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Speaker 1: Welcome just About to Blow your Mind production of My

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: And hey, it is finally October, our favorite month of

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Speaker 1: the year if you're new to the show. Every October

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Speaker 1: every year we spend the whole month, uh talking about

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Speaker 1: monster science, spooky stuff. And we have got a firecracker

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Speaker 1: to kick off this month this year, I think because Robert,

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Speaker 1: you and I both got wax fever. That's right, we

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Speaker 1: are going to be talking about wax. Uh. In particular,

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Speaker 1: We're going to be talking about wax and human flesh,

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Speaker 1: wax in the human form, what happens when we make

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Speaker 1: human bodies out of wax? How do we feel about that?

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Speaker 1: And we're gonna we're gonna gonna start at the U,

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Speaker 1: I guess at the the end of this consideration, and

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Speaker 1: like if this were like a drainage pipe, we're you're

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Speaker 1: going to find where it empties out into the river

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Speaker 1: of popular culture and genre film, because we're going to

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Speaker 1: talk about wax, horror movies, house of wax movies, wax

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Speaker 1: museum movies, the treatment of wax in horror cinema. I

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Speaker 1: love your metaphor here, because yes, climbing in through the

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Speaker 1: sewer grade is the only way to infiltrate the wax Fortress.

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Speaker 1: Uh no, wait, did did you end up watching the

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three House of Wax? No? I watched the

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Speaker 1: wonderful trailer for it that contains no footage from the

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Speaker 1: film and just just a whole bunch of crazy fonts

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Speaker 1: and promises about what the film will consist of and

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Speaker 1: how it will change your life. Oh man, the lettering

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Speaker 1: of the titles is actually one of the best things

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Speaker 1: in this movie. It's like very bright orange and it's

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Speaker 1: zooming out at the camera. So The House of Wax

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three is a vincent price feature exploring the

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Speaker 1: dark mania of wax crime. And it is made truly

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Speaker 1: exquisite by just see after seeing of of back to

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Speaker 1: back three D effects money shots, where there is there's

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Speaker 1: like a solid five minutes in the middle of the

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Speaker 1: movie of a guy just doing paddleball tricks straight into

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Speaker 1: the camera lens, you know, like in in Jason three

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Speaker 1: D where he's like shoving the knife towards the camera.

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Speaker 1: It's it's that level of three d exploitation. But other

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Speaker 1: than that, it is a film about a wax sculptor

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Speaker 1: played by Vincent Price, who is obsessively devoted to his craft,

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Speaker 1: and he's got this belief that his sculptures are somehow

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Speaker 1: real people who can speak to him, like he says

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Speaker 1: he'd rather die than have his sculptures destroyed. But then

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Speaker 1: he's got this scheming, evil investor who wants to burn

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Speaker 1: down prices wax museum and get the insurance cash. And

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Speaker 1: so he does this and Price gets injured in the fire,

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Speaker 1: and then he turns to wax crime, deciding that he's

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Speaker 1: gotta he's gotta kill people and use their dead bodies

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Speaker 1: to make wax figures for a brand new museum, which

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Speaker 1: is weird because it seems like that would kind of

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Speaker 1: take the artistry out of it, right, if you're just

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Speaker 1: using real dead bodies, like it wasn't the whole point

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Speaker 1: that you were crafting them. Yes, and this is but

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Speaker 1: this is something that first of all, we'll see time

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Speaker 1: and time again in wax horror movies, the idea that

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Speaker 1: the wax figure is actually wax cast around a human victim,

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Speaker 1: and it's almost like a like a weird backhanded compliment, like, like,

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Speaker 1: the artistry is so perfect in these they look so lifelike.

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Speaker 1: They must be made out of corps as you took

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Speaker 1: a corpse, right, This isn't this, This isn't a product

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Speaker 1: of your skill. You're a murder right right? Yeah? And

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Speaker 1: and they're like whole scenes in the movie where characters

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Speaker 1: are just sitting around arguing about whether or not this

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Speaker 1: wax figure is a real person or not. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: it spoiler alert, it is it's a you know that

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Speaker 1: that that's not Joan of Arc. That's my friend Matilda

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Speaker 1: who got murdered in the elevator last week. A quick,

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Speaker 1: quick fun fact about this film. I was reading that

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Speaker 1: it is. It's it's largely responsible apparently for really uh

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Speaker 1: bringing Vincent Price back into these leading horror roles. Apparently

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Speaker 1: prior to this, he was doing a lot of you

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Speaker 1: know second and their billing relatable characters. And because of

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Speaker 1: this film we see some of like the real horror

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Speaker 1: films to come with Vincent Price. So I have to say,

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Speaker 1: Vincent Price, all the likability always shines through, no matter

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Speaker 1: how deplorable the character. Totally, He's always that same lovable

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Speaker 1: Vincent Price. But I didn't realize that about his career,

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Speaker 1: So maybe he was like coming out of the era

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Speaker 1: where he had been the narrator in a maid for

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Speaker 1: TV adaptation of a Christmas Carol. Yeah, they're equivalent thereof Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but then also, uh, there's a funny thing about this

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Speaker 1: movie is that it's notable for featuring a very young

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Speaker 1: Charles Bronson as a character named Igor, who is Price's

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Speaker 1: assistant in Wax Crime, which seems a little bit on

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Speaker 1: the nose. Yeah, But then also, you know, there was

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Speaker 1: a you make of this, So actually I think the

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Speaker 1: fifty three movie was technically a remake of an earlier

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Speaker 1: movie that you might mention in a minute. But before

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Speaker 1: I ever saw the fifty three one, I saw many

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Speaker 1: years ago, the two thousand five, I guess, final remake

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Speaker 1: of House of Wax. It was marketed almost exclusively on

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Speaker 1: the fact that Paris Hilton was in it and you

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Speaker 1: would get to see her die, like literal literally there

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Speaker 1: were posters that said, see Paris die. Yeah, this is

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Speaker 1: a weird one to think back on, because this was

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Speaker 1: a time when Paris Hilton was at the center of

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Speaker 1: like media attention, and this whole this film was just

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Speaker 1: sold entirely on this idea of celebrity death worship. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I tried to rewatch it last night. It was a

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Speaker 1: brief experience of intense suffering and I did not I

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Speaker 1: was we were not able to finish watching this. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It is probably the most mid two thousand's thing I

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Speaker 1: have ever seen. It's just two thousand five in pill form.

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Speaker 1: So you've got Paris Hilton, you've got Chad Michael Murray

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Speaker 1: is like the bad boy who turns out to be

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Speaker 1: good in a pinch. And then there's a character who's

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Speaker 1: shoving a digital camcorder in everybody's face. Remember when every

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Speaker 1: horror movie had that for some reason. It would randomly

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Speaker 1: inter cut too grainy digital video for for no apparent reason.

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Speaker 1: And the soundtrack it was just constantly coming in with

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Speaker 1: you know, sudden compressed guitars and the butt rock voice

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Speaker 1: just stabbing into your ears. Uh, it's it. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: couldn't finish it. I was reading about it. Um, this

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Speaker 1: is when I have not watched. But apparently the wax

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Speaker 1: museum in the film is supposed to actually be made

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Speaker 1: of wax as well, which, um, it sounds stupid, but

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Speaker 1: it's stupid enough that I at least have to commend

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Speaker 1: it on committing to such a ludicrous notion. Uh yeah,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I didn't get that far this time,

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Speaker 1: and I do not recall from the last time I

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Speaker 1: watched it though it does feature a Paris Hilton made

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Speaker 1: of wax, or at least covered in wax. All of

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Speaker 1: the characters a little bit waxy anyway, and I would say, well,

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Speaker 1: that's an intentional effect, you know, for this film in particular,

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Speaker 1: But really I think that was just the visual style

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Speaker 1: of Mint two thousand's horror movies. Now, um, let's see,

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Speaker 1: we're not gonna be able to touch on all the

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Speaker 1: wax horror films in this episode really say much about him.

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Speaker 1: I will say that wax Work, which came out in

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Speaker 1: it was a lot of fun and had a pretty

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Speaker 1: fun sequel as well. It has the the guy from

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Speaker 1: Gremlin and Gremlin's too, and oh yeah, Zach Gallagan, Yeah yeah,

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Speaker 1: he played he's in both films, and David Warner plays

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Speaker 1: the wax Master, the villain in the first one. The

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Speaker 1: wax work films that I recall are are very they're

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Speaker 1: kind of, you know, that genre of of of fantasy

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Speaker 1: film that existed at the time where it's like you're

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Speaker 1: skipping channels and you're being thrown into different realities. Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: I do. That's what this was based on. It's like

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Speaker 1: that plus wax museum horror film, and I remember it

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Speaker 1: being kind of fun. I haven't watched these since the nineties,

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Speaker 1: but I I remember them being kind of fun late

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Speaker 1: night viewing experience. So it's kind of like the montage

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Speaker 1: at the end of West Craven's Shocker. Yeah, I guess, yeah, Okay, um,

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Speaker 1: now I should. I should also point out that the

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five film Mad Love starring Peter Laure uh uh,

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Speaker 1: this is one of my favorite weird pictures and probably

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Speaker 1: my favorite new to me film that I saw this year.

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Speaker 1: It actually features a wax double of a popular performer

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Speaker 1: as a plot point. So you see it, you see

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Speaker 1: him popping up again and again, at least as an

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Speaker 1: element in a weird or a horror movie plot. But but, but, but,

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Speaker 1: just weird wax films in general, they seem to go

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Speaker 1: all the way back. It appears that wax museum horror

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Speaker 1: movies basically just are across the entire landscape of cinematic tradition.

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Speaker 1: The earliest example that I was able to find was

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Speaker 1: Figures This Siri with with the or the Man with

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Speaker 1: Wax Faces from nineteen three, and this is a short,

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Speaker 1: silent French horror film based on a short story by

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Speaker 1: Andre de Lord, a French playwright of the Grand uh

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Speaker 1: gignal Um tradition, you know, the sort of hard decapitation

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Speaker 1: plays of the time, Grand gain Yall. We we talked to, yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: with the uh I think we talked about this in

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Speaker 1: our episode about the Masked Killers, right, how like the

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Speaker 1: Jason movies and all that sort of grow out of

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Speaker 1: the Grand gain Yall tradition, which was like just extremely

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Speaker 1: gory stage plays, which interesting, interestingly enough, also part of

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Speaker 1: the plot to Mad Love. Also another kind of cool

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Speaker 1: thing about this particular film. It was apparently thought to

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Speaker 1: be a lost film up until two thousand seven. Oh wow.

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Speaker 1: But even even during the nineteen twenties, there were multiple

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Speaker 1: other wax movies that came out in this film's wake.

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Speaker 1: Um there was nine While Paris Sleeps ninety wax Works

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Speaker 1: Seven Faces, and another film in nineteen twenty nine title

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Speaker 1: Chamber of Horrors, and subsequent decades would prove you know

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Speaker 1: that we had plenty of tolerance for more wax films. Uh.

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Speaker 1: I think that you pretty much have wax films popping

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Speaker 1: up in every subsequent decade um of of of horror

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Speaker 1: movie history. So the idea that wax figures are inherently

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Speaker 1: creepy is not one of these like new creepiness inventions

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Speaker 1: or discoveries like how you know, I don't know what

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Speaker 1: year it was that everybody decided clowns were creepy, you know. Um,

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Speaker 1: but this seems to be like to go basically back

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Speaker 1: as far as wax figures go right there, there's always

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Speaker 1: sort of this understanding that they had extreme horror potential. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: well it's I think that, Well, it's definitely gonna be

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Speaker 1: one of the things we explore in this episode. But

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Speaker 1: clearly throughout the history of cinema, it's always been established,

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Speaker 1: like there was never a question. There was never like

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Speaker 1: a pre wax is creepy era in cinema. And we

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Speaker 1: we should also note that that that prior to the

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenties there was also just a history of wax

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Speaker 1: chambers of horror um that you would find in wax museums.

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Speaker 1: They would have this rogues gallery of you know, generally

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Speaker 1: serial murderers and burglars and grave robbers. In this tradition

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Speaker 1: dates back to uh, you know, even before that, So

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Speaker 1: in a way, wax was a medium for horror before

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Speaker 1: cinema became available to host all of our fears and

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Speaker 1: our revulsions. Yeah, that's reflected in in the fifty three

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Speaker 1: price movie that you know, they they're getting pressure from

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Speaker 1: potential investors to say, like, wouldn't you make a lot

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Speaker 1: more money if your wax museum was full of murderers

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Speaker 1: and people going to executions? And he does end up

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Speaker 1: staging a lot of those scenes. But I remember actually

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Speaker 1: going to Madame Tusseau's and like, I was just kind

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Speaker 1: of shocked by how much of it was just absolutely

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Speaker 1: like puerile interest in in like gross and violent stuff. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: basically the the the Wax Chamber of Horrors was the

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Speaker 1: original Murder podcast. So yeah, that's so I'm I'm joking,

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Speaker 1: But of course I think it does show the y

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Speaker 1: that that interest has always been there and we have

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Speaker 1: to find a way to express it culturally. I should

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Speaker 1: also know that there's a literary tradition here as well,

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Speaker 1: most notably the wax works by Charles S. Belden, which

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Speaker 1: was the basis for nineteen thirty three's Mystery of the

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Speaker 1: Wax Museum and the subsequent House of Wax Films and

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Speaker 1: fifty three and two thousand five. Now that there are

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Speaker 1: a number of these wax films that I have not seen,

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Speaker 1: but I felt like I needed to watch something new.

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Speaker 1: I got so excited about it, so I ended up

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Speaker 1: watching a large portion of the nineteen sixty nine film

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Speaker 1: Nightmare in Wax. Is this the one that's got Cameron

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Speaker 1: Mitchell and the photo looking like William Shatner with an

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Speaker 1: I patch. I'm glad you brought that up, because I

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Speaker 1: think there's something about I was thinking about this earlier,

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Speaker 1: that that Cameron Mitchell is, like he's very similar um

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Speaker 1: to Shatner, and in many ways, you know, has similar

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Speaker 1: similar sort of body and stature, and also you know,

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Speaker 1: similar like like stereotypically handsome face, except with Cameron Mitchell

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Speaker 1: everything is just a little more dangerous and unsettling. Like

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Speaker 1: like you you can you can trust a character played

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Speaker 1: by William Shatner, but you cannot trust a character played

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Speaker 1: by Cameron Mitchell. If Cameron Mitchell had played the Captain

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Speaker 1: of the Starship Enterprise. It would have been an entirely

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Speaker 1: different universe. It would have been a very, a very

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Speaker 1: dark star fleet if he was at the at the Helm.

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Speaker 1: He's a shatterer with lurid secrets, yes, and in this

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Speaker 1: film he he gets he has a lot of time

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Speaker 1: to shine, as much as anything shines in a film

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Speaker 1: that is this grubby looking and this grubby sounding. Um

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Speaker 1: it's uh. There may be a cleaner cut of it

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Speaker 1: out there, I don't know, but the version I watched

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Speaker 1: is the one as of this recording currently on Amazon Prime,

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Speaker 1: and it is it is just it is grubby. It's

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Speaker 1: I had to put on the subtitles understand what people

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Speaker 1: were saying part of the time, and it is, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's it's it's just the sound quality of the thing.

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Speaker 1: I wonder which is more visually unpleasant, this one or

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Speaker 1: the two, I think in different ways, Like this one.

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Speaker 1: This one has a lot of gels, and it's like, again,

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Speaker 1: the video qualities just kind of grubby. There are a

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Speaker 1: lot of scenes of a of a gel lit Cameron

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Speaker 1: Mitchell in this kind of dark satanic robe with scarred face.

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Speaker 1: I patch constantly just chain smoking and drinking and having

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Speaker 1: these just really insane, maniacal monologues as he's either by

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Speaker 1: himself or when he's tormenting a victim. It's it's a

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Speaker 1: weird one. I went ahead and fast forward to the

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Speaker 1: end just to see how it wrapped up, and it

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Speaker 1: just it just ends in nightmare and madness. Um, it's

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Speaker 1: a film that makes you feel uneasy. Well, maybe we

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Speaker 1: should talk about some of the aspects that apparently have

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Speaker 1: to show up in every wax movie, right, Yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: there there are certain certain things you're always going to find. Um.

