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Speaker 1: And from a stone beside, a poisonous eft peeps idly

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Speaker 1: into those Gorgonian eyes, whilst in the air a ghastly bat,

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Speaker 1: bereft of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise out

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Speaker 1: of the cave. This hideous light had cleft, and he

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Speaker 1: comes hastening like a moth that hies after a taper,

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Speaker 1: and the midnight sky flares a light more dread than

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Speaker 1: obscurity tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror. For from the

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Speaker 1: serpent's gleams a brazen glare, kindled by that inextricable error,

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Speaker 1: which makes a thrilling vapor of the air become a

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Speaker 1: blank and ever shifting mirror of all the beauty and

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Speaker 1: the terror. There a woman's countenance with serpent locks, gazing

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Speaker 1: in death on heaven from those wet rocks. Welcome to

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Speaker 1: Thought to Blow your Mind production of My Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're

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Speaker 1: back with part two of our series on the Gorgon Medusa.

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Speaker 1: That's right. In the last episode, we largely just recounted

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Speaker 1: what can roughly be thought of as the canonical myth

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Speaker 1: of Medusa as it emerged from the classical era, based

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Speaker 1: on a few popular tellings of the myth from those days.

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Speaker 1: Now it's time to get into possible origins of the

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Speaker 1: myth as well as various interpretations of the meaning behind it.

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Speaker 1: Some of the meanings we've attributed it over time. But

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Speaker 1: there you know, there are also these cases where for

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Speaker 1: the underlying power of myth that just keeps us coming

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Speaker 1: back to reinterpret it. Uh. You know, there's just something

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Speaker 1: about mythology in general, but especially with the Gorgon, there's

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Speaker 1: something about the Gorgon myth that just keeps bringing us back,

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Speaker 1: keeps forcing us to reevaluate it. Yeah, it absolutely cannot

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Speaker 1: be ignored. I mean, maybe it's because you can't look

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Speaker 1: at it without dying, that people can't stop looking at it.

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Speaker 1: It's like being told not to think about a taboo subject.

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Speaker 1: Uh and so uh, it's clearly the image of Medusa

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Speaker 1: is one of the most obsessed over and revisited images

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Speaker 1: from all of Greek mythology. Yeah, and we're gonna explore

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Speaker 1: a number of the different threads there. I think one

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Speaker 1: of the great things about it is that all of

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Speaker 1: the interpretations I think pretty much all the interpretations were

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Speaker 1: going to discuss here. They certainly have uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: a strong air of truth to them, like they it

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Speaker 1: feels right, and yet none of them feel like they

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Speaker 1: explain it completely. There is always this sense of darkness

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Speaker 1: and mystery uh to Medusa that we can't quite grasp,

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Speaker 1: you know, and and that's part of the this, that's

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Speaker 1: part of the enigma of it. Well, yeah, exactly. I

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Speaker 1: think that's really the appeal of these ancient archetypes, these

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Speaker 1: archetypal stories and monsters. Uh, it's that they don't mean

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Speaker 1: one thing. Instead, there's something that that kind of you know,

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Speaker 1: there are a box that can be opened twenty different ways,

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Speaker 1: and depending on you know, which part of it you open,

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Speaker 1: you you uh, you unlock different treasures from within. Yeah. Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: And I want to remind everybody that one of one

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Speaker 1: of our key sources in this these episodes was a

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Speaker 1: book by David A. Limming that's l. E. E. M.

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Speaker 1: I n G. Titled Medusa in the Mirror of Time

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Speaker 1: from eighteen. So we'll refer back to that a few

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Speaker 1: different times here, but we we also just recommend that

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Speaker 1: book for anyone who wants a deeper dive into the

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Speaker 1: nature of Medusa. Now we've got a really cool etymological

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Speaker 1: lesson from your son, I believe in between recording these

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Speaker 1: two episodes. Yeah, yeah, this was really interesting. So I

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Speaker 1: mentioned that he was reading a lot about mythology, uh.

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Speaker 1: And I also mentioned a cool comic book series that

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Speaker 1: he was really into, titled The Olympians, and I neglected

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Speaker 1: to mention the author last time, but it's George O'Connor.

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Speaker 1: He's written eleven of these, each of them themed around

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Speaker 1: a god or goddess, and book to Athena concerns Medusa.

