaker 1: other men plug their ears, and he wants to hear it.
Speaker 1: They're all the designated drivers. Yes, though in a sense
Speaker 1: he's the designated driver because he is the only one
Speaker 1: who can tell them when they're out of the sirens range.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, they're they're all plugged up. He's the
Speaker 1: one that's a that's their rope to the mast, begging
Speaker 1: to be let free, and their industrict orders that the
Speaker 1: more I begged, the more you need to wrote me
Speaker 1: to the mast. Now another interesting uh individual or race,
Speaker 1: depending on how you look at it, from Greek Mytholity,
Speaker 1: the Triton. So Triton was originally a specific mirror person.
Speaker 1: But Ariel's father, right is was that his name in
Speaker 1: the cartoon in the Disney movie, wasn't it? I thought
Speaker 1: you just saw a little mermaid themed show, and I did,
Speaker 1: But it was at wiki Watchie, which is the long
Speaker 1: running mermaid show there. And the underwater dancing is a
Speaker 1: very limited storytelling medium. And I don't think her father
Speaker 1: ever showed up. Okay, yeah, I think that's his name.
Speaker 1: I remember this from childhood, the guy with the big
Speaker 1: beard and the trident. Okay, the mayor man king. He's
Speaker 1: King Triton. Okay, I definitely remember him, but I didn't
Speaker 1: remember his name. Well. Uh. The Triton's eventually became seen
Speaker 1: as just a class of murr people in Greek myth.
Speaker 1: They were the sons of Poseidon and Amphitrite. They had
Speaker 1: humanoid bodies covered in scales, and then they had dolphin
Speaker 1: tails matted green or yellow hair. They had gills as
Speaker 1: well as pointed kind of elf ears, wide mouths things,
Speaker 1: and then they typically would serve as escorts for the
Speaker 1: Nereid sea nymphs as well as general attendants for Seed
Speaker 1: of Entity. And our old friend Hessiod said that they
Speaker 1: inhabited golden palaces under the sea. Now it sounds like
Speaker 1: King Triton, Yeah, exactly. It's it's that this is key
Speaker 1: to so many of our our myths and legends of
Speaker 1: my people. Now I'm wondering This is kind of interesting
Speaker 1: that it's combining features of the house of Ichthos. Right,
Speaker 1: it's got the scales and the fish like characteristics, but
Speaker 1: then they've also got dolphin tales, So there's this melding
Speaker 1: of aquatic mammals and fish. Well, of course you have
Speaker 1: to remember that for the longest time, this was not
Speaker 1: a clear distinction, the idea that the dolphins were not fish,
Speaker 1: So it makes sense it just mesh it all up
Speaker 1: under miscellaneous sea beasts. And also in medieval times, tritons
Speaker 1: were made the male counterparts of sirens, the male counterparts,
Speaker 1: as in like they were the same species, or like
Speaker 1: they were just friends or what. My understanding is that
Speaker 1: it's like they were of the same species. If one
Speaker 1: dares to get too technical with your your mythological people's
Speaker 1: under the waves. And I think this will be very
Speaker 1: interesting later on when we discussed modern treatments of mermaids
Speaker 1: and fish people. Okay, so Fang's scales, dolphin tales, humanoid characteristics.
Speaker 1: That's not enough hybrid City for me. I want you
Speaker 1: to mash in some more stuff. Well you're in luck, Joe,
Speaker 1: because there there's another creature to consider here. The a
Speaker 1: theo centaur. Yes, so you had something called a centauro triton,
Speaker 1: which is basically what occurs when you have a triton
Speaker 1: that's depicted with like like a definite dolphin esque hind quarters.
Speaker 1: But then the atho centaur takes the hybrid city to
Speaker 1: a whole another level. So we see this and around
Speaker 1: the third century common Air. Uh. And this is found
Speaker 1: in the natural history text Physiologists. Uh. And this creature,
Speaker 1: the echio centaur, was said to have the torso and
Speaker 1: head of a man, the four legs of a horse
Speaker 1: or lion are the hind quarters of a dolphin, and
Speaker 1: unlike the centaur o tritan, they had scale. Now I'm
Speaker 1: so imagining what kind of habitat this creature dwells in.
Speaker 1: When would it be useful to have the four legs
Speaker 1: of a horse and the tail of a dolphin? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you could really tease that apart and get
Speaker 1: into I guess the symbolic meaning of the things, or
Speaker 1: you you end up coming back to your idea of like,
Speaker 1: here's something washed up on the beach. Makes sense of it,
Speaker 1: and well, this is kind of the story that ends
Speaker 1: up spreading about it. There are no classical accounts of
Speaker 1: the Ichthyo centaur. According to the resources I was looking
Speaker 1: at button that they remained a decorative motif, which is
Speaker 1: kind of the ultimate fate of a lot of these,
Speaker 1: like the mermaid and the Uh and the triton and
Speaker 1: the Ethio centaur, they become just part of medieval iconography
Speaker 1: going forward, and they come to symbolize other things, the
Speaker 1: Mermaid particular becoming to symbolize to sort of the the
Speaker 1: the evil and monstrous nature of the female Uh sometimes
Speaker 1: depicted Uh, I believe with a with a fish to
Speaker 1: show that she is entrapping the Christian soul. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: often think of the tradition of the mermaid as being
Speaker 1: one of temptation. Like that, it it establishes kind of
Speaker 1: like a foolish and weak willed sailor that will give
Speaker 1: in to the temptation of the mermaid because he has
Speaker 1: not properly disciplined his spirit to resist sin. It reminds
Speaker 1: me a lot of the incubi and succubi legends we've
Speaker 1: discussed in the podcast before, where the feet would be
Speaker 1: a giveaway. The feet would be the feet of a beast,
Speaker 1: and therefore any any rational believer would notice the feet
Speaker 1: of the creature and and just and cease to pursue
Speaker 1: this foolish pairing. But that's an interesting parallel, like that
Speaker 1: they both go back to this idea of the center
Speaker 1: as someone who's oblivious to difference. Yeah, like they can't
Speaker 1: see all the warning signs here, the main warning sign
Speaker 1: of course, being that the individual is part fish. All right, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we should take a quick break and then we
Speaker 1: come back. We will discuss more aquatic humanoid legends from
Speaker 1: around the world. Alright, we're back. So not every mirror
Speaker 1: person in mythology and legend is a villain. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: see some that that have beneficial aspects as well. There's,
Speaker 1: for instance, the the the Nno of Japanese legend. This
Speaker 1: is essentially less of a mermaid and more of just
Speaker 1: a fish with a beautiful woman's face, and it's protective
Speaker 1: and warns of misfortune on land and sea. And then
Speaker 1: there's also an interesting one from the Micmac people of
Speaker 1: eastern Canada. They were known as the halfway people. Uh,
Speaker 1: these particular mr folk they had the upper bodies of
Speaker 1: a body of a human and a lower body of
Speaker 1: a fish, and they'd warn fishermen of coming storms or
Speaker 1: invoke storms if they were disrespected. Now I have to
Speaker 1: add another North American or Canadian entry, a less fulkloric
Speaker 1: and more of a one off. But I'm adding it
Speaker 1: because I've seen this in person, Robert the Bant Merman.