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Speaker 1: Facial scarring or deformity seems to always be there, seemingly

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Speaker 1: linking the the human likeness in wax. Uh. Two, in

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Speaker 1: the in the idea that it could melt, and that

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Speaker 1: it is um, you know, an imperfect medium in which

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Speaker 1: to work, is not like stone, comparing that to the

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Speaker 1: actual fragility of human flesh. Um. And on top of that,

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Speaker 1: almost all of these movies have some sort of a

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Speaker 1: wax master behind it all. Often the wax master is

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Speaker 1: the one that is scarred, and it's generally played by

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Speaker 1: some sort of interesting character actor. Okay, so the fifty

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Speaker 1: three You've got Vincent Price, he gets he gets burned,

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Speaker 1: into fire and then his face is scarred and then

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Speaker 1: turns to wax crime. But he there's a variation in

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Speaker 1: the fifty three movie, which is that he makes himself

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Speaker 1: a wax face of his old face. So for a

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Speaker 1: significant part of the later part of the movie, he's

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Speaker 1: going around looking like regular Vincent Price. But it's because

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Speaker 1: he supposedly has this matter ask on yes. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: you see that at that exact same situation pop up

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Speaker 1: in other wax master films. Uh the not always, but

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Speaker 1: certainly the Cameron Mitchell character here is a is an

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Speaker 1: example of that. But but so some of the other

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Speaker 1: characters that have played wax masters include Peter Cushing, Um,

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Speaker 1: David Warner, also John Carradine. So you know, just gives

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Speaker 1: you an idea that the type of kid basically your

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Speaker 1: your your middle aged horror movie lead, the actor who

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Speaker 1: will say yes. Another important aspect of wax movies is

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Speaker 1: if you can afford it, you've got to have a

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Speaker 1: cauldron of wax, and someone needs to either go into

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Speaker 1: that cauldron of wax or be suspended over it. Yep, yep,

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Speaker 1: all correct, though I got a bone to pick with

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Speaker 1: that cauldron thing. In a minute, here when I get

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Speaker 1: into some chemistry of wax. But I've got another element

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Speaker 1: that has to appear in all these movies, which is

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Speaker 1: that the palace of wax must burn. You know, there's

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Speaker 1: a fire, and you get to watch the whack figures

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Speaker 1: melting grotesquely. Because of the textural similarity of wax to skin,

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Speaker 1: it sometimes looks surprisingly like a real human melting. I

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Speaker 1: don't think a real human would melt quite like that.

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Speaker 1: But you know, something about it looks organic, you know

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Speaker 1: it does. It doesn't look like just a normal type

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Speaker 1: of inanimate object. It's something kind of like alive and

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Speaker 1: coming apart. Uh. And it almost makes me wonder if,

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Speaker 1: like all these wax movies where the wax figures always melt,

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Speaker 1: could be the source of the melt movie trend. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think that's that's a good point. But I want

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Speaker 1: to add another thing, which is that I don't know

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Speaker 1: for sure, but I think it's possible that this common

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Speaker 1: set piece of the wax palace burning down is inspired

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Speaker 1: by real historical events. Because I found an archived article

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Speaker 1: from the Guardian from I guess it was the Manchester

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Speaker 1: Guardian at the time, from March nineteenth nine about a

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Speaker 1: fire at Madame Tusseau's in London from that year, so

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Speaker 1: it looks like there so there was a fire at

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Speaker 1: this wax museum is very famous popular wax museum in London.

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Speaker 1: The fire started in the evening around ten thirty one

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Speaker 1: night and then firefighters showed up. They had it extinguished

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Speaker 1: by midnight, but there was a lot of damage and

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Speaker 1: while it was burning it reportedly turned into a huge spectacle,

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Speaker 1: with The Guardian reporting that possibly ten thousand people assembled

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Speaker 1: in the neighborhood to watch watch the fire or be nearby.

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Speaker 1: That number sounds high to me. I don't know how

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Speaker 1: that was estimated, but then again I guess they did

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Speaker 1: not have TV at the time. But there's there's some

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Speaker 1: real gems from this article, so I just want to

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Speaker 1: read a few quotes. One of them is quote the

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Speaker 1: fire brigade was under the command of a Mr. A. R. Dyer,

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Speaker 1: who was brought to the scene from a theater where

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Speaker 1: he had been spending the evening with some friends. Despite

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Speaker 1: the fact that he was in evening dress, he took

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Speaker 1: an active part in the operations. So you've you've got

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Speaker 1: I guess a guy into like a fancy tuxedo commanding

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Speaker 1: the firefighters at at Tussau's and then um. Once the

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Speaker 1: firefighters start to get the blaze under under control, it

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Speaker 1: says that the men of the Salvage Corps started running

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Speaker 1: in and grabbing wax figures out of the exhibits to

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Speaker 1: bring them out to safety. The Salvage Corps where a thing.

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Speaker 1: There were like a force that worked in concert with

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Speaker 1: firefighters at the time, where the firefighters be trying to

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Speaker 1: put out the blaze and the Salvage Corps which would

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Speaker 1: be running in trying to grab stuff to prevent property

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Speaker 1: damage and loss. I don't know if they were somehow

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Speaker 1: funded by insurance companies or something, but it seems possible.

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Speaker 1: But rita quote from this article, two of the Salvage

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Speaker 1: Corp men were seen struggling along with a huge cage

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Speaker 1: containing a green parrot, which after a moment or two,

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Speaker 1: hopped onto its perch and began to show signs of

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Speaker 1: a return to perkiness. This was apparently a famous green

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Speaker 1: parrot of Madame Tusso's, and there was another report in

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Speaker 1: the Evening Post that says, after the parrot was I

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Speaker 1: guess that it had been sort of rendered sluggish by

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Speaker 1: some smoke inhalation. But once they got it back outside,

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Speaker 1: it's sort of perked back up. And this, uh, this

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Speaker 1: report in the Evening Post says, then it startled everyone

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Speaker 1: by remarking, this is a rotten business. I can't do

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Speaker 1: a parrot voice, but rotten business. And then one more

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Speaker 1: longer quote from that Guardian article, members of the crowd

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Speaker 1: inquired after the safety of Charlie Peace, Crippen and other

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Speaker 1: notorious criminals from the Chamber of Horrors. So people are

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Speaker 1: out there yelling like, how's Crippen doing? Is he okay?

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Speaker 1: Um uh? The side of the salvage men shouldering the

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Speaker 1: wax models was a strange one. An eyewitness who lives

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Speaker 1: opposite Madame Tousseau has said in an interview that the

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Speaker 1: fire was a wonderful spectacle. Strong red and golden flames

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Speaker 1: leapt fifty feet from the roof of the building. The

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Speaker 1: wax models could be distinctly heard sizzling. It is strange

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Speaker 1: to think of the number of imminent and highly respectable

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Speaker 1: people being burned in effigy in London. Madame Tousseau's famous

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Speaker 1: wax works spread its net far and wide, with at

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Speaker 1: least forty people of the present Arliament and scores of

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Speaker 1: notabilities outside were represented in wax in these burning galleries.

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Speaker 1: Criminals represented in the Chamber of Horrors, however, will have

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Speaker 1: no feelings in the matter, as they are all dead. Well.

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Speaker 1: This is great because this does also get into some

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Speaker 1: of the ideas we're going to discuss concerning the likeness

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Speaker 1: that has been created in wax and it's relationship to

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Speaker 1: the living human or the deceased human and whatever the

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Speaker 1: case may be. You know, there's some photos online that

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Speaker 1: are alleging to be of the aftermath of the fire

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Speaker 1: at Madame Tusso's. They appear to be of like various

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Speaker 1: like charred and and partial remains of wax figures. I'm

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Speaker 1: not I couldn't confirm that they were definitely from uh

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Speaker 1: this actual fire, but wherever they're from, they really do

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Speaker 1: look absolutely horrific. It's it's one of one of the

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Speaker 1: most nightmarish things I've ever seen. Yeah, it's just like

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Speaker 1: bodies and lifelike heads and they're just kind of clearly

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Speaker 1: they're just kind of like thrown up against the wall temporarily.

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Speaker 1: But it it is bizarre to look at. Is that

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Speaker 1: it is unsettling because they are. They are lifelike and

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Speaker 1: yet lifeless. Now, there's an interesting thing that I want

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Speaker 1: to get into for a minute, if you don't mind

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Speaker 1: a brief chemistry diversion, which is uh so the fact

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Speaker 1: that all of these movies feature a roasting, burning, melting

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Speaker 1: hell of wax. At some point it kind of raises

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Speaker 1: an issue about the chemistry of wax. What actually happens

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00:22:27,640 --> 00:22:32,040
Speaker 1: when wax burns, like what happens in a candle. I

402
00:22:32,080 --> 00:22:35,160
Speaker 1: think this is something that I probably should have been

403
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Speaker 1: able to intuit the answer to, but I went most

404
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Speaker 1: of my life, I think, not really knowing the question

405
00:22:40,280 --> 00:22:42,879
Speaker 1: of how a candle works or you know, what what

406
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Speaker 1: is being what is happening when a candle burns down?

407
00:22:45,840 --> 00:22:48,400
Speaker 1: Because this is key be you know, we have to

408
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Speaker 1: to realize that when when we we get into the

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Speaker 1: discussions of of wax bodies that have been created, like

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Speaker 1: one of our primary relationships with wax would have long

411
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Speaker 1: been the candle. And and so we bring that knowledge

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Speaker 1: of what a candle appears to do to our I think,

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Speaker 1: to our consideration of wax bodies and wax art, etcetera. Yeah,

414
00:23:07,880 --> 00:23:11,240
Speaker 1: and a candle is, despite being a very mundane object.

415
00:23:11,640 --> 00:23:15,679
Speaker 1: It's actually a little bit more mysterious and mystical the

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Speaker 1: more you look into it, and it's actually a wonderful

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00:23:17,960 --> 00:23:21,520
Speaker 1: scientific invention. Uh So. So technically, you know, you've got

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Speaker 1: a lot of different chemical compounds that are called wax.

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Speaker 1: There's not just one thing that is wax. Wax is

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Speaker 1: the umbrella category for malleable organic compounds that are solid

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Speaker 1: at room temperature and lipophilic, meaning that you know they're

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Speaker 1: they're not going to dissolve in water, they will only

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Speaker 1: dissolve in oil or other nonpolar solvents. And basically, almost

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Speaker 1: all waxes, I think, perhaps all at least almost all

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Speaker 1: our hydrocarbons. They're made up of hydrogen and carbon atoms.

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Speaker 1: The most common type that you will find for various

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00:23:52,680 --> 00:23:56,760
Speaker 1: consumer items and uses today is probably paraffin wax, which

428
00:23:56,880 --> 00:24:01,000
Speaker 1: is a modern industrial product that's derived from troleum, first

429
00:24:01,040 --> 00:24:04,359
Speaker 1: created in the early eighteen hundreds, but people have been

430
00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:06,679
Speaker 1: using other types of wax for thousands of years. There

431
00:24:06,680 --> 00:24:08,199
Speaker 1: are a lot of types of wax that are derived

432
00:24:08,200 --> 00:24:11,040
Speaker 1: from animal products. For example, we're going to talk about

433
00:24:11,040 --> 00:24:13,480
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians in a bit, but they were certainly

434
00:24:13,560 --> 00:24:16,919
Speaker 1: lords of bees, wax. And then there's lanolin, which is

435
00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:20,679
Speaker 1: a type of wool wax. It is secreted from glands

436
00:24:20,720 --> 00:24:23,800
Speaker 1: in the skin of animals like sheep I believe called

437
00:24:23,800 --> 00:24:27,000
Speaker 1: the sebaceous glands, which is that's a good word for

438
00:24:27,320 --> 00:24:30,919
Speaker 1: your tool belt. But there's also spermaceti, which is a

439
00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:34,520
Speaker 1: historically very important wax that came out of the heads

440
00:24:34,600 --> 00:24:38,040
Speaker 1: of whales like sperm whales and bottlenose whales, which some

441
00:24:38,119 --> 00:24:41,760
Speaker 1: people once believed was literally the congealed semen of the

442
00:24:41,800 --> 00:24:44,479
Speaker 1: whales stored in its head for some reason, it's not.

443
00:24:44,640 --> 00:24:48,400
Speaker 1: It's a waxy material. But so you probably know from

444
00:24:48,440 --> 00:24:53,119
Speaker 1: experience that candle wax, whatever it's made of, generally is

445
00:24:53,200 --> 00:24:56,880
Speaker 1: not flammable in the sense that you know oily rags

446
00:24:57,000 --> 00:24:59,720
Speaker 1: or something are. You can't hold a flame up to

447
00:24:59,800 --> 00:25:02,440
Speaker 1: the wax edge of a candle, uh and and watch

448
00:25:02,520 --> 00:25:04,960
Speaker 1: it just catch fire. Instead, it's going to melt and

449
00:25:05,040 --> 00:25:09,520
Speaker 1: run down the side, right. Nevertheless, the wax is the

450
00:25:09,640 --> 00:25:12,760
Speaker 1: fuel for the candle flame. When a candle burns, the

451
00:25:12,800 --> 00:25:15,959
Speaker 1: fuel that's burning is the wax that the candles made of.

452
00:25:16,359 --> 00:25:18,760
Speaker 1: And the crucial factor here is that wax is not

453
00:25:18,920 --> 00:25:22,280
Speaker 1: flammable in its solid or liquid state. It has to

454
00:25:22,320 --> 00:25:26,520
Speaker 1: be vaporized into its constituent hydrogen and carbon molecules in

455
00:25:26,640 --> 00:25:29,199
Speaker 1: order to catch fire. So the way it works is

456
00:25:29,240 --> 00:25:32,480
Speaker 1: once you light the wick, the flame melts a little

457
00:25:32,480 --> 00:25:34,880
Speaker 1: bit of the solid wax around the base of the wick,

458
00:25:35,200 --> 00:25:37,800
Speaker 1: and then once the wax is melted, it gets drawn

459
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:40,720
Speaker 1: up into the wick via capillary action, just kind of

460
00:25:40,720 --> 00:25:42,879
Speaker 1: like kind of like the way that water is drawn

461
00:25:42,960 --> 00:25:45,439
Speaker 1: up the length of a celery stalk. And then this

462
00:25:45,600 --> 00:25:48,479
Speaker 1: liquid wax gets even hotter as it gets sucked up

463
00:25:48,480 --> 00:25:51,320
Speaker 1: into the area where the fire is, and it undergoes

464
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:54,920
Speaker 1: a second phase change into the gaseous form of its

465
00:25:54,960 --> 00:25:58,240
Speaker 1: constituent molecules, and then the fire happens. The heat of

466
00:25:58,240 --> 00:26:01,199
Speaker 1: the flame causes those gaseous molecules to react with the

467
00:26:01,240 --> 00:26:04,040
Speaker 1: oxygen in the air, and this creates more fire. It

468
00:26:04,119 --> 00:26:07,280
Speaker 1: keeps the flame going, and as long as new wax

469
00:26:07,359 --> 00:26:09,920
Speaker 1: can be drawn up into the wick, the flame can

470
00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:14,240
Speaker 1: keep burning. Candles are actually a rather ingenious invention, but

471
00:26:14,520 --> 00:26:17,679
Speaker 1: there's also something kind of uncanny to them, even in

472
00:26:17,720 --> 00:26:21,399
Speaker 1: their mundane form, which is that unlike wood or coal

473
00:26:21,600 --> 00:26:23,480
Speaker 1: or a lot of the other things that we burn

474
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:27,560
Speaker 1: on purpose, candles burn without leaving any ash or any

475
00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:32,760
Speaker 1: solid you know, detritus. The wax that burns simply disappears

476
00:26:32,760 --> 00:26:36,240
Speaker 1: completely into thin air. And this is certainly a quality

477
00:26:36,480 --> 00:26:41,080
Speaker 1: of candles and wax that that influences our magical thinking

478
00:26:41,200 --> 00:26:43,960
Speaker 1: regarding wax. Oh yeah, this will definitely come up again,

479
00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:47,520
Speaker 1: certainly with ancient Egypt and things like that. But um,

480
00:26:47,760 --> 00:26:50,639
Speaker 1: this actually leads to a very fun and easy science

481
00:26:50,680 --> 00:26:52,600
Speaker 1: experiment that like, if you've got kids and you want

482
00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:54,800
Speaker 1: to try this at home, I just did this myself

483
00:26:54,840 --> 00:26:57,800
Speaker 1: earlier today. You ever noticed, how so when you first

484
00:26:57,880 --> 00:27:00,640
Speaker 1: attempt to light a candle when the wax is still

485
00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:03,399
Speaker 1: completely solid, it can kind of take a while, right, Like,

486
00:27:03,440 --> 00:27:05,679
Speaker 1: you have to hold the flame against the wick. You

487
00:27:05,680 --> 00:27:07,480
Speaker 1: have to put it right there on the wick, and

488
00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:09,840
Speaker 1: usually have to hold it there for several seconds or

489
00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:13,480
Speaker 1: the candle won't light. But if you leave a candle

490
00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:16,520
Speaker 1: burning for a few minutes, first of all, you might

491
00:27:16,560 --> 00:27:20,600
Speaker 1: notice that the flame burns almost perfectly clean with no smoke.

492
00:27:20,760 --> 00:27:23,800
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's kind of a miraculous looking thing

493
00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:26,120
Speaker 1: when you notice it. Most of the time, if there's

494
00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:28,760
Speaker 1: a fire, you're going to see smoke coming off of it.

495
00:27:29,040 --> 00:27:31,720
Speaker 1: But then if you blow out the candle, suddenly you

496
00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:34,320
Speaker 1: will see smoke. It'll be smoke rising off the wick.

497
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:38,920
Speaker 1: What is that stuff, Well, primarily this is vaporized wax.

