Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It is Saturday,
Speaker 1: so we have another Vault episode for you. This one's
Speaker 1: a bit older than some of the Vault episodes that
Speaker 1: we roll out. This is an episode that originally published
Speaker 1: twelve twenty three. Twenty twenty one seems like a very
Speaker 1: long time ago, but I guess it wasn't really that
Speaker 1: long ago. This is our episode the Ancient and Occult
Speaker 1: History of the A Christmas Story leg Lamp. Yes, the
Speaker 1: leg lamp from the nineteen eighty three holiday film A
Speaker 1: Christmas Story. We get into it and we talk about
Speaker 1: the deep, ancient and occult history of lamps and other
Speaker 1: objects shaped in the likeness of a human leg or foot.
Speaker 1: So it's a holiday celebration, so let's slip it on.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And this is
Speaker 1: gonna be our last core, our last new core episode
Speaker 1: of the year. And what do we have for you here?
Speaker 1: Another holiday episode. And we really didn't know until just
Speaker 1: a few days ago exactly what the Holiday episode would be.
Speaker 1: We were talking about doing an episode on reindeer related stuff,
Speaker 1: and maybe we'll do that next year. And then we
Speaker 1: were talking about, well, let's we've done previous episode where
Speaker 1: we talked about holiday inventions, Christmas inventions and so forth,
Speaker 1: maybe we could do another one of those. And you know,
Speaker 1: we started looking into some topics and we wound up
Speaker 1: focusing entirely upon the nineteen eighty three holiday film A
Speaker 1: Christmas Story.
Speaker 3: Well not just on the movie, on the movie's most
Speaker 3: sacred prop that's right.
Speaker 1: I mean, for a little bit there we were thinking, well,
Speaker 1: look at all the things that are to talk about
Speaker 1: in a Christmas story. We could talk about soap poisoning,
Speaker 1: freezing your tongue to a flag pole, the dangers posed
Speaker 1: by BB guns, how furnace work.
Speaker 3: I gotta say, having looked into the medical literature on
Speaker 3: soap poisoning, first of all, it is a real thing. Second,
Speaker 3: that's some pretty dark territory. Not the most fun way
Speaker 3: to head into the holidays.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, it's pretty dark. And Christmas story. You
Speaker 1: know there he is, he's a child and he's blind,
Speaker 1: and his parents feel such remorse for having him put
Speaker 1: that bar of soap in his mouth.
Speaker 3: Now from what I could tell in my brief investigation,
Speaker 3: I don't think it's dangerous to put a bar of
Speaker 3: soap in your mouth for a few minutes, but you
Speaker 3: definitely don't want to like eat a significant amount of it.
Speaker 1: Right, So, so soap poisoning is a thing.
Speaker 3: Yes, Okay, don't swallow soap.
Speaker 1: But like I said, we're not We're not focusing on
Speaker 1: the soap here we're talking. We're going to be talking
Speaker 1: about the old Man's major award. We're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about that leg lamp.
Speaker 3: Now, Rob. I don't know if you've had this experience,
Speaker 3: but I can say most of my exposure to a
Speaker 3: Christmas story the movie comes in the form of a
Speaker 3: sort of running, droning background ways that's going on at
Speaker 3: a at a some kind of family house around Christmas
Speaker 3: while it's just playing on an infinite loop on some
Speaker 3: cable TV station that is turned on in a room
Speaker 3: I might not even be in very much, But when
Speaker 3: this happens, I noticed that this must have something to
Speaker 3: do with like the patterns with which I come and
Speaker 3: go into certain rooms in the house. So that would
Speaker 3: be an interesting thing to study on its own. But
Speaker 3: I will pretty frequently have the experience of seeing one
Speaker 3: scene in the movie like five times in the same
Speaker 3: day and it's always the same scene. And for me,
Speaker 3: it has definitely been the scene where the old man
Speaker 3: is in the house and a big crate arrives and
Speaker 3: we get the lines about it being Fredgi Lay and
Speaker 3: he digs through the straw and then pulls out this
Speaker 3: glorious leg lamp.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have I have a similar experience with a
Speaker 1: Christmas story. It would there were there are There have
Speaker 1: been some dedicated viewings of it, you know, throughout the years,
Speaker 1: but most of it's just it's on TV during Christmas,
Speaker 1: and therefore you watch it or you watch part of it,
Speaker 1: and so when you actually set down and watch it
Speaker 1: in its entirety, there will be these scenes that you
Speaker 1: remember really vividly, and then there are scenes that you
Speaker 1: didn't realize were part of the movie at all. That
Speaker 1: sort of thing. I should probably inform everyone what this
Speaker 1: movie is. A number of you were probably familiar with it,
Speaker 1: some of you were not. This was a nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: three holiday film that was based on the writings of
Speaker 1: Jane Shepherd, particularly on the book In God We Trust
Speaker 1: All Others Pay Cash. It's one Boy's account of childhood,
Speaker 1: Holiday dreams, desires, and fears. It's a fun movie with
Speaker 1: some solid laughs in. It's some good heart, but not
Speaker 1: to a sappy degree, especially for a holiday film. And
Speaker 1: in some ways you could almost think of it as
Speaker 1: kind of like a proto Simpsons, you know, like it's
Speaker 1: some of the gags that they get up to in
Speaker 1: a Christmas story are the sorts of things that would
Speaker 1: happen on The Simpsons later on. But of course the
Speaker 1: Simpsons leans more into more, more into the satire and
Speaker 1: more into like pop cultural references, you know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. Like, can't you imagine an episode where Homer
Speaker 1: gets some sort of obnoxious award that he wants to
Speaker 1: display at the front of the house. Oh, Marge doesn't
Speaker 1: like it, and maybe something terrible ends up happening to
Speaker 1: the award and he blames her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now that you say that, I can't imagine that
Speaker 3: being a plotline.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, I mean Ralphie is essentially a good boy,
Speaker 1: whereas Bart is a bad boy, so you know we
Speaker 1: have to take that into account as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bart would not dream of getting a BB gun
Speaker 3: for Christmas. He would just go And I don't know,
Speaker 3: shoplift a BB gun or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh well, I mean I hope he learned his
Speaker 1: lesson from that Christmas episode of The Simpsons where he
Speaker 1: did shoplift.
Speaker 3: Remember, Oh that's right. Oh I remember that One's actually
Speaker 3: very sad because his mother is very disappointed in him.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, we just huged that heart strings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a solid episode like that sort of Simpsons episode
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of this, though in a weird way.
