Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and Halloween Hangover Week continues. Rob Today, I think you
Speaker 1: wanted to talk a little bit about melting. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: basically the reason for this episode is that we are
Speaker 1: publishing this the first week of November, but we were
Speaker 1: recording it the last week of October, so we didn't
Speaker 1: want to work on any non Halloween material the week
Speaker 1: of Halloween. Uh So Halloween on the show is lasting
Speaker 1: an extra week. Uh So we're going to get into
Speaker 1: some topics here. They are a little bit horror themed
Speaker 1: in places, but also I think go beyond horror and
Speaker 1: maybe just get into a study of a very particular
Speaker 1: symbol or metaphor in the human experience and a discussion
Speaker 1: of what it means. You know, one of the first
Speaker 1: movies we talked about in October this year, I think
Speaker 1: it was the first one was was the House of
Speaker 1: Wax movie starring Vincent Price. So we did a whole
Speaker 1: episode about wax horror and one of the things that
Speaker 1: you see time and again in these wax murder movies
Speaker 1: is there's the scene where the Palace of wax burns
Speaker 1: down and you watch all of the wax figures melting. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's got to happen in every one of these stories,
Speaker 1: and there's clearly some kind of psychological thing going on
Speaker 1: where the imagery they're is supposed to resemble human beings
Speaker 1: actually melting, and that's what the fascination is in. But
Speaker 1: another thing about it that just recently struck me as
Speaker 1: a reason to have those wax figure melting scenes is
Speaker 1: it's almost like a way of sneaking in gore, extra
Speaker 1: gore around the sensors. Like if you couldn't get a
Speaker 1: melting human past you know, the m P A A
Speaker 1: or whatever, you probably can get some melting humanoid wax figure. Years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder like how much violence and gore involving a
Speaker 1: clear um mannequin or wax figure, you know, just a
Speaker 1: pure effigy could you get away with um? I mean
Speaker 1: to a certain extent. You see that with other things, right,
Speaker 1: Like you hear about movies where they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we decided that the monster or the villain should have
Speaker 1: green blood, because then we can use as much as
Speaker 1: we want, but if we're red, we couldn't show it
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. So but yeah, I think you
Speaker 1: know it kind of it ties back to a lot
Speaker 1: of the themes that we talked about in the Wax episode,
Speaker 1: you know, like what happens when we watch violence involving
Speaker 1: an effigy or some sort of sacrament involving an effigy.
Speaker 1: Uh it, you know, we we can't help but associate
Speaker 1: then those movements, violent or otherwise with the person that
Speaker 1: it is resembling, or like just a human in general.
Speaker 1: Uh And it's it's fitting that we kicked off our
Speaker 1: Halloween season this year with Wax and we're going to
Speaker 1: close it out with the Melt. Now, there are a
Speaker 1: couple of ways you could look at this. One I
Speaker 1: think is just there is a good melting scene in
Speaker 1: a movie, such as in Raiders of the Lost Ark
Speaker 1: has a famous classic Nazi melting scene. But then on
Speaker 1: the other end of the spectrum, you can you can go,
Speaker 1: you can really embrace it to the nth degree and
Speaker 1: go full melt movie, which is a sort of sub
Speaker 1: genre of its own, of like horror, gore, gross out
Speaker 1: films that are all just about people melting. Well, it's
Speaker 1: this kind of the difference between a yeah, like a
Speaker 1: blockbuster like Raiders, and a smaller picture or a B picture.
Speaker 1: Right like Raiders is a film that does a lot
Speaker 1: of things exceedingly well, and one of them is the
Speaker 1: use of a practical special effect to make it look
Speaker 1: like someone's melting. But a lot of times with these
Speaker 1: be with the B film, you know, you're lucky if
Speaker 1: you get one thing that's done really well, and sometimes
Speaker 1: like that is the that is the push with the film,
Speaker 1: like that is the energy of the film, Like, look,
Speaker 1: we can do a really good melting scene. Let's build
Speaker 1: a movie around our billy to do this, or at
Speaker 1: least our desire to do this. You know. Well, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like how a B movie can maybe have
Speaker 1: a budget for one star, so you can just get
Speaker 1: Vincent Price or something, and then you try to build
Speaker 1: it around that star. Or maybe if you just have
Speaker 1: a budget for a really good makeup effects artists, then
Speaker 1: you build the whole film around that. Yeah, exactly, and
Speaker 1: and in many cases that that can be enough. Um.
Speaker 1: I also think it's certainly a case, especially with some
Speaker 1: of these earlier pictures we're talking about, where they they
Speaker 1: strike a chord, and they they for like there's something
Speaker 1: about the melting human that resonates strongly with us and
Speaker 1: makes us want to go back and re examine it.
Speaker 1: Maybe not so deeply certainly with some of these films,
Speaker 1: but we have to come back for more. There's just
Speaker 1: something intriguing about about the melting human. And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of it does go back to wax effigies
Speaker 1: and some of the things we discussed in that past episode,
Speaker 1: but in terms of just the cinnamon that we grow
Speaker 1: up on. For my own part, and I feel like
Speaker 1: other people probably share this cinematic legacy as well. I
Speaker 1: think of Eights of course from eighty one, which we
Speaker 1: just just discussed. But the other big one, of course
Speaker 1: is the Wizard of Oz, which is not the goryous
Speaker 1: scene ever, but a very memorable scene often seen at
Speaker 1: a young age for the first time, in which the
Speaker 1: wicked Witch of the West is splashed with water and
Speaker 1: melts away into like smoking nothingness. The feeling of that
Speaker 1: scene is very much defined by the fact that it's
Speaker 1: water that does it. If it had been sulfuric acid
Speaker 1: or something that supposedly melts her, that scene would be
Speaker 1: more horrific, but the fact that she's melted by water
Speaker 1: gives it a fairy tale kind of quality that actually
Speaker 1: makes it less body horrific, less gruesome, and more magical
Speaker 1: and and like something that would happen in a grim's
Speaker 1: fairy tale. Yeah, yeah, exactly, something that the purity of
Speaker 1: water is the only thing you could destroy such a
Speaker 1: like a foul creature, right though, that would be a
Speaker 1: hilarious ending to the movie where they find out the
Speaker 1: secret is you've got to throw sulfuric acid on the witch. Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna get more into the contemplative part
Speaker 1: of this podcast in a bit, but we need to
Speaker 1: go ahead and talk about a few other melt movies
Speaker 1: before we move forward, just to establish the firm ground
Speaker 1: upon which we're going to build everything else. And I
Speaker 1: think one of the one of the big ones is
Speaker 1: all I don't know, maybe for some of you have
Speaker 1: never heard of it, but a big one for me
Speaker 1: is seven The Incredible Melting Man. Then the plot here is,
Speaker 1: uh was it was not original to this picture. There
Speaker 1: have been some There's been at least one other film,
Speaker 1: probably more before it, that explored a similar contemplation, and
Speaker 1: that is, Uh, you have an astronaut goes into space,
Speaker 1: is exposed to cosmic radiation, and he brings this home.
Speaker 1: In this case, the radiation has caused him to melt,
Speaker 1: and he can slow down this melting by eating human flesh.
Speaker 1: And he also has radioactive powers. If I'm remembering correctly, Uh,
Speaker 1: seems kind of similar to the plot of Monster A
Speaker 1: Go Go, if I recall correct Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: there's um, there's the there's a move with Frankenstein in
Speaker 1: the title that has a similar element, like like clearly
Speaker 1: meets the space monster. Is that I think it had
Speaker 1: a similar plot. Yeah, and I think there are more
Speaker 1: films because obviously you you're dealing with the this this
Speaker 1: one is perhaps the kind of an homage to the
Speaker 1: radioactive cinema of the previous decades. And like this was
Speaker 1: on everybody's mind in the post war period in the
Speaker 1: in the shadow of the Mushroom Cloud, you know, this
Speaker 1: was these were the kinds of of of myths we
Speaker 1: kept stirring up. Now, many of you probably know this
Speaker 1: film because it was featured on Mystery Science Theater three
Speaker 1: thousand back in the day. And the other thing that's
Speaker 1: really key about it is that the legendary Rick Baker
Speaker 1: did effects on it, and the effects are quite terrifying.