Speaker 1: You've looked up images, right, I did. I was not
Speaker 1: familiar with this, and I had, of course heard of
Speaker 1: the Fiji Mermaid, and I've never been to bath, but
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with it. You know, you've talked about your
Speaker 1: adventures there, and it does not seem like a likely
Speaker 1: mermaid destination. No, not really. I mean, so this is Inland, Canada.
Speaker 1: This is in Alberta and Bant National Park. So this
Speaker 1: is a mountainous region, not a not a coastal region,
Speaker 1: but it has lakes, and so in these lakes, I
Speaker 1: guess one might expect to find some kind of hybrid
Speaker 1: humanoid aquatic creature. And so inside this business in ban
Speaker 1: f in Alberta, there is a little store called the
Speaker 1: Indian Trading Company, and in the back of the store
Speaker 1: there is a taxidermy creature that's half fish, half humanoid
Speaker 1: gremlin and it looks like, I don't know, how would
Speaker 1: you describe it, Like the back of it just looks
Speaker 1: straight up like a fish. It's a fish with the
Speaker 1: head cut off, and then that fish just goes straight
Speaker 1: into some ribs with with like human baby arms but
Speaker 1: with claws on them, and a scary looking head that
Speaker 1: has hair. I mean it looks like a taxidermied creation.
Speaker 1: I mean that is what it is. Yes, it is
Speaker 1: a fish and probably some sort of a small monkey
Speaker 1: that the remains of which we were sewn together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or the I think it's also possible that the top
Speaker 1: half of it could just be artificial. Think it could
Speaker 1: be a crafted artifact. According to a write up on
Speaker 1: Atlas Obscurity, it was probably bought by a man named
Speaker 1: Norman Luxton, who is the proprietor of the shop around
Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen when it was when it first showed up there.
Speaker 1: It's very much in the traditional of like the P. T.
Speaker 1: Barnum kind of thing that the Fiji mermaid. Yes, so
Speaker 1: some kind of a side shoe oddity sort of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: except it stays right here in this uh, in this store.
Speaker 1: I don't know how long it's been totally stationary there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you go to bamp and you go
Speaker 1: to the store and you go into the back room.
Speaker 1: You will see lots of oddities. There is like a
Speaker 1: giant taxidermy bear I think, and some moose heads and
Speaker 1: other local stuff. But yeah, this thing is in a
Speaker 1: glass case. It's got a mirror behind it, and they
Speaker 1: sell postcards. It's like I saw them from Herman. Interesting.
Speaker 1: Well that's that. I've got to check that out when
Speaker 1: I finally get up to ban Now, speaking of Canadian
Speaker 1: we can sort of extend that and think of French
Speaker 1: traditions as well. There is a mermaid in French traditions
Speaker 1: known as Melosne, and much like a kidna, the mother
Speaker 1: of monsters in Greek myth, the French mermaid here boasts
Speaker 1: a two pronged tale. Oh you know what that reminds
Speaker 1: me of Dagon? Well yeah, I think you're gonna say Starbucks.
Speaker 1: But yes. Also the movie, the Stewart Gordon movie Dagon
Speaker 1: that came out in two thousand and one. It's kind
Speaker 1: of a mixed bag. Not not a great movie, but
Speaker 1: there's some things to like about it. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: love craft Ian like it's basically an adaptation of shadow
Speaker 1: Over in Smith, but they lean into the mermaids a
Speaker 1: little more. They lean into the sex and violence a
Speaker 1: little more. Uh, it's worth checking out if you like
Speaker 1: violent fish people movies. Yeah, but what about Starbucks Starbucks, Well,
Speaker 1: just coffee basically. But but that that logo with the
Speaker 1: mermaid with the two pronged tail, uh, with going up
Speaker 1: on each side of the creature, Like that's basically melocene
Speaker 1: or a kid not, depending on how you want to
Speaker 1: look at Robert. I hate to say it, but I
Speaker 1: don't think anybody ever pays attention to that logo unless
Speaker 1: they're trying to get mad about it or not having
Speaker 1: a Sanda hat or something. It would be interesting if
Speaker 1: people started getting mad over that, is, like, why does
Speaker 1: this mermaid have two tales instead of one? We want
Speaker 1: an American Mermaid, not a French Mermaid. One tale, one country,
Speaker 1: one tale. Well, they're probably, you know, pining for the
Speaker 1: classic mermaid the have for the Danish Mermaid. Why is
Speaker 1: this the classic? Well, you know, because when you when
Speaker 1: you really think about mermaids, you think of, like Hans
Speaker 1: Christian Andersen, you think of northern Europe. So to be clear,
Speaker 1: Hans Christian Anderson is the author of the Little Mermaid
Speaker 1: story that the Disney movie is loosely based on very loosely,
Speaker 1: because in his version there's a lot more like blood
Speaker 1: and cutting off feed and stuff. Oh yes, it's a
Speaker 1: bit a bit more violent. But but over in denmarkt
Speaker 1: they did have to have frew and uh, this is
Speaker 1: a that that's a pretty helpful mermaid because it can
Speaker 1: also tell the future, and it allegedly foretold the birth
Speaker 1: of Danish King Christian the fourth of Denmark. So that's
Speaker 1: a that's a beneficial mermaid for you, okay. And of
Speaker 1: course I have to mention the monk fish. Are you
Speaker 1: familiar with the monk fish or perhaps it's kin the
Speaker 1: bishop fish. Well, I know of the monkfish, like the monkfish,
Speaker 1: but you're not thinking of like the monkfish that you
Speaker 1: would eat right. This is this was a creature widely
Speaker 1: reported marine creature in Northern European w described in Ambrose