Speaker 1: That Simpsons episode is more serious than a Christmas story is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what is it he steals? It's like a video
Speaker 3: games like the Bone Storm for whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like essentially like a Mortal Kombat type game
Speaker 1: that just seems like the greatest thing ever. And they
Speaker 1: have like the muscled Santa Claus and the commercial.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we're not going to give a Christmas story the
Speaker 1: full weird house cinema treatment or anything here today, but
Speaker 1: I do want to just point out real quickly a
Speaker 1: few of the people involved in it because it's kind
Speaker 1: of fun. First of all, I was directed by Bob Clark,
Speaker 1: who also directed the notorious holiday proto slasher Black Christmas
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy four, which I have never seen, but
Speaker 1: it had a great cast, including Olivia Hussey, Margo Kidder,
Speaker 1: Kira Dulia from two thousand and one, A Space Odyssey,
Speaker 1: and of course Weird House Cinema favorite John Saxon.
Speaker 3: Everybody at home do a push up for John Saxon
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 1: He also directed Death Dream Murder by Decree, which is
Speaker 1: a Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper story, two Porky's movies,
Speaker 1: two Baby Geniuses movies.
Speaker 3: Oh, Porky's and Baby Geniuses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but still there's some good stuff in there.
Speaker 1: He passed away in two thousand and seven, but I
Speaker 1: think a Christmas story is likely to remain.
Speaker 4: His legacy, Like this is the one that's going to.
Speaker 1: Really stick, though I guess Black Christmas also has its
Speaker 1: place in film history as well. Sure, and as far
Speaker 1: as the cast, guy has a wonderful cast Christmas story,
Speaker 1: But the two main characters worth pointing out for our purposes.
Speaker 1: The old Man is played by the always terrific Darren McGavin.
Speaker 1: This is the guy who played Could Shak the knights Stalker.
Speaker 1: I think he was also in the Arnold Swarzenegger film
Speaker 1: Raw Deal Okay, and the mom is played by Melinda Dillon,
Speaker 1: who was in Harry and the Henderson's as well as
Speaker 1: Spontaneous Combustion, which is one of the films that we
Speaker 1: covered on Weird House Cinema this year.
Speaker 3: Did she play like the creepy scientist? Am I right
Speaker 3: about that?
Speaker 1: It's really hard to remember. Everybody else just kind of
Speaker 1: grows him against the burning fire that is Dora's performance
Speaker 1: in that. Brad Dorof is just so good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just double check she's the German scientist. I
Speaker 3: think at some point Brad Dorriff goes to her house
Speaker 3: and maybe she catches on fire, and I don't.
Speaker 1: Know, probably that's probably that's generally how it goes. But
Speaker 1: I don't want to sell her short because Melinda Dylan
Speaker 1: is a great actor as well. She was in Close
Speaker 1: Encounters of the Third Kind and Absence of Malice in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one. She was nominated for two Academy Awards
Speaker 1: and one Tony Award.
Speaker 3: Okay, but we don't want to leave anybody out. For
Speaker 3: the like eight people in the audience who have never
Speaker 3: seen this movie or even just seen this sequence in
Speaker 3: the movie on five times in the same day on Christmas.
Speaker 3: But what's the deal with the major award.
Speaker 1: Well, it is, as we've been saying, a major award.
Speaker 1: It is something he has won for his achievements in
Speaker 1: a game. And what is the game, Joe.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's like it's like a trivia contest,
Speaker 3: maybe done through the mail from a newspaper, though I
Speaker 3: think it's worth of saying that he actually does not
Speaker 3: supply most of the answers on the contest. He has
Speaker 3: to ask Melinda Dylon and she actually knows the answers.
Speaker 3: Then he fills them in and it sends it off
Speaker 3: or something, and apparently wins this trivia contest by answering
Speaker 3: questions like what is the name of the Lone Rangers
Speaker 3: nephew's horse. But later in the film, after he receives
Speaker 3: his major award, when people ask him how what it
Speaker 3: was for, he says, it's for mind power.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's this wonderful design. It is a lamp
Speaker 1: that is shaped like a woman's leg wearing a fishnet stocking,
Speaker 1: with the shade resembling a kind of mini skirt or
Speaker 1: short hoop dress or something. And as we learn in
Speaker 1: the show, it's an item of much controversy in the
Speaker 1: household and it's clear that Mom does not like this
Speaker 1: lamp and certainly does not think it belongs at the
Speaker 1: front of the house where neighbors can see it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's already it's it's becoming a topic of discussion in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. And then what happens there is an accident.
Speaker 1: Somebody is cleaning too close to the lamp and it
Speaker 1: is accidentally destroyed.
Speaker 3: Now, I think one of the great points of humor
Speaker 3: in the movie is that it is never made clear
Speaker 3: why a lamp shaped like a sexy leg is the
Speaker 3: prize for winning this newspaper contest. Like there's no connection there,
Speaker 3: Like why would this be what you get? And it's
Speaker 3: just not explained.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it doesn't even say anything, you know,
Speaker 1: on the lamp. It's not like the award is shaped
Speaker 1: like a lamp. No, this is just a lamp that
Speaker 1: shaped like a leg. But he is he is fond
Speaker 1: of it. He thinks it is wonderful.
Speaker 4: She does not.
Speaker 1: It becomes it becomes a controversial issue between the two
Speaker 1: of them. It is destroyed. An attempt to rebuild the
Speaker 1: leg lamp seems possible, but we'll never know if it
Speaker 1: was successful. We suspect that it was not, that this
Speaker 1: is something that, once broken can never be repaired.
Speaker 3: Well. I think also there's a little bit of subtlety there,
Speaker 3: because when the old man is trying to repair it
Speaker 3: with glue and failing, you sense in him a kind
Speaker 3: of a kind of waning enthusiasm, where it may be,
Speaker 3: in fact, that he is realizing that his wife was
Speaker 3: correct and thinking that this lamp is rather tacky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but he didn't want to admit it earlier. Right,
Speaker 1: So this is this lamp. This is a hilarious part
Speaker 1: of the film. This is based on the chapter My
Speaker 1: Old Man and the Thilcivias Special Award that heralded the
Speaker 1: birth of pop art from the nineteen sixty six novel
Speaker 1: In God We Trust All.
Speaker 4: Others pay cash.
Speaker 1: But it's really taken on a life of its own.
Speaker 1: Since then, you can now buy replicas of the lamp,
Speaker 1: reproductions of the rent lamp in various sizes. You can
Speaker 1: get Christmas tree ornaments where the Christmas I mean you
Speaker 1: can basically get Christmas tree ornaments of it, or even
Speaker 1: Christmas lights of the lamp. Like the amp has become
Speaker 1: like this weird symbol all its own. I was reading
Speaker 1: about it on read Kraiger's blog Inventor's Digest, and apparently
Speaker 1: Shepard was inspired to create this fictional lamp based on
Speaker 1: knee high soda ads that he remembered seeing in magazines
Speaker 1: showing two shapely legs up to the knee. He remembered
Speaker 1: these from when he was a boy. And then for
Speaker 1: the film production designer Ruben Fried, he did the rest
Speaker 1: and the lamp is apparently protected by two different trademarks.