Speaker 1: Of these this like Melting Man, It's just kind of
Speaker 1: like perpetually melting despite throughout the film. Um and uh,
Speaker 1: maybe in part because of the effectiveness of those effects. This,
Speaker 1: this is what started out as an intended horror parody
Speaker 1: became a straight horror film. Like the producers apparently took
Speaker 1: comedian scenes out of the picture in order to emphasize
Speaker 1: the horror. Uh. That's something about the Melting Man, especially
Speaker 1: when depicted convincingly through you know, Someone's worth like Rick Baker's,
Speaker 1: that you just can't ignore. Movies don't usually go that
Speaker 1: way during production. It's much more common for them to
Speaker 1: go the other way, where you embrace comedy and add
Speaker 1: more comedy in. Yeah, it's like this looks this look
Speaker 1: looks dumb. Let's have it up a little bit. Let's
Speaker 1: pretend like we meant to do this. Uh. An interesting
Speaker 1: fact about the melt effects in this film. Um, the
Speaker 1: Rick big Baker films apparently inspired uh, the effects in RoboCop.
Speaker 1: You know, there's an infamous scene in RoboCop where one
Speaker 1: of the Hinchmen gets toxic waste of splattered all over
Speaker 1: them and they started melting. Yeah, a scene that really
Speaker 1: shook me when I saw it way too early in
Speaker 1: my life. Children should not watch RoboCop. No, not at all.
Speaker 1: So in these two previous examples, we mentioned the melt
Speaker 1: almost being in parody, uh, or you know, in the
Speaker 1: case of RoboCop playing into sort of an ultra violent
Speaker 1: satire of American culture. But there are more comedic examples
Speaker 1: to consider as well. One of them, I believe you've
Speaker 1: seen this, and I think we've talked about this and
Speaker 1: before Joe, but Street Trash. It's been a long time
Speaker 1: since I saw it, but my my friend Ben showed
Speaker 1: it to me many many years ago, and it is
Speaker 1: that is a absolutely grotesque film of the highest order. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is a it's a I guess it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be a black comedy. Uh, you know, it's filled with gallows, humor,
Speaker 1: um and just just atrocities. It's just an atrocious film
Speaker 1: you should not watch unless you were into atrocious nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties cinema, even less for children than RoboCop. Yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it is just wall to wall humans melting and disgusting nastiness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the the the Key melt and it has a
Speaker 1: fabulous melt scene in it involves this this plot element
Speaker 1: where there is cheap liquor that's going around. I think
Speaker 1: it's called like Tina fly Viper. Yeah. They find it
Speaker 1: in the bay cement of a liquor store and starts
Speaker 1: selling it and it makes people melt. Yeah. Like there's
Speaker 1: a scene where a like a homeless individual or a
Speaker 1: hobo or or something, um it, gets a bottle of this,
Speaker 1: starts drinking and then starts melting whilst sitting on a
Speaker 1: like a discarded toilet out in a junk field, and
Speaker 1: he melts into the toilet and then goes down the
Speaker 1: toilet bowl. But they do it in a way where
Speaker 1: it's like, it's not like a purely gory melt like
Speaker 1: it has. It's kind of a technicolor melt, So it's
Speaker 1: not actually as bloody or gross as I'm making it sound.
Speaker 1: It's more surreal and comic. Bookie, Well, it is gross,
Speaker 1: but as he melts into the toilet, he's turning Lisa
Speaker 1: Frank colors, so he's like blue and green and pink
Speaker 1: as he melts. Now, another movie that has uh, if
Speaker 1: not absolute melting, something very much like melting troll To
Speaker 1: from ah yes where. Uh So I watched troll To
Speaker 1: probably at least fifty times when I was in college.
Speaker 1: But it's weird because now it's been a while since
Speaker 1: I've seen it. We're we're about to rewatch it for
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema. But what I recall is there's like
Speaker 1: nilbog milk in this town full of goblins, and when
Speaker 1: people drink it or eat the food there, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: they get poisoned and then their bodies are reduced to
Speaker 1: this kind of green sap as they slowly turn into
Speaker 1: plants and green jello, and they become food for vegetarian
Speaker 1: goblins pretty much. Yeah. So if that sounds intriguing, uh,
Speaker 1: pay attention to our feed. We'll come back and discuss
Speaker 1: it in in full into a little bit. Another melt movie,
Speaker 1: this one from the eighties is the Stuff. This one
Speaker 1: is by the Master Larry Cohen, starring Saturday Night Live's
Speaker 1: Garrett Morris. And this is one I haven't actually seen,
Speaker 1: but I have seen the key melting scene in it,
Speaker 1: in which Garrett Morris kind of mutate slash slash melts
Speaker 1: into a big blob of killer cool whip. If I recall,
Speaker 1: the real moral of the stuff is that you need
Speaker 1: a strong f DA with good inspection provisions and regulations
Speaker 1: on consumer goods, because I think it's like a packaged
Speaker 1: yogurt product or something like that that ends up turning
Speaker 1: people into into liquid in that. Let's see, what are
Speaker 1: some other melt films that come to mind, um or
Speaker 1: at least scenes that have films that have good melt
Speaker 1: scenes in them. Uh, these are all played for straight horror.
Speaker 1: But there's the Devil's Rain, that's where the rain melts
Speaker 1: the Satanist. There's some melting in The Evil Dead. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the Gremlins movies have some fabulous melting. Warlock has a
Speaker 1: melt scene. As I recall, The Blob is actually a
Speaker 1: wonderful melt film, and that not only is the Blob
Speaker 1: itself very amorphous and melty, but it's it's always just
Speaker 1: anytime it gets a person, it starts melting them, starts
Speaker 1: dissolving them, digesting them. Uh in real grotesque time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Blob, I think is a is an underrated type
Speaker 1: of horror because something you know, if we were like
Speaker 1: smaller types of animals, there could be real blob type
Speaker 1: horror to worry about in the real world. I don't
Speaker 1: think there are any major predators that would uh that
Speaker 1: would prey on a human sized organism by digesting it
Speaker 1: externally with enzymes. But that happens all the time to
Speaker 1: you know, smaller types of creatures in the ocean or
Speaker 1: in the like insect world. I mean, basically, a lot
Speaker 1: of what a spider does to you if it catches
Speaker 1: you is it will sort of spit enzymes into you
Speaker 1: that dissolve your inner body parts, melt them and turn
Speaker 1: them into a soup that the spider can suck out
Speaker 1: of you. Do you remember the of I know the
Speaker 1: answer to this. I know you remember these guys. But
Speaker 1: the winged creatures and beast Master, yes, they do a
Speaker 1: form of external digestion on the creatures they catch. They
Speaker 1: like wrap them in their big wings and then they
Speaker 1: just like turned to jelly and then presumably they eat
Speaker 1: at least some of the jelly nice um. Other films,
Speaker 1: let's see take more of a weird sigh five approach
Speaker 1: to melting. A time cop which we've we've mentioned on
Speaker 1: the show before, features a great melt seat when a
Speaker 1: character comes into physical contact with their past self. Uh,
Speaker 1: they melt away into nothingness together. I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 1: c g I melt scene. Yeah, it's a c g
Speaker 1: I melt scene which doesn't hold up as well today,
Speaker 1: but at the time was was pretty crazy. As I
Speaker 1: recall all c g I seemed like that in the nineties.