498
00:27:39,160 --> 00:27:42,720
Speaker 1: This is wax converted to its vaporized form, condensing into

499
00:27:42,720 --> 00:27:44,960
Speaker 1: little droplets in the air as it rises off with

500
00:27:44,960 --> 00:27:48,000
Speaker 1: the wick. And now it can't react with the oxygen

501
00:27:48,040 --> 00:27:50,520
Speaker 1: in the air anymore because the flame is gone. But

502
00:27:50,680 --> 00:27:53,480
Speaker 1: if you hold a flame up to a candle that

503
00:27:53,560 --> 00:27:56,359
Speaker 1: you have just blown out while the wax vapor is

504
00:27:56,400 --> 00:27:59,240
Speaker 1: still rising off of the wick, you will notice that

505
00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:02,080
Speaker 1: it lights much more easily than it did at first.

506
00:28:02,119 --> 00:28:04,920
Speaker 1: In fact, it happens almost instantly, and you probably don't

507
00:28:04,960 --> 00:28:08,000
Speaker 1: even have to touch the lighter, lighter flame to the wick.

508
00:28:08,080 --> 00:28:10,600
Speaker 1: You can just hold it close. And the difference is

509
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:13,080
Speaker 1: that now the candle has been burning for a few minutes,

510
00:28:13,280 --> 00:28:15,960
Speaker 1: there's already wax in its liquid form and even in

511
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:19,439
Speaker 1: its gaseous form, rising in that smoke. And this brings

512
00:28:19,480 --> 00:28:22,240
Speaker 1: me back to the fact that the fact of those

513
00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:25,600
Speaker 1: bubbling cauldrons in the wax movies, you know, the fact

514
00:28:25,600 --> 00:28:29,160
Speaker 1: that vaporized wax is so flammable, is one of those

515
00:28:29,200 --> 00:28:31,480
Speaker 1: reasons that that all of those movie scenes with a

516
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:34,600
Speaker 1: bubbling cauldron of wax are scary. Like if you're trying

517
00:28:34,640 --> 00:28:36,880
Speaker 1: to heat and melt wax for sculpting, I think people

518
00:28:36,880 --> 00:28:40,320
Speaker 1: are usually advised to do it over a double boiler,

519
00:28:40,400 --> 00:28:42,320
Speaker 1: you know, so you have water boiling on the bottom,

520
00:28:42,360 --> 00:28:44,560
Speaker 1: and you're using the steam from that to heat your

521
00:28:44,640 --> 00:28:48,000
Speaker 1: your boiler with the wax to prevent accidentally heating the

522
00:28:48,000 --> 00:28:51,000
Speaker 1: wax to the point where it becomes extremely flammable and

523
00:28:51,080 --> 00:28:54,560
Speaker 1: dangerous um and if you know, if it does get

524
00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:57,120
Speaker 1: to that point, if you have wax reaching its flash point,

525
00:28:57,480 --> 00:28:59,240
Speaker 1: it's also not the kind of fire that can be

526
00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:01,880
Speaker 1: easily put out, say by throwing water on it, because

527
00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:05,400
Speaker 1: throwing water onto lipid based fires can be very dangerous

528
00:29:05,440 --> 00:29:08,480
Speaker 1: make it worse. This is excellent advice for any would

529
00:29:08,480 --> 00:29:11,120
Speaker 1: be wax masters out there looking to set up their

530
00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:14,840
Speaker 1: secret dungeon studio. Don't play around with wax. And now,

531
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:18,040
Speaker 1: again we're not able to reference every wax horror film

532
00:29:18,120 --> 00:29:20,000
Speaker 1: that's that's come out. You know, we're trying to sort

533
00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:22,920
Speaker 1: of stick to the the generalities here, but I should

534
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:24,400
Speaker 1: I do want to point out that there is a

535
00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:28,920
Speaker 1: really cool wax based entity that shows up In TV's

536
00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:32,640
Speaker 1: Doom Patrol, which is a current television series based on

537
00:29:32,720 --> 00:29:35,920
Speaker 1: the comic book and in this case, particularly Grant Morrison's

538
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:39,400
Speaker 1: run with the title, there's this character named Candlemaker that's

539
00:29:39,440 --> 00:29:44,000
Speaker 1: this wax dripping candelabra headed being with with like candle

540
00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:46,520
Speaker 1: light on its head and in the pits of its

541
00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:49,920
Speaker 1: eyes um and it in the comics it's described as

542
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:53,440
Speaker 1: being an edgargor. This is a thing that's created by

543
00:29:53,720 --> 00:29:57,840
Speaker 1: unconscious tensions surrounding historical crisises such as the threat of

544
00:29:57,920 --> 00:30:01,520
Speaker 1: nuclear nuclear annihilation, and the comic version is quite ghastly

545
00:30:01,560 --> 00:30:04,640
Speaker 1: as well, but the TV version also creates this wonderful

546
00:30:04,680 --> 00:30:09,200
Speaker 1: ambiguity of melting flesh and or candle wax, and there's

547
00:30:09,280 --> 00:30:13,040
Speaker 1: as it begins to tear into all the characters around it,

548
00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:16,760
Speaker 1: there's also a lot of melted wax shenanigans in the

549
00:30:16,760 --> 00:30:19,640
Speaker 1: way it dispatches people and like leaves them covered in

550
00:30:19,960 --> 00:30:23,040
Speaker 1: now dried wax behind it. Man, that's a great idea

551
00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:25,360
Speaker 1: for a monster. Yeah, it's pretty good. I was not

552
00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 1: familiar with it prior to checking out this show because

553
00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:32,320
Speaker 1: I've never actually never read Grant Morrison's run on Doom patrol.

554
00:30:32,400 --> 00:30:34,960
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's a wonderful creation and it's it's

555
00:30:34,960 --> 00:30:38,000
Speaker 1: brought to uh to life rather nicely in the show.

556
00:30:38,360 --> 00:30:40,000
Speaker 1: Should we take a break and then come back to

557
00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:46,480
Speaker 1: talk more wax? Let's do it. Thank alright, we're back.

558
00:30:46,760 --> 00:30:50,520
Speaker 1: So we talked about the pop culture, the end of it,

559
00:30:50,640 --> 00:30:55,160
Speaker 1: the genre film end of this situation. But let's talk

560
00:30:55,200 --> 00:30:58,200
Speaker 1: a little bit about the idea of of wax and

561
00:30:58,280 --> 00:31:01,360
Speaker 1: magic wax and an ancient magic with with a focus

562
00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:04,520
Speaker 1: on the human form. So years ago we did uh

563
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:07,360
Speaker 1: that many years ago? What a few years ago, we

564
00:31:07,400 --> 00:31:12,080
Speaker 1: did an episode titled The Tears of Ray, all about

565
00:31:12,440 --> 00:31:15,560
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptian art of beekeeping and the various uses

566
00:31:15,920 --> 00:31:18,840
Speaker 1: that the ancient Egyptians had for wax and for honey,

567
00:31:18,880 --> 00:31:21,440
Speaker 1: both of which were considered that the tears of the

568
00:31:21,440 --> 00:31:25,760
Speaker 1: god Ray. And we chatted with author Jane Kritzky about

569
00:31:25,800 --> 00:31:27,680
Speaker 1: it because he had written his Stabulus book titled The

570
00:31:27,720 --> 00:31:30,800
Speaker 1: Tears of Ray and UH and certainly we encourage you

571
00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:34,040
Speaker 1: to check out that episode to hear that interview, but

572
00:31:34,120 --> 00:31:35,960
Speaker 1: we're also going to refer back to some of what

573
00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:41,880
Speaker 1: we discussed concerning wax in that episode. So Egyptian physicians

574
00:31:41,920 --> 00:31:44,760
Speaker 1: would use bees wax to treat wounds. They would also

575
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:49,160
Speaker 1: give you a wax amulet to burn. As we discussed already,

576
00:31:49,320 --> 00:31:53,720
Speaker 1: it burns brightly, it burns up completely symbolically and by

577
00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 1: extension magically. You know, the ideas it consumes the illness

578
00:31:57,760 --> 00:32:00,360
Speaker 1: or the thing that is created in its like is

579
00:32:00,400 --> 00:32:04,720
Speaker 1: now just magically evaporated from the world through fire. Yeah,

580
00:32:04,760 --> 00:32:07,120
Speaker 1: and apparently this is not something that only happened in

581
00:32:07,120 --> 00:32:09,480
Speaker 1: ancient Egypt. There there have been traditions in a number

582
00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:13,160
Speaker 1: of different religions. I think in in pre Christian Rome

583
00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:17,520
Speaker 1: there were also like cases of people burning wax effigies

584
00:32:17,560 --> 00:32:19,840
Speaker 1: of say, an organ of the body or something like

585
00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:22,600
Speaker 1: that to try to get a blessing from the gods

586
00:32:22,720 --> 00:32:26,120
Speaker 1: or to defeat an illness of some kind. Uh. And

587
00:32:26,120 --> 00:32:28,560
Speaker 1: and it seems to be there's something about the way

588
00:32:28,560 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 1: that the wax would disappear completely that made it seem

589
00:32:31,520 --> 00:32:34,840
Speaker 1: more magical, right, yes, you know, well we'll get into

590
00:32:34,960 --> 00:32:37,680
Speaker 1: to that in more detail. But but certainly you see

591
00:32:37,680 --> 00:32:39,920
Speaker 1: that in the pre Christian tradition and then as an

592
00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:43,880
Speaker 1: element of Christianity with the use of votive candles. Um.

593
00:32:43,920 --> 00:32:46,720
Speaker 1: But but yeah, the Egyptians were super into it. They

594
00:32:46,800 --> 00:32:49,800
Speaker 1: used bax these wax for for a number of different purposes.

595
00:32:49,800 --> 00:32:52,440
Speaker 1: I mean, they used it isn't isn't adhesive. They also

596
00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:55,200
Speaker 1: used it as an embalming agent, a light source, and

597
00:32:55,240 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 1: an artistic medium. So already we can see the idea

598
00:32:58,600 --> 00:33:02,240
Speaker 1: of wax being used in many cases in physical contact

599
00:33:02,240 --> 00:33:05,080
Speaker 1: with the flesh of the living and the dead. And

600
00:33:05,360 --> 00:33:08,000
Speaker 1: also and also is something out of which to form

601
00:33:08,160 --> 00:33:12,400
Speaker 1: likenesses of living flesh. Um. But but there were a

602
00:33:12,480 --> 00:33:16,520
Speaker 1: number of magical connotations here as well, and and part

603
00:33:16,520 --> 00:33:18,640
Speaker 1: of that I think comes down to the and and certainly,

604
00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:22,040
Speaker 1: uh Jean Chritsky made this argument that a lot of

605
00:33:22,040 --> 00:33:24,800
Speaker 1: it comes down to the particular properties of wax. It's

606
00:33:24,920 --> 00:33:28,760
Speaker 1: it's malleable, it's insoluble in water, it doesn't discolor and

607
00:33:28,840 --> 00:33:32,440
Speaker 1: doesn't lose shape after being molded into its desired form.

608
00:33:32,520 --> 00:33:35,280
Speaker 1: And in that respect, wax figures can last for centuries.

609
00:33:35,800 --> 00:33:37,840
Speaker 1: But also if you place it in the sun, it's

610
00:33:37,920 --> 00:33:41,800
Speaker 1: color can change, which Kritsky believes might have been highly

611
00:33:41,840 --> 00:33:45,000
Speaker 1: desirable as well, given the importance of the god Ray

612
00:33:45,120 --> 00:33:49,040
Speaker 1: and the and the sun in Egyptian mythology. So it's

613
00:33:49,040 --> 00:33:51,440
Speaker 1: almost like the god is is continuing to work his

614
00:33:51,520 --> 00:33:56,400
Speaker 1: magic on the products of his of his hidden industry, right,

615
00:33:56,840 --> 00:33:59,719
Speaker 1: and then of course there's this idea that it leaves

616
00:33:59,720 --> 00:34:05,440
Speaker 1: no ash behind, that it burns cleanly and almost magically. Apparently,

617
00:34:05,520 --> 00:34:11,080
Speaker 1: the the Salt Papyrus describes how wax quote could be

618
00:34:11,200 --> 00:34:14,680
Speaker 1: used to ensure the destruction of Seth, the god of confusion,

619
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:18,319
Speaker 1: disorder and violence, and the murderer of Osiris. So you'd

620
00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:21,520
Speaker 1: simply make a bees wax likeness of your enemies, and

621
00:34:21,600 --> 00:34:24,600
Speaker 1: you would burn them to kill the name of Seth. Now,

622
00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:28,000
Speaker 1: the very nature of these likenesses or figurines would seem

623
00:34:28,040 --> 00:34:30,600
Speaker 1: to suggest that we're probably not likely to possess a

624
00:34:30,600 --> 00:34:34,000
Speaker 1: lot of them, right, Yeah, that's apparently one of the issues.

625
00:34:34,160 --> 00:34:37,360
Speaker 1: If it is a like a small statue that's meant

626
00:34:37,440 --> 00:34:40,520
Speaker 1: to be burned and consumed, they're not going to be

627
00:34:40,560 --> 00:34:43,920
Speaker 1: that many that remain. But still we see plenty of

628
00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:47,600
Speaker 1: other wax sculptures that apparently had other uses wax ambulance

629
00:34:47,640 --> 00:34:51,359
Speaker 1: and whatnot, that show up um in the remains of

630
00:34:51,480 --> 00:34:55,560
Speaker 1: ancient egypt Um. And then there are also various stories

631
00:34:55,600 --> 00:34:58,520
Speaker 1: as well. For instance, there's a Twelfth Dynasty myth that

632
00:34:58,600 --> 00:35:02,359
Speaker 1: tells of a priest by the name of webin Air,

633
00:35:02,880 --> 00:35:05,080
Speaker 1: which always sounds a bit like I always read it,

634
00:35:05,080 --> 00:35:07,440
Speaker 1: and I picture webinar in my in my head, but

635
00:35:07,880 --> 00:35:10,440
Speaker 1: it an't that a terrible word. I want to purge

636
00:35:10,560 --> 00:35:13,560
Speaker 1: webinar from my mind. I wish I didn't know it.

637
00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:16,880
Speaker 1: Well now it's it's kind of life, right. But at

638
00:35:16,880 --> 00:35:20,040
Speaker 1: any rate, this particular priest made a wax crocodile, also

639
00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:23,120
Speaker 1: using herbs and spells, and he threw it into a

640
00:35:23,160 --> 00:35:26,680
Speaker 1: pond where his life's lover was bathing. It came to life,

641
00:35:26,760 --> 00:35:29,680
Speaker 1: swallowed the lover, and then vanished. A week later, he

642
00:35:29,719 --> 00:35:31,640
Speaker 1: called the croc up from the depths, and then he

643
00:35:31,680 --> 00:35:34,600
Speaker 1: touched it and the animal turned back into a wax model,

644
00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:37,880
Speaker 1: disgorging the lover. The pharaoh watched all of this as

645
00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:40,359
Speaker 1: had happened and decided, well, actually the lover should die,

646
00:35:40,400 --> 00:35:42,640
Speaker 1: so the model was transformed into a croc again, ate

647
00:35:42,719 --> 00:35:45,319
Speaker 1: the lover again, and then left for good. Make up

648
00:35:45,360 --> 00:35:50,640
Speaker 1: your mind, so anyway, that's certainly check out Gene Kritzki's

649
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:53,120
Speaker 1: book if you want more about the ancient Egyptian use

650
00:35:53,120 --> 00:35:56,960
Speaker 1: of wax and honey. But but basically the idea is

651
00:35:56,960 --> 00:35:59,680
Speaker 1: there were a lot of magical ideas about what waxes,

652
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:02,799
Speaker 1: and I think it can help. These ideas can also

653
00:36:02,880 --> 00:36:05,480
Speaker 1: highlight some of the just the universal aspects of wax

654
00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:09,040
Speaker 1: that make it attractive to the human imagination. Yeah, one

655
00:36:09,080 --> 00:36:11,359
Speaker 1: of the things we didn't even really get deep into here,

656
00:36:11,400 --> 00:36:13,719
Speaker 1: but also worth looking up. You know, you've never seen

657
00:36:13,800 --> 00:36:18,120
Speaker 1: them before. Um uh, look up the Phiume mummy portraits.

658
00:36:18,239 --> 00:36:21,279
Speaker 1: These are some some of the most striking paintings I

659
00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:24,200
Speaker 1: think that that are extant from the ancient world. I mean,

660
00:36:24,280 --> 00:36:27,200
Speaker 1: just like it's hard to believe the level of color

661
00:36:27,239 --> 00:36:30,040
Speaker 1: and detail that's still visible on them given how old

662
00:36:30,080 --> 00:36:34,040
Speaker 1: they are. Um. And a lot of these paintings were

663
00:36:34,120 --> 00:36:37,400
Speaker 1: made with a process that was able to preserve the

664
00:36:37,440 --> 00:36:40,719
Speaker 1: color of the paint because the painting incorporated wax, like

665
00:36:40,760 --> 00:36:43,080
Speaker 1: instead of just regular paint, it used something called in

666
00:36:43,239 --> 00:36:45,880
Speaker 1: caustic painting, which I think is where you mix bees

667
00:36:45,920 --> 00:36:50,040
Speaker 1: wax together with your pigments and this produces a type

668
00:36:50,080 --> 00:36:53,000
Speaker 1: of painting that is, you know, more durable over time,

669
00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:56,040
Speaker 1: which is which is interesting because one of the critiques

670
00:36:56,120 --> 00:36:59,400
Speaker 1: and the criticisms it is often made against wax based

671
00:36:59,520 --> 00:37:02,480
Speaker 1: art is that it is it is so impermanent. The

672
00:37:02,520 --> 00:37:04,120
Speaker 1: idea that is just going to melt away, it's not

673
00:37:04,160 --> 00:37:07,279
Speaker 1: going to stand the test of time clearly, you know,

674
00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:09,640
Speaker 1: as as we've discussed so far and we'll continue to discuss.