Speaker 1: They've been mass produced over the years, and yes you
Speaker 1: can buy them today as functional lamps. When this movie
Speaker 1: came out, you could only dream of such a thing.
Speaker 1: I think they made just a handful of these for
Speaker 1: the film, but now it is achievable by anyone.
Speaker 3: Now, correct me if I'm wrong, But I believe I
Speaker 3: read somewhere that the original lamp prop made for the
Speaker 3: film no longer exists.
Speaker 1: That is what I was reading as well. Yeah, lost
Speaker 1: to history like so many great works.
Speaker 3: Like many of the art works of the Parthenon or
Speaker 3: the great antiquities, they just fade to time.
Speaker 1: Well, speaking of antiquities, obviously this can't be where the
Speaker 1: story begins and ends, right, There has to be more
Speaker 1: of it. There has to be more to the lamp
Speaker 1: that is a leg, and the leg that is a lamp.
Speaker 3: By God, if there's not more to it, will make
Speaker 3: more to it.
Speaker 4: Absolutely well.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the obvious place to discuss all of
Speaker 1: this is to go way back and just talk about
Speaker 1: lamps in general. The lamp in the movie is of
Speaker 1: course an electric lamp with origins in the early nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: but the history of illumination technology.
Speaker 4: Goes way back. Obviously.
Speaker 1: You can think to our invention episodes on fire technology,
Speaker 1: and indeed the most basic form of illumination technology is
Speaker 1: of course a mere torch or a burning brand of
Speaker 1: some sort, or even a very primitive burning stick. These
Speaker 1: wall get it done. But according to Brian M. Fagan
Speaker 1: and Garrett G. Fagan in the Seventy Great Inventions of
Speaker 1: the Ancient World, wick burning lamps go back at least
Speaker 1: as far as the late Paleolithic period. It's thirty thousands
Speaker 1: through ten thousand years ago. All you need is a
Speaker 1: reservoir of fuel and a wick made from plant fiber
Speaker 1: or even something like human hair. And the fuel itself
Speaker 1: can be any number of things. It can be oil,
Speaker 1: it can be fat and sometimes salt was added to
Speaker 1: oil to keep it from overheating. Tons of lamps survived
Speaker 1: from the ancient world, as these were, of course widespread
Speaker 1: and extremely useful pieces of technology. They illuminate your environment.
Speaker 1: They turn nighttime, well not it doesn't turn nighttime into day,
Speaker 1: but it provides some of the illumination that you would
Speaker 1: have in the daytime in a nice concentrated form.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I think one of the things that's useful
Speaker 3: about a lamp or like a candle. We've talked about
Speaker 3: this in core episodes of the show before, is that
Speaker 3: they provide light for a long period of time. They're
Speaker 3: constructed so as to gradually slowly feed the fuel into
Speaker 3: the flame, rather than have the fire just burned through
Speaker 3: the fuel source as fast as it possibly can, like
Speaker 3: it would with you know, many other things, like you know,
Speaker 3: a lit stick or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the technology here, the device itself, allows you to
Speaker 1: make the most out of your limited fuel. Now real quick,
Speaker 1: I want to just mention the Fagans quickly. Brian Fagan,
Speaker 1: of course, Brian M. Fagan is someone I cite a
Speaker 1: lot on the show starters that Great Inventions.
Speaker 4: Book is super useful.
Speaker 1: But he's written a number of volumes and still has
Speaker 1: books coming out, including a new book with Nadia Durrani
Speaker 1: titled Climate Chaos Lessons on Survival from Our Ancestors Now.
Speaker 1: The other Fagan, though, Garrett G. Fagan, was an Irish
Speaker 1: American ancient historian, best known for his social histories of
Speaker 1: Roman bathing and the Spectacles of the Roman Arena. And
Speaker 1: I could be wrong on this, but I do not
Speaker 1: believe the these two Fagans are related at all. They
Speaker 1: just happen to work together in this one chapter in
Speaker 1: the seventy grade Inventions of the Ancient World that deals
Speaker 1: with illumination technology.
Speaker 3: Okay, so lamps go very far back into the Paleolithic period.
Speaker 1: Right, and lamp technology of this basic sword can be
Speaker 1: found from throughout Mesopotamia. And the shape of the reservoir varies,
Speaker 1: so you can use basically found objects as your reservoir.
Speaker 1: So seashells were often used because these were naturally occurring
Speaker 1: shallow bowls with ridges to accommodate a wick at one end.
Speaker 1: But then once you start making artificial reservoirs for your
Speaker 1: oil or your fat, whatever you're burning your fuel, then
Speaker 1: you're making them out of pottery or even metal, and
Speaker 1: this allows for all manner of simple and ornate lamp designs.
Speaker 1: And you know where we're going with that, right, Oh,
Speaker 1: of course. Yeah, the obvious question is how many of
Speaker 1: these lamps were.
Speaker 4: Shaped like legs?
Speaker 3: Well, are you going to tell me?
Speaker 1: Well, this is a difficult question to answer, Joe. Humans have,
Speaker 1: of course always loved to craft things in the likeness
Speaker 1: of animals and or themselves, and animal legs and feet
Speaker 1: have always been a favorite motif. In fact, Fagan includes
Speaker 1: an image of one in the book. It's a first
Speaker 1: century CE brazier from Pompeii with beautiful like animal feet
Speaker 1: supporting it. And of course we still see this today
Speaker 1: with you know, tubs, anything. It's like it's the human
Speaker 1: artisan can't help it. It's like, well, I have put
Speaker 1: feet upon this device or this prop or this piece
Speaker 1: of furniture. Could I not make those feet like actual feet?
Speaker 1: And I guess you could even say there's a bit
Speaker 1: of biomimicry there as well, like if you're going to
Speaker 1: support an object with these like stumpy pods, well maybe
Speaker 1: make them look like a foot.
Speaker 3: That's true. In fact, you've got me thinking about how
Speaker 3: often the legs of you know, fancier pieces of furniture
Speaker 3: are kind of shaped to be organic or flesh like
Speaker 3: in a way. They might have kind of curves on them,
Speaker 3: similar to a human leg or to an animal leg,
Speaker 3: even if they're not explicitly trying to depict a human
Speaker 3: or animal leg like with toes and stuff.
Speaker 1: Right though, of course, there are plenty of explicit depictions
Speaker 1: out there, whereas like it straight up looks like the
Speaker 1: foot of a lion or a goat or what have you.