Speaker 1: Pare's sixteenth century work on Monsters. It had the head
Speaker 1: of a human, the tonstrated hair style of a monk,
Speaker 1: monks cow and cape, and two extremely long flippers. It's
Speaker 1: it's a ridiculous looking creature. It looks like you drew
Speaker 1: a monk as a fish. It's what we're talking about
Speaker 1: it sounds I've seen the medieval drawings. But the cool
Speaker 1: thing is that there's a very strong case to be
Speaker 1: made that these were based on descriptions of dead giant squid,
Speaker 1: because you have this kind of you know, thick, lumpy
Speaker 1: body that kind of tapers off on one end and
Speaker 1: then has what a number of tentacles and then two
Speaker 1: very long additional arms that would have been the two
Speaker 1: extremely long flippers of the monk fish. Yeah, I'm looking
Speaker 1: at the comparisons right now, I can see why that
Speaker 1: would have been the case. And there was also a
Speaker 1: Chinese variant of this, the Hi Ho Shun, which was
Speaker 1: the sea Buddhist priest. So again we're getting back to
Speaker 1: the idea of when when you're talking about a mythical
Speaker 1: sea creature, there are a number of different ways to
Speaker 1: look at it. You know, is it a former god
Speaker 1: that's been demoted. Is it a dead sea animal that
Speaker 1: that someone has misinterpreted, and then someone else has heard
Speaker 1: about that, and then that person told another individual who
Speaker 1: illustrated and wrote it in in a medieval baster area. Yet, uh,
Speaker 1: these are just a few of the possible excuses for
Speaker 1: many of these fantastic creatures. So is there anything that
Speaker 1: seems to unite all of the legends we've looked at
Speaker 1: so far? Or are aquatic humanoids as diverse as real
Speaker 1: humans or as diverse as other gods and monsters. Well,
Speaker 1: there's always the sense of the familiar yet alien. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the sense that it's uh, well, lots of lots
Speaker 1: of monsters are familiar yet alien, but that they come
Speaker 1: from another world. The aquatic humanoids do. Yes, they're familiar
Speaker 1: yet yet foreign. They are something, they're there are people
Speaker 1: from the other side of the mirror. Yeah, I've got
Speaker 1: another one. Maybe, let me know what you think about this.
Speaker 1: When I think of ocean dwelling humanoids in mythology and fiction,
Speaker 1: they don't usually seem to be like party hard kind
Speaker 1: of gods or party hard monsters or humanoids. They usually
Speaker 1: seem kind of sad. There's a kind of melancholy that
Speaker 1: we associate with the underwater life and the ocean that
Speaker 1: may come from the sad faces of fish is. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's too crazy of a stretch. When
Speaker 1: I look at fish faces, I tend to project emotions
Speaker 1: on them, and those emotions are never like happiness. Fish
Speaker 1: faces always look a little bit sad, like they're disappointed
Speaker 1: in something, like they wish things were going better. Well,
Speaker 1: it comes back to the old saying a fish out
Speaker 1: of water as well, Right, there's nothing more awkward than
Speaker 1: a creature that has been taken from its natural habitat
Speaker 1: and thrown into another. The fish out of water is
Speaker 1: a thing that is vulnerable, perhaps doomed. Uh, it is
Speaker 1: in shock and uh. And therefore I think we we
Speaker 1: do see that a lot with our mur folk of
Speaker 1: various designs, in our our myths and our fictions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sad fish faces and also also kind of a shadowy realm. Right.
Speaker 1: The the the underwater world for these underwater humanoids is
Speaker 1: another world, but it's the world that the sun is
Speaker 1: on the opposite side of the barrier from. Like the
Speaker 1: sun is all ours, and the sun they get is
Speaker 1: just what filters down through the through the membrane of
Speaker 1: the water surface. Yeah. But then sometimes there are depictures
Speaker 1: again the golden cities of the Triton's Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: that's true. So there is a sense of of the glorious,
Speaker 1: but also the sense of just sort of alien hard
Speaker 1: work as well. Like, I mean, maybe I'm projecting more
Speaker 1: about what what we know from covering aquatic biology and
Speaker 1: just the the aquatic habitat, knowing that it is such
Speaker 1: a place of of intent competition. You know, when I
Speaker 1: think of the the ultimate melancholy underwater humanoids, I got
Speaker 1: to go to the Universal Monster movies, it's the gill Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the gil Man. I mean, I imagine most of the
Speaker 1: people listening to this podcast grew up with the gil Man, right,
Speaker 1: creature from the Black Lagoon nine four, part of the
Speaker 1: classic Universal Monster movie canon. Except the gil Man was
Speaker 1: different from a lot of the others in that unlike
Speaker 1: Dracula or Frankenstein, which had been the subject of novels
Speaker 1: of horror and science fiction at the time, the gill
Speaker 1: Man was the synthesis of many of these human mr
Speaker 1: fult kind of traditions, was not from like a novel
Speaker 1: that existed, right. It's uh, there are other interesting facts
Speaker 1: about it too, like, for instance, unlike Frankenstein or Dracula
Speaker 1: or the Mummy, the gil Man was a was a
Speaker 1: product of the natural world. It was just a product
Speaker 1: of the natural world that no longer had a place
Speaker 1: in the modern world. And that's why it often gets
Speaker 1: classed as a science fiction movie instead of a horror movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the science discusses is rather rather sketchy. Oh, the
Speaker 1: science is even better in the sequel, Revenge of the Creature.