675
00:37:09,640 --> 00:37:12,200
Speaker 1: There are there are a number of examples of wax

676
00:37:12,360 --> 00:37:15,040
Speaker 1: art that has stood the test of time totally. And yes,

677
00:37:15,400 --> 00:37:17,200
Speaker 1: once again, if you have never looked up the fire

678
00:37:17,280 --> 00:37:20,160
Speaker 1: Mummy portraits, that they are absolutely worth a look. It's

679
00:37:20,200 --> 00:37:23,960
Speaker 1: just shocking. So if we fast forward to medieval Europe,

680
00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:26,560
Speaker 1: we we see a world where where wax still has

681
00:37:26,760 --> 00:37:28,880
Speaker 1: is important for a host of reasons, including the use

682
00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:33,399
Speaker 1: of wax tablets, seilence candles, torches, you know, all though

683
00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:37,279
Speaker 1: the basic material uses for wax you might expect, but

684
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:42,799
Speaker 1: also they became useful in the creation of death masks. Man,

685
00:37:42,880 --> 00:37:45,280
Speaker 1: I love a death mask. It's a it's an interesting,

686
00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:47,440
Speaker 1: you know, I think complex topic because it comes down

687
00:37:47,480 --> 00:37:51,000
Speaker 1: to that big question how do we remember the dead? Uh?

688
00:37:51,280 --> 00:37:53,720
Speaker 1: You know, because as with all of our memories, memories

689
00:37:53,760 --> 00:37:58,520
Speaker 1: of faces are subject to change, erasure, elaboration, and more, uh,

690
00:37:58,560 --> 00:38:00,319
Speaker 1: you know. And plus they're there are different is in

691
00:38:00,320 --> 00:38:03,560
Speaker 1: neural abilities to summon visual images. To today, we have

692
00:38:03,640 --> 00:38:06,040
Speaker 1: photos and we have videos to help us maintain the

693
00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:08,600
Speaker 1: likeness of the deceased. But there was a time when

694
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:13,440
Speaker 1: you know, other than painting um and and other artistic traditions,

695
00:38:13,760 --> 00:38:15,960
Speaker 1: you know, what were you going to do? Well, Like, certainly,

696
00:38:15,960 --> 00:38:23,160
Speaker 1: if you wanted a realistic depiction of an individual's face, uh,

697
00:38:23,680 --> 00:38:26,200
Speaker 1: you only had so many options. One of those options

698
00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:28,800
Speaker 1: would come to be, at least for some members of society,

699
00:38:29,000 --> 00:38:31,280
Speaker 1: the death mask. I mean, one of the most interesting

700
00:38:31,360 --> 00:38:33,320
Speaker 1: things about it to me, I guess is the question

701
00:38:33,360 --> 00:38:37,040
Speaker 1: it raises of um. Does one want to be remembered

702
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:40,600
Speaker 1: as one looked at the time of death? You know, like,

703
00:38:41,080 --> 00:38:46,200
Speaker 1: is that the image of you that should be preserved? Yeah,

704
00:38:46,280 --> 00:38:48,480
Speaker 1: that is a difficult question to answer. I mean, that's

705
00:38:48,520 --> 00:38:52,480
Speaker 1: ultimately one that that probably comes up in um considerations

706
00:38:52,480 --> 00:38:57,279
Speaker 1: of even modern funeral um traditions. You know, certainly, if

707
00:38:57,320 --> 00:38:59,880
Speaker 1: your body has been embalmed, you're not going to be

708
00:39:00,120 --> 00:39:03,319
Speaker 1: uh laid out to look like you did at the

709
00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:05,759
Speaker 1: moment of death or anything so ghastly, but still it's

710
00:39:05,800 --> 00:39:09,880
Speaker 1: gonna be your body at that final state of life.

711
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:11,799
Speaker 1: Like if you are an older individual, it is going

712
00:39:11,840 --> 00:39:14,960
Speaker 1: to be your aged body, not your youthful um. You know,

713
00:39:15,120 --> 00:39:18,839
Speaker 1: a vigorous body, etcetera. Like it's a very common practice now,

714
00:39:19,120 --> 00:39:21,880
Speaker 1: even at you know, an open casket funeral, Like people

715
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:23,839
Speaker 1: can come and visit the body as it looks in death,

716
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:27,000
Speaker 1: but very often there will be a photograph or a

717
00:39:27,080 --> 00:39:29,839
Speaker 1: number of photographs, like right there beside the coffin of

718
00:39:29,880 --> 00:39:32,480
Speaker 1: the person younger, you know, when they when they were

719
00:39:32,480 --> 00:39:34,360
Speaker 1: in their prime. So yeah, I don't know that I

720
00:39:34,360 --> 00:39:38,439
Speaker 1: would necessarily want to be remembered exclusively based on how

721
00:39:38,480 --> 00:39:41,160
Speaker 1: I looked after death, but I mean I guess that

722
00:39:41,239 --> 00:39:43,880
Speaker 1: was often the best time to get in there and

723
00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:47,000
Speaker 1: and make a cast of the thing. Uh. You would

724
00:39:47,719 --> 00:39:49,680
Speaker 1: first of all, you would see even back in Roman days,

725
00:39:49,680 --> 00:39:52,320
Speaker 1: you would see whax sometimes used to preserve the features

726
00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:55,160
Speaker 1: of a deceased person for the purpose of of modeling

727
00:39:55,239 --> 00:39:57,600
Speaker 1: or sculpture, just to you know, to to sort of

728
00:39:57,680 --> 00:39:59,560
Speaker 1: keep it all together long enough to to model a

729
00:39:59,600 --> 00:40:02,160
Speaker 1: copy of it. But if you're going to create a

730
00:40:02,160 --> 00:40:04,799
Speaker 1: straight up death mass based on a person's face, you're

731
00:40:04,800 --> 00:40:08,440
Speaker 1: gonna need to create a mold um uh, And plaster

732
00:40:08,719 --> 00:40:12,000
Speaker 1: was often used, just as plasters used today for for

733
00:40:12,040 --> 00:40:15,760
Speaker 1: facial casts. You know, so certainly everybody's seen a makeup

734
00:40:16,160 --> 00:40:19,000
Speaker 1: FX documentary at this point and seeing that performed on

735
00:40:19,480 --> 00:40:22,760
Speaker 1: your your your favorite actor, uh, you know, or two.

736
00:40:23,440 --> 00:40:28,200
Speaker 1: But um, but on top of using plaster, wax could

737
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:31,640
Speaker 1: also be used. I was looking particularly at iris I J. M.

738
00:40:31,800 --> 00:40:36,360
Speaker 1: Gainsum's Death Masks Unlimited, which appeared in the British Medical

739
00:40:36,440 --> 00:40:40,239
Speaker 1: Journal in nive uh and point out the they would

740
00:40:40,280 --> 00:40:44,040
Speaker 1: sometimes pour wax over the features and these would often

741
00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:47,640
Speaker 1: the resulting um death mass that they created would would

742
00:40:47,640 --> 00:40:49,480
Speaker 1: then be used as a source for use in other

743
00:40:49,600 --> 00:40:53,600
Speaker 1: artistic works. But by the eighteen hundreds, UM we saw

744
00:40:53,640 --> 00:40:56,080
Speaker 1: a change. The mass became sought after in and all

745
00:40:56,080 --> 00:41:02,000
Speaker 1: of themselves, the creation of this life like um face uh,

746
00:41:02,040 --> 00:41:04,760
Speaker 1: and the resulting plaster or metal version of the face

747
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:07,840
Speaker 1: was used as an object of remembrance in and of itself,

748
00:41:07,880 --> 00:41:11,640
Speaker 1: not merely as a model for other treatments. That's interesting.

749
00:41:11,800 --> 00:41:14,440
Speaker 1: I wonder if that has anything to do with changing

750
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:18,640
Speaker 1: attitudes around the same time towards I don't know, like

751
00:41:18,960 --> 00:41:22,840
Speaker 1: objective accuracy in the capturing of images, say, like you know,

752
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:26,160
Speaker 1: also in the eighteen hundreds were getting the first photography

753
00:41:26,200 --> 00:41:29,360
Speaker 1: as opposed to portraiture. Yeah, yeah, this is a good point.

754
00:41:29,440 --> 00:41:33,799
Speaker 1: It's it's it's the difference between the the painting that

755
00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:37,240
Speaker 1: you have commissioned and perhaps had some insight into exactly

756
00:41:37,239 --> 00:41:40,759
Speaker 1: how you are represented, and then just the abstract reality

757
00:41:40,880 --> 00:41:42,960
Speaker 1: of the plaster cast that is made of your face

758
00:41:43,000 --> 00:41:46,279
Speaker 1: after you die. You know, you're not even around to say,

759
00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 1: can we can we do something about these eyebrows here?

760
00:41:49,280 --> 00:41:52,719
Speaker 1: Can I would like this mole removed? Etcetera? Like, Nope,

761
00:41:52,760 --> 00:41:56,080
Speaker 1: this is what you um what what you act is

762
00:41:56,080 --> 00:41:59,239
Speaker 1: what you get. Well, yeah, I mean it's like in

763
00:41:59,239 --> 00:42:01,520
Speaker 1: the modern era, we tend to think a photo of

764
00:42:01,560 --> 00:42:05,319
Speaker 1: a person is somehow more real than a painting of them,

765
00:42:05,360 --> 00:42:09,040
Speaker 1: you know, it's somehow more realistically captures what they looked

766
00:42:09,040 --> 00:42:10,960
Speaker 1: like that was the real them. And I guess you

767
00:42:10,960 --> 00:42:13,400
Speaker 1: could probably say the same thing about a death mask

768
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:18,960
Speaker 1: versus you know, when a somewhat interpreted sculpture. Right now, now,

769
00:42:19,000 --> 00:42:21,840
Speaker 1: the face is ultimately only one part of the scenario

770
00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:24,000
Speaker 1: here and what we'll come back to it. But there's

771
00:42:24,040 --> 00:42:28,279
Speaker 1: also this this rich history of anatomical wax replicas as

772
00:42:28,320 --> 00:42:33,680
Speaker 1: it concerns organs and other parts of the body, you know, hands, etcetera. Yeah,

773
00:42:33,719 --> 00:42:37,120
Speaker 1: And we were reading a really interesting paper about this

774
00:42:37,480 --> 00:42:41,280
Speaker 1: by a scholar named ROBERTA. Balestri Erro in the Journal

775
00:42:41,320 --> 00:42:47,080
Speaker 1: of Anatomy called Anatomical Models and wax venuses art masterpieces

776
00:42:47,160 --> 00:42:50,279
Speaker 1: or scientific craft works. And Robert I really liked this

777
00:42:50,360 --> 00:42:52,560
Speaker 1: paper that I thought this was so interesting. It was

778
00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:57,919
Speaker 1: all about the history of of how human anatomy has

779
00:42:57,960 --> 00:43:02,359
Speaker 1: been rendered in wax ulptures and to what degree those

780
00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:08,239
Speaker 1: sculptures incorporate elements of or are considered examples of fine art. Yeah,

781
00:43:08,239 --> 00:43:11,640
Speaker 1: it's a wonderful paper. It's available in full for free online,

782
00:43:11,640 --> 00:43:15,600
Speaker 1: no paywall, and it has it also has illustrations of

783
00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:18,399
Speaker 1: these works, has photographs of the various wax works that

784
00:43:18,920 --> 00:43:21,560
Speaker 1: the author is referring to. Now, one of the areas

785
00:43:21,600 --> 00:43:25,920
Speaker 1: that ballestri Errow begins with is going back to burnable

786
00:43:25,960 --> 00:43:29,760
Speaker 1: effigies of wax, and the author notes that pre Christian

787
00:43:29,880 --> 00:43:33,280
Speaker 1: votive offerings quote could be of any kind, but often

788
00:43:33,320 --> 00:43:38,319
Speaker 1: reproduce parts of the human body, representing healthy or diseased organs. Now,

789
00:43:38,320 --> 00:43:41,239
Speaker 1: one thing that balstri Erro points out in this particular

790
00:43:41,280 --> 00:43:44,600
Speaker 1: paper is how between the thirteen and seventeenth century of

791
00:43:44,680 --> 00:43:49,080
Speaker 1: Florentine and foreign nobles in Florence would commission life sized

792
00:43:49,160 --> 00:43:53,320
Speaker 1: colored wax figures of themselves which were then dressed in clothes.

793
00:43:53,360 --> 00:43:56,080
Speaker 1: They would you know, you could give them wigs and

794
00:43:56,160 --> 00:43:59,880
Speaker 1: basically create a stand in for yourself that would just

795
00:44:00,239 --> 00:44:04,680
Speaker 1: hang out in church as an act of devotion. Um,

796
00:44:05,400 --> 00:44:09,040
Speaker 1: this is this is so so weird, this is amazing.

797
00:44:09,239 --> 00:44:11,359
Speaker 1: You remember the episodes we did a few years back

798
00:44:11,400 --> 00:44:15,080
Speaker 1: about religious technology, so you would have, for example, the

799
00:44:15,160 --> 00:44:17,680
Speaker 1: prayer wheel. You know that in a way, this is

800
00:44:17,840 --> 00:44:21,560
Speaker 1: trying to create a machine that can accomplish a religious

801
00:44:21,680 --> 00:44:24,880
Speaker 1: or or supernatural objective by doing prayers for you at

802
00:44:24,880 --> 00:44:27,640
Speaker 1: a greater rate than a person could. But I also

803
00:44:27,680 --> 00:44:31,360
Speaker 1: wonder if there's some sort of vague idea of religious

804
00:44:31,400 --> 00:44:33,560
Speaker 1: technology here where if you can create a good enough

805
00:44:33,680 --> 00:44:37,280
Speaker 1: likeness of yourself to put in the church, it's almost

806
00:44:37,360 --> 00:44:41,279
Speaker 1: as if you can accomplish being there praying all the

807
00:44:41,360 --> 00:44:44,879
Speaker 1: time while being in your actual physical body somewhere else

808
00:44:44,920 --> 00:44:48,480
Speaker 1: and doing other things. Yes, it is like it. It's

809
00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:50,600
Speaker 1: it's really hard to even kind of fit this in

810
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:53,239
Speaker 1: your head, because on one hand, this seems like the

811
00:44:53,320 --> 00:44:55,480
Speaker 1: kind of thing Homer Simpson would do in an episode, right,

812
00:44:55,600 --> 00:44:57,560
Speaker 1: like try to put a wax version of himself in

813
00:44:57,719 --> 00:45:00,560
Speaker 1: church so that he doesn't have to go. Um. But

814
00:45:00,640 --> 00:45:02,799
Speaker 1: then it also again we have to think about the

815
00:45:02,840 --> 00:45:06,200
Speaker 1: magical ideas about wax, the idea like what happens when

816
00:45:06,200 --> 00:45:10,120
Speaker 1: you create a life like version of yourself, especially when

817
00:45:10,160 --> 00:45:16,000
Speaker 1: there's already this history of creating sacred objects out of wax. Um. Yeah,

818
00:45:16,040 --> 00:45:19,520
Speaker 1: it's it's it's ultimately really trippy stuff. Now, the tradition

819
00:45:19,560 --> 00:45:22,360
Speaker 1: here seems to have in part involved out of that

820
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:26,120
Speaker 1: death mass creation practice as well, because this would have

821
00:45:26,120 --> 00:45:29,480
Speaker 1: been the treatment befitting a regal face in death. But hey,

822
00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:32,360
Speaker 1: why not in life as well? If a funeral wax

823
00:45:32,440 --> 00:45:35,760
Speaker 1: body could stand in for a corpse in a coffin,

824
00:45:35,960 --> 00:45:38,640
Speaker 1: then why not stand in for the living body as well?

825
00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:40,560
Speaker 1: Why not? In in a way like stand in is

826
00:45:40,640 --> 00:45:45,399
Speaker 1: a like an additional antenna for the human soul. Oh yeah,

827
00:45:45,480 --> 00:45:47,879
Speaker 1: and and unless we skip over that too quickly, I mean,

828
00:45:47,880 --> 00:45:50,719
Speaker 1: another thing Balustri Arrow talks about in her paper is

829
00:45:50,760 --> 00:45:52,759
Speaker 1: the idea that say, if you go to a I

830
00:45:52,840 --> 00:45:55,440
Speaker 1: think it would be like a seventeenth century or sixteenth

831
00:45:55,520 --> 00:46:00,040
Speaker 1: century funeral in France, you might expect to find a

832
00:46:00,040 --> 00:46:05,319
Speaker 1: wax sculpture of the dead person. Yeah, how strange. Yeah,

833
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:07,040
Speaker 1: I mean in a way, it gets right back to

834
00:46:07,080 --> 00:46:09,480
Speaker 1: what we were talking about. Do I want everyone to

835
00:46:09,520 --> 00:46:12,919
Speaker 1: see my old body, uh there in the casket? How

836
00:46:12,960 --> 00:46:16,640
Speaker 1: about a wax version of me that can be uh,

837
00:46:16,680 --> 00:46:18,919
Speaker 1: you know a little more beautified. Let's put that on top.