Speaker 1: So looking around in the history of lamp designs, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I miss something interesting, But I've come across
Speaker 1: two different examples of from Greek and Roman traditions that
Speaker 1: are that are pretty interesting, particularly when dealing with the
Speaker 1: Greek ascos and the Greek alabastron.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: An ascos is an ancient Greek pottery vessel used to
Speaker 1: pour liquids such as oils, so it is not quite
Speaker 1: a lamp, though it could have been used to store
Speaker 1: lamp oil and could have been used to re fill lamps,
Speaker 1: and many of these were decorated and decorational, sometimes in
Speaker 1: the form of animals. And then an alabastron is similar.
Speaker 1: It's a pottery vessel often used for holding oils or perfumes,
Speaker 1: named for the carved alabaster containers from Egypt that started
Speaker 1: the design. Key and the key thing here is that
Speaker 1: these are generally elongated, so they are, by their very
Speaker 1: nature in their sort of generic form, kind of leg shaped.
Speaker 1: So you'll find both of these in various shapes and forms,
Speaker 1: and they're littered throughout museums and collections around the world.
Speaker 1: But I was able to find some images for starters.
Speaker 1: There's a leg shaped ascos or alabastron that is or
Speaker 1: was in the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto,
Speaker 1: though I've had trouble finding out any additional information about it.
Speaker 1: I might have to ask anyone out there who has
Speaker 1: visited the Royal Ontario Museum or can visit it now
Speaker 1: to go in and try and get me more answers
Speaker 1: on this. But the image I found is indeed an alabastron,
Speaker 1: or it appears to be an alabaster. It's hard to
Speaker 1: figure out what the scale is here. It is shaped
Speaker 1: like a essentially like a naked human leg, and it's
Speaker 1: free standing. It looks like it had it maybe has
Speaker 1: sandals drawn on it, and it was used to hold
Speaker 1: oil or something.
Speaker 3: This gives new meaning to the expression that someone who
Speaker 3: can hold their liquor has a quote hollow leg.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is indeed hollow leg. I wonder if that Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't even think about that phrase. Now I was
Speaker 1: able to find more information on another one. There is
Speaker 1: a Greek pottery alabastron in the shape of a grieved
Speaker 1: or armored leg from Corinth or Rhodes circa sixth century BCE.
Speaker 1: And it's part or was part, I'm not sure of.
Speaker 1: The Callos Collection in London included an image of this
Speaker 1: for you to look.
Speaker 4: At as well. Joe.
Speaker 1: So this is less decorative, but also is not a
Speaker 1: naked leg. It has armor on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is more like an ancient RoboCop leg.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the Callos Collection website shares the following quote. The
Speaker 1: Callos example above is a very rare and fine alabastron
Speaker 1: that takes the shape of a leg protected by a greeve,
Speaker 1: dating to the sixth century BC. It is an interesting
Speaker 1: example of a plastic vase from this period. And note
Speaker 1: the use of the term plastic here. It's not modern
Speaker 1: plastic obviously. This just means that it's molded, and this
Speaker 1: is derived from the Greek verb placine, meaning to mold quote.
Speaker 1: The greeve is outlined in black slip and tapers toward
Speaker 1: the ankle area. The foot emerges beneath with carefully insized
Speaker 1: details for the sandal and toes. Although primarily used as
Speaker 1: a container, the form of this alabastron as a grieved
Speaker 1: leg implies that it may also have been used at
Speaker 1: or dedicated to a sanctuary as a votive offering. There
Speaker 1: is a very similar example of this rare type in
Speaker 1: the Museum of Farmacia in Portugal, and they include an
Speaker 1: inventory number, and I was able to look it up.
Speaker 1: It's number ten eighty nine to two, and you get
Speaker 1: kind of a delightful rear view of this freestanding hollow leg.
Speaker 3: I was, okay, so it seems like a bunch of
Speaker 3: ancient Greeks really pouring stuff out of legs.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, again, these are not lamps. They're merely containers that
Speaker 1: may have contained lamp oil and may have been used
Speaker 1: to refill lamps. But we're not done yet. So, as
Speaker 1: the Pagans point out, the Roman period was a time
Speaker 1: of pottery lamp mass production and lamps of every design
Speaker 1: were used for not only practical reasons providing illumination when
Speaker 1: you need it, but also purely esthetic reasons and even
Speaker 1: religious and occult reasons. And that brings us to the
Speaker 1: next example, the Roman foot lamp.
Speaker 4: Ooh.
Speaker 1: I initially found these on the Farrabee Keeper blog by
Speaker 1: Wayne Farrabee, a Brooklyn based rider, and I have to
Speaker 1: say this is quite a good, good looking blog. Looks
Speaker 1: like a lot of interesting content on here. If anyone
Speaker 1: wants to check it out, it's uh Farabee Keeper dot org,
Speaker 1: press dot com.
Speaker 4: And uh.
Speaker 1: The great thing here is that we're not just talking
Speaker 1: about one lamp. We're not talking about Oh well, here's
Speaker 1: the Roman foot lamp, and we we don't we have
Speaker 1: no idea why they made this. Instead, we have several
Speaker 1: different surviving lamps, and I've included images for you to
Speaker 1: look at. Joe, I invite anyone out there to either
Speaker 1: visit that Farrabee website or to to do Google image
Speaker 1: searches so you can pull this up for yourself, because
Speaker 1: these are these are wondrous and and really strange to
Speaker 1: look at. They are lamps in the shape of a
Speaker 1: human foot, as the name implies, with with with with
Speaker 1: essentially a stopper or lid at the aperture where the
Speaker 1: stump of the disembodied foot would be. And then there
Speaker 1: is another aperture at the big toe, and it is
Speaker 1: from this that the and and therefore the flame would emerge.
Speaker 3: Right, So I guess you would hold this by the
Speaker 3: handle at the back of the foot, so you're holding
Speaker 3: it like behind the heel, and then you would have
Speaker 3: the flame sticking out of the big toe at the front.
Speaker 4: Yes, if you were holding it.
Speaker 1: But then, as we'll discuss, there are some questions regarding
Speaker 1: exactly what one does with a foot lamp. But I'm
Speaker 1: looking at it too. It also reminds me a bit
Speaker 1: of depictions of the hand of Glory, the you know,
Speaker 1: the occult item that is supposed to be like the
Speaker 1: disembodied hand of a of a like a criminal's corpse,
Speaker 1: that is then transformed into this magical item that burns
Speaker 1: candle light from the fingertips and you know, has strange
Speaker 1: energies and effects.
Speaker 4: Except this is not a hand. This is a foot.
Speaker 3: It's not a real glory.