Speaker 1: We should get to that in a few minutes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I grew up with it with this Sponster like I'm
Speaker 1: sure you did. I remember having I had the little
Speaker 1: glow in the dark figurine of it. As a kid,
Speaker 1: I had these Universal trading cards that had been my
Speaker 1: dad's that had all these universal monsters and some horrible
Speaker 1: jokes on them. You people at home, Robert has brought
Speaker 1: these cards in. I think we should read a couple
Speaker 1: of the jokes on the back of them. Okay, you
Speaker 1: go for it, Joe, I'll play along. Okay, joke on
Speaker 1: the first one. This so the first one shows the
Speaker 1: gil Man. On the front, it said, did you say
Speaker 1: fish for dinner? Anyone I know? And then on the
Speaker 1: back it's got this first ghost Colin, we just had
Speaker 1: a baby. Second ghost Colin, Congratulations, was it a ghoul
Speaker 1: or a boy? See? That's that's some that's some it
Speaker 1: up crypt keeper humor right there. That's that's pretty good.
Speaker 1: I got an even better one. So the front is
Speaker 1: the creature, but it's from the third movie. The creature
Speaker 1: walks among us when he sort of gets turned into
Speaker 1: a regular human, and the back has a joke that says,
Speaker 1: what's a cowardly skeleton? I don't know, Joe, what's a
Speaker 1: cowardly skeleton? A boned chicken? See that. That's probably a
Speaker 1: joke that we would get if this were the early
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, But I do not get it. Chicken. Oh man,
Speaker 1: there's this whole world of butchery jokes that we just
Speaker 1: said don't have access to. But it's great, you know,
Speaker 1: because this is a joke that no longer fits into
Speaker 1: our time, and that's basically the idea of the creature,
Speaker 1: And I think one of the it's telling that the
Speaker 1: creature continues to be celebrated despite the fact that there
Speaker 1: has not really been a creature from the Black Liogoon
Speaker 1: movie since the original trilogy, but he's taken on this
Speaker 1: sort of outsider icon status. Yeah. I'm really mortified for
Speaker 1: the time when they come into remake Creature from the
Speaker 1: Black Lagoon, I don't want it. I don't I don't
Speaker 1: think we're ready. Yeah that really, I mean Gama de
Speaker 1: Toro's The Shape of Water, which just came out Christmas.
Speaker 1: That's really the best possible creature from the Black Lagoon remake,
Speaker 1: even though it's not officially creature from the Black Looking right. No,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about like the Tom Cruise Mummy Universe remakes,
Speaker 1: where it would be like a Benedict's cumber Batch as
Speaker 1: the Gilman and then take a good go man who
Speaker 1: would play the lugs who show up in the Lagoon
Speaker 1: and start poking in with stuff. Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Just you can just point a scatter gun at an
Speaker 1: IMDb page, I guess get some candidates. So when did
Speaker 1: you first see the Gillman on screen? Um? You know,
Speaker 1: I think before I saw any of the movies. I
Speaker 1: was introduced to it in two. It came from Hollywood.
Speaker 1: That's a great one. Yeah. Basically just a bunch of
Speaker 1: old movie trailers, uh, stitched together with some at times
Speaker 1: delightful jokes, at times cringeworthy jokes, and various celebrity guest
Speaker 1: spots from like Cheech and Chong, Dan Ackroy, John Candy.
Speaker 1: They were principles on this project. They highlight a great
Speaker 1: brain attack scenes. Yes, yeah, there's a whole section on
Speaker 1: guerrilla movies. It's It's, It's, it's a it's a wonderful film.
Speaker 1: It's hard to find these days because I think that
Speaker 1: some of the rights issues prevented from being properly distributed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you don't see the gil Man showing up in
Speaker 1: repeated uses throughout other films the same way you do
Speaker 1: like Bello, the Ghosties version of Dracula, or the Frankenstein
Speaker 1: Monster exactly. Now. One of the things though about the Gilman,
Speaker 1: to really to bring it back to some of these
Speaker 1: themes we're discussing here, though, is that that outsider aspect,
Speaker 1: you know, the the idea that there's something sympathetic and
Speaker 1: yet other, or depending on how you're looking at it,
Speaker 1: threatening and yet other. And when you start teasing the
Speaker 1: gil Man apart, there's some really unsettling dimensions to the creature.
Speaker 1: The same can certainly be said of HP Lovecraft's story
Speaker 1: The Shadow Over in Smith which which is which of
Speaker 1: course was published before The Creature came to our cinemas. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it's kind of like a proto creature short story.
Speaker 1: It's got a quatic humanoids, right, it does. It has
Speaker 1: a whole race of aquatic humanoids that end up interbreeding
Speaker 1: with this rural uh fishing and trade community. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and that is like the horror of the piece. It's
Speaker 1: the idea that they're fish people and humans are breeding
Speaker 1: with them. And you know, I I first read this story,
Speaker 1: I read it in nine for the first time, and
Speaker 1: uh and I remember being like, really, um, just blown
Speaker 1: over by it. I thought it was just such a creepy,
Speaker 1: um atmospheric tale. And uh, it's a it's a little
Speaker 1: more disturbing the more one reads about it, and the
Speaker 1: one the more one knows about Lovecraft and his his
Speaker 1: uh sentiments towards other people's and other races. Yeah, Lovecraft
Speaker 1: was very imaginative, but he was not a nice person. No. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes excuses are made from this is a
Speaker 1: guy that lived nineteen thirty seven, and some people defended
Speaker 1: by saying, oh, you know, he was a product of
Speaker 1: his time, as as we all are. But he's definitely
Speaker 1: a man with some very problematic views on race, especially
Speaker 1: from modern modern readers. Absolutely, yeah, I mean, even if
Speaker 1: we're to leave out his personal letters and so forth,
Speaker 1: his fiction often falls back on the trend of championing
Speaker 1: a white English culture over everything else. And we see
Speaker 1: the other races sometimes depicted as is just outright monstrous.
Speaker 1: You often get the sense for him that any non
Speaker 1: Anglo ethnic groups are sort of allied with the monsters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's something like threatening and debility of about them in
Speaker 1: his work. Um, you know, there's a lot to unpack
Speaker 1: in in Smith and again in many ways it is
Speaker 1: a tremendous short story. It was highly influential. But as
Speaker 1: Evan Lampi discusses in his paper in praise of the
Speaker 1: in Smith Look Nautical Terror and the Specter of Atlantic
Speaker 1: History and HP Lovecrafts fiction, you can compare it to
Speaker 1: Lovecrafts earlier story, The Dunwich Horror, which presents a town
Speaker 1: with a quote degraded population of ignorant, backward, physically stunted villagers.