Speaker 1: You remember when we were all saying how good the
Speaker 1: c G I and Mortal Kombat the motion picture was.
Speaker 1: What's the other films that come to mind. Toxic Avenger
Speaker 1: has some melting in it. Um Society by Brian Jasna
Speaker 1: is another sort of video nasty that has a certain
Speaker 1: amount of orgiastic melting between characters, pet characters melting into
Speaker 1: each other, etcetera. There's a really spectacular melting scene in
Speaker 1: Fright Night where the vampire is familiar in that movie,
Speaker 1: So the vampires Chris Srandon, but he's got this apparently
Speaker 1: human help or named Billy. Uh, and this is I
Speaker 1: don't know, there's something in a lot of vampire movies
Speaker 1: have as like the vampire can't go out in the daytime,
Speaker 1: so he's got a helper who goes out and does
Speaker 1: stuff with him or doest to for him during the day.
Speaker 1: For example, in um in Salem's Lot, this is the
Speaker 1: character Straker, who's played by uh, what's his name, James Mason.
Speaker 1: There's just wonderful in the role, you know, back priest,
Speaker 1: back Shaman. Uh. But but in this movie, the James
Speaker 1: Mason role is I can't remember the actor's name who
Speaker 1: plays him, but the character's name is Billy. And later
Speaker 1: in the film, when the when the characters start fighting Billy,
Speaker 1: I think they shoot him with a revolver and they
Speaker 1: discover he's not quite human at all. Actually, or if
Speaker 1: he is human, he's cursed in some kind of way,
Speaker 1: because after he has killed, he melts into a green
Speaker 1: puddle of of bones and goo. U is it Roddy McDowell. No, No,
Speaker 1: Roddy McDowell plays the Peter Cushing character in the movie.
Speaker 1: He plays an actor who regularly plays Van Helsing type
Speaker 1: roles in in films. Within the film, I just looked
Speaker 1: him up. The actor's name is Jonathan Stark. Looks like
Speaker 1: he's also in the House to the second story and
Speaker 1: in an episode of Tales from the Crypt. Maybe we'll
Speaker 1: have to come back to that another time. Now. Another
Speaker 1: film that some of you might be thinking of it
Speaker 1: involves like melting, external digestion, etcetera. Is of course David
Speaker 1: Cronenberg's The Fly, which we we recently did, or sometime
Speaker 1: earlier this year we did an episode on particularly we
Speaker 1: we discussed the themes of the plasma pool UH in
Speaker 1: that picture, because I I think David Cronenberg's film here
Speaker 1: is worth focusing on, because certainly there's a lot of
Speaker 1: meltish body heart that's going on in that film, characters
Speaker 1: basically rotting and falling apart, etcetera. But the Brundle character
Speaker 1: brings up this idea of the plasma pool is this
Speaker 1: thing to to dive into and be reborn out off,
Speaker 1: which itself is I think nicely represents the other side
Speaker 1: of the coin with idea of melting uh, because it
Speaker 1: brings with it again the idea of rebirth. And we
Speaker 1: see a version of this in the natural world as well.
Speaker 1: It's not all just amba's digesting things. We also see
Speaker 1: um this jellification, this this melting and then rebirth in metamorphosis.
Speaker 1: So we often don't realize this, but but what a
Speaker 1: caterpillar does inside a chrystalis or cocoon is essentially a
Speaker 1: full body melt. It digests itself, It releases enzymes that
Speaker 1: dissolve almost all of its tissues, reducing itself to an
Speaker 1: oozing goop. Only the imaginal discs survived this process, and
Speaker 1: these develop into the adult body parts of the mature
Speaker 1: butterfly er moth that ultimately emerges. So again, the larval
Speaker 1: form must melt before it becomes an adult. It must
Speaker 1: be granted within the protective frame of the crystalis or cocoon.
Speaker 1: It must give up all of its hard exteriors. It
Speaker 1: must liqui I undergo a self digestion, become an ouze,
Speaker 1: and then that ouze becomes the butterfly. It is weird
Speaker 1: to think about, if you focus on it for a second,
Speaker 1: that across every generation of humans, the body plan has
Speaker 1: to return to a mass of undifferentiated cells that you
Speaker 1: know you you basically turn into a little lump of google.
Speaker 1: And then, of course can the body can be reconstituted
Speaker 1: based on on recombined DNA from the parents. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: for a while, this line of organisms coming down the ages,
Speaker 1: ever since the beginning of life on Earth, has always
Speaker 1: been reduced back to a kind of primordial ooze with
Speaker 1: each generation every time it changes over. Yeah, I wonder
Speaker 1: if especially as we get more into you know, that's
Speaker 1: certainly the modern age and more scientifically literate, um, you know, public,
Speaker 1: I wonder if that plays into our appreciation of the melt,
Speaker 1: at least on a subconscious level. This idea that we
Speaker 1: are all all essentially creamy Newgat and therefore to see
Speaker 1: us reduced to creamy newgat, uh, you know, fills this
Speaker 1: with a certain wonder or horror or just sort of
Speaker 1: you know, kind of spiritual um awe. Yeah, our genetic
Speaker 1: essence at least is contained in the new Gat, and
Speaker 1: we could be rebuilt from the Newgat. By the way,
Speaker 1: on the topic of imaginal self, I once wrote an
Speaker 1: article about gremlins for How Stuff Works, in which I
Speaker 1: tried to make scientific sense of the gremlins biology and
Speaker 1: the gremlin magua relationship, which is was a challenge to do,
Speaker 1: but I felt like the closest we could come to
Speaker 1: describing some of the things that happened, like the the
Speaker 1: water triggering um a sexual butting or the or specifically
Speaker 1: the idea of sunlight melting that might be linked to
Speaker 1: some sort of biological impulse to self digest within the
Speaker 1: cocoon that has then triggered outside of the cocoon. Uh.
Speaker 1: In the case of light exposed magua and gremlins, you
Speaker 1: should have been present at that scene depicted in the
Speaker 1: Key and Peel skit where they're kind of a lot
Speaker 1: of gremlins too. Yes, yes, yes, that's one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll
Speaker 1: be right back. Thank thank you, Thank alright, we're back. Well. So,
Speaker 1: with regard to organisms actually melting, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: like turning into a liquid or a goo. Uh, there
Speaker 1: was something I briefly wanted to touch on, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of parallel to some things we've talked about on
Speaker 1: the show in the past. For example, when we did
Speaker 1: an episode I think it was last year about pressure
Speaker 1: about where we talked about and say, you know, organisms
Speaker 1: that thrive under high pressure deep in the ocean. One
Speaker 1: of the things we talked about is that sometimes when
Speaker 1: fish from deep waters are brought up to the surface,
Speaker 1: they can undergo a kind of traumatic body response to
Speaker 1: the lower pressures that they're exposed to on the surface.
Speaker 1: So there are are, for example, types of rock fish
Speaker 1: or other fish that can uh, that can suffer eversions
Speaker 1: of their digestive systems as their swim bladders expand with
Speaker 1: lower pressure when they're brought up to the surface, so
Speaker 1: it can actually actually like push their stomach out through
Speaker 1: their mouth, which is really disgusting, don't knocket. Some organisms
Speaker 1: do that as part of their they're just natural behavior.
Speaker 1: There are certain sharks that do that too, if if
Speaker 1: memory serves their sharks that do that as a way
Speaker 1: of emptying their their stomach if need be. It's called
Speaker 1: stomach aversion. Well for these fish, it is not part
Speaker 1: of the plan. It's not voluntary. No, it happens because
Speaker 1: like as they get as they rise up, the lower
Speaker 1: pressure makes their swim the gas in their swim bladder
Speaker 1: naturally expand. It pushes everything else out of the way,
Speaker 1: and their guts get like pushed out through their mouth,
Speaker 1: which is yeah, not good to happen to them. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there are similar things that can happen, though not
Speaker 1: not quite as stomach aversion, a little bit more melty
Speaker 1: that happened to other organisms. The example I was looking
Speaker 1: at was a type of fish that is known as
Speaker 1: the snail fish, and there are a number of different
Speaker 1: types of snail fish. This is a it's it's a
Speaker 1: genus known as the lie parody, and Lie parody often
Speaker 1: dwell in very deep, very cold waters, especially in ocean trenches.