Speaker 1: It's a ceramic foot, and you know it's a it's
Speaker 1: a foot of pottery, and yeah, there is this flame
Speaker 1: that is emitting from either in front of the toe
Speaker 1: or from the toe itself on exactly how how the
Speaker 1: sculptor or has has arranged it.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Now, what I would wonder is is this just like
Speaker 3: because somebody wanted an interesting lamp and they made lamps
Speaker 3: that look like looked like all kinds of things. Or
Speaker 3: would a foot lamp have a particular significance in say
Speaker 3: a religious or political context or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that is that is the riddle that the
Speaker 1: rest of us are left having to solve. So Pharaby
Speaker 1: points out that the symbols and motifs of the ancient
Speaker 1: Romans don't always make sense to us today, which I
Speaker 1: think is a very fair point. And he says that
Speaker 1: the best explanation that he could find were that these
Speaker 1: were sort of literal footlights placed on the floor or
Speaker 1: a ground, especially at the base of murals, which which
Speaker 1: is interesting. It's still hard to figure out exactly like
Speaker 1: what that means. It just you know, pure novelty. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: it's it's a foot lamp, or it's a lamp that
Speaker 1: goes on the ground where our feet are. Let's make
Speaker 1: it in the shape of a foot is well, well
Speaker 1: to call back to the Simpsons. That kind of reminds
Speaker 1: me of why is there corn on the curtains in
Speaker 1: the kitchen? I don't know kitchen food corn?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or imagine time traveler visiting our current age and finding
Speaker 1: solar powered outdoor lights that look like mushrooms. Why do
Speaker 1: they look like mushrooms? Well, I mean it basically comes
Speaker 1: down to there on the ground where mushrooms are, so
Speaker 1: why not make them look like mushrooms? It amuses us,
Speaker 1: It just makes sense, yes, But I decided to look
Speaker 1: into this a little bit deep deeper, and I looked
Speaker 1: in a book titled Light and Darkness in Ancient Greek
Speaker 1: Myth and Religion from twenty ten. This has numerous authors
Speaker 1: on it, but is edited by Christopholis and Lavaniuk. And
Speaker 1: they mentioned that Roman footlamps were used in incubation rituals,
Speaker 1: citing a couple of sources as well that I tried
Speaker 1: to follow, but I don't think they actually have English translations.
Speaker 1: So incubation rituals or dream incubation rituals involve involved sleeping
Speaker 1: in sacred places in order to receive dreams or visions.
Speaker 1: And it seems that copious amounts of lamps were often
Speaker 1: associated with many of the sites where you would engage
Speaker 1: in incubation rituals, as described in a book by Sandra
Speaker 1: Blakely titled God's Objects and Ritual Practice.
Speaker 3: I don't remember what episode it was in the past,
Speaker 3: but somehow this came out, but I think we were
Speaker 3: talking about ancient rituals for dream incubation, specifically with regard
Speaker 3: to the Greek god of healing in medicine, Asclepius, where
Speaker 3: people who were sick and wanted healing would come to
Speaker 3: the temple of Asclepias and actually sleep in the temple
Speaker 3: in order to like they'd make an offering or do
Speaker 3: a ritual and they'd sleep in the temple in order
Speaker 3: to receive a dream from the god as a form
Speaker 3: of cure for their illness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. That would be. That would be
Speaker 1: dream and incubation. That's what we're talking about here. But
Speaker 1: how do these lamps come into play? I found another
Speaker 1: source that had some wonderful inside here, and this was
Speaker 1: a nineteen forty six paper titled Material on the Cult
Speaker 1: of Sirapis by Dorothy Kent Hill. And I'm going to
Speaker 1: read a quote from it here. But first I want
Speaker 1: to run through a couple of things here so that
Speaker 1: everyone will know what's being referred to. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: a Ureus is a curling snake motif, probably best recognized
Speaker 1: as a symbol of divine authority on the heads of
Speaker 1: Egyptian sarcophagus. So I think everyone's probably seen one of
Speaker 1: these before, you know, like a hooded cobra or a
Speaker 1: snake that is emerging from a head dress or from
Speaker 1: the head of one of these artistic depictions.
Speaker 3: Also known as a boss snake.
Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then Syrapis. It was a Greco Egyptian deity. He
Speaker 1: was introduced, but not necessarily created by Greek pharaoh Ptolemy
Speaker 1: the First Soda as an attempt to unify Greek and
Speaker 1: Egyptian culture. Specifically, as Geraldine Pinch points out, in Egyptian
Speaker 1: mythology a Diza. He was meant to be a combination
Speaker 1: of Appis and Osiris and Zeus and Dionysus. Now, Syrapus
Speaker 1: is often depicted with something on his head that might
Speaker 1: be confused by the casual viewer as maybe something that
Speaker 1: is also involved in illumination, like it looks like you
Speaker 1: look at images of him, and it kind of looks
Speaker 1: like you're supposed to put a candle on top of
Speaker 1: his head.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't really look like a hat or anything.
Speaker 3: It just looks like there's some kind of like container,
Speaker 3: bucket or something attached to his head in the form
Speaker 3: that he's in now, as a piece of statuary or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So at first I was thinking, well, maybe it's illumination
Speaker 1: is involved in more ways than one here, But as
Speaker 1: it turns out, Syrapis is often depicted with this thing
Speaker 1: on his head called a modius, which is a basket
Speaker 1: grain measure, a Greek symbol for the land of the dead. Now,
Speaker 1: in this tech by Dorothy Kent Hill, she includes two
Speaker 1: images of bronze lamps in the form of human feet,
Speaker 1: and they're very much like we've described thus far, except
Speaker 1: there's an extra interesting thing about them. So, yes, you
Speaker 1: have the big toe or something just beyond the big
Speaker 1: toe that is clearly designed for the wick to go
Speaker 1: in and for flame to come out of. There is
Speaker 1: the larger aperture at the stump of the disembodied foot.
Speaker 1: But in both of these you also have a rod
Speaker 1: that's basically going up from the base of the heel,
Speaker 1: and this is something that she ends up reflecting on.
Speaker 1: I should also add, at the top of this rod
Speaker 1: that's emerging from the base of the heel, we see
Speaker 1: once more this ureus symbol. We see the curled snake.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there it is what the hood flared.