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Speaker 1: I highly recommend those to anyone who just wants, you know,

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Speaker 1: a nice uh visual representation of these myths, for for

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Speaker 1: a young reader or just for them in themselves. But

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Speaker 1: another series that my son was reading, these are all

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Speaker 1: things like checked out of the library digitally, uh during

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Speaker 1: this quarantine period. There's a series called Science Comics, and

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Speaker 1: he was reading one titled Science Comics Dinosaurs, Fossils and Feathers.

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Speaker 1: And the book points out that one of the three

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Speaker 1: um Gray sisters were referred to in the last episode

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Speaker 1: is Dino. That's d E I n O or d

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Speaker 1: I n O, which can be translated as dread. So

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Speaker 1: in eighteen forty two, paleontologists Sir Richard Owen coined the

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Speaker 1: term dinosaur, derived from the ancient Greek uh dinos, meaning terrible,

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Speaker 1: potent or fearfully great, along with sauros, meaning lizard or reptile. Now,

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Speaker 1: I don't think there's a stronger connection between the myth

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Speaker 1: and the term, but Science Comics took the opportunity to

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Speaker 1: include an image of the three Gray Sisters in this

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Speaker 1: book about dinosaurs, which was pretty awesome. Uh, and I

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Speaker 1: salute especially since it brought you know, these two subjects

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Speaker 1: in my son Is super into together in one book. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I never made that connection, even when I saw the

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Speaker 1: name translated at dano or dino however you say it

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Speaker 1: it as meaning like terror or dread, I didn't. I

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Speaker 1: didn't make the connection to the dread lizard. Yeah, so,

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Speaker 1: I I thought. When he first told me about it,

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Speaker 1: I didn't believe him. I was like, what are you sure?

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Speaker 1: And then he showed me the page and yep, there

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Speaker 1: they are just popping up in in in dinosaur books now,

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Speaker 1: so you know, good for them. Well, I say, let's

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Speaker 1: jump right back into uh to the head of the

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Speaker 1: gore gun and pick up where we left off last time.

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Speaker 1: So the last time you mentioned that we basically gave

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Speaker 1: the outline of the myth, we talked about some of

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Speaker 1: its major variations. Um. But one thing that I think

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Speaker 1: we alluded to a little bit last time was the

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Speaker 1: idea that there have been attempts to sort of route

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Speaker 1: the myth in history to say, like, uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: there's some magical elements to this myth, but basically it

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Speaker 1: really came from this actual historical event that happened. But

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Speaker 1: I'll just I'll just make up right now. Yeah. Leming

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Speaker 1: points out in his book that several noted individuals throughout history,

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Speaker 1: notably um Uh Palla fatas Uh, Diodorus of Sicily, Busonia's Uh, etcetera,

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Speaker 1: have attempted to sort out the historical quote unquote truth

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Speaker 1: of the myth. And this is kind of like geo mythology,

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Speaker 1: the geomethology approach that we've discussed on the show before,

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Speaker 1: you know, wondering what a particular myth really is about

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Speaker 1: by seeking a literal version of the affairs of history.

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Speaker 1: With geo mythology, it tends to break down to looking

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Speaker 1: at fossils for the answer dinosaur fossils informing the shape

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Speaker 1: of a dragon, that sort of thing. Now, Digego mythology

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Speaker 1: is certainly a fascinating field, and we've discussed some wonderful

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Speaker 1: ideas concerning the origins of various myths and monsters, but

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Speaker 1: we also point out that it's often unbalanced to depend

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Speaker 1: entirely upon geo mythology, because myths and monsters, you know,

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Speaker 1: certainly they can be borne out of you know, actual

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Speaker 1: extent or extinct animals whose remains or uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: description one has come across. But we also have to

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Speaker 1: factor in human belief, human fears, human creativity, and just

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Speaker 1: the layer upon layer of human culture that often builds

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Speaker 1: these things. Yeah, I would say, I mean, the thing

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Speaker 1: about explanations like this that try to seek a rational,

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Speaker 1: real world inspiration for some kind of mythological story or

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Speaker 1: element we have is I mean, for one thing, it's

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Speaker 1: it's usually going to be highly speculative. You're you're just

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Speaker 1: trying to find a story that could fit the evidence.