838
00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:21,400
Speaker 1: That's exactly what you would see. But we should get

839
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:23,279
Speaker 1: back to these figures in the churches, because this is

840
00:46:23,320 --> 00:46:26,840
Speaker 1: this is just too good. So you would have a

841
00:46:27,000 --> 00:46:29,720
Speaker 1: rich person would commission a wax sculpture of their body

842
00:46:29,719 --> 00:46:32,280
Speaker 1: that could be put in the basilica in the church

843
00:46:32,600 --> 00:46:35,600
Speaker 1: to just live there. Basically, yes, and there would be

844
00:46:36,080 --> 00:46:38,600
Speaker 1: multiple figures that would populate the inside of the church,

845
00:46:39,239 --> 00:46:42,279
Speaker 1: alongside wax models of organs and the like, and also

846
00:46:42,360 --> 00:46:45,920
Speaker 1: some non wax models. But apparently wax was quite popular

847
00:46:46,280 --> 00:46:50,319
Speaker 1: and in this practice continued, especially in Florence and a

848
00:46:50,360 --> 00:46:53,720
Speaker 1: few other areas, at least until Leopold the Second banned

849
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:57,640
Speaker 1: the practice in seventies six. The author writes quote these

850
00:46:57,680 --> 00:47:00,200
Speaker 1: boatie as they were known in the Florentine vernacular. There

851
00:47:00,520 --> 00:47:03,560
Speaker 1: were present in nearly all churches in Florence, but in

852
00:47:03,600 --> 00:47:08,520
Speaker 1: the Church of the Santissima Annunziata they became a major feature,

853
00:47:08,760 --> 00:47:12,640
Speaker 1: turning the sanctuary into an enormous museum of wax figures

854
00:47:12,640 --> 00:47:15,880
Speaker 1: of all types, including body parts as well as whole figures.

855
00:47:16,120 --> 00:47:17,799
Speaker 1: This gets even weirder in a minute, but I'm going

856
00:47:17,840 --> 00:47:20,120
Speaker 1: to hold off for a second. That's right, because into

857
00:47:20,360 --> 00:47:24,360
Speaker 1: the Medici family, the House of Medici. I was looking

858
00:47:24,480 --> 00:47:30,040
Speaker 1: at a book titled Medici Women by Gabrielle Langdon. That is,

859
00:47:30,160 --> 00:47:33,240
Speaker 1: I think the deals you know predominantly with with women

860
00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:37,120
Speaker 1: in the powerful House of Medici family, the Italian banking

861
00:47:37,160 --> 00:47:41,239
Speaker 1: family and political dynasty of the time. But there's a

862
00:47:41,280 --> 00:47:44,880
Speaker 1: section and they're talking about how the Medici family used

863
00:47:44,920 --> 00:47:48,359
Speaker 1: bodi um that they were first of all, to drive

864
00:47:48,400 --> 00:47:51,480
Speaker 1: home these figures were not meant to be burnt in

865
00:47:51,520 --> 00:47:53,960
Speaker 1: the church. They were there to hang out. They were

866
00:47:54,000 --> 00:47:58,200
Speaker 1: there too as a magical presence in these particular churches. Uh.

867
00:47:58,239 --> 00:48:01,080
Speaker 1: And there they could last for decade and were, as

868
00:48:01,160 --> 00:48:04,640
Speaker 1: Langdon describes them, ex voto centers in these churches, and

869
00:48:04,640 --> 00:48:07,520
Speaker 1: by ex voto we mean a religious offering given in

870
00:48:07,640 --> 00:48:11,400
Speaker 1: order to fulfill a vow. But more importantly, the author

871
00:48:11,480 --> 00:48:14,279
Speaker 1: rights here, they made quite an impact on anyone who

872
00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:19,919
Speaker 1: saw them, and they served to reaffirm just Medici domination

873
00:48:20,120 --> 00:48:24,000
Speaker 1: over politics. Uh. And also to to drive home their

874
00:48:24,040 --> 00:48:27,400
Speaker 1: divine favor over that of their enemies. Well yeah, I

875
00:48:27,400 --> 00:48:30,920
Speaker 1: mean you're putting like a like a secular powerful person

876
00:48:31,200 --> 00:48:35,160
Speaker 1: in effigy inside the house of worship. Yeah, I mean,

877
00:48:35,200 --> 00:48:39,120
Speaker 1: I just imagine how grotesque that would be today. I mean,

878
00:48:39,480 --> 00:48:41,160
Speaker 1: I would not surprise me if it were to type

879
00:48:41,160 --> 00:48:44,560
Speaker 1: plus today. Also just given human nature has not changed

880
00:48:44,600 --> 00:48:49,319
Speaker 1: that much. Uh sadly, but but but yeah, just you

881
00:48:49,360 --> 00:48:51,360
Speaker 1: go into church and here is a member of the

882
00:48:51,360 --> 00:48:54,880
Speaker 1: Medici family in wax. Uh. This is almost like a

883
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:58,480
Speaker 1: religious icon in the church. Addink to that, what if

884
00:48:58,520 --> 00:49:02,440
Speaker 1: it could kill you? Because there's a great passage and

885
00:49:02,880 --> 00:49:05,879
Speaker 1: so also another thing we were reading was this book

886
00:49:05,960 --> 00:49:10,040
Speaker 1: chapter in a book called Disguised Deception and trump loy

887
00:49:10,480 --> 00:49:14,200
Speaker 1: uh Interdisciplinary Perspectives, And it was a chapter by an

888
00:49:14,320 --> 00:49:18,880
Speaker 1: artist and scholar named Catherine Heard called Uneasy Associations wax

889
00:49:18,960 --> 00:49:22,840
Speaker 1: bodies outside the Cannon. And so Heard is also talking

890
00:49:22,880 --> 00:49:27,600
Speaker 1: about this same church, the Basilica of Santissima Nunziata in Florence,

891
00:49:28,600 --> 00:49:31,920
Speaker 1: and she writes, quote today none of the six hundred

892
00:49:32,000 --> 00:49:35,400
Speaker 1: vote of Santissima and Nunziata are known to survive. The

893
00:49:35,480 --> 00:49:38,680
Speaker 1: church was partially cleared in sixteen sixty five, when the

894
00:49:38,800 --> 00:49:42,040
Speaker 1: number of accumulated vote had become so great that they

895
00:49:42,040 --> 00:49:44,840
Speaker 1: had to be suspended from the ceiling of the church

896
00:49:45,000 --> 00:49:50,000
Speaker 1: to accommodate their volume, and poorly secured vote plummeting into

897
00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:53,800
Speaker 1: the midst of parishioners at prayer had become a regular hazard.

898
00:49:54,320 --> 00:49:57,400
Speaker 1: The remaining sculptures fell victim to the spirit of the

899
00:49:57,520 --> 00:50:01,759
Speaker 1: Enlightenment during the eighteenth century when they were unceremoniously relegated

900
00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:04,759
Speaker 1: to an outdoor courtyard of the church, left exposed to

901
00:50:04,800 --> 00:50:07,960
Speaker 1: the elements to decay until they were finally melted down

902
00:50:08,239 --> 00:50:12,720
Speaker 1: and made into candles. Oh can you imagine how weird

903
00:50:12,880 --> 00:50:15,560
Speaker 1: and grotesque that courtyard became there though for a while.

904
00:50:15,560 --> 00:50:18,080
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that that would be a great scene

905
00:50:18,120 --> 00:50:22,120
Speaker 1: for a horror movie, given the number of of of

906
00:50:22,160 --> 00:50:26,600
Speaker 1: Italian horror films um and indeed at least one example

907
00:50:26,719 --> 00:50:28,800
Speaker 1: of a of a wax horror film. There's a wax

908
00:50:28,840 --> 00:50:33,080
Speaker 1: mask that Dario Argento and Lucio Fulcy were both involved

909
00:50:33,239 --> 00:50:35,839
Speaker 1: in the creation of that is on my to watch list.

910
00:50:35,920 --> 00:50:38,800
Speaker 1: I'm super excited to watch this film, so it's possible

911
00:50:38,840 --> 00:50:40,719
Speaker 1: they get into some of this but if not, like

912
00:50:40,800 --> 00:50:44,520
Speaker 1: this is prime territory, somebody make a like, like a

913
00:50:44,760 --> 00:50:50,640
Speaker 1: like a seventeen century horror film about these things. Yeah, yeah, wow,

914
00:50:50,920 --> 00:50:54,439
Speaker 1: Argento fulci and wax figures. That sounds like the most

915
00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:58,920
Speaker 1: disgusting thing I could possibly imagine. Just I'm just picturing

916
00:50:58,960 --> 00:51:02,320
Speaker 1: the textures. Yes, yeah, the trailer. I've only seen the

917
00:51:02,320 --> 00:51:04,319
Speaker 1: trailer so far, but it looks it looks amazing. But

918
00:51:04,400 --> 00:51:06,600
Speaker 1: I don't want to pass over either, the idea of

919
00:51:06,600 --> 00:51:09,680
Speaker 1: the wax figure suspended from the ceiling in the church,

920
00:51:09,960 --> 00:51:13,279
Speaker 1: which could fall and crush you during worship. Right like that,

921
00:51:13,640 --> 00:51:17,160
Speaker 1: the place has become like a cracker barrel of of

922
00:51:17,160 --> 00:51:21,080
Speaker 1: wax figures instead of antiquated farm equipment. Well, I guess

923
00:51:21,080 --> 00:51:22,239
Speaker 1: I want to be fair. I don't know if the

924
00:51:22,239 --> 00:51:24,400
Speaker 1: wax figure would be heavy enough to crush you, but

925
00:51:24,480 --> 00:51:27,200
Speaker 1: it could at least injure you. It would disrupt your

926
00:51:27,440 --> 00:51:30,160
Speaker 1: religious experience, I would think, I would think so. So

927
00:51:30,239 --> 00:51:33,800
Speaker 1: this whole situation apparently took on a kind of cult flavor, um,

928
00:51:33,800 --> 00:51:36,359
Speaker 1: you know, which is one of the reasons that it's

929
00:51:36,360 --> 00:51:41,480
Speaker 1: eventually eventually banned. Um. But not only could these boatie

930
00:51:41,520 --> 00:51:45,480
Speaker 1: be revered and the individual be revered through their wax likeness.

931
00:51:45,760 --> 00:51:48,160
Speaker 1: They could you know, they could certainly stand in positively

932
00:51:48,239 --> 00:51:52,719
Speaker 1: for powerful uh members of the mediagee family. But they

933
00:51:52,800 --> 00:51:57,600
Speaker 1: could also be the target of violence um violence that

934
00:51:57,680 --> 00:52:02,040
Speaker 1: often reverberated with a very real sort of danger. Langdon

935
00:52:02,080 --> 00:52:04,840
Speaker 1: writes about this, pointing out that writers of the time

936
00:52:05,160 --> 00:52:08,560
Speaker 1: described this as someone having been quote slaughtered in wax,

937
00:52:09,080 --> 00:52:11,960
Speaker 1: or even as a murder. Uh. You know, they would

938
00:52:12,000 --> 00:52:15,400
Speaker 1: describe the act of destroying the wax likeness of the

939
00:52:15,440 --> 00:52:19,480
Speaker 1: individual a murder. Well, in the fifty three House of Wax,

940
00:52:19,760 --> 00:52:23,160
Speaker 1: I reiterate Vincent Price thinks his wax figures are as

941
00:52:23,280 --> 00:52:25,680
Speaker 1: human as as he is, and he says he would

942
00:52:25,760 --> 00:52:30,560
Speaker 1: rather die than see his artworks destroyed. Yeah. So so again.

943
00:52:30,640 --> 00:52:33,000
Speaker 1: Here in these examples we see wax standing in for

944
00:52:33,080 --> 00:52:36,719
Speaker 1: flesh and taking on magical properties. The likeness becomes the

945
00:52:36,800 --> 00:52:40,120
Speaker 1: thing or the person. They are present in the church.

946
00:52:40,200 --> 00:52:42,920
Speaker 1: They are devotees to God in wax. And if the

947
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:45,840
Speaker 1: effigy is then dragged out into the street and then

948
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:49,319
Speaker 1: stomped into the dirt, h then the violence is all

949
00:52:49,400 --> 00:52:53,239
Speaker 1: that more direct and physical. Now, One thing Balustri Arrow

950
00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:56,520
Speaker 1: points out in her paper is that wax by it's

951
00:52:56,680 --> 00:53:00,640
Speaker 1: by it's very like natural texture just lends itself so

952
00:53:00,680 --> 00:53:05,080
Speaker 1: well to realism and and an unsettling level of realism.

953
00:53:05,120 --> 00:53:09,040
Speaker 1: Like it it mimics flesh in a way that naturally

954
00:53:09,120 --> 00:53:12,880
Speaker 1: becomes very unpleasant to people. Yeah, like you think of

955
00:53:12,920 --> 00:53:16,160
Speaker 1: why people love marble sculpture so much is because you know,

956
00:53:16,160 --> 00:53:18,799
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, it's like my flesh, except it is

957
00:53:19,200 --> 00:53:22,120
Speaker 1: it is solid, it is resistant, and it is so

958
00:53:22,200 --> 00:53:26,399
Speaker 1: perfect and flawless. But within wax, especially if you're dealing

959
00:53:26,400 --> 00:53:29,200
Speaker 1: with a like a mold situation, you know you can

960
00:53:29,280 --> 00:53:33,800
Speaker 1: capture every detail, every wrinkle and poor can be created.

961
00:53:33,840 --> 00:53:35,920
Speaker 1: It is flesh like. It can be colored, it can

962
00:53:35,920 --> 00:53:39,279
Speaker 1: be molded. And one thing that this is something I

963
00:53:39,320 --> 00:53:42,400
Speaker 1: wasn't even thinking about until I read it here is

964
00:53:42,440 --> 00:53:46,279
Speaker 1: that you know, you have actual organic materials that can

965
00:53:46,320 --> 00:53:50,560
Speaker 1: be combined with the wax, actual body hair, actual hair, teeth,

966
00:53:50,560 --> 00:53:55,520
Speaker 1: and nails can be kind of melded into the substance,

967
00:53:55,800 --> 00:53:59,080
Speaker 1: which even it just just serves to blur that boundary

968
00:53:59,160 --> 00:54:02,040
Speaker 1: between wax and flesh. And she also points out that

969
00:54:02,280 --> 00:54:06,000
Speaker 1: these are the these very lifelike qualities in wax as

970
00:54:06,000 --> 00:54:08,560
Speaker 1: a medium, that this would be part of the reason

971
00:54:08,600 --> 00:54:12,600
Speaker 1: that it was abandoned by the artistic community anyway, not

972
00:54:12,600 --> 00:54:16,839
Speaker 1: not by crafts people. During the rise of neo Classicism. Yeah,

973
00:54:16,880 --> 00:54:20,200
Speaker 1: neo Classicism was a it was an esthetic movement in

974
00:54:20,239 --> 00:54:23,440
Speaker 1: the Western arts and literature that began in roughly like

975
00:54:23,480 --> 00:54:27,240
Speaker 1: the mid eighteenth century. But it consisted basically of a

976
00:54:27,280 --> 00:54:31,120
Speaker 1: revival of interest in classical antiquity. So you would start

977
00:54:31,120 --> 00:54:34,600
Speaker 1: to see artwork of the time much more favoring the

978
00:54:34,680 --> 00:54:38,239
Speaker 1: style of the Greek and Roman arts, architecture, theater, and

979
00:54:38,239 --> 00:54:40,719
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. It's often described as a move

980
00:54:40,800 --> 00:54:45,000
Speaker 1: away from the highly ornamental Rococo style that came before it,

981
00:54:45,360 --> 00:54:48,319
Speaker 1: and it favored you know, the elegant symmetries of the

982
00:54:48,360 --> 00:54:52,200
Speaker 1: Parthenon or ancient ancient Greek sculpture, all of which have

983
00:54:52,840 --> 00:54:56,399
Speaker 1: a sort of a simplicity to them that is not

984
00:54:56,640 --> 00:55:00,680
Speaker 1: there in the wax sculpture. Like the wax sculpture goes

985
00:55:00,719 --> 00:55:04,279
Speaker 1: against this because of how close to real it can get,

986
00:55:04,320 --> 00:55:08,279
Speaker 1: Like the realism actually counted against it for the aesthetics

987
00:55:08,280 --> 00:55:11,719
Speaker 1: of the day. Yeah, And and and I think, or I

988
00:55:11,719 --> 00:55:14,640
Speaker 1: suspect anyway, that a lot of what we just we

989
00:55:15,000 --> 00:55:18,839
Speaker 1: consider now in terms of the uncanny valley effect would

990
00:55:18,840 --> 00:55:22,560
Speaker 1: have also been present with wax like that, Like wax