Speaker 1: And so I was reading a New York Times article
Speaker 1: about a discovery of several new types of snail fish
Speaker 1: in uh. The article is by very Neic Greenwood, and
Speaker 1: it was about discoveries of three new types of snail
Speaker 1: fish of the Atacama Trench, which is off the coast
Speaker 1: of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. And this trench
Speaker 1: gets very deep. It's almost five miles deep and down
Speaker 1: in the dark. There some researchers, I think some of
Speaker 1: them more associated with Newcastle University. They discovered these three
Speaker 1: new varieties of snail fish. But they were describing the
Speaker 1: difficulty in bringing these fish up to the surface because
Speaker 1: the fish are adapted to these extremely deep waters. And
Speaker 1: so they were speaking with a research nature named Thomas
Speaker 1: Linley who's with Newcastle University, who says that their tissue
Speaker 1: is almost entirely gel quote. They are really supported by
Speaker 1: the water around them, so they do have some hard
Speaker 1: body parts. They have teeth. Most species of snail fish
Speaker 1: have these kind of blunt, little cuppy kind of teeth,
Speaker 1: and then they've got tiny bones, according to this article,
Speaker 1: especially in the inner ear, and these are really the
Speaker 1: main hard parts of their bodies. So if you grab
Speaker 1: some of these snail fish and then you try to
Speaker 1: bring them up to the surface to examine them, uh,
Speaker 1: it all just goes to hell because when they're no
Speaker 1: longer confined by the hydrostatic pressure of the deep water
Speaker 1: and the extremely low temperatures of this deep ocean trench,
Speaker 1: they essentially just melt when they get to the surface.
Speaker 1: Quoting Thomas Linley, they fall apart at like the molecular level.
Speaker 1: It's like a ghost thing that's disappearing in front of
Speaker 1: your eye ways. And you might think, well, why why
Speaker 1: would a fish be that fragile, you know, wouldn't need
Speaker 1: to have a little bit more structural integrity to survive.
Speaker 1: But no, it's because it's adapted to these extreme conditions
Speaker 1: that are present only in this deep ocean trench where
Speaker 1: it lives. Uh. Greenwood writes quote. This may be because
Speaker 1: shallow water snailfish gain adaptations that let them thrive in
Speaker 1: the deepest ocean where they have plenty of prey. So
Speaker 1: there's less competition down there because less stuff can survive
Speaker 1: there quote. But then because of these physiological changes, they
Speaker 1: find themselves unable to rise to higher levels to leave
Speaker 1: and thus are never seen by humans. So at the
Speaker 1: deepest parts of the ocean and these trenches, you get
Speaker 1: these islands of adapted organisms, including these types of snail fish,
Speaker 1: that have to make major changes to their bodies through
Speaker 1: evolution in order to survive down there. But then once
Speaker 1: they make those changes, they're kind of stuck right there,
Speaker 1: not going to migrate out of these deep water trenches
Speaker 1: once they're there, because now they bodies that can't survive
Speaker 1: at the lower pressures and higher temperatures of more shallow water.
Speaker 1: It's like becoming a professional podcaster, you realize, oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can handle um different depths.
Speaker 1: Um may be stuck down here. Yeah, you're in the
Speaker 1: like the challenger deep of career paths where you're I
Speaker 1: specialize in talking about science and horror movies. Yeah, people,
Speaker 1: it's really useful skill, you know. It's this is actually
Speaker 1: ties in with a lot of stuff we're talking about,
Speaker 1: because even in this we're joking about the fear of change,
Speaker 1: and and perhaps clinging to stability um and uh and
Speaker 1: in the case of this this creature, this is a
Speaker 1: creature that thrives in this this this narrow environment that
Speaker 1: is pretty stable, but it cannot handle change at all. Uh.
Speaker 1: And melting in our fear of melting, our desire to melt, etcetera.
Speaker 1: A lot of this does seem to center around how
Speaker 1: we deal with change. And I think one thing to
Speaker 1: keep in mind is that melting. We've certainly touched on
Speaker 1: a lot of horrifying example, but melting doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be bad. I just look to our language, um, you know,
Speaker 1: because we have we have some really positive ideas and
Speaker 1: metaphors that relate to melting at time, like the idea
Speaker 1: of melting with joy or seeing something or experiencing something
Speaker 1: that quote just makes you melt. Um. There's uh, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: especially if you if you were someone you know UH
Speaker 1: enjoys like metal or dub step music or some other
Speaker 1: kind of genre that has kind of a I don't know,
Speaker 1: an atmosphere of intensity to it. Sometimes you'll say loudness,
Speaker 1: love loudness. You'll hear about how it is it is
Speaker 1: face melting right uh. And and that and that is
Speaker 1: largely depicted as being a positive thing. Yeah. One of
Speaker 1: my favorite musicians is Neil Young, and I remember an
Speaker 1: interview many years ago where Conan O'Brien was interviewing him,
Speaker 1: and he he told him, I watched you at some
Speaker 1: concert play a rendition of rocking in the free world
Speaker 1: that made my eyes melt. It's clearly a compliment. Did
Speaker 1: he mean crying? Was he crying? No? No, I think
Speaker 1: he just meant like it was so powerful it like
Speaker 1: destroyed my body. But he meant it as a compliment. Okay,
Speaker 1: because yeah, because I think sometimes crying plays into how
Speaker 1: we're loosely thinking about melting. But it doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: be a case where we're using it as like a
Speaker 1: euphemism for for crying, you know, or trying to sort
Speaker 1: of cover up the fact that we're crying, like trying
Speaker 1: to be like hyper masculine about crying. That doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be the way that people use melt. No. But
Speaker 1: I think there's a very interesting thing that if you
Speaker 1: look at movie scenes where characters are very first beginning
Speaker 1: to melt, so the melt scene is happening very often,
Speaker 1: a place for it to start is with some kind
Speaker 1: of piece, like a drop of liquid rolling down the face,
Speaker 1: almost like a tear drop does That is interesting? I
Speaker 1: guess it does kind of look like, like, you know,
Speaker 1: just water going down the face. You could sort of
Speaker 1: interpret it as like flesh or the surface of flesh melting.