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Speaker 1: Rarely do we have a case where, like from ancient history,

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Speaker 1: we know that, oh we we believe this mythical dragon

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Speaker 1: existed because we found bones buried in the ground or

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Speaker 1: something like that that would give you a really strong

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Speaker 1: clue what the actual inspiration was. The simple way I'd

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Speaker 1: put it is, don't undersell human imagination, right Like the

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Speaker 1: fact that a strange creature or character or sequence of

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Speaker 1: events happens in a myth doesn't mean that creature or

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Speaker 1: character whatever has to be based on, uh, the storyteller

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Speaker 1: having once seen something in the real world that shared

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Speaker 1: this or that quality. A lot of times we just

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Speaker 1: make stuff up, like we dream up weird things we

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Speaker 1: you know, the mind mutates variations of things we've experienced

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Speaker 1: in life. Naturally, it happens in dreams without us ever

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Speaker 1: having seen, you know, like a bat with human teeth

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Speaker 1: or whatever it is that scared us in a dream.

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Speaker 1: And so I think we don't. Uh, while it's fun

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Speaker 1: to speculate about this kind of thing, we don't have

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Speaker 1: to assume that myths and all that are are based

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Speaker 1: directly on anything that happened in reality or that somebody saw. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, and certainly there are plenty of examples where

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Speaker 1: dido mythological approach or the purely historical approach can be

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Speaker 1: very informative. Monsters based on again previously extant species or specimens,

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Speaker 1: descriptions that make their way from distant lands. Um. And

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Speaker 1: of course many mythic exploits do have a basis, even

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Speaker 1: a primary one, in actual kings and queens and in

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Speaker 1: heroes that at one point in history may have been

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Speaker 1: actual mortal people before you know, mythology and legend took over.

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Speaker 1: But but Living cautions that the rationalist approach quote provides

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Speaker 1: one sort of explanation of the meaning of the medusas story,

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Speaker 1: but tends to ignore the power of the mythic elements. Yes,

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Speaker 1: so examples of this would include, like you know, ancient

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Speaker 1: historians saying, ah, so the story of Perseus and Medusa

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Speaker 1: really comes from Perseus being like, imagine there was this

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Speaker 1: guy named Perseus, and he was a pirate, and he

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Speaker 1: was trying to go to these islands in the Atlantic.

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Speaker 1: One was that were each ruled by these queens who

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Speaker 1: were the Gorgon sisters, uh and and so forth like that.

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Speaker 1: I would say one problem with the rationalist historic all

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Speaker 1: approaches that very often it seems to me to just

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Speaker 1: be making things up. So like, how does simply making

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Speaker 1: up a non magical fictional origin story for a monster

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Speaker 1: or character improve on the existing magical mythology. Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: And and ultimately, as Leming argues, the power of myth

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Speaker 1: is deeper than history and and we can follow that

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Speaker 1: in a couple of different directions. But first I thought

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Speaker 1: we might discuss the origin of Medusa. That is perhaps

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Speaker 1: most fascinating and Limings book that of the disembodied head

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Speaker 1: of Medusa and the idea that it predates Medusa's body.

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Speaker 1: And I realized that sounds like some causality wrecking weirdness there,

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Speaker 1: which you know you can certainly encounter in in mythology.

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Speaker 1: But the more you think about this angle, I think

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Speaker 1: the more it makes perfect sense. And here's the basic premise.

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Speaker 1: The moment that really caps off the story of Medusa,

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Speaker 1: as we recounted in the previous episode, is Athena's incorporate

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Speaker 1: rating of her petrifying head into her own shield. Uh,

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Speaker 1: that that Gorgonian face becoming part of her own emblem.

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Speaker 1: And we know that Medusa's head and the Gorgonian head itself,

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Speaker 1: these were common motifs on Vice's sculptures and helmets, shields, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: Were pieces of armor and uh, and not only for

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Speaker 1: mythic heroes but for common soldiers as well. And what's more,

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Speaker 1: this practice of utilizing the gorgon's head pre dates the

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Speaker 1: more evolved versions of the Medusa myth. You know that

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Speaker 1: the real story shaped elements that we refer back to

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Speaker 1: again and again. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I think it's hard to know for sure, but it seems,

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Speaker 1: based on the evidence we have, that before the fully

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Speaker 1: formed story of Medusa existed, there was simply the Gorgonian,

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Speaker 1: the magical image, a protective amulet bearing this terrifying monstrous

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Speaker 1: head with grinding teeth and a lolling tongue, often tusks uh.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes kind of gender fluid. It could be it could

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Speaker 1: be female, could be male with a beard, could incorporate

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Speaker 1: some kind of snake imagery in the hair, but often not.