991
00:55:22,680 --> 00:55:26,160
Speaker 1: just allows you to get so close to reality, you

992
00:55:26,200 --> 00:55:30,480
Speaker 1: get into that potential, that that arguable realm of of

993
00:55:30,480 --> 00:55:33,560
Speaker 1: of close but not quite close enough, or so close

994
00:55:33,880 --> 00:55:37,239
Speaker 1: but not perfect that it unnerves me. Is the art

995
00:55:37,320 --> 00:55:39,360
Speaker 1: real or not? You know, I can look at a

996
00:55:39,360 --> 00:55:41,560
Speaker 1: at a at a marble sculpture, and I can walk

997
00:55:41,560 --> 00:55:43,880
Speaker 1: through a sculpture garden, and yes, these are beautiful and

998
00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:48,400
Speaker 1: life like in the craftsmanship. The artistry involved is just amazing. Uh,

999
00:55:48,440 --> 00:55:51,680
Speaker 1: But I don't wonder if it's real. I'm certainly not

1000
00:55:51,760 --> 00:55:55,040
Speaker 1: accusing that the people of having, you know, taking the

1001
00:55:55,080 --> 00:55:58,279
Speaker 1: corpses of their victims and use them as models for

1002
00:55:58,360 --> 00:56:01,719
Speaker 1: these stone works of art. Yeah. And one of the

1003
00:56:01,760 --> 00:56:03,960
Speaker 1: things addressed in in a couple of these sources we've

1004
00:56:04,000 --> 00:56:06,759
Speaker 1: been talking about definitely in Balustrial arrow and and and

1005
00:56:06,960 --> 00:56:10,640
Speaker 1: Catherine Herd's chapter is the question of whether wax sculptures

1006
00:56:10,680 --> 00:56:13,600
Speaker 1: are art or not, or you know what, whether people

1007
00:56:13,680 --> 00:56:17,200
Speaker 1: consider them even potentially to be art. There there's some

1008
00:56:17,280 --> 00:56:21,439
Speaker 1: kind of a there's a kind of bias against the media. Absolutely,

1009
00:56:21,640 --> 00:56:23,640
Speaker 1: So we're gonna take a break, but when we come back,

1010
00:56:23,800 --> 00:56:25,600
Speaker 1: we're going to dive into this very topic, but we're

1011
00:56:25,600 --> 00:56:29,360
Speaker 1: also going to get really into the topic of anatomical

1012
00:56:29,520 --> 00:56:34,880
Speaker 1: wax creations. Thank you, thank you, thank you. All right,

1013
00:56:34,920 --> 00:56:37,359
Speaker 1: we're back, all right now. While we've been talking about

1014
00:56:37,360 --> 00:56:40,920
Speaker 1: how there's sort of a mixed history of how wax

1015
00:56:40,960 --> 00:56:44,840
Speaker 1: sculpture has been received as art, there is one area

1016
00:56:44,960 --> 00:56:48,640
Speaker 1: in which wax sculpture was was and sort of always

1017
00:56:48,640 --> 00:56:52,560
Speaker 1: has been a big hit, which is in scientific and

1018
00:56:52,680 --> 00:56:57,720
Speaker 1: anatomical renderings of the human body. So Balustri Arrow writes, quote,

1019
00:56:57,960 --> 00:57:01,479
Speaker 1: with the advent of neo classicism, the very qualities made

1020
00:57:01,520 --> 00:57:06,040
Speaker 1: the realistic nature of wax models seem repulsive, and the

1021
00:57:06,040 --> 00:57:11,319
Speaker 1: practice of artistic seroplastics, and that's wax sculpture, basically seroplastics,

1022
00:57:11,360 --> 00:57:15,600
Speaker 1: meaning wax started a slow decline. From an artistic point

1023
00:57:15,640 --> 00:57:19,440
Speaker 1: of view. It virtually disappeared in the nineteenth century, surviving

1024
00:57:19,480 --> 00:57:22,640
Speaker 1: only in a minor way for votive uses, for example,

1025
00:57:22,720 --> 00:57:25,960
Speaker 1: by the creation of ex voto objects and statues, at

1026
00:57:26,000 --> 00:57:30,200
Speaker 1: times containing relics of saints and martyrs, and in secular

1027
00:57:30,240 --> 00:57:33,760
Speaker 1: wax works such as those displayed at Madame Tousseaux's museum

1028
00:57:33,840 --> 00:57:35,960
Speaker 1: in London. As we've already talked about, but it seems

1029
00:57:36,000 --> 00:57:39,600
Speaker 1: like maybe Madame Tousseaux's is a little bit ghosh. Uh.

1030
00:57:39,760 --> 00:57:42,840
Speaker 1: She goes on. In contrast, the use of wax modeling

1031
00:57:42,880 --> 00:57:48,480
Speaker 1: techniques for didactic and scientific purposes increased considerably for the

1032
00:57:48,520 --> 00:57:54,280
Speaker 1: study of normal and pathological anatomy, obstetrics, zoology, and botany.

1033
00:57:54,480 --> 00:57:58,800
Speaker 1: So here waxes finding its natural home. Maybe maybe it's

1034
00:57:58,800 --> 00:58:02,000
Speaker 1: not always perfectly received in the art world, but it

1035
00:58:02,120 --> 00:58:05,800
Speaker 1: definitely has a role to play in science. Yeah, now

1036
00:58:05,840 --> 00:58:08,280
Speaker 1: and now, of course, there's there's always been this connection

1037
00:58:08,320 --> 00:58:12,560
Speaker 1: between art and science, certainly certainly in pre photographic and

1038
00:58:12,640 --> 00:58:16,440
Speaker 1: cinematic days, because if you were a naturalist exploring the world,

1039
00:58:16,720 --> 00:58:19,520
Speaker 1: if you were if you saw a new species of bird, uh,

1040
00:58:19,840 --> 00:58:21,720
Speaker 1: you would need to draw that bird, You need to

1041
00:58:21,720 --> 00:58:27,040
Speaker 1: have a record of that bird, uh, even paint that bird, etcetera. Likewise,

1042
00:58:27,040 --> 00:58:29,840
Speaker 1: in the in the we see this relationship between the

1043
00:58:29,880 --> 00:58:33,800
Speaker 1: study of human anatomy and the pursuit of art, where

1044
00:58:33,920 --> 00:58:37,520
Speaker 1: oftentimes the artist is the anatomist and the anatomist is

1045
00:58:37,560 --> 00:58:40,760
Speaker 1: the artist, and sometimes it's difficult to say which is

1046
00:58:40,800 --> 00:58:45,320
Speaker 1: the primary occupation, which is the primary endeavor totally, but

1047
00:58:45,360 --> 00:58:48,080
Speaker 1: this brings us to the sixteenth century. Uh. During this

1048
00:58:48,120 --> 00:58:50,680
Speaker 1: time we sell a renewed interest in human anatomy and

1049
00:58:50,720 --> 00:58:54,040
Speaker 1: it ends up sweeping across Europe. Human cadaver has proved

1050
00:58:54,120 --> 00:58:57,440
Speaker 1: the most essential um source and exploring the mysteries of

1051
00:58:57,520 --> 00:59:00,600
Speaker 1: human anatomy and ana and anatomical wrong was still an

1052
00:59:00,680 --> 00:59:04,960
Speaker 1: essential tool as well, but the two dimensional medium had

1053
00:59:04,960 --> 00:59:09,280
Speaker 1: its limitations. Access to cadavers was also not universal, and

1054
00:59:09,320 --> 00:59:11,680
Speaker 1: as we've discussed, they were in short supply at times.

1055
00:59:11,720 --> 00:59:15,360
Speaker 1: So you know, people were afraid of their bodies being

1056
00:59:15,440 --> 00:59:19,240
Speaker 1: stolen by the grave robbers. Yeah, if you were buried

1057
00:59:19,240 --> 00:59:22,840
Speaker 1: too close to like the Edinburgh Medical College, you could very,

1058
00:59:22,960 --> 00:59:25,760
Speaker 1: very possibly have your corpse stolen for a dissection there.

1059
00:59:25,880 --> 00:59:28,240
Speaker 1: I mean, this was the age of dissections. In order

1060
00:59:28,280 --> 00:59:31,160
Speaker 1: to educate and to study, you know what, you've got

1061
00:59:31,160 --> 00:59:33,320
Speaker 1: to know what the organs inside the body look like

1062
00:59:33,360 --> 00:59:35,760
Speaker 1: if you're gonna do medicine, do surgery and all that.

1063
00:59:36,000 --> 00:59:38,960
Speaker 1: But sometimes bodies are hard to come by, especially in

1064
00:59:39,040 --> 00:59:42,400
Speaker 1: the summer. Yes, and you know, I don't think i'd

1065
00:59:42,440 --> 00:59:45,160
Speaker 1: really thought about this, but the author points out that, yeah,

1066
00:59:45,200 --> 00:59:49,680
Speaker 1: this practice becomes increasingly taxing on human revulsion during the

1067
00:59:49,680 --> 00:59:53,680
Speaker 1: warmer months of the year in many regions, you know. So, um,

1068
00:59:54,400 --> 00:59:57,040
Speaker 1: so it makes sense to have some other kind of

1069
00:59:57,120 --> 01:00:01,920
Speaker 1: three dimensional representation that is not an actual dead body. Now,

1070
01:00:01,920 --> 01:00:04,240
Speaker 1: she points out one way around some of the cadaver

1071
01:00:04,360 --> 01:00:10,040
Speaker 1: limitations was doing things to actual bodies to sort of, uh,

1072
01:00:10,080 --> 01:00:13,200
Speaker 1: to make them last longer, to some way copy parts

1073
01:00:13,240 --> 01:00:16,680
Speaker 1: of them. You had some procedures like that that came along. Yeah,

1074
01:00:16,720 --> 01:00:20,560
Speaker 1: there was an injections that involved colorless or colored preserving

1075
01:00:20,600 --> 01:00:25,840
Speaker 1: fluids composed of things like alcohol, mercury, different metals, and

1076
01:00:26,000 --> 01:00:29,120
Speaker 1: also wax as well. Uh. She writes that these methods

1077
01:00:29,120 --> 01:00:32,480
Speaker 1: produced results that that we're you know, we're good, but

1078
01:00:32,840 --> 01:00:36,520
Speaker 1: that that the preparations were not long lasting and that

1079
01:00:36,640 --> 01:00:40,880
Speaker 1: they subsequently deteriorated. Uh so it's still not going to

1080
01:00:40,920 --> 01:00:43,920
Speaker 1: be as good as say a model made out of wax.

1081
01:00:44,280 --> 01:00:49,360
Speaker 1: So why not make a grotesque, perfectly rendered dead body

1082
01:00:49,440 --> 01:00:53,120
Speaker 1: with all the tissues in place that never rots exactly.

1083
01:00:53,120 --> 01:00:55,600
Speaker 1: I mean, as we've discussed, it's the perfect medium for

1084
01:00:55,680 --> 01:00:59,360
Speaker 1: creating human flesh and creating in a way that is lifelike.

1085
01:00:59,680 --> 01:01:01,800
Speaker 1: And he tweaking it a bit, you know, And so

1086
01:01:02,000 --> 01:01:05,520
Speaker 1: you had numerous anatomous and artists, uh, from the sixteenth

1087
01:01:05,560 --> 01:01:09,000
Speaker 1: century onward, that we're working in wax, creating informative models

1088
01:01:09,000 --> 01:01:12,080
Speaker 1: of human anatomy, often in miniature. And I have to

1089
01:01:12,120 --> 01:01:14,640
Speaker 1: say I've been eyeing examples of this for years. I

1090
01:01:14,720 --> 01:01:17,120
Speaker 1: used to do a blog series for Stuff to Blow

1091
01:01:17,160 --> 01:01:20,160
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com back when we had a blog,

1092
01:01:20,840 --> 01:01:22,800
Speaker 1: where I would basically I would just I would go

1093
01:01:22,840 --> 01:01:25,880
Speaker 1: to Getty Images, and I would find cool images of things,

1094
01:01:26,320 --> 01:01:28,960
Speaker 1: works of art, things from museums, and I would find

1095
01:01:28,960 --> 01:01:31,680
Speaker 1: a reason to post about them. And I ran across

1096
01:01:31,680 --> 01:01:35,440
Speaker 1: a bunch of wonderful images of various wax and accounts

1097
01:01:35,440 --> 01:01:39,080
Speaker 1: on anatomical models, and I was always thinking and back

1098
01:01:39,080 --> 01:01:41,040
Speaker 1: in my mind that I should do something about these.

1099
01:01:41,200 --> 01:01:44,240
Speaker 1: Never got around to it. But this is this is

1100
01:01:44,320 --> 01:01:48,600
Speaker 1: like such a fascinating area of where where medicine and

1101
01:01:48,760 --> 01:01:53,160
Speaker 1: artuh combine, where they where they intermingle. I would also say,

1102
01:01:53,200 --> 01:01:55,800
Speaker 1: this is a place where you see some shocking examples

1103
01:01:56,280 --> 01:02:00,680
Speaker 1: of like real talent and bad taste coming together. You know,

1104
01:02:00,760 --> 01:02:02,440
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that a lot of people like

1105
01:02:02,560 --> 01:02:08,600
Speaker 1: today where you would be interested in grotesque, like intentionally

1106
01:02:08,760 --> 01:02:11,840
Speaker 1: kind of like gross and morbid artwork. As I know

1107
01:02:11,920 --> 01:02:15,760
Speaker 1: you and I in some various ways actually are. UH.

1108
01:02:16,400 --> 01:02:18,520
Speaker 1: You don't see as much of that back in the day,

1109
01:02:18,520 --> 01:02:21,960
Speaker 1: but you do see it in anatomical renderings of the

1110
01:02:22,000 --> 01:02:25,960
Speaker 1: human body in wax. Yes. Now, one of the early

1111
01:02:26,040 --> 01:02:30,000
Speaker 1: figures that the other points out here was a character

1112
01:02:30,120 --> 01:02:34,880
Speaker 1: that is known as Cigoli. Their full name was Lodovico Cardi,

1113
01:02:34,960 --> 01:02:40,720
Speaker 1: who lived fifteen fifty nine through sixteen and they created

1114
01:02:40,760 --> 01:02:45,480
Speaker 1: this small statue of of in Courche. I believe it

1115
01:02:45,560 --> 01:02:48,720
Speaker 1: is which is the first known wax anatomical anatomical model.

1116
01:02:49,040 --> 01:02:54,080
Speaker 1: It was Slash is a miniature anatomical human like like

1117
01:02:54,240 --> 01:02:57,000
Speaker 1: d fleshed clearly not made from a cast because it's

1118
01:02:57,040 --> 01:02:59,600
Speaker 1: the size of a doll. But it's detailed in three

1119
01:02:59,720 --> 01:03:03,640
Speaker 1: D chose in like the details of human muscles um.

1120
01:03:03,880 --> 01:03:06,160
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, I wasn't able to find it. I believe

1121
01:03:06,160 --> 01:03:08,760
Speaker 1: it is in the in the possession of a museum today,

1122
01:03:08,800 --> 01:03:11,480
Speaker 1: but I couldn't find a photograph of it. But I

1123
01:03:11,560 --> 01:03:15,560
Speaker 1: found UH an artistic depiction of it, and it again

1124
01:03:15,640 --> 01:03:20,640
Speaker 1: is depicted as just this miniature humanoid without skin that

1125
01:03:20,720 --> 01:03:22,680
Speaker 1: you can hold in your hand, that you can point

1126
01:03:22,720 --> 01:03:25,920
Speaker 1: out the various muscles on UH that you know, designed

1127
01:03:25,920 --> 01:03:28,360
Speaker 1: to be used as an as an educational tool. I

1128
01:03:28,400 --> 01:03:30,800
Speaker 1: love it. I do wish we had a photo. I

1129
01:03:30,840 --> 01:03:32,680
Speaker 1: wish you could get like a barbie of it and

1130
01:03:32,920 --> 01:03:36,760
Speaker 1: you know, give it to kids for Christmas. Now, later

1131
01:03:37,000 --> 01:03:41,400
Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century, we saw really, I think, an

1132
01:03:41,400 --> 01:03:43,840
Speaker 1: individual that could probably be considered the grandfather of a

1133
01:03:43,880 --> 01:03:46,760
Speaker 1: lot of the thanatomical wax art and as a Sicilian

1134
01:03:47,080 --> 01:03:52,840
Speaker 1: wax artist by the name of Zoombo Gaetano Guglio Zoombo,

1135
01:03:53,280 --> 01:03:58,160
Speaker 1: who was apparently quite an interesting character. He was an

1136
01:03:58,160 --> 01:04:01,800
Speaker 1: abbot who initially took on religious themes and his artistic work,

1137
01:04:02,240 --> 01:04:07,240
Speaker 1: but then uh his blestri Arrow describes his interest turned darker.