Speaker 1: But that's a good point. So I was looking around
Speaker 1: to see if anybody, you know, done any you know,
Speaker 1: serious contemplation on this idea of of of melting, of
Speaker 1: you know, there being a fear of melting or desire
Speaker 1: to melt um. Because, as we've discussed on the show before,
Speaker 1: you do see psychological delusions such as that of feeling
Speaker 1: that your body as is as brittle as glass and
Speaker 1: may shatter, so why not melting as well? Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are all kinds of uh, psychological conditions that can disrupt
Speaker 1: various features of the body schema, or can disrupt types
Speaker 1: of appropriate reception where you since, where your body is,
Speaker 1: what it feels like, what's happening to it. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I did not find anything. If anyone out there has
Speaker 1: run across it, I am happy to be corrected, but
Speaker 1: I'm also I'm not I'm not going to say I'm
Speaker 1: disappointed that people are not dealing with a psychological delusion
Speaker 1: that their bodies are melting, like I'm I'm happy that
Speaker 1: people or spared that at least. Uh. But I did
Speaker 1: come across studies in Nondeterministic Psychology by James L. Fausage. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is the National Institute of Psychotherapies in nineteen and
Speaker 1: in it the author discusses psychotherapy approaches that make use
Speaker 1: of transformative melting metaphors during the waking state of consciousness,
Speaker 1: which I found quite interesting. So this is not you know,
Speaker 1: this is very much about like using various mental images
Speaker 1: as a way of connecting with the patient and psychotherapy,
Speaker 1: but it touches on some of the things we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. So in this paper, Fassage Minsent mentions the
Speaker 1: melting of a shield with one's warmth. So that's like
Speaker 1: there's a shield between you and another person or another thing,
Speaker 1: and your warmth can be the thing that melts the shield,
Speaker 1: So you're like a an instrument of melting. And then
Speaker 1: there's quote the fear of melting, of letting go and
Speaker 1: becoming vulnerable without adequate defenses, which I think is is
Speaker 1: very key. And then there's the fear of melting completely
Speaker 1: and there being nothing left of oneself, this kind of
Speaker 1: I guess, going back to the candle metaphor, but also
Speaker 1: reminding me a bit of the Wicked Witch of the
Speaker 1: West as well, you know, because she basically melts awaited nothing,
Speaker 1: but it's just left. All this left is just the
Speaker 1: clothing that she was wearing. I'd say, in psychological terms,
Speaker 1: the one that I here emerge most naturally from people
Speaker 1: is the middle one about the melting of defenses, the
Speaker 1: idea that people bring up metaphors of melting when they're
Speaker 1: talking about people becoming more open and vulnerable with each other. Yeah, which,
Speaker 1: on one hand, you might say, well, that's clearly not
Speaker 1: what the Incredible Melting Man is about, that's clearly not
Speaker 1: what RoboCop is about, etcetera. But I'm not quite convinced.
Speaker 1: I think I think these may, on a subconscious level,
Speaker 1: be be about the the fear of of what happens
Speaker 1: if we open ourselves up to the world too much,
Speaker 1: you know, like because it's let me look at RoboCop,
Speaker 1: you know, it's or straight trash. These are films in
Speaker 1: which the world around us is depicted as being a
Speaker 1: horrible place, and you know, you want to I guess
Speaker 1: from your exterior to remain is is hard and impregnant,
Speaker 1: impregnatble is possible, right in those cases, like you don't
Speaker 1: want to melt into that world. That world would melt you, though.
Speaker 1: I would say one of the main themes of RoboCop
Speaker 1: is the attempt to hang on to pieces of humanity
Speaker 1: in an in in an inhuman or inhumane world and
Speaker 1: the world that is ruled by by cruelty and corporations
Speaker 1: and machines and and transactional relationships. Trying to hang onto
Speaker 1: something that's pure and good and human. And you see
Speaker 1: that emphasized in several of the scenes between Alex Murphy
Speaker 1: or RoboCop and Lewis played by Nancy Allen, his partner.
Speaker 1: They've got these these little moments where you can remember
Speaker 1: that you're human even when he's mostly machine. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a very good point. Yeah, and again just more reasonable, like, no,
Speaker 1: don't just dismiss RoboCop. Is this ultra violent you know,
Speaker 1: a piece of trash or something like, There's there's a
Speaker 1: lot going on there. It's so I don't think it's
Speaker 1: for for all tastes, but it's it's definitely a film
Speaker 1: that intends to say something, Yeah, it's a movie. It's
Speaker 1: a movie that's relatable to anyone who's trying to remain
Speaker 1: a human at the same time that a corporation is
Speaker 1: extracting maximum value from what's left of your body. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, again, this is a world where that you
Speaker 1: do not want to melt into. You don't want to
Speaker 1: let go and become vulnerable because you want to hang
Speaker 1: on to that part of you that's still human, that
Speaker 1: hasn't been crushed by the machine yet. So I think
Speaker 1: it's also interesting in all of this, you know what
Speaker 1: we're talking about, this idea of like the metaphorical body
Speaker 1: uh melting away and uh and all, and then how
Speaker 1: this is reflected in these horrific images of the body melting.
Speaker 1: But while a wax effigy of a human definitely melts,
Speaker 1: our bodies don't really melt even in the even when
Speaker 1: extreme things happen to them. Um, generally, what's going on
Speaker 1: with us is not quite the phase change that we
Speaker 1: see occurring when say ice melts, or even when when
Speaker 1: when wax is melting away. Um, it's not quite what
Speaker 1: it is. It's similar to in our episode about freezing,
Speaker 1: about how our bodies don't exactly freeze solid and shatter
Speaker 1: in the way that pure water can correct. But I
Speaker 1: think we concluded in that episode that if you get
Speaker 1: a body cold enough, like you know, down to liquid
Speaker 1: nitrogen temperatures, and use enough force, you can achieve some
Speaker 1: shattering like the kinds of things. And I think something
Speaker 1: similar is true with melting, that the human body doesn't
Speaker 1: melt the way Nazis do in the movies, but elements
Speaker 1: of the human body will kind of melt. I mean,
Speaker 1: the body is made of different types of tissues and materials,
Speaker 1: and some of them will sort of melt, yeah, some
Speaker 1: some Some parts of our flesh liquefy a little more easily,
Speaker 1: and in rare cases human fat and the body has
Speaker 1: been observed to behave something like the wick of a candle.
Speaker 1: This is called the Wick effect. And uh, if you've
Speaker 1: if you've ever read anything about the various theories involving
Speaker 1: um uh spontaneous combustion, they are the Wick effect often
Speaker 1: plays into this. So so coming back to some of the
Speaker 1: the faustages explorations about melting UM, I want to come
Speaker 1: back to the idea of of losing oneself through melting,
Speaker 1: and in this I think melting serves as a strong
Speaker 1: metaphor for gradual decay, for aging, for the you know,
Speaker 1: the gradual work of a debilitating disease. Uh. These effects
Speaker 1: coupled with the totality of death, you know, because death
Speaker 1: robs us of everything that we are, and in the
Speaker 1: in its wake, there can be an almost candle like experience.
Speaker 1: Right again, think back to what we talked about in
Speaker 1: the Wax episodes about how the candle often had magical
Speaker 1: um uh connotations in various cultures because it was this thing,
Speaker 1: this physical thing that burned a way completely are almost completely,
Speaker 1: you know, and at the end you might ask, what's
Speaker 1: the candle even real? Did it exist? Where did it go?