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Speaker 1: It's just generally this terrifying face. So before there was

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Speaker 1: the character, there was the ritual magical image, even in

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Speaker 1: Homer's Iliad, you know, one of the great literary sources

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Speaker 1: giving us access to early information about Greek myths. You

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Speaker 1: don't get the full Medusa story, you don't get a

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Speaker 1: full fledged character. Instead, you just get this image, recurring

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Speaker 1: the image of the disembodied head of the gorgon, which

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Speaker 1: Homer describes as a thing grim and awful to behold. Yeah. So,

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Speaker 1: so basically the idea is that Medusa pre existed is

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Speaker 1: a terrifying, petrifying, disembodied head um. Like you said, sometimes

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Speaker 1: the gorgon was even bearded. It was sometimes it was male. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and it was a common decoration. And then the perseus

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Speaker 1: smith comes along, at least in part to provide a

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Speaker 1: backstory for the monster, to to literally flesh her out,

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Speaker 1: to give her a body so as to explain the

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Speaker 1: absence of a body. So if this origin is correct,

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Speaker 1: you know, you could imagine cases where you have like

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Speaker 1: soldiers hanging around the campfire and they've all got this

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Speaker 1: terrifying head on their shields, and somebody's looking at the

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Speaker 1: shields and being like, I wonder, I wonder who that is. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean it's easy to imagine how a lot of

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Speaker 1: these things come come around. You know. Storyteller is just

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Speaker 1: sort of coming up with something to explain it, incorporating

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Speaker 1: it into some other story they heard, Uh, and that

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Speaker 1: monster was the Medusa, the very face on your shield,

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Speaker 1: that sort of thing, or it's or you could also

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Speaker 1: compare it to what we do in the modern era

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Speaker 1: with we have say a terrifying we'll say, certainly a

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Speaker 1: more fleshed out entity, but we have something like say

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Speaker 1: Hannibal Lecter, and people are like, oh, this character is great. Uh,

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Speaker 1: I want to learn more about him? What's his backstory?

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Speaker 1: Where do you come from? Can we have a whole

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Speaker 1: book that just explains where we came from? And uh,

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Speaker 1: you know so, and you can. You can look at

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Speaker 1: examples of that, numerous works, you know, and you make

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Speaker 1: something that appeals to people, people want to keep tugging

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Speaker 1: on that thread. Well that's that's something I think a

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Speaker 1: lot of times gets out of hand and is can

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Speaker 1: be very unsatisfying because a lot of times people don't

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Speaker 1: realize that the scarcity of a beloved element in a

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Speaker 1: narrative is exactly what makes it so beloved. Like, you know,

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Speaker 1: Hannibal Lecter in the original Silence of the Lamb's movie. Uh,

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Speaker 1: I know, he was a character and other stuff before that,

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Speaker 1: but and you know, the Jonathan Demmi movie. I would

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Speaker 1: say he's especially effective as a character because he's in

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Speaker 1: the movie so little. He's you know, he's got less

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Speaker 1: than twenty minutes of screen time or whatever. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: would agree. Yeah, and certainly in in both both the

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Speaker 1: book's Uh Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs, it's

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Speaker 1: very that's very much the case. He's a key character,

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Speaker 1: but he's not your primary character. You're not spending just

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Speaker 1: oodles of time with him. The mystery remains. And so yeah,

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Speaker 1: you say, oh, I want a whole book about Hannibal

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Speaker 1: lector I want to know his whole backstory because he's

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Speaker 1: so cool, is so interesting, so mysterious. And then you

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Speaker 1: get that and it's like, Okay, I mean the same

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Speaker 1: thing that people are like, I want a Boba Fette movie, Like,

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Speaker 1: is that going to be as good as you think

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Speaker 1: it is? Yeah, exactly. But to bring it back to Medusa,

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Speaker 1: So I think this idea that the the image of

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Speaker 1: Medusa's severed head could in fact pre date the fully

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Speaker 1: formed myth of Medusa's life and and you know, her

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Speaker 1: origins and uh and her role in the perciest story

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Speaker 1: uh like that ordering is is interesting to consider because

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Speaker 1: again it's something that's difficult to prove conclusively, but it

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Speaker 1: does appear to be going on with a number of

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Speaker 1: things in the history of myth and religion around the world.