Speaker 1: This again encapsulating his Lovecrafts anxieties concerning not only other races,
Speaker 1: but even just like other like classes of people within
Speaker 1: the United States. But Lampy points out the quote the
Speaker 1: fall of dun which is a result of racial decline
Speaker 1: brought on by isolation, which is a source of terror
Speaker 1: in the narrative, But in in Smith it's not isolation
Speaker 1: but contact with distant lands via Atlantic commerce, that serves
Speaker 1: as their undoing. So Lampy says quote in Smith's degradation
Speaker 1: is a result of its worldliness, not its isolation. Even
Speaker 1: if the city became a backwater, it looked out to
Speaker 1: the Atlantic for much of its history, open to the world,
Speaker 1: its ideas, and its people. So in some ways, the
Speaker 1: creatures from the sea here are standing in for contact
Speaker 1: and intercourse with other cultures, right, Yeah, And and that
Speaker 1: sort of works for the sea because the sea is
Speaker 1: traditionally like a way for cultures to come together. It's
Speaker 1: the you know, the trade routes through the sea. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And then that's what what makes the story so so ikey,
Speaker 1: if you read it with all of this in mind,
Speaker 1: is that it's a tale that's describing the adoption of
Speaker 1: of of other cultures, and certainly with the the the
Speaker 1: interbreeding with other cultures as being something that is inherently
Speaker 1: monstrous that the white Anglo Saxon people should not venture out,
Speaker 1: either you know, mentally or certainly physically or sexually. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is a really troubling strain in Lovecraft's work, especially
Speaker 1: since Lovecraft is so popular with so many people today,
Speaker 1: like for his monsters and his settings and stuff that
Speaker 1: I feel like this is sort of like the part
Speaker 1: of him that nobody really wants to think about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it can be difficult because, like I said,
Speaker 1: I grew up loving Lovecraft's work, and I still have
Speaker 1: have a strong affinity for for for the love crafting
Speaker 1: and vibe, but you know, for the weird fiction world
Speaker 1: and many of the older writers from the day. But
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't stick your hand in the sand
Speaker 1: regarding the sensibilities that are they're not only president in
Speaker 1: the individual behind the stories, but in the works themselves.
Speaker 1: And so we got here from Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if this is leading to to you thinking
Speaker 1: that some of the same themes can be ported it
Speaker 1: over to Creature from the Black Lagoon. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't used to think so. I used to think
Speaker 1: that the Creature from the Black Lagoon was was somehow
Speaker 1: separate from from any real world concerns. You know. It's
Speaker 1: kind of this. I mean, it's rated G for for goodness,
Speaker 1: say the first one anyway, maybe the other two as well,
Speaker 1: but I distinctly remember saying the G rating on the
Speaker 1: first film. It's essentially a Disney movie just with a
Speaker 1: murderous monster in it. Well, but before we get into
Speaker 1: any racial aspects of the Creature from the Black logan,
Speaker 1: we should probably just take a moment to enjoy the
Speaker 1: existence of the film on its own. Narrits quote from
Speaker 1: Q magazine about Creature from the Black Lagoon. This horrendous
Speaker 1: pseudoscience fiction melodrama revolves wildly in three dimensions and with
Speaker 1: considerable excitement around a poor ancestral fish that never quite
Speaker 1: made the grade to man. All Right, Well, that's that's
Speaker 1: pretty accurate, I guess. I mean, it's it's generally it's
Speaker 1: often looked. It looked at is one of the lesser
Speaker 1: of the universal movies, though, even though the monster itself
Speaker 1: is pretty great. Yeah, it might be the best universal
Speaker 1: monster in terms of makeup and stuff. Uh well, I don't.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's that's debatable. I guess it's more ambitious
Speaker 1: makeup wise than I mean, Carlos Frankenstein is a pretty
Speaker 1: amazing makeup creation, It's true. But does Frankenstein begin with
Speaker 1: the big bang? No, it doesn't, And Creature from the
Speaker 1: Black Lagoon sure does. It starts with a big explosion.
Speaker 1: It's sort of the inverse of bride of the Monster. Uh.
Speaker 1: Starts with the big explosion, and their idea of what
Speaker 1: the big bang is is that it involved literally exploding
Speaker 1: chunks of rock. Yes, yeah, it looks like a like
Speaker 1: a like a mining detonation. And they get into this
Speaker 1: whole narrative about how the creature is a product of
Speaker 1: the Devonian period from sixty million years ago. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: pretty old, the age of the trilobytes. Yeah, that's when
Speaker 1: they went extinct, I think, right, yeah, yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: and of course you get the dunk last as back then,
Speaker 1: that's right. And then they spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: talking about the lungfish. Uh. They sort of throw a
Speaker 1: lot of science at the screen early on to try
Speaker 1: and trick you into thinking that this is a like
Speaker 1: a scientifically accurate picture. Now, it was really released in
Speaker 1: three D. Did you ever see it in three D? Robert?
Speaker 1: I never did, But that's right. They filmed the first
Speaker 1: two of these films in three D, but a lot
Speaker 1: of people, even when it very first came out, saw
Speaker 1: it flat because it was at the very end of
Speaker 1: the early fifties three D craze that it was released,
Speaker 1: so it was already becoming pass a. I actually rewatched
Speaker 1: this movie last night, and if you ever get a
Speaker 1: chance to check out the Universal Monster Movies set the
Speaker 1: remaster of Creature, it's got a great commentary track by
Speaker 1: horror scholar Tom Weaver, and I just wanted to mention
Speaker 1: a few things I learned from it, some really interesting highlights.
Speaker 1: Um one of them was where did this story come from? Like?