Speaker 1: And he's certainly in the face of actual human death,
Speaker 1: not movie human death, but but actual personal loss. You
Speaker 1: can feel that as well, totally. Now, the idea of
Speaker 1: melting as phase transfer by which we become more vulnerable
Speaker 1: without adequate defenses, you know, of letting go um. You know,
Speaker 1: I think that's extremely apt as well. It certainly ties
Speaker 1: into our uses of melting, as in melting with joy um. Again,
Speaker 1: perhaps tears add an additional context to a certain degree, um,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, it's it's about becoming more
Speaker 1: malleable to the world around you, both in positive and
Speaker 1: in negative ways, connecting with other people, connecting with the environment,
Speaker 1: but also perhaps opening yourself to the dangers of other
Speaker 1: people and of society, etcetera. It reminds me a lot
Speaker 1: of what we discussed in our psychedelic episodes, you know,
Speaker 1: about the breaking down of boundaries between ourselves and others,
Speaker 1: between ourselves in the natural world, not only melting, but
Speaker 1: merging into some larger totality. Uh. In fact, I look back,
Speaker 1: just just out of curiosity, I did some quick uh
Speaker 1: word searches in a in a few texts, uh to
Speaker 1: see who was using melting, and I noticed, for instance
Speaker 1: that that Huxley did not use melt or melting at
Speaker 1: all in the Doors of Perception. But for instance far
Speaker 1: more recent work UM How to Change Your Mind by
Speaker 1: Michael Pollen, he uses melt or melting multiple times in
Speaker 1: the book. You know, it seems like a pretty handy
Speaker 1: contemporary um uh mental image to draw upon to make
Speaker 1: sense of what's happening with the psychedelic experience. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, in fact, I would say melting becomes an
Speaker 1: interesting way of thinking about psychedelic psychedelic compounds effects on
Speaker 1: our perception because it even comes through and just the
Speaker 1: sheer mechanics of how imagery transitions under the effects of
Speaker 1: many psychedelics, where there are these things that people talk about,
Speaker 1: like using terms like tracers and things like that, where
Speaker 1: mental imagery and even visual imagery is perceived normally doesn't
Speaker 1: transition as quickly from one state to another, but there
Speaker 1: seemed to be sort of drag effects in between images,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about, uh, And that this
Speaker 1: simulates a kind of liquidity of mental content that I
Speaker 1: think is quite aptly described by metaphors of melting. Often
Speaker 1: on psychedelics, people describe some version of instead of just
Speaker 1: thinking about image A and then thinking about image B,
Speaker 1: image A melts into image by I don't know if
Speaker 1: that was entirely clear, but just the psychedelics really encourage
Speaker 1: these sort of like dragging transition states. No, I absolutely agree.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting to think that, like, since that kind
Speaker 1: of thing is so common phenomenologically, it would almost suggest
Speaker 1: there is something about these compounds that that consistently encourage
Speaker 1: that at a chemical level in the brain. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and some of them maybe even comes down to like
Speaker 1: how we're how we're we're taking in sense data, right,
Speaker 1: is it are we taking in abstract facts about the
Speaker 1: reality around us or is it a more fluid observation
Speaker 1: of reality in terms of of of making note of changes. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's very interesting. So like instead of that, maybe you
Speaker 1: could more easily, in a normal frame of mind, look
Speaker 1: at one thing and then look at another thing because
Speaker 1: you've got cognitive filtering that you're applying to your visual
Speaker 1: sense data. You know that that's sort of like excluding
Speaker 1: the transition, the transitional middle period of what your eyes
Speaker 1: are doing. But on the psychedelic you're processing things in
Speaker 1: a raw or way that does not filter out the
Speaker 1: transitional period as efficiently. Yeah, Like instead of saying, oh,
Speaker 1: that's my face in the mirror, it's more it's a
Speaker 1: continual updating of it. Uh. It can create kind of
Speaker 1: a melting effect without it actually looking like your face
Speaker 1: is straight up melting. So I I would never attempt
Speaker 1: to argue that something like, um, you know that to
Speaker 1: say the psychedelic experience and humanity sister with the psychedelic experiences.
Speaker 1: Certainly in the like the twentieth century would have been
Speaker 1: like the the soul uh influence on all this melting
Speaker 1: um fixation in cinema. But but I can't help but
Speaker 1: wonder if that's part of it. But clearly you still
Speaker 1: have other things. You have just the cinematic influence and
Speaker 1: tradition that's going on when you know, people watch a
Speaker 1: witch melt in one film and then create a melting
Speaker 1: effect in another film later on. Obviously that's part of
Speaker 1: it um. And I think also material the materials in
Speaker 1: our surrounding culture are a big part of it as well.
Speaker 1: I mean we see that again with wax observations of wax,
Speaker 1: and then what happens when you create a human of wax.
Speaker 1: Also what happens when you have, you know, a wax
Speaker 1: culture that becomes eventually an iron culture and then you
Speaker 1: have all of this melting and smelting um mixed up
Speaker 1: in um in in your understanding the world. And then
Speaker 1: what happens when you go from an iron culture eventually
Speaker 1: to a plastic culture. You know, it brings on new
Speaker 1: connotations of what melting is, how things melt, and how
Speaker 1: we might imagine our bodies in reference to that material.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I was just thinking about the metaphors we
Speaker 1: live by here. So so the metal metaphor is one
Speaker 1: in which it takes a tremendous amount of work to
Speaker 1: change one's shape. The plastic metaphor is pretty much just
Speaker 1: shaped at the factory. You're not gonna melt it and
Speaker 1: reshape it. That would kind of destroy it. So it's
Speaker 1: it's you know, the plastic age. You're just stuck. All right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Thank thank, thank, and we're back. And you know this,
Speaker 1: this ultimately leads us to the next topic we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss here, and this will be I guess that
Speaker 1: sort of the final topic of discussion in this episode,
Speaker 1: and that is another major melting symbol or metaphor that
Speaker 1: comes up that a lot of your probably thinking about already,
Speaker 1: and that is the American melting pot. Now quick note again,
Speaker 1: we're recording this episode the week of Halloween, though it
Speaker 1: won't publish till after election day, so just throwing that
Speaker 1: out there for timing should it be essential. So this
Speaker 1: is another area where I think when we're talking about melting,
Speaker 1: everything we've discussed so far is still very much in play,
Speaker 1: uh melting, and even you know, the fear of melting,
Speaker 1: but also the potential joy of melting, the transformative nature
Speaker 1: of melting. It's all reflected in this strange concept of
Speaker 1: the American melting pot, something that I've heard my whole life,
Speaker 1: and and I have to say, I think early on
Speaker 1: I always interpreted it's kind of a stupot. Maybe I
Speaker 1: was confused by the franchise of Fondue restaurants called the
Speaker 1: melting pot. I'm not exactly sure, because I mean, clearly
Speaker 1: it is referring to a you know, a metallurgical comparison. Here,
Speaker 1: it is an idea of metals melting together in in
Speaker 1: a pot. Right, you combine different metals to form a
Speaker 1: stronger alloy that has the great properties of each YEA.
Speaker 1: On some level, though, I did recognize that it seemed
Speaker 1: to be about different cultures and backgrounds, so that was
Speaker 1: only coming together in this pot that is America and
Speaker 1: becoming something new. Now it's this is a broad and
Speaker 1: h and at times very uh, you know, non specific
Speaker 1: symbol to engage with, because it ultimately raises a lot
Speaker 1: of questions like is this is this an accurate, accurate
Speaker 1: depiction depiction of what American culture is? Is it more
Speaker 1: of an ideal of what it could be. Is it
Speaker 1: a misunderstanding of culture? Is it actually a misunderstanding of melting?
Speaker 1: Is it a helpful concept? Is it a hurtful concept? Uh?
Speaker 1: And certainly, at least to some extent, it depends on
Speaker 1: how it's being used and who's using it during what
Speaker 1: period of of of you know, the last century or
Speaker 1: so of American history. You know? Is it something to
Speaker 1: support the idea of a monoculture and often a particular
Speaker 1: mono culture, or is it anti multiculturalism? So I decided
Speaker 1: to look into this a little bit and and just
Speaker 1: learn from myself, like, what what are the origins of
Speaker 1: this term? I I honestly didn't have any idea. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I read a paper this is from nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: four by historian Philip Gleason, uh and it's titled the
Speaker 1: Melting Pot Symbol of Fusion or Confusion in American Quarterly.
Speaker 1: That's a great title, Umfusion or Confusion and American Quarterly,
Speaker 1: by the way, as an academic journal and the official
Speaker 1: publication of the American Studies Association. So I want to
Speaker 1: roll through some of the points that Gleason makes. I
Speaker 1: am not attempting to summarize the entire uh right up here.
Speaker 1: I recommend seeking this out if you want the full story.
Speaker 1: It's a it's it's it's a wonderful read, and it's
Speaker 1: invailable available in full in full on j Starr. So.
Speaker 1: First of all, he ties this this idea back to
Speaker 1: the myth of metals in Plato's The Republic. This is
Speaker 1: also known as the Noble Lie, and here's how Malcolm's
Speaker 1: Schofield summarized it in the Cambridge companion to Plato's Republic quote.