1138
01:04:07,600 --> 01:04:10,080
Speaker 1: He began to just consider death and decay and to

1139
01:04:10,160 --> 01:04:13,120
Speaker 1: sort of brood on death and decay, and he created

1140
01:04:13,160 --> 01:04:17,320
Speaker 1: a series of compositions known as the Theaters of Death,

1141
01:04:18,080 --> 01:04:22,240
Speaker 1: which were apparently quite realistic. There is the plague, the

1142
01:04:22,320 --> 01:04:25,880
Speaker 1: triumph of time, the vanity of human glory, and of

1143
01:04:25,920 --> 01:04:31,960
Speaker 1: course the syphilis fun I mean, yeah, Zoombo was clearly

1144
01:04:32,120 --> 01:04:36,440
Speaker 1: highly talented and extremely morbid in his fascinations, and you

1145
01:04:36,480 --> 01:04:38,919
Speaker 1: can look up examples of his work. There's a one

1146
01:04:39,000 --> 01:04:41,160
Speaker 1: in particular if you if you even just go to

1147
01:04:41,200 --> 01:04:46,120
Speaker 1: the Wikipedia page for Zombo. Uh. There's a picture of

1148
01:04:46,120 --> 01:04:51,000
Speaker 1: of the plague, which is just these wax corpses heaped. Uh.

1149
01:04:51,320 --> 01:04:55,000
Speaker 1: But also there's this there's this artistic energy to them,

1150
01:04:55,200 --> 01:04:58,680
Speaker 1: like there is movement to it, there is emotion to it. Um.

1151
01:04:58,720 --> 01:05:01,120
Speaker 1: It's it's quite a site to hold, but it's certainly

1152
01:05:01,160 --> 01:05:04,560
Speaker 1: not for all tastes. But Zoomo was not only working

1153
01:05:04,560 --> 01:05:07,640
Speaker 1: with religious artwork. He eventually did turn his hand to

1154
01:05:07,800 --> 01:05:12,200
Speaker 1: actual scientific anatomical sculpture when he teamed up with a

1155
01:05:12,320 --> 01:05:16,880
Speaker 1: French surgeon named Guillaume de new Yes, he met de Neu,

1156
01:05:17,080 --> 01:05:20,360
Speaker 1: and together they created anatomical models that they apparently sold,

1157
01:05:20,880 --> 01:05:23,600
Speaker 1: though by sevent hundred they stopped working together due to

1158
01:05:23,640 --> 01:05:29,080
Speaker 1: some sort of famous argument. Yeah yeah. So Zoombo moves

1159
01:05:29,120 --> 01:05:31,520
Speaker 1: to Paris and with the support of the royal court,

1160
01:05:31,560 --> 01:05:35,640
Speaker 1: he collaborates with many other dissectors and physicians and an

1161
01:05:35,680 --> 01:05:41,200
Speaker 1: animus and creates anatomical waxes until he died the following year. Um.

1162
01:05:41,240 --> 01:05:45,040
Speaker 1: But all told, he was um. He he was only

1163
01:05:45,080 --> 01:05:48,200
Speaker 1: active in the anatomy game for something like six years total.

1164
01:05:48,240 --> 01:05:50,240
Speaker 1: It really kind of came towards the end of his life,

1165
01:05:50,800 --> 01:05:55,160
Speaker 1: but his works were highly influential enabling wax anatomical modeling

1166
01:05:55,400 --> 01:05:59,120
Speaker 1: to then evolve and ultimately expand outside of Italy and

1167
01:05:59,160 --> 01:06:02,400
Speaker 1: France throughout Western Europe. This opened the door for other

1168
01:06:02,440 --> 01:06:05,120
Speaker 1: wax anatomical artists to make a major splash, such as

1169
01:06:05,320 --> 01:06:09,320
Speaker 1: Giovanni Manzolini, who lives seventeen hundred through seventeen fifty five,

1170
01:06:09,720 --> 01:06:13,600
Speaker 1: who worked with his wife Anna Morandi, who lived seventeen

1171
01:06:13,600 --> 01:06:18,120
Speaker 1: sixteen through seventeen seventy four. She outlived him by many years,

1172
01:06:18,120 --> 01:06:21,280
Speaker 1: and she actually continued this work after her husband's death

1173
01:06:21,480 --> 01:06:23,760
Speaker 1: and was quite successful in her own right, traveling to

1174
01:06:23,840 --> 01:06:28,640
Speaker 1: various institutes and foreign courts. Her anatomical models were very

1175
01:06:28,680 --> 01:06:32,040
Speaker 1: sought after, and she also she but but her work

1176
01:06:32,080 --> 01:06:37,440
Speaker 1: was was again um artistic and anatomical. For instance, she

1177
01:06:37,480 --> 01:06:40,960
Speaker 1: created a self portrait of herself that is still around today.

1178
01:06:41,000 --> 01:06:43,640
Speaker 1: You can find images of this online. Uh, and it

1179
01:06:43,800 --> 01:06:47,160
Speaker 1: is it's it's beautiful, but it is also definitely a

1180
01:06:47,200 --> 01:06:51,600
Speaker 1: work of wax artistry, and as we'll discuss later, that

1181
01:06:51,680 --> 01:06:54,160
Speaker 1: does come with certain baggage. Like we're sort of were,

1182
01:06:54,160 --> 01:06:59,439
Speaker 1: there's a predisposition I think for us to find it unsettling. Well,

1183
01:06:59,480 --> 01:07:02,640
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I guess this maybe some form of

1184
01:07:02,720 --> 01:07:06,440
Speaker 1: subjective bias speaking, but I feel like it's almost universal

1185
01:07:06,840 --> 01:07:10,520
Speaker 1: to regard these things that as even when they're beautiful,

1186
01:07:10,560 --> 01:07:14,480
Speaker 1: they're also grotesque. So this art continues to spread, and

1187
01:07:14,520 --> 01:07:17,760
Speaker 1: then Blestriero provides an excellent and concise history of it

1188
01:07:17,840 --> 01:07:20,760
Speaker 1: all um getting into more detail than we we can

1189
01:07:20,760 --> 01:07:25,000
Speaker 1: get into here, but that eventually arrives in England as well.

1190
01:07:25,040 --> 01:07:28,960
Speaker 1: You have, um, you have an actual um English wax

1191
01:07:29,120 --> 01:07:32,840
Speaker 1: anatomist by the name of Joseph Town who lived eighteen

1192
01:07:32,840 --> 01:07:36,440
Speaker 1: o eight th eighteen seventy nine. And apparently part of

1193
01:07:36,480 --> 01:07:40,240
Speaker 1: the reason that it was so lately established in England

1194
01:07:40,920 --> 01:07:43,320
Speaker 1: was first of all due to the greater availability of

1195
01:07:43,320 --> 01:07:48,200
Speaker 1: cadavers um prior to laws that restrained the practice of

1196
01:07:48,200 --> 01:07:50,400
Speaker 1: obtaining them. Yeah, we got dead bodies. We don't need

1197
01:07:50,400 --> 01:07:54,040
Speaker 1: wax sculptures here, you know. Yeah. But eventually, yeah, you

1198
01:07:54,080 --> 01:07:56,080
Speaker 1: have Joseph town showing up. And he would go on

1199
01:07:56,160 --> 01:07:59,800
Speaker 1: to create something like a thousand different wax anatomical models

1200
01:08:00,080 --> 01:08:02,920
Speaker 1: in his career that ultimately went to medical centers around

1201
01:08:02,920 --> 01:08:06,720
Speaker 1: the world. Now, there's an example of of Towns work

1202
01:08:06,880 --> 01:08:11,040
Speaker 1: that is shown in a photograph in uh balustri Arrows

1203
01:08:11,120 --> 01:08:14,880
Speaker 1: paper and it looks straight out of hell Raiser. I mean,

1204
01:08:14,920 --> 01:08:17,040
Speaker 1: I guess actually what it is is that the art

1205
01:08:17,120 --> 01:08:22,000
Speaker 1: style of the hell raisor movies is clearly copied from this. Yes, there,

1206
01:08:22,960 --> 01:08:26,120
Speaker 1: so this this is where we're getting into a lot

1207
01:08:26,200 --> 01:08:30,519
Speaker 1: of artistic consideration. Uh. And Balustri Arrow gets into this

1208
01:08:30,560 --> 01:08:33,160
Speaker 1: a good bit um because on one hand you have

1209
01:08:33,560 --> 01:08:37,080
Speaker 1: the Italians who were sort of the the originators of

1210
01:08:37,120 --> 01:08:39,479
Speaker 1: this sort of art, along with you know, the French,

1211
01:08:39,960 --> 01:08:42,880
Speaker 1: and then you have the English coming along and doing

1212
01:08:42,920 --> 01:08:46,000
Speaker 1: their own spin on it. And uh, there are some

1213
01:08:46,000 --> 01:08:48,680
Speaker 1: some definite differences. There's some side by side images in

1214
01:08:48,680 --> 01:08:51,679
Speaker 1: this paper that really pointed out. But this is where

1215
01:08:51,920 --> 01:08:56,799
Speaker 1: the author really sums it up. Um, she writes, quote.

1216
01:08:56,800 --> 01:08:59,719
Speaker 1: Italian waxes are imbued with a real sense of beauty.

1217
01:09:00,080 --> 01:09:04,799
Speaker 1: The splendid Italian models of Les Pacola Florence are graceful statues.

1218
01:09:04,840 --> 01:09:07,000
Speaker 1: They do not seem to belong in the dissecting room.

1219
01:09:07,560 --> 01:09:10,680
Speaker 1: Specimens from northern countries such as the UK, the Netherlands

1220
01:09:10,720 --> 01:09:15,440
Speaker 1: or Germany are usually more realistic, almost brutal, preferring anatomical

1221
01:09:15,479 --> 01:09:19,280
Speaker 1: accuracy rather than artistic flair. One of the major differences

1222
01:09:19,320 --> 01:09:22,719
Speaker 1: between the Italian and English wax models is the fact

1223
01:09:22,760 --> 01:09:27,200
Speaker 1: that the former are alive whilst the later are lifeless. Yeah.

1224
01:09:27,240 --> 01:09:29,439
Speaker 1: She highlights this in a number of different ways that,

1225
01:09:29,520 --> 01:09:33,599
Speaker 1: like the the Italian artists were much more concerned with

1226
01:09:33,720 --> 01:09:38,640
Speaker 1: making the wax anatomical models not disgusting and even sometimes

1227
01:09:38,800 --> 01:09:43,759
Speaker 1: kind of lively and happy looking and seductive somehow, whereas

1228
01:09:43,760 --> 01:09:46,720
Speaker 1: the stuff you'd get with Robert town or some of

1229
01:09:46,760 --> 01:09:50,439
Speaker 1: the other artists in England or Germany would be more

1230
01:09:50,560 --> 01:09:53,679
Speaker 1: just kind of a like it wasn't it wasn't really

1231
01:09:53,680 --> 01:09:57,080
Speaker 1: worried about being grotesque and wasn't trying. It wasn't trying

1232
01:09:57,080 --> 01:09:59,400
Speaker 1: to comfort you and say like look at this, look

1233
01:09:59,439 --> 01:10:02,840
Speaker 1: at these happy the eyes. Yeah. She describes Towns some

1234
01:10:02,920 --> 01:10:06,120
Speaker 1: of towns waxes as being quote practical, crude, true to death.

1235
01:10:07,320 --> 01:10:10,040
Speaker 1: But you know, from my own part, looking at various examples,

1236
01:10:10,080 --> 01:10:12,479
Speaker 1: I do think it's fair to add that towns work

1237
01:10:13,000 --> 01:10:16,320
Speaker 1: is beautiful in its own right. Uh. You know, there's

1238
01:10:16,360 --> 01:10:19,840
Speaker 1: certainly more of a brutal realism to his works, But

1239
01:10:19,960 --> 01:10:22,280
Speaker 1: one I think could argue that some of the Italian

1240
01:10:22,320 --> 01:10:26,000
Speaker 1: works are actually more unnerving because there's this weird spark

1241
01:10:26,040 --> 01:10:29,559
Speaker 1: of life to them, you know, like they there's something

1242
01:10:29,600 --> 01:10:31,280
Speaker 1: in their eyes you feel. You look at them and

1243
01:10:31,280 --> 01:10:33,920
Speaker 1: you're like this, this human being has no skin, and

1244
01:10:34,000 --> 01:10:37,439
Speaker 1: yet they are, you know, glancing across the room. It's

1245
01:10:37,479 --> 01:10:42,240
Speaker 1: something whereas towns work looks like a dead body, but

1246
01:10:42,920 --> 01:10:47,559
Speaker 1: as partially flayed body, but as seen through you know,

1247
01:10:47,600 --> 01:10:50,559
Speaker 1: the eyes of someone with an appreciation for the beauty

1248
01:10:50,560 --> 01:10:52,760
Speaker 1: of death. Yeah, maybe maybe it is a little bit

1249
01:10:52,760 --> 01:10:55,280
Speaker 1: more troubling if, like, you know, you're taking apart the

1250
01:10:55,320 --> 01:10:58,280
Speaker 1: torso of a wax sculpture to see its internal organs.

1251
01:10:58,600 --> 01:11:01,280
Speaker 1: But it's like reclined ing in a chair in a

1252
01:11:01,360 --> 01:11:04,400
Speaker 1: in a way that almost resembles classical painting, and it's

1253
01:11:04,439 --> 01:11:06,920
Speaker 1: got this brightness in its eyes, like let's go for

1254
01:11:06,960 --> 01:11:12,720
Speaker 1: a picnic. Um. There's there's another whole area that she

1255
01:11:12,760 --> 01:11:17,120
Speaker 1: gets into, the meta chief venus um, basically touching on

1256
01:11:17,160 --> 01:11:21,400
Speaker 1: the popularity of anatomical venuses during the nineteenth century. These

1257
01:11:21,400 --> 01:11:26,200
Speaker 1: would be artfully sculpted out of wax, reclining female nudes

1258
01:11:26,560 --> 01:11:30,000
Speaker 1: that also had dismountable torsos, so you could go up

1259
01:11:30,040 --> 01:11:33,760
Speaker 1: to them, um and you could like open them up

1260
01:11:33,800 --> 01:11:36,000
Speaker 1: like the hood of a of a vehicle, you know,

1261
01:11:36,400 --> 01:11:39,280
Speaker 1: and then look at the wax organs within see how

1262
01:11:39,600 --> 01:11:42,479
Speaker 1: human anatomy works under the skin, and there would often

1263
01:11:42,520 --> 01:11:45,599
Speaker 1: be a fetus in the womb as well. Um, which

1264
01:11:45,600 --> 01:11:47,880
Speaker 1: apparently you know this, this wouldn't have really meant the

1265
01:11:47,920 --> 01:11:50,160
Speaker 1: inside wouldn't have matched the outside. That had reflected what

1266
01:11:50,200 --> 01:11:53,439
Speaker 1: was what little was known about, uh, you know, actual

1267
01:11:53,680 --> 01:11:57,200
Speaker 1: um fetal development at the time. Uh. And by the way,

1268
01:11:57,320 --> 01:12:01,400
Speaker 1: over at Atlas Obscura, a website that I've loved for

1269
01:12:01,400 --> 01:12:04,000
Speaker 1: for years but basically is devoted to helping you find

1270
01:12:04,000 --> 01:12:07,599
Speaker 1: weird wax museums in your area wherever you are. Much

1271
01:12:08,439 --> 01:12:12,400
Speaker 1: there's a great two thousand thirteen article from Morbid Anatomies

1272
01:12:12,479 --> 01:12:16,439
Speaker 1: Joanna Epstein about anatomical venus is and where you can

1273
01:12:16,479 --> 01:12:18,960
Speaker 1: find them today, and and apparently she was setting out

1274
01:12:19,000 --> 01:12:21,400
Speaker 1: to chronicle all the ones that she could she could

1275
01:12:21,400 --> 01:12:25,400
Speaker 1: travel to. It's titled an Ode to an Anatomical venus

1276
01:12:25,560 --> 01:12:29,599
Speaker 1: waxing poetic on the uncanny a lure of eighteenth century uh,

1277
01:12:29,760 --> 01:12:32,880
Speaker 1: dissectible women. Now, at this point, let's get back to

1278
01:12:33,000 --> 01:12:37,240
Speaker 1: the question, then is it art um? Because clearly, as

1279
01:12:37,240 --> 01:12:40,519
Speaker 1: we've discussed like this, especially with the anatomical art, there

1280
01:12:40,600 --> 01:12:44,120
Speaker 1: is this intermingling of the artistic and the you know,

1281
01:12:44,160 --> 01:12:47,000
Speaker 1: the purely scientific. Uh, you know. And certainly we even

1282
01:12:47,000 --> 01:12:49,920
Speaker 1: see a divide within the tradition, with the idea that

1283
01:12:50,040 --> 01:12:52,719
Speaker 1: like the French and Italian version is more in line

1284
01:12:53,040 --> 01:12:58,439
Speaker 1: with artistic values, whereas the English and German models are

1285
01:12:58,479 --> 01:13:01,760
Speaker 1: are less. So this is question that that blestri erro

1286
01:13:02,200 --> 01:13:06,240
Speaker 1: gets into in the article as well. Apparently there's this

1287
01:13:06,720 --> 01:13:11,280
Speaker 1: there's long an attitude against wax art. It was considered

1288
01:13:11,320 --> 01:13:15,200
Speaker 1: more of a craft, more devoted either to morbidity or

1289
01:13:15,280 --> 01:13:19,680
Speaker 1: to anatomical study. And apparently this survived well into the

1290
01:13:19,720 --> 01:13:24,040
Speaker 1: twentieth centuries, where you had critics like E. H. Gombridge,

1291
01:13:24,040 --> 01:13:27,519
Speaker 1: who was not familiar with who expressed that wax works

1292
01:13:27,560 --> 01:13:31,360
Speaker 1: were a quote, situated outside the limits of symbolization. So

1293
01:13:31,479 --> 01:13:34,440
Speaker 1: I guess the idea is that they're just too realistic

1294
01:13:34,520 --> 01:13:36,599
Speaker 1: to do the things that art is supposed to do,

1295
01:13:37,760 --> 01:13:42,080
Speaker 1: Like it's just too close, like there's not enough, there's

1296
01:13:42,080 --> 01:13:45,679
Speaker 1: not enough distance. I don't know, I mean it seems

1297
01:13:45,720 --> 01:13:47,960
Speaker 1: arbitrary to me. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't seem to

1298
01:13:47,960 --> 01:13:51,160
Speaker 1: line up with with what we know about art photography,

1299
01:13:51,240 --> 01:13:53,040
Speaker 1: But I don't know. Then again, I'm not an expert

1300
01:13:53,040 --> 01:13:56,599
Speaker 1: on the history of of of art theory and so forth.