Speaker 1: What what is the origin of the creature? So, the
Speaker 1: producer of Creature from the Black Lagoon was this guy
Speaker 1: named William Alland, who was the He was the producer
Speaker 1: of the film. He was a Universal producer at the time,
Speaker 1: and he made his start as an actor working with
Speaker 1: Orson Wells in the Orson Wells Theater Group. He was
Speaker 1: part of the Infamous or the World's Radio Broadcast. But
Speaker 1: he was also friends with Wells and so sometimes sometime
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties, during the filming of Citizen Kane,
Speaker 1: Aland was an actor in Citizen Kane as well. He
Speaker 1: was he was the reporter who was hunting down the
Speaker 1: meaning of the word rosebud and so Aland was over
Speaker 1: at Wells house for a dinner party. Also in attendance
Speaker 1: was Dolores del Rio, who was a Mexican actress who
Speaker 1: was Orson Welles partner at the time, and a Mexican
Speaker 1: cinematographer named Gabrielle figaroa who would go on to a
Speaker 1: really stellar career. He was the cinematographer of things like
Speaker 1: The Pearl and John Houston's Night of the Iguana. And
Speaker 1: during this dinner party the story goes. Figaro starts in
Speaker 1: on this bizarre story about a half man, half fish
Speaker 1: creature that lived in the Amazon River near a certain village,
Speaker 1: and according to Figaro's telling, once a year, the fishman
Speaker 1: would come up out of the river and claim one
Speaker 1: maiden from the village as its victim, and then it
Speaker 1: would retreat eat into the water, and the village would
Speaker 1: be safe again until it emerged the next year. Apparently,
Speaker 1: at first the other guests thought Figaro was kidding, but
Speaker 1: he insisted, and he started getting worked up because he
Speaker 1: wasn't being taken seriously, and he claimed the story was
Speaker 1: absolutely true, and that he'd seen a photo of the
Speaker 1: Amazon fishman. So this was early forties, and despite how
Speaker 1: awkward of a dinner it must have been, apparently the
Speaker 1: story must have stuck in the deep inside the mind
Speaker 1: of William alland and about ten years later, when he
Speaker 1: was a producer at Universal, he decided to make a
Speaker 1: version of the Amazon Fishman story into a new entry
Speaker 1: in the Universal Monster movie canon. So he wrote up
Speaker 1: this three page treatment of the film, which was supposed
Speaker 1: to start not with the big Bang, but with a
Speaker 1: reenactment of his dinner conversation with Figaro, followed by an
Speaker 1: expedition to the Amazon with a fishman creature, and of
Speaker 1: course he wanted to have a gorgeous blonde that would
Speaker 1: get kidnapped by the fishman. Uh. And then the rest
Speaker 1: of the story was basically just a rip off of
Speaker 1: the plot of King Kong, but with a fishman instead
Speaker 1: of a giant ape. So they'd capture and bring him
Speaker 1: back to civilization, he'd escape and you know, run him
Speaker 1: up in the cities. And there's this basically the territory
Speaker 1: they explore in the three Creature of movies. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you put together the first Creature from the Black Lagoon
Speaker 1: and the second movie, Revenge of the Creature that came
Speaker 1: out in nineteen fifty five the following year together, they
Speaker 1: are the plot of King Kong. Now, one of the
Speaker 1: other things I love about the creature from the Black
Speaker 1: Lagoon is that you had. This is a product of Florida. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I've I've now been to some of these locations
Speaker 1: in Florida that are tied to it, such as Wakula Springs,
Speaker 1: which I mentioned on the show before a Fabulous Destination.
Speaker 1: That's where they shot a lot of the underwater stuff.
Speaker 1: I think maybe all of the underwater stuff. Well if
Speaker 1: I'm if memory serves, they certainly did all of the
Speaker 1: underwater stuff in the third movie there. I'm not as
Speaker 1: sure about the first one because there are a number
Speaker 1: of different spring locations that are used in some of
Speaker 1: these these films. Uh. And then they're tied into other
Speaker 1: like weird Florida places like the wiki Watchie Mermaid Show. Uh.
Speaker 1: Julie Adams stunt double from the first film was a
Speaker 1: Mermaid swimmer at the wiki watch Mermaid Show. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: That's a great fact about the movie is that anytime
Speaker 1: you see the characters above water, they're played by different
Speaker 1: actors than the people who played them below water. So
Speaker 1: like the Gilman above water was one actor they had
Speaker 1: in in I guess in Hollywood, and then below the
Speaker 1: water the Gilman was always this other guy, Rico Browning. Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a fascinating figure who's also come up on the on
Speaker 1: the podcast before because he worked briefly with John C. Lily.
Speaker 1: But crazy. Yeah, it was a crazy story there. Go
Speaker 1: back and listen to that episode if you want the
Speaker 1: details on that. But he was also tied to Wiki
Speaker 1: Watchee and I really had quite a career outside of
Speaker 1: of the Creature from the Black Cagoon. Yeah. Did you
Speaker 1: know that Rico Browning directed the underwater scenes that go
Speaker 1: on for thirty seven hours in Thunderball? I I read
Speaker 1: that the other day, but I wasn't aware of it obviously, know.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, when is the last time you saw Thunderball?
Speaker 1: I was a child watching on TVs. Okay, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: one of those Sean Connery bonds, so it has parts
Speaker 1: that are kind of fun. But the underwater fight scenes
Speaker 1: are just in term and um bowl go on forever.
Speaker 1: But there. I'm sure they're very well choreographed, especially for
Speaker 1: the time. I mean, shooting underwater back in the fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties was not easy. Yeah, I mean, if you
Speaker 1: accept them on their own terms, they're they're kind of marvelous.
Speaker 1: It's just they don't necessarily match up to to modern
Speaker 1: cinematic pacing standards. I guess another thing that's kind of
Speaker 1: interesting to me about the Creature from the Black Calagoon
Speaker 1: that Weaver mentioned in his commentary is that creature has
Speaker 1: a lot of monsters I view shots, and this is
Speaker 1: contrasted to some of the earlier Universal Monster movies and
Speaker 1: some of the other movies that Alan and Jack Arnold
Speaker 1: had done. I'm not sure if that says anything interesting
Speaker 1: about how they thought of the creature, but there is
Speaker 1: a lot in how the story was created and in
Speaker 1: how it's owned that does to me make the creature
Speaker 1: kind of a sad, melancholy, sympathetic sort of character. Unlikes
Speaker 1: a Dracula, who is a predatory demon who arrives to
Speaker 1: you know, to to consume people's souls and kill them
Speaker 1: and turn them into his servants. The Creature from the
Speaker 1: Black Lagoon is a is a sad creature who who
Speaker 1: never really I mean like he lives in the Black Lagoon.