Speaker 1: So this is what she had to say. Quote lamps
Speaker 1: modeled after parts of the body, especially the foot, we're very,
Speaker 1: very common in antiquity. Such a lamp might reflect no
Speaker 1: more than a whimsical mood of a craftsman. But the
Speaker 1: ureus immediately suggests a connection with the giant detached syrapus
Speaker 1: feed recently studied by Dow and Upsen. On these monuments,
Speaker 1: the ureus is usually curled somewhere in the neighborhood of
Speaker 1: the ankle. Here it coils on a rod which rises
Speaker 1: at the back of the foot. The space between the
Speaker 1: top of the foot and the tail of the snake
Speaker 1: is great enough to accommodate a small bust of syrapis,
Speaker 1: which would correspond in position to the busts on some
Speaker 1: of the stone feet. We have observed that something was
Speaker 1: attached to the cover, and may now suggest a bust
Speaker 1: of the god. As the most plausible candidate. If the
Speaker 1: bust were placed in this position, the Uaeus would appear
Speaker 1: to loom over the head of the god.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, so I feel like I must be
Speaker 3: understanding this wrong. But does this mean this would be
Speaker 3: a foot with a head on the leg of the
Speaker 3: foot and then a snake over the head.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that's what I am to understand here. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like, here's a foot, let's put it. Or
Speaker 1: maybe we should think in reverse. I have a bust
Speaker 1: of a god I want to display. I want to
Speaker 1: display it. I don't want to just lay it on
Speaker 1: the floor though. I need something to hold it up,
Speaker 1: and also I need to illuminate it. Well, I need
Speaker 1: a foot, and I need a foot that emits fire.
Speaker 1: And then you know they're able to work the Uaeus
Speaker 1: into it as the rod that is holding the bust
Speaker 1: above the foot. And there's more, because she writes quote,
Speaker 1: the smoke rising before the god from the lamp would
Speaker 1: create an eerie religious effect. Although Syrapis was by no
Speaker 1: means the only deity honored on lamps, his frequent presence,
Speaker 1: there is evidence for the probability of his guardianship over
Speaker 1: this bronze foot referring to the example that she's talking
Speaker 1: about in the article. Certainly, however, there are not good
Speaker 1: grounds for connecting all foot shaped lamps with the Syrapis cult.
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, she also speculates she brings up Psalms one nineteen.
Speaker 1: Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a
Speaker 1: light into my path, suggesting that you know, there are
Speaker 1: various ways we could interpret a foot shaped lamp that
Speaker 1: and again it comes back to the basic question like
Speaker 1: how much of this is novelty, how much of it
Speaker 1: is based in some reference that just has not survived
Speaker 1: the ages, or indeed, I mean, I have to say this,
Speaker 1: this idea of the lamp being used to illuminate and
Speaker 1: create like a smoky effect before the image of a god. Uh, there,
Speaker 1: there's something attractive about that. And and perhaps this idea too.
Speaker 1: Yeah that it's like if well, if I'm going to
Speaker 1: hold up the face of a god on some sort
Speaker 1: of a stand, then I need it to be in
Speaker 1: a foot as well. Like I there's something about the
Speaker 1: compulsion there that is it's fascinating, Like would it be
Speaker 1: wrong to hold up that bust of Serapis without a foot,
Speaker 1: without a human foot at the bottom. Would there be
Speaker 1: something kind of blasphemous about that?
Speaker 3: I wonder, Well, it's funny how the idea of a
Speaker 3: pedestal is derived from pad like foot, but in this
Speaker 3: case it's literally a foot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this is interesting too to think of in
Speaker 1: comparison to a Christmas story, because obviously, with a Christmas story,
Speaker 1: part of the whole deal with the lamp is that
Speaker 1: it is objectification of the female form. It's the idea
Speaker 1: of like, here is just the leg of a woman
Speaker 1: that is sexy, you know, without taking into new account
Speaker 1: the rest of her as a physical, whole being and
Speaker 1: of course as a person. In this it almost seems
Speaker 1: like we have the reverse where it's like, well, if
Speaker 1: we're going to have something else attached to this piece
Speaker 1: of a god, we need it to also be a
Speaker 1: physical piece of said god.
Speaker 3: Perhaps, Okay, I'm going.
Speaker 4: With you now.
Speaker 1: Realistically, I think that's about all the connects these ancient
Speaker 1: foot lamps with a Christmas story. You know, probably no
Speaker 1: more than to say, making objects, including lamps that look
Speaker 1: like feeder legs, is just the sort of thing that
Speaker 1: human artisans might do. But I think if we were
Speaker 1: to be unrealistic about the action we could wonder that
Speaker 1: perhaps what has happened here is the old man has
Speaker 1: has entered into the worship of an ancient Greco Egyptian
Speaker 1: god and wishes to bring the city of Cleveland under
Speaker 1: his domain. His wife, however, clearly she serves the god Osiris,
Speaker 1: who Syrapis, you know, partially replaces whereas it is introduced
Speaker 1: to replace, and so she brings about the lamp's destruction
Speaker 1: in a campaign to keep Cleveland under the sway of
Speaker 1: the green skinned god.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think there's also some underworld stuff you can do
Speaker 3: with him going into the basement to fight the furnace.
Speaker 3: That seems to connect maybe somehow.
Speaker 1: Oh but you know, we also have to think about
Speaker 1: the fact that, okay, if the god Syrapis is also
Speaker 1: still Osiris to some extent, I mean, part of the
Speaker 1: whole myth of Osiris is that his body is dismembered.
Speaker 1: You know, that's part of the whole you know, Osiris
Speaker 1: myth cycle. It's about his death and resurrection. And of
Speaker 1: course we see the lamp broken into pieces as well,
Speaker 1: and an attempt, a failed attempt to resurrect it.
Speaker 3: That's very good, Kudos to you, Rob.
Speaker 1: I'm just interpreting the work of the gods.
Speaker 3: Here, I'm just a messenger.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 3: Now, on the subject of tenuous connections to ancient art,
Speaker 3: I wanted to talk about leg sculpture a little bit
Speaker 3: more broadly, and at the risk of getting sappy, I
Speaker 3: also just have to say that the idea of sculpture
Speaker 3: of the human form as a lamp got me thinking
Speaker 3: about a line in one of my favorite poems. I'm
Speaker 3: sure this is what I've brought up on the show before.
Speaker 3: I don't remember when, but it's the poem The Archaic
Speaker 3: Torso of Apollo by Rayner Maria Rilka. I'm sure I've
Speaker 3: read this one at you before, Rob Adam.
Speaker 1: Well, let's see. I read a little bit and i'll
Speaker 1: see of it rings a bell.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, so this is the English translation by Stephen Mitchell.
Speaker 3: I can't read the whole poem, but it's worth looking
Speaker 3: up The Archaic torsov Apollo. It's a excellent poem. But
Speaker 3: Stephen mitchell translation begins, we cannot know his legendary head
Speaker 3: with eyes like ripening fruit, and yet his torso is
Speaker 3: still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp in
Speaker 3: which his gaze now turned low gleams in all its power.
Speaker 4: All right, all right.