Speaker 1: The noble Lie is to serve as charter myth for
Speaker 1: Plato's Good City, a myth of national or civic identity,
Speaker 1: or rather two related myths, one grounding that identity in
Speaker 1: the natural brotherhood of the entire indigenous population. They're all
Speaker 1: auto cathanas, literally born from the earth, the other making
Speaker 1: the city's differentiated class structure a matter of divine dispensation.
Speaker 1: The god who molds them puts different metals in their souls.
Speaker 1: If people can be made to believe it, they will
Speaker 1: be strongly motivated to care for the city and for
Speaker 1: each other. If they can be made to believe it. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, at least in Plato's vision. There's got to
Speaker 1: be a certain amount of just like getting people on
Speaker 1: board with a certain way of thinking about things. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: Gleason writes that the American myth of the medals here
Speaker 1: is is ultimately a rejection of the platonic Um and
Speaker 1: this is the melting pot quote. Unlike Plato's it was
Speaker 1: not deliberately contrived to provide a supernatural sanction for the
Speaker 1: existing social order. But is it that it is intimately
Speaker 1: related to the origins and nature of American society? Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not a supernatural myth that you would tell people,
Speaker 1: like a story that you make up to unify them.
Speaker 1: But in the case of American society, it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be a fact that is literally just like descriptive and
Speaker 1: self evident. Yeah. The interesting thing that Gleason drives something
Speaker 1: about the melting pot, and I hadn't really thought about
Speaker 1: this as well, is that it's it's a curious thing
Speaker 1: to be so entrenched in the national mindset because on
Speaker 1: one hand, it is not an actual thing you can
Speaker 1: point to, like you can't go to Boston or Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. And like, hey, should we hey, family, should
Speaker 1: we go see the melting Pot? There it is. We've
Speaker 1: heard all about the American melting pot. Yeah, behhold no,
Speaker 1: it's not a thing. And on the other hand, it's
Speaker 1: not a proper symbol either. You can't say, oh, let me,
Speaker 1: let me fish some dollar bills out of my wallet. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: here's the melting pot right here. You could you if
Speaker 1: you were asked to draw the melting pot, what would
Speaker 1: you draw? You know, it's it's not a concrete symbol
Speaker 1: per se, to the extent that it's a symbol, It's
Speaker 1: only a linguistic one, like the phrase is a symbol,
Speaker 1: but it's never depicted. Yeah. So Gleason says that it
Speaker 1: might be more fair to consider it a concept or theory.
Speaker 1: But but it He also discusses it just in terms,
Speaker 1: loosely as a symbol throughout the paper. Uh. He points
Speaker 1: out that it's used in many ways as a simile.
Speaker 1: America is is like a melting pot. Sometimes it's a
Speaker 1: metaphor America is a melting pot, and sometimes it's a symbol.
Speaker 1: They traveled across the sea to be part of the
Speaker 1: melting pot. So the use of the melting pot is
Speaker 1: a symbol, he says, You know, for the process of immigration,
Speaker 1: into American society. This was popularized basically as recently as
Speaker 1: nine eight with Israel Zangwell's play that was titled The
Speaker 1: Melting Pot. So it it's another interesting thing about it.
Speaker 1: It's not really that old of an idea, and not
Speaker 1: that the United States is that old of an idea either,
Speaker 1: But the idea itself does date back a good bit
Speaker 1: before eight uh, dating back to the eighteenth century contemplations
Speaker 1: of the New American man, and particularly it goes back
Speaker 1: to the French American writer Jay Hector st. John de Crevicur,
Speaker 1: who lived seventeen thirty five through eighteen thirteen. Crevicur wrote
Speaker 1: pro American writings during the Revolution. He also opposed slavery,
Speaker 1: and he touched on the melting pot concept in Letters
Speaker 1: from an American Farmer in seventeen eighty two, in which
Speaker 1: he quote developed or implied all of the themes unquote
Speaker 1: involved in the idea that a new American man would
Speaker 1: be the product of cross cultural fertilization. Right, So that
Speaker 1: would be the sort of what was considered a revolutionary
Speaker 1: idea at the time, that you could build a civic culture,
Speaker 1: you could build a polity on the basis of shared
Speaker 1: ideals rather than shared ethnicity. Yeah, yeah, Like he was
Speaker 1: very much it's at least for for a time here
Speaker 1: in a lot of these writings, was very gung ho
Speaker 1: about what America could be, this idea like it's going
Speaker 1: to be a new thing where we're building a new
Speaker 1: country here and uh and and the people that occupied
Speaker 1: are going to be a new creation in a sense,
Speaker 1: they're going to be created out of out of these
Speaker 1: pre existing elements. And he did use the word melt
Speaker 1: to describe the process quote individuals of all nations are
Speaker 1: melted into a new race of men unquote, which at
Speaker 1: least in some ways sounds futuristic and positive. You know,
Speaker 1: it sounds very plasma pool in his wake, though you
Speaker 1: see other people occasionally use it in a different fashion.
Speaker 1: For instance, DeWitt Clinton, described by Gleason as a nativistic congressman,
Speaker 1: used it in the eighteen forties as a criticism of
Speaker 1: immigrants who did not melt into American culture and kept
Speaker 1: aspects of their own culture. So again, already we see
Speaker 1: melt the idea of the melting pot be used positively,
Speaker 1: like like, hey, everybody, let's melt together and become something new.
Speaker 1: And then here's this other guy using it and saying,
Speaker 1: why aren't people melting? I want to see more melting.
Speaker 1: You're not melting enough. You're not melting enough me. Well, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not melted. I'm I'm I'm not in I'm melting.
Speaker 1: But you you need to do some melting. But still
Speaker 1: it doesn't quite inner general usage just yet again, not
Speaker 1: until that play comes around, which we'll get to in
Speaker 1: a second. Um. Ralph Waldo Emerson, however, who lived eighteen
Speaker 1: o three eighteen eighty two, he came close and discussing
Speaker 1: how Americans America would quote construct a new race and
Speaker 1: new religion, a new state, and new literature, and that
Speaker 1: it would be as as vigorous, quote as the new
Speaker 1: Europe which came out of the smelting pot of the
Speaker 1: Dark Ages. So Gleason points to a few different examples there.
Speaker 1: But the melting pot again doesn't really take off in
Speaker 1: uh in in in the in in our language until
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century. In that period between the dawn
Speaker 1: of the twenti century and the start of World War One.
Speaker 1: Uh this, Gleason says, is a time when one million
Speaker 1: immigrants roughly entered the United States of America. Most of
Speaker 1: them were from southern and Eastern Europe, and the resulting
Speaker 1: communities in major cities were considered by some to be
Speaker 1: to constitute an immigration problem. Thus the notion of the
Speaker 1: melting Pot. There was a fear of an express fear
Speaker 1: of what non assimilating immigrants meant for the country. Now,
Speaker 1: the play itself was a big hit, at least with
Speaker 1: with audiences, apparently not so much with the with the
Speaker 1: theater critics of the day. But the plot concerned a
Speaker 1: Russian Jewish immigrant family and the main character's desire to
Speaker 1: melt into a new future devoid of ethnic division and hatred,
Speaker 1: and it also also concerns the plight of the Jewish
Speaker 1: people in this period of history. But in in criticizing
Speaker 1: the average American of the day, it also you know, proposed,
Speaker 1: it put forth this idea that the melting pot is
Speaker 1: not something that either that has been done or is done,
Speaker 1: is not part of a process that we see completed
Speaker 1: in any person around us, but rather it is an
Speaker 1: ongoing process that we're all going to be reborn out of.