Speaker 1: People come and invade his territory and then they start
Speaker 1: messing with him and attacking him, and and he fights back. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, he does try to kidnap Julie Adams, the
Speaker 1: leading lady in the movie, presumably because he's wowed by
Speaker 1: her beauty. Um, and so it's a King Kong kind
Speaker 1: of thing. You know, he falls in love and wants
Speaker 1: to carry her off to his cave. But you often
Speaker 1: get the sense in the Creature from the Black Lagoon
Speaker 1: movies that the real villains are like the human heroes.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, I think this is something
Speaker 1: I picked up on as a kid, is especially the
Speaker 1: more I learned about in and ultimately when I saw
Speaker 1: the third film, Uh, the creature walks among us because
Speaker 1: in this one they've captured the creature horribly burned it
Speaker 1: in the process, and then they treat the creature and
Speaker 1: there's this there's this hokey scientific explanation basically Lamarckian evolution
Speaker 1: where the creatures scales fall away and it has human
Speaker 1: flesh underneath and it's becoming more man like. And they're
Speaker 1: all these two sad scenes of the this now land
Speaker 1: creature standing in this little enclosed area surrounded by barbed wire,
Speaker 1: longing for the sea, but it can't even go back
Speaker 1: to the sea because it will drown if it does.
Speaker 1: And uh, in all these films, it's like the especially
Speaker 1: the white leads in the film, like they're never really
Speaker 1: in peril, like they're always in control. The creature just
Speaker 1: lumbers about and uh, and the only reason it's able
Speaker 1: to grab the lady is because she just stands there
Speaker 1: and screams instead of like walking away from it. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Generally the human lead characters in these films are just
Speaker 1: not very sympathetic that they're usually just coming into this
Speaker 1: monster's domain or not. I mean, it's a creature. They're
Speaker 1: coming into the creature's domain. And they're in the second movie,
Speaker 1: they even they fish for the creature with dynamite. They
Speaker 1: throw dynamite into the black lagoon. It blows him up
Speaker 1: and he floats to the surface stunned, and then they
Speaker 1: take him and they put him in a tank at
Speaker 1: Sea World and chain him to the bottom. And there's
Speaker 1: a great scene where somebody goes, I hope that chain holds,
Speaker 1: and the other guy goes, I wouldn't worry about that chain.
Speaker 1: So you see him like suffering and struggling and pulling
Speaker 1: at his chain, and eventually he gets free and this
Speaker 1: is and then runs around and yet again, it's like
Speaker 1: the heroes of the movie or the real villains It
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of the late great Gil Scott.
Speaker 1: Heron had a bit kind of a stand up bit,
Speaker 1: like a spoken word bit that he did talking about Jaws,
Speaker 1: and he was saying, like, why why you upset about
Speaker 1: Jaws attacking people? You're going where Jaws is, like you
Speaker 1: should you should only be upset if Jaws is attacking
Speaker 1: people in the city where you are, Like you've gone
Speaker 1: where you're not supposed to be. So of course there's Jaws.
Speaker 1: All right. I think we need to take a quick
Speaker 1: break and then when we come back, we'll discuss more
Speaker 1: about aquatic humanoid legends and the creature from the Black Lagoon.
Speaker 1: Thank thank alright, we're back, all right. So I mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier that I used to to think of the creature
Speaker 1: as being this mostly pure thing that was untouched by
Speaker 1: the concerns of the real world. But then I was
Speaker 1: turned onto the commentary of Robin R. Means Coleman, particularly
Speaker 1: in particular, there was an episode of the NPR podcast
Speaker 1: Code Switch about the movie get Out, and they talked
Speaker 1: about some of the history of African Americans and horror movies.
Speaker 1: So I ended up looking up Coleman's book It's titled
Speaker 1: a horror noir Blacks in American horror film from an
Speaker 1: eight nine to the present and uh and she She
Speaker 1: shares the following read on the creature quote. The gil
Speaker 1: Man is calng and Gus from the Birth of a
Speaker 1: Nation rolled into one impossible body. Bodily, the monster resembled
Speaker 1: a racist caricature. Its lips are large and exaggerated, Its
Speaker 1: skin is dark, It is seemingly feeble minded. Its movements
Speaker 1: are shambling, except for a swift adept move it displays
Speaker 1: when stealing away with a white woman. And side note,
Speaker 1: if anyone's not Fameric. Gus, who she mentions here, is
Speaker 1: the antagonist from the nineteen fift movie The Birth of
Speaker 1: the Nation. The film attributed to the revival of the
Speaker 1: klu kox Klan terrorist organization in the United States. In it,
Speaker 1: the Clan served as heroes as they lynch an African
Speaker 1: American named Gus portrayed by a white actor in black face,
Speaker 1: who chases a white woman off of a bridge. Coleman
Speaker 1: refers to this as the first real racial horror movie,
Speaker 1: and as Coleman points out, the creature from the Black Cogoon.
Speaker 1: The film features a white female researcher who is only
Speaker 1: there to scream and serve as the object of desire.
Speaker 1: A team of local Brazilians who only serve to perish.
Speaker 1: In the first portion of the film, Yeah, Uh, only
Speaker 1: and then only the white scientific elite are able to
Speaker 1: best the creature. And uh, and certainly best that they do. That.