1301
01:13:56,640 --> 01:13:59,600
Speaker 1: But it seems like the argument that that Gombridge was

1302
01:13:59,680 --> 01:14:01,960
Speaker 1: making here would not be the same sort of argument

1303
01:14:01,960 --> 01:14:04,800
Speaker 1: you would make about photography. Uh. There, there's plenty of

1304
01:14:05,160 --> 01:14:09,080
Speaker 1: very artistic photography that is about capturing the stark reality

1305
01:14:09,120 --> 01:14:11,960
Speaker 1: of a situation, right that. But I'm not sure that

1306
01:14:12,280 --> 01:14:15,120
Speaker 1: you know, the limits of symbol symbolization really show up

1307
01:14:15,120 --> 01:14:17,080
Speaker 1: in that. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to be

1308
01:14:17,160 --> 01:14:20,000
Speaker 1: unfair to this critic, but part of me suspects that

1309
01:14:20,080 --> 01:14:24,040
Speaker 1: there's just a sort of instinctual revulsion that many people feels.

1310
01:14:24,080 --> 01:14:26,479
Speaker 1: The same reason there's so many house of wax horror

1311
01:14:26,520 --> 01:14:31,160
Speaker 1: movies and that, and that is it finds difficulty being

1312
01:14:31,240 --> 01:14:35,920
Speaker 1: articulated as an aesthetic uh, as like a formal esthetic criteria.

1313
01:14:36,000 --> 01:14:38,400
Speaker 1: So instead it just gets criticized as like, well it's

1314
01:14:38,400 --> 01:14:42,479
Speaker 1: too realistic or something. Yeah. Uh yeah. But as we

1315
01:14:42,520 --> 01:14:46,040
Speaker 1: mentioned the rise of neo Classism earlier, apparently, especially with

1316
01:14:46,080 --> 01:14:48,479
Speaker 1: the rise of neo classism and art, wax was often

1317
01:14:48,520 --> 01:14:51,880
Speaker 1: considered a lower medium, a fragile medium, and so the

1318
01:14:52,040 --> 01:14:55,320
Speaker 1: art was rather it was either you know, expelled from

1319
01:14:55,360 --> 01:14:58,000
Speaker 1: the art world or left the to the domain of

1320
01:14:58,000 --> 01:15:01,240
Speaker 1: the anatomys and of course you know crude wax museums,

1321
01:15:01,840 --> 01:15:05,720
Speaker 1: which apparently emerged out of the wax effigy tradition. To

1322
01:15:05,760 --> 01:15:08,960
Speaker 1: come back to that. Westminster Abbey, for instance, has quite

1323
01:15:08,960 --> 01:15:12,519
Speaker 1: a collection of royal wax effigies dating back to Edward

1324
01:15:12,560 --> 01:15:16,320
Speaker 1: the Third who died in thirteen seventy seven. Um. So

1325
01:15:16,360 --> 01:15:20,480
Speaker 1: this is where we get the Madame Tussau's um um tradition.

1326
01:15:20,560 --> 01:15:23,200
Speaker 1: You know, the idea ultimately that we should put we

1327
01:15:23,240 --> 01:15:27,080
Speaker 1: should have representations of royal people or failing that, uh,

1328
01:15:27,360 --> 01:15:31,479
Speaker 1: famous people or infamous people like the modern Royalty of

1329
01:15:31,520 --> 01:15:33,840
Speaker 1: the day, the Paris Hilton's of the day, or at

1330
01:15:33,920 --> 01:15:37,439
Speaker 1: least the mid two early two thousands. Well, I mean, yeah,

1331
01:15:37,600 --> 01:15:40,720
Speaker 1: so Madam Tusso's is going to be full of celebrities, right,

1332
01:15:40,760 --> 01:15:44,200
Speaker 1: it'll have it. It'll have a I remember, I think

1333
01:15:44,200 --> 01:15:47,680
Speaker 1: I remember them having like a really good Pierce Brosnan

1334
01:15:47,760 --> 01:15:52,440
Speaker 1: as James Bond wax sculpture um and I think sometimes

1335
01:15:52,479 --> 01:15:56,080
Speaker 1: the celebrity sculptures get like attacked or vandalized. I don't

1336
01:15:56,080 --> 01:15:58,200
Speaker 1: know if that has something. You know, somebody you don't

1337
01:15:58,240 --> 01:16:02,320
Speaker 1: like Pierce Brosnan, so you knock his head off or whatever. Um. Yeah,

1338
01:16:02,400 --> 01:16:04,240
Speaker 1: I mean it's getting into the magic of wax. Then

1339
01:16:04,320 --> 01:16:06,599
Speaker 1: wax effigies. What do you do with the wax effigy.

1340
01:16:06,600 --> 01:16:10,120
Speaker 1: It's either there to revere the individual or to lash

1341
01:16:10,160 --> 01:16:12,479
Speaker 1: out against them. Yes, But the other thing I was

1342
01:16:12,520 --> 01:16:15,320
Speaker 1: getting to is that it does seem somehow like there

1343
01:16:15,400 --> 01:16:19,240
Speaker 1: is a very clear natural draw to let's do some

1344
01:16:19,320 --> 01:16:22,760
Speaker 1: serial killers and let's do like a dungeon with you know,

1345
01:16:22,840 --> 01:16:25,760
Speaker 1: tortures and stuff like that. Yeah, I mean, well that

1346
01:16:25,840 --> 01:16:28,639
Speaker 1: was that was a long standing part of Madame Tussau's

1347
01:16:28,680 --> 01:16:32,560
Speaker 1: in London. Madame Tussau, by the way, lived a seventy

1348
01:16:32,720 --> 01:16:36,320
Speaker 1: th eighteen fifty was a French artist who studied under

1349
01:16:36,720 --> 01:16:41,559
Speaker 1: a Swiss physician, Philippe Curtius Um. But one of the

1350
01:16:41,560 --> 01:16:45,400
Speaker 1: main attractions at Madame Tusseau's was always the Chamber of Horrors,

1351
01:16:45,479 --> 01:16:51,000
Speaker 1: which was again full of grave robbers, serial killers and burglars. Uh. Incidentally,

1352
01:16:51,080 --> 01:16:53,400
Speaker 1: Jack the Ripper was was never part of it because

1353
01:16:53,400 --> 01:16:57,360
Speaker 1: Tusso had a policy against representing individuals whose identity and

1354
01:16:57,400 --> 01:17:02,439
Speaker 1: appearance was unknown. Uh, that's an interesting principle. But yeah,

1355
01:17:02,439 --> 01:17:04,599
Speaker 1: so this is how we get obviously the thing that

1356
01:17:04,680 --> 01:17:07,599
Speaker 1: the that it's most famous for is the Chamber of Horrors,

1357
01:17:07,600 --> 01:17:10,400
Speaker 1: which is that seems to be confirmed by those reports

1358
01:17:10,400 --> 01:17:13,880
Speaker 1: from nineteen five that when Madame Tussau's is burning down,

1359
01:17:14,280 --> 01:17:16,040
Speaker 1: the people in the streets are not saying, oh, I

1360
01:17:16,080 --> 01:17:19,200
Speaker 1: hope that the sculpture of King George is okay. They're asking,

1361
01:17:19,240 --> 01:17:23,640
Speaker 1: how's crippen? Yeah? What about the what about the Norfolk Strangler?

1362
01:17:24,080 --> 01:17:27,360
Speaker 1: We've saved Burke? How about Hair? Make sure both we

1363
01:17:27,439 --> 01:17:30,720
Speaker 1: must reunite Burke and Hair. Don't let them burn? Yeah,

1364
01:17:30,760 --> 01:17:34,240
Speaker 1: I mean, sadly the Chamber of hors apparently closed in

1365
01:17:35,120 --> 01:17:38,280
Speaker 1: is no longer a part of Madame Tussa's at least

1366
01:17:38,320 --> 01:17:41,120
Speaker 1: that that that according to the materials I was looking at.

1367
01:17:41,200 --> 01:17:45,240
Speaker 1: But but certainly the Chamber of Horrors in Wax museums

1368
01:17:45,640 --> 01:17:49,280
Speaker 1: is one of the major influences on uh, you know,

1369
01:17:49,520 --> 01:17:53,360
Speaker 1: on on horror cinema in the twenties onward. This idea

1370
01:17:53,760 --> 01:17:57,720
Speaker 1: of the wax museum as a place where unsavory characters

1371
01:17:57,720 --> 01:18:01,960
Speaker 1: are recreated in wax uh and where haunted or unnatural

1372
01:18:02,040 --> 01:18:05,880
Speaker 1: things may be going on. It's an interesting mixing of

1373
01:18:05,920 --> 01:18:09,360
Speaker 1: two very different streams that that feel odd when they

1374
01:18:09,400 --> 01:18:12,360
Speaker 1: get into each other. One is the standard fascination with

1375
01:18:12,640 --> 01:18:16,160
Speaker 1: violence and pain and death and morbid topics and all that.

1376
01:18:16,520 --> 01:18:19,000
Speaker 1: And then the other is that, well, it's a museum

1377
01:18:19,200 --> 01:18:23,080
Speaker 1: and it's nonfiction, so it's almost like it's educational. Yeah,

1378
01:18:23,320 --> 01:18:27,840
Speaker 1: it's it's it's weird, it's it's also just really um

1379
01:18:27,880 --> 01:18:30,400
Speaker 1: it's it's a really interesting, I think thought experiment to

1380
01:18:30,479 --> 01:18:33,719
Speaker 1: take these wax movies and then take everything we've discussed

1381
01:18:33,720 --> 01:18:36,479
Speaker 1: here thus far and then try and figure out what

1382
01:18:36,640 --> 01:18:40,559
Speaker 1: is what is this in product saying about all the

1383
01:18:40,600 --> 01:18:43,439
Speaker 1: human history with wax that came before it, especially what

1384
01:18:43,560 --> 01:18:47,320
Speaker 1: is it saying about the anatomical history of wax models

1385
01:18:47,600 --> 01:18:50,160
Speaker 1: and then the the use of wax models as stand

1386
01:18:50,200 --> 01:18:53,800
Speaker 1: ins for human beings to be either revered or punished. Um,

1387
01:18:53,840 --> 01:18:56,040
Speaker 1: Because I think we see shadows of all of this

1388
01:18:56,439 --> 01:18:59,479
Speaker 1: in these works, and all we also see treatments of

1389
01:18:59,479 --> 01:19:03,040
Speaker 1: of wax, this flesh magical and transformative wax as a

1390
01:19:03,120 --> 01:19:07,439
Speaker 1: meditation on both the preservation of human flesh. Because what

1391
01:19:07,520 --> 01:19:11,200
Speaker 1: are these uh, these these wax creepos often doing these movies.

1392
01:19:11,439 --> 01:19:14,920
Speaker 1: They're preserving their victims and wax, but then also things

1393
01:19:14,960 --> 01:19:17,360
Speaker 1: made out of wax. Uh, they gotta burn if you

1394
01:19:17,439 --> 01:19:19,479
Speaker 1: it's like bringing a roll in a cannon on stage,

1395
01:19:19,520 --> 01:19:21,240
Speaker 1: you bring out some wax in a film, You've got

1396
01:19:21,240 --> 01:19:23,640
Speaker 1: to melt some wax as well. Yeah, I mean, I

1397
01:19:23,680 --> 01:19:27,479
Speaker 1: think it is not a standard trope that a person

1398
01:19:27,600 --> 01:19:32,360
Speaker 1: who is an obsessively devoted artist will eventually turn to

1399
01:19:32,560 --> 01:19:36,160
Speaker 1: crime and violence. But it is that if you're obsessively

1400
01:19:36,200 --> 01:19:40,880
Speaker 1: devoted to wax artistry, you have wax crime in your future.

1401
01:19:41,280 --> 01:19:45,040
Speaker 1: That's just more people assume. It's such a weird stereotype,

1402
01:19:45,880 --> 01:19:49,920
Speaker 1: especially again considering just how important this was, you know,

1403
01:19:50,000 --> 01:19:51,880
Speaker 1: for for a long time, and just human anatomy and

1404
01:19:51,920 --> 01:19:54,320
Speaker 1: the understanding of the human body, like these were informative

1405
01:19:54,439 --> 01:20:00,360
Speaker 1: educational models that ultimately helped save lives trained surgeon without

1406
01:20:00,439 --> 01:20:03,680
Speaker 1: the need for grave robbing or put honest grave robbers

1407
01:20:03,680 --> 01:20:06,120
Speaker 1: out of business. Oh I've never thought about that, that

1408
01:20:06,120 --> 01:20:08,240
Speaker 1: that would be a great premise for like a for

1409
01:20:08,320 --> 01:20:10,760
Speaker 1: like a movie or something. You know, you've got a

1410
01:20:10,760 --> 01:20:14,080
Speaker 1: pretty good grave robbing business going, but then somebody shows

1411
01:20:14,120 --> 01:20:16,559
Speaker 1: up at the local medical college with a bunch of

1412
01:20:16,560 --> 01:20:20,479
Speaker 1: wax sculptures. Oh my god, Now you're like, what am

1413
01:20:20,520 --> 01:20:23,280
Speaker 1: I gonna do? You've got to destroy them somehow or something.

1414
01:20:23,600 --> 01:20:28,320
Speaker 1: Oh man, So grave robbers versus wax Master, with all

1415
01:20:28,400 --> 01:20:31,439
Speaker 1: the possible shenanigans that could pop up, because you know

1416
01:20:31,520 --> 01:20:35,360
Speaker 1: they're gonna be wax automatons. There are going to be Uh,

1417
01:20:36,280 --> 01:20:38,640
Speaker 1: the sky's the limit. There's so much a room for

1418
01:20:38,680 --> 01:20:43,280
Speaker 1: exploration here. Copyright Stamp Stamp hours. Yeah, you can't have it.

1419
01:20:45,000 --> 01:20:48,439
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm just hoping that there maybe someone

1420
01:20:48,479 --> 01:20:51,160
Speaker 1: out there is listening to this, the filmmaker or future

1421
01:20:51,200 --> 01:20:55,960
Speaker 1: filmmaker who will make the next great wax film. Uh.

1422
01:20:56,040 --> 01:20:58,679
Speaker 1: In which case, I think we've presented a number of

1423
01:20:58,680 --> 01:21:02,720
Speaker 1: of wonderful his oracle h and scientific anecdotes here that

1424
01:21:02,760 --> 01:21:06,519
Speaker 1: could be that could prove useful. All right, On that note,

1425
01:21:06,600 --> 01:21:10,960
Speaker 1: we are going to close the Wax Museum for the day,

1426
01:21:11,200 --> 01:21:14,320
Speaker 1: but certainly stick with us as we continue to explore

1427
01:21:14,720 --> 01:21:19,240
Speaker 1: Halloween related topics the entire month of October, maybe even longer.

1428
01:21:19,280 --> 01:21:21,000
Speaker 1: I don't know. Who knows what the future will bring.

1429
01:21:22,320 --> 01:21:23,960
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other

1430
01:21:23,960 --> 01:21:25,760
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you can find

1431
01:21:25,800 --> 01:21:28,600
Speaker 1: us wherever you get your podcasts, wherever that happens to be.

1432
01:21:29,080 --> 01:21:31,679
Speaker 1: We just ask that you rate, review, and subscribe. Huge

1433
01:21:31,720 --> 01:21:35,120
Speaker 1: thanks as always, to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

1434
01:21:35,400 --> 01:21:36,880
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

1435
01:21:36,880 --> 01:21:39,400
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1436
01:21:39,400 --> 01:21:41,360
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hi,

1437
01:21:41,479 --> 01:21:44,240
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow

1438
01:21:44,280 --> 01:21:54,040
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

1439
01:21:54,080 --> 01:21:56,760
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my

1440
01:21:56,800 --> 01:21:59,760
Speaker 1: heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts

1441
01:21:59,760 --> 01:22:17,400
Speaker 1: are ever you're listening to your favorite shows. U