Speaker 1: If that makes sense. So it's not it's so if I,
Speaker 1: if I understand the play correctly, the concept of the
Speaker 1: melting plot employed here is not one of hey, immigrants,
Speaker 1: go get into the melting pot and then come out
Speaker 1: and then you can be with me. It's more like
Speaker 1: we are all in the melting pot. We are all
Speaker 1: melting into something better and and new, right, not an
Speaker 1: exhortation of like, you're not melting properly, but just saying, like,
Speaker 1: it's descriptive. The melting pot is what happens. Yes, it
Speaker 1: is an ongoing thing that has had It is the
Speaker 1: the ongoing transformation of what it means to be an
Speaker 1: American now. Gleason points out that Theodore Roosevelt loved it,
Speaker 1: but he didn't like the lines in there about Americans
Speaker 1: being lax on divorce or public corruption. So the playwright
Speaker 1: took it out like, okay, it fair enough to be happy. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's it also seems like the play
Speaker 1: carried with it a certain you know, divisive interpretations depending
Speaker 1: on who was thinking about the play and was also
Speaker 1: then thinking about immigration. You know, is it preaching too
Speaker 1: much conformity on the part of the immigrant or too
Speaker 1: much transformation on the part of the nation. And I
Speaker 1: I guess in that respect it sounds like the play
Speaker 1: did what what good art should do, right. I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's maybe pissing off everybody to a certain extent
Speaker 1: or making everybody think about, like, what what's going on
Speaker 1: in the country. Well, if I'm understanding correctly, I mean
Speaker 1: it maybe sort of assuming something that sounds kind of
Speaker 1: ahead of its time, which is that the cultural assimilation
Speaker 1: of immigrant communities into into a new country is not
Speaker 1: necessarily what what the you know, the nativist that the
Speaker 1: angry finger waggers are saying that you're not assimilating good enough. Uh,
Speaker 1: that like that they need to become like the nativist
Speaker 1: finger waggers. Instead, it's the nativist finger waggers and the
Speaker 1: new immigrants are all going to in the future assimilate
Speaker 1: into this this common thing that is yet to come. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. Yeah, the idea that it's it's it's
Speaker 1: something that is happening and will happen. Uh yeah, as
Speaker 1: opposed to this this thing that has supposed to have
Speaker 1: already occurred. But but it does get back to a
Speaker 1: lot of what we discussed already about, like how we
Speaker 1: think about melting, both in its positive and negative connotations.
Speaker 1: You know, if I'm melting, am I gonna lose myself?
Speaker 1: Will I be hurt when I become soft and malleable?
Speaker 1: I am am I ready for change, you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and as Gleason points out, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of variety and how the melting pot is presented,
Speaker 1: and and there are a lot of questions that all
Speaker 1: the time about what exactly you're trying to say, Like it,
Speaker 1: are we talking about a biological blending, like is it
Speaker 1: about you know, different ethnicities becoming one? Is it a
Speaker 1: cultural blending that we're talking about? Is it is it
Speaker 1: all of the culture or just like aspects of the culture.
Speaker 1: I mean again, it depends on who's who's trotting it
Speaker 1: out really, Uh, you know, is it describing something that
Speaker 1: used to take place, something that is taking place, something
Speaker 1: that needs to take place, or is taking place with
Speaker 1: with a few, with the future in mind, etcetera. Uh
Speaker 1: So I found it all very very um, very intriguing
Speaker 1: to think about. It makes me even less likely to
Speaker 1: use the term melting pot in my own conversations unless
Speaker 1: i'm you know, uh talking with somebody about the concept itself.
Speaker 1: Like it seems it seems like it's just too um,
Speaker 1: it's too vague. And too open to interpretation and also uh,
Speaker 1: too too easy to misuse. Yeah, you could look at
Speaker 1: it that way, And I gotta say, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I've ever really been somebody who used this image myself.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, as as somebody who you know,
Speaker 1: believes in the project of multiculturalism and uh and believes
Speaker 1: like immigration is good for a nation. Um, I you
Speaker 1: think it's also useful to have imagery, Like having symbols
Speaker 1: and imagery really does help an idea take root. It's
Speaker 1: it's possible that this symbolar imagery is not the best
Speaker 1: symbol or imagery. I don't know, because it's certainly right
Speaker 1: that it has like tons of ambiguous meanings. But when
Speaker 1: you're talking about a trend as big as uh, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to form a multicultural polity, I guess there probably
Speaker 1: is going to be a lot of ambiguity and in
Speaker 1: whatever imagery you use. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: it's asking a lot, I guess of a of a
Speaker 1: symbol or metaphor to really sum up um, some of
Speaker 1: what this this uh, this symbol or metaphor has called
Speaker 1: on to do. But again I found it interesting, especially
Speaker 1: again just in terms of thinking once more about melting
Speaker 1: as this thing that has positive and negative connotations that
Speaker 1: ultimately is about how we think about change in our lives. Uh,
Speaker 1: in the world. Uh, you know, political change, societal change,
Speaker 1: cultural change, biological change. I gotta say, when you proposed
Speaker 1: a Melt movie episode, this is not the direction I
Speaker 1: expected it to go. But this has been really interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I enjoyed it as well. I don't think I
Speaker 1: ended I thought that we'd end up talking about the
Speaker 1: you know, the substance of America uh so much. Um.
Speaker 1: That was not the intent. In fact, if the attempt,
Speaker 1: if it was any intent, it was to not talk
Speaker 1: about anything political or or or America centrics. So but
Speaker 1: here we are, we have melted into it, and I'll
Speaker 1: proudly melt up next to you and melt her still today.
Speaker 1: Are there songs about melting Um in the Sopranos. There
Speaker 1: is a metal band, uh that has a song called melt.
Speaker 1: I know, there's there's a there's a Calm Truise album
Speaker 1: called Galactic Melt, which I think is nice because his
Speaker 1: his sound has a very like that that I think
Speaker 1: it sums up to something about it sound like something
Speaker 1: galactic something that is like spacey and specific, but the
Speaker 1: melting aspect of it has implies a kind of you know,
Speaker 1: biological um uh, you know, amorphous quality that's there as well,
Speaker 1: sort of like it's it's in biology and technology fused
Speaker 1: together into one sound. Shoegaze type music has some good
Speaker 1: sonic melting qualities I would I would consider like my
Speaker 1: Bloody Valentine and a very melty band. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: a vapor wave in it in its own way. Like
Speaker 1: just the word vapor wave implies phase transition as well,
Speaker 1: but different, not a different one, not melting but sublimation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't know that that's something we really explore
Speaker 1: that much in our our horror movies. So I don't
Speaker 1: know what happens when the mall turns not from a
Speaker 1: solid into a liquid, but a solid directly into a gas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then you get an eternal loop of the chorus from
Speaker 1: Take These Broken Wings. The real quick is that you know,
Speaker 1: is that what happens in um the Avengers movies, the
Speaker 1: whole Fingersnap thing are are are people turning into vapor
Speaker 1: or they just turning into ash? And that I don't know.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen those movies. Okay, I watched the first one.
Speaker 1: The listeners will have to cue clue us in on
Speaker 1: that and being exposed for the millionth time as somebody
Speaker 1: who I don't I'm not in the marble thing. I
Speaker 1: don't really. Well, you'll come back for the next Blade film.
Speaker 1: I hope. Oh, I guess you know what. I still
Speaker 1: haven't seen Blade three, so uh well, it has one
Speaker 1: good line in it. But I can send you a
Speaker 1: clip of that and then you're good to go. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, well we're gonna go ahead and close it
Speaker 1: out here. This was this was melting. This says the
Speaker 1: episode is going to close out this year's Halloween festivities.
Speaker 1: But don't worry. We're you know, we're coming back next
Speaker 1: week and it's gonna be new topics. Uh perhaps a
Speaker 1: little less halloweeny, but just as h as exciting and
Speaker 1: contemplated in theory. Anyway, Well, we'll see where it goes.
Speaker 1: We're just gonna see where the rest of the year, Texas.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other
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Speaker 1: all right, uh huge, Thanks as always to our excellent
Speaker 1: audio producers Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
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