Speaker 3: From here, he goes on to describe this the kind
Speaker 3: of strange life flowing through this dismembered sculpture from ancient Greece,
Speaker 3: and it ends with a line that's pretty famous in
Speaker 3: this translation. It says, for here there is no place
Speaker 3: that does not see you. You must change your life.
Speaker 3: So it's about Roka's experience of looking at this fragment
Speaker 3: of an ancient sculpture of the human form that he
Speaker 3: sees it. I think he sees it in the louver
Speaker 3: one day and having this profound kind of stirring and
Speaker 3: even frightening human connection with it. Now, the word that
Speaker 3: appears as lamp in this English version I think I've
Speaker 3: seen translated as candelabrum in others. But in any case,
Speaker 3: I like this because the line in the poem seems
Speaker 3: to be confessing the power of great sculpture, to suggest
Speaker 3: that there's something more than just mimicry of the shape
Speaker 3: of a human in great sculpture. It's not just that
Speaker 3: great sculpture gets the outline and the form and the
Speaker 3: contours of a human, right, It's that in great sculpture
Speaker 3: something actually seems to be alive inside it, almost perceptibly
Speaker 3: moving or lighting up. And I think this is the
Speaker 3: case for Rilca. Even though the sculpture he's looking at
Speaker 3: has arrived in the modern world in a totally degraded form,
Speaker 3: he mentions that it has no head. He calls it
Speaker 3: a torso. So I looked it up, and I think
Speaker 3: the actual artwork that he's talking about here is usually
Speaker 3: understood to be an artifact in the collection of the
Speaker 3: Louver called the kuros of Melitas or the torso of Melitas.
Speaker 3: So it is the torso of this nude male figure
Speaker 3: that's a very common form of sculpture and in archaic
Speaker 3: Greek art known as the kouros, and this one was
Speaker 3: excavated from the remains of militias. It is missing its head,
Speaker 3: it's missing both arms. It's missing one leg up to
Speaker 3: the upper thigh and the other leg from above the knee. Rob,
Speaker 3: I've got an image from a couple of angles for
Speaker 3: you to look at just down below here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is quite quite striking. Yeah, the lifelike muscle
Speaker 1: definition on this torso.
Speaker 3: I agree. Even though it's like missing most of the
Speaker 3: parts of the body, there's still something a little bit
Speaker 3: haunting about it. I know what Rolka is talking about
Speaker 3: because I see a kind of hint of that light
Speaker 3: or animating life force in it, though in a muted
Speaker 3: or half formed way, which I think is the ambiguity
Speaker 3: that makes the sculpture an interesting subject for poetry. It's
Speaker 3: what we can't fully see or know about it that
Speaker 3: makes it unsettling and something kind of ring within our
Speaker 3: chest when we look at it. And I think that's
Speaker 3: the thing also that leads Rilka to say, you must
Speaker 3: change your life. But this leads me to the fuller
Speaker 3: observation I wanted to make connecting the leg lamp to
Speaker 3: art history, which is that I think you could make
Speaker 3: a pretty good case that when it comes to sculpture
Speaker 3: of the human form, the legs are the life. Hmm okay,
Speaker 3: now why would I say that. Here's the case I
Speaker 3: want to make. One thing that's interesting about this sculpture,
Speaker 3: the Curos of Melitis, is that it seems to come
Speaker 3: from a period of transition in ancient Greek art, when
Speaker 3: Greek art was moving from what modern art historians called
Speaker 3: the Archaic period into what we now call the Classical period,
Speaker 3: and this transition was sometime in the fifth century BCE
Speaker 3: that seemed to be roughly the turning point, and so
Speaker 3: rob to illustrate, I want to let you look at
Speaker 3: a couple of statues of the human form, both from
Speaker 3: ancient Greece, and so there's going to be one here
Speaker 3: you can look at on the left that's typical of
Speaker 3: the archaic style, and one on the right that's typical
Speaker 3: of the classical style. These are both images I found
Speaker 3: on the website of the Met Museum, so both things
Speaker 3: in the collection there, but to describe them from you
Speaker 3: out there listening at home, the older statue, I would
Speaker 3: say is very rigid, with very straight upright posture. It
Speaker 3: is looking straight forward at you with very square shoulders,
Speaker 3: and the head is pointed straight towards you. So it's
Speaker 3: very just an aligned body. In fact, I would say
Speaker 3: that in a lot of ways it looks similar to
Speaker 3: sculpture from ancient Egypt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it has a very two dimensional kind of appearance
Speaker 1: to it. It's forward facing. It does not even though
Speaker 1: it is itself a three dimensional object, it is not
Speaker 1: really like owning that three dimensional space.
Speaker 3: Right, And I want to be clear as I go
Speaker 3: ahead that I would say For my part, I think
Speaker 3: both of these styles are beautiful, both striking in their
Speaker 3: own way. I certainly would not say that I think
Speaker 3: one is somehow better than the other, but there is
Speaker 3: a difference. So when you look at the second kind,
Speaker 3: these sculptures that are typical of the classical style beginning
Speaker 3: in the fifth century BCE. A good example of this,
Speaker 3: if you want to look it up at home. One
Speaker 3: is called the Dori Foos or the spear Bearer by
Speaker 3: the ancient Greek sculptor Polyclitis p O L y k
Speaker 3: l e I t o s. And these classical ones
Speaker 3: are very different in that they have I would say,
Speaker 3: this powerful lifelike quality that we see developing in this period.
Speaker 3: It looks it looks like there is something alive and
Speaker 3: even moving inside this totally still hunk of dead rock.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think if you've ever visited a sculpture garden
Speaker 1: and organa does to see some of these classical works
Speaker 1: reproductions of these classical works, you know exactly what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. You know, It's that that feeling that this
Speaker 1: is this is life that was captured and frozen. You know,
Speaker 1: you look at it at one of these statues and
Speaker 1: it looks as if it had just moved and it
Speaker 1: wasn't even necessarily posing for the artist, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great comparison. They often the classical sculptures
Speaker 3: look as if, you know, you're a fly on the
Speaker 3: wall and you have just frozen time in the middle
Speaker 3: of a scene, and this is what was happening while say,
Speaker 3: you know, the discus thrower was winding up to throw,
Speaker 3: or somebody was leaning back to regard someone who had
Speaker 3: just entered the room. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like the spear bear here, he's kind
Speaker 1: of has the pose like, oh, are you sculpting me?