Speaker 1: These guys are supposed to be scientists, but instead of
Speaker 1: studying it, they just destroy it. Uh, for the crime
Speaker 1: of making eyes at this white woman. Yeah. Again, that's
Speaker 1: what we've been saying. I mean that they just show
Speaker 1: up in its lagoon and then they start attacking it essentially,
Speaker 1: and we're it's like we're supposed to feel bad for them.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, there's always this ambiguity in
Speaker 1: the monster movies of old, like King Kong, Creature from
Speaker 1: the Black Calagoon, where you get the sense that maybe
Speaker 1: you're supposed to feel some sympathy for the creature. It's
Speaker 1: not quite clear how much. Yeah, and then I mean
Speaker 1: this additional um like racial read on everything just makes
Speaker 1: everything all the more problematic. She argues that the film
Speaker 1: presents a world in which the white race alone has
Speaker 1: evolved and the rest are static. She points to the
Speaker 1: work of Patrick Gander, who argues that the film isn't
Speaker 1: just about reinforcing white superiority and non white inferiority. It's
Speaker 1: a film that taps into racist fears of desegregation. Quote
Speaker 1: as the Black Monster, in leaving its proper place in
Speaker 1: the water and attempting to integrate among those on land,
Speaker 1: is a Darwinian reminder of why segregation is necessary. So
Speaker 1: and I would argue that this is all the more
Speaker 1: unsettling if you go into the third Creature movie and
Speaker 1: watch it with these scenes of this this even more
Speaker 1: human looking creature, like just behind barbed wire, just trapped,
Speaker 1: treated treated like an animal, even as you have these
Speaker 1: two characters that are engaging in these monologues about the
Speaker 1: It's the jungle versus the Stars, about how how we
Speaker 1: need to be kinder to the creature instead of violent
Speaker 1: towards it. It's it's it's a very flawed and handled film,
Speaker 1: in my opinion. But it's interesting how that this this
Speaker 1: read of this racial read of the Creature um which
Speaker 1: some of you might not care for, but I think
Speaker 1: on one hand, it meshes with with with what was
Speaker 1: going on in the Shadow over in Smith. I think
Speaker 1: it also echoes a lot of these ideas that we've
Speaker 1: already discussed of the the aquatic humanoid as being this
Speaker 1: this other, this uh this uh this creature that I mean,
Speaker 1: think to the triton and the siren. Like the siren
Speaker 1: is beautiful and desirable. The triton, though the masculine version
Speaker 1: is to be feared, is more more brutal. And that
Speaker 1: that lines up with with various racist depictions in which
Speaker 1: the female of another race is is an exotic object
Speaker 1: of desire and then the male counterpart part is depicted
Speaker 1: as something brutish. I'm not trying to ruin a classic
Speaker 1: film for anybody, but I do think this, this read
Speaker 1: is really worth considering. We need to start thinking about
Speaker 1: about the era that the film came from and uh,
Speaker 1: the attitudes of the of the time, uh, and what
Speaker 1: that the film is supposed to say to a modern viewer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that is a totally valid interpretive. Lens I.
Speaker 1: I don't know of any evidence that this is what
Speaker 1: the filmmakers consciously had in mind. I think it's probably not,
Speaker 1: but that you can certainly see how these sorts of
Speaker 1: themes come out from, you know, the unconscious forces that
Speaker 1: guide our creativity, right, very much so. So as we
Speaker 1: begin to close out this episode, let's let's return into
Speaker 1: some of the trends that we've identified and skirted around.
Speaker 1: Uh were concerning the various myths and fictions of aquatic humanoids,
Speaker 1: like what do they what do they represent? What do
Speaker 1: they convey? Obviously the mirror world, that's right, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: unknown depths as well as the dangers of the sea.
Speaker 1: The feature we so often see in legends of monsters,
Speaker 1: which is hybridity, bringing together different features of different animals
Speaker 1: and humans. Yeah, and just mysterious biology as well, animals
Speaker 1: again washing up on the beach, and also humans with
Speaker 1: birth defects such as uh siren o'melia, which is a
Speaker 1: birth defect that involves the fusing of the legs together.
Speaker 1: It's a really depressing topic, but I have I was,
Speaker 1: I have read a couple of papers making the argument
Speaker 1: that some mermaid legends might be based on these defects. Also,
Speaker 1: we've mentioned mermaids as harbingers of doom as well as
Speaker 1: sources of divine aid. There's the idea that it's the
Speaker 1: erotic other, it's the monstrous other, that the evil or
Speaker 1: monstrous feminine and uh, and just the idea too, that
Speaker 1: it can be depicted as a racial other to that
Speaker 1: does not belong in our world. It's amazing that water
Speaker 1: has so much power to carry so much symbolic weight
Speaker 1: and and to project so many different symbolic meanings. Like
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about the way it's this mirror world in
Speaker 1: the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but then also the
Speaker 1: way in shadow over in Smith that can reper reason
Speaker 1: the idea of commerce with the rest of the planet. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you see again. You you can think of the
Speaker 1: Golden cities and which people are said to live, or
Speaker 1: you can just think of dark, depressing depths. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's it's just put a proof positive again
Speaker 1: that there there are no simple monsters, no matter how
Speaker 1: shallow you think a particular fictional or even mythological creature.
Speaker 1: Maybe when you start teasing it apart, there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot going on there. There's a whole legacy that it's
Speaker 1: built upon. What's the name of the cathulic city, the
Speaker 1: city under the under the ocean where he's where he
Speaker 1: hangs out. I believe it's really a or something to
Speaker 1: that effect. I wonder how that compares to the to
Speaker 1: the Golden Palace of Triton. I'm thinking it's might be
Speaker 1: a little darker, a little less less well lit, a
Speaker 1: little less golden. Totally random thought. Have you ever seen
Speaker 1: the coins that are the currency of Iceland? No, do
Speaker 1: they have mermaids on them? Now, I haven't made it
Speaker 1: to the mermaid coins. Maybe it really high value they do.
Speaker 1: But the coins, I remember, they are great compared to
Speaker 1: our coins because our coins have like politicians on them,
Speaker 1: and their coins have all the children of Dagon, so
Speaker 1: they've got crab coins, they've got trout coins, like all
Speaker 1: of the sea creatures make it onto the currency. That
Speaker 1: has to be better for teaching kids about money. Like
Speaker 1: my my son would would would be far more into
Speaker 1: coins if they each had a cool animal on them.
Speaker 1: So take note, uh, Nations of the World. Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to close out this episode,
Speaker 1: but there is going to be a follow up episode
Speaker 1: in which we will discuss some of the science of
Speaker 1: aquatic humanoids. Uh. And if you don't think there's any
Speaker 1: science there, well just tune in and you'll be surprised.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, check out all the previous episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's Stuff to Blow your
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