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I was just standing here naked.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the question is what makes the difference? How
Speaker 3: do you go again? I think both styles are wonderful,
Speaker 3: But what makes the difference from this style that is
Speaker 3: striking as artwork but doesn't look lifelike to this kind
Speaker 3: of the classical period that almost it feels like it
Speaker 3: has a pulse, you know, it looks like there's something
Speaker 3: just about to move. I think there are a number
Speaker 3: of changes in artistic technique, and I fully admit that
Speaker 3: there's a lot about classical art that I don't know
Speaker 3: or understand. But I am to understand that one of
Speaker 3: the most significant developments here is a change in the
Speaker 3: approach to the depictions of legs, hips, and posture, which
Speaker 3: would come to be known by later artists and scholars
Speaker 3: as contra posto. So I was trying to find a
Speaker 3: succinct definition of this. I found one on a website
Speaker 3: for the National Galleries of Scotland. So this museum describes
Speaker 3: contra posto as quote, a standing human figure carrying its
Speaker 3: weight on one leg so that the opposite hip rises
Speaker 3: to produce a relaxed curve in the body. Now, I
Speaker 3: hope when I say that, you can kind of picture
Speaker 3: that you realize, like, oh, yes, I have seen statues
Speaker 3: like this where the figure being shown has all of
Speaker 3: their weight shifted to their back leg and their other
Speaker 3: leg is kind of lifted and bent, and this sort
Speaker 3: of causes a shift, a corresponding sh in the position
Speaker 3: of the hips, and then also causes a kind of
Speaker 3: twist in the spine where it looks like the character
Speaker 3: has been caught in the middle of turning or leaning
Speaker 3: or relaxing or something. And the result is this powerful
Speaker 3: striking quality of life caught in the middle of motion.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 3: And again this is in contrast to the posture that
Speaker 3: would have been common for standing sculptures of the human
Speaker 3: form in Greek art of the period just before this,
Speaker 3: the Archaic period, where again the curos, the nude male
Speaker 3: figure would usually have a rigid, straight posture with weight
Speaker 3: equally distributed on both legs. And again, for some reason,
Speaker 3: while I think that is artistically beautiful, it doesn't look alive.
Speaker 3: Something happens when you twist the form like that, the
Speaker 3: adjustment of the legs so that the weight is on
Speaker 3: one leg and not the other. It almost seems to
Speaker 3: to peel back this opening in the shroud that separates
Speaker 3: animate from inanimate. You shift the weight across the legs,
Speaker 3: and the twist the hips and the spine accordingly, and
Speaker 3: something just happens. Stone can become flesh, and sculpture can
Speaker 3: sort of it can start to have that glow, that
Speaker 3: unsettling quality of movement or soul.
Speaker 1: I don't think I'd really thought about this much before,
Speaker 1: but yeah, absolutely. You look at you look at these
Speaker 1: these statues, the ones that are the most lifelike, and
Speaker 1: you do see this kind of you know, it's in
Speaker 1: the legs often it's it's how though the weight is distributed.
Speaker 1: I mean really one of the most iconic examples of
Speaker 1: this would probably be Michelangelo's David. Oh yeah, where if
Speaker 1: you look look at the legs and it's exactly what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here.
Speaker 3: Well, yes, I think Actually, again, I admit I don't
Speaker 3: know a ton about art history, but I think that
Speaker 3: this is something that was consciously sort of noticed and
Speaker 3: then recreated on purpose by Renaissance artists looking back to
Speaker 3: classical art, like they sort of noticed this about the
Speaker 3: legs and the posture and said like, oh, hey, you know,
Speaker 3: let's the keys do like that, and even can up
Speaker 3: kick it up a notch from there, because I think
Speaker 3: the Renaissance artists took it a step further where there
Speaker 3: would be sort of like a double twist in the
Speaker 3: body like you see on the David, where the the
Speaker 3: you know, the legs are the legs have the lower
Speaker 3: bodies weight shifted one way and then the upper bodies
Speaker 3: kind of kind of shifting back even in the other direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm looking at a photo of it right now,
Speaker 1: and yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3: So there's my case. The legs are the life.
Speaker 1: It makes me want to go and uh and visit
Speaker 1: a museum with a number of sculptures. I go to
Speaker 1: the met and start looking at the legs more because
Speaker 1: often there's the legs are not the the the obvious
Speaker 1: focal point of the statue. Instead, you're drawn to well,
Speaker 1: you're drawing to like the chest or or certainly with
Speaker 1: the nude statues, you might you know, notice what is
Speaker 1: there or isn't there concerning the groin. Oftentimes they have
Speaker 1: a weapon, or they're holding like the head of a Medusa,
Speaker 1: or they're fighting a centaur. There's generally a lot going on.
Speaker 1: It's easy to miss the legs and not think about
Speaker 1: these things. But now that it's been pointed out to me,
Speaker 1: like I want to I want to go. I want
Speaker 1: to look at the legs of some statues and see
Speaker 1: to what extent their life is brought about by this effect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. Once you notice it, you kind of can't
Speaker 3: unsee it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So to conclude, I guess you must change your life.
Speaker 1: And how would you connect all of this to a
Speaker 1: Christmas story and the major award?
Speaker 3: Well, I told you it was going to be tenuous.
Speaker 3: But okay, you know leg sculpture, right, that's what I got.
Speaker 1: All right now, Obviously we'd love to hear from everyone
Speaker 1: out there. Do you do you have additional insights on
Speaker 1: the history of lamps that look like legs or feet,
Speaker 1: or the history of sculpture and an artifice depicting legs
Speaker 1: and feet? Certainly right in, because we would love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. Also, just additional thoughts on the deep
Speaker 1: occult secrets that are hidden within the film A Christmas Story?
Speaker 3: Are you going to fall asleep with it? Playing to
Speaker 3: inky bit? A dream that ooh yeah, bring you a
Speaker 3: gift from the gods?
Speaker 1: It is a film with multiple like dream and vision
Speaker 1: sequences in it, so im perfect for that.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 1: Like we said, this will probably be the last new
Speaker 1: episode of Stuff to Blow your mind for the year,
Speaker 1: but we'll be back in January with all new episodes.
Speaker 1: We're gonna We're gonna be I'm excited to see what
Speaker 1: kind of topics we end up discussing. We have a
Speaker 1: whole list of potential topics, stuff we've thought up, stuff
Speaker 1: that you have submitted to us, So we have plenty
Speaker 1: plenty of material to draw from and we're looking forward
Speaker 1: to it. In the meantime, you can find all of
Speaker 1: our episodes and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast
Speaker 1: feed wherever you get your podcasts. Core episodes of the
Speaker 1: show on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener mail on Monday's short
Speaker 1: form Artifact on Wednesdays, and on Fridays, we do Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema. That's our time to set aside most practical
Speaker 1: and serious concerns and just talk about a strange film.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent to your producer,
Speaker 3: Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in
Speaker 3: touch with us with feedback on this episode or any
Speaker 3: other suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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