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Speaker 1: This was a point often made by the people known

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Speaker 1: as the Cambridge Ritualists. In Lemming's book, he identifies specifically

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Speaker 1: the scholar Jane Harrison as one pushing this idea that

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Speaker 1: many myths that we have access to today very likely

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Speaker 1: emerge as a response to ritual and practices rather than

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Speaker 1: as the cause of them. And of course this would

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Speaker 1: match up pretty well with the ordering of evidence that

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Speaker 1: we have in the history of Medusa. Not that there

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Speaker 1: was like a myth of Perseus and Medusa which gave

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Speaker 1: rise to the use of Medusa emblems on shields and

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Speaker 1: armor and money and stuff, but exactly the inverse, that

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Speaker 1: there was a tradition of displaying a fearsome gorgon head

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Speaker 1: on objects as a kind of ritual protective magic, and

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Speaker 1: you know, to scare away the bad demons, to frighten

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Speaker 1: your enemies, and so forth. And over time, these rituals,

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Speaker 1: the art the spells gave rise to a myth to

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Speaker 1: explain it, Who is this scary head we keep stamping

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Speaker 1: on things? Where did she come from? And then as

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Speaker 1: the myth changes, grows more complex and develops along with

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Speaker 1: the cultural values and interests over time, So in that

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Speaker 1: the myth of the Gorgon's head is so ancient that

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Speaker 1: Liming points out that it's its origins likely reside outside

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Speaker 1: of Greece and higherly. Now we should remind ourselves that

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Speaker 1: that this is quite common in myth and religion. An

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Speaker 1: idea or a deity from one culture grows into or

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Speaker 1: is absorbed by another. For instance, gray eyed Athena is

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Speaker 1: said to have sprung from Zeus's head, but we can

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Speaker 1: be sure that she did not emerge wholesale from the

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Speaker 1: Greek imagination. Is is her roots seemed to go back

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Speaker 1: through the various powerful goddesses of Proto into Indo European

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Speaker 1: Sumerian culture. Leming gives the specific example of Aphrodite Uh

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Speaker 1: and her likely connection to a nana and ishtar in

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Speaker 1: ancient sumeriaan Babylon, and Leming points out a few different

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Speaker 1: traditions of Gorgonian heads that predate Medusa heads that that

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Speaker 1: gaze out at us with be steel faces and petrifying eyes.

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Speaker 1: Uh that there reminds me a lot of the kind

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Speaker 1: of lion face one makes in in yoga. But also

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Speaker 1: you see similar faces that are made, snarling faces that

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Speaker 1: are made in various forms of dance, or you know,

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Speaker 1: bodily performing. As a scholar, Tobin Ciber's described it, that's

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Speaker 1: the emblem of of the stupefying look and and some

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Speaker 1: of the examples that Living points out. There's the Mesopotamian

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Speaker 1: demon whom Baba uh quote, when he looks at someone,

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Speaker 1: it is the look of death. Yeah, And I think

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Speaker 1: with whom Baba you get a similar dynamic to Medusa,

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Speaker 1: where there's this tradition of ritual imagery. It's this kind

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Speaker 1: of like demon head that has some kind of ritual

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Speaker 1: magical power and as as displayed on objects. But also,

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Speaker 1: of course Humbaba appears as a character in the mythology,

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Speaker 1: shows up in the Epic of Gilgamesh as a as

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Speaker 1: a villain that must be destroyed, right and destroying they do.

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Speaker 1: They in fact, they decapitate the monster, which is key

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Speaker 1: in all of this as well. There's also the God

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Speaker 1: Best of Egypt, household protector God with possible sub Saharan origins,

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Speaker 1: and despite the Egyptian dependency on side profile imagery, Bess

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Speaker 1: is always depicted facing out towards the viewer. I want

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Speaker 1: to come back to that, and it inationally some early

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Speaker 1: Greek versions of the bodied Medusa apparently have the look

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Speaker 1: of a pre existing head motif having been basically stamped

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Speaker 1: onto a body. But you know, kind of kind of

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Speaker 1: coming back to this idea of like let's let's just

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Speaker 1: let's match this up, let's let's let's provide a body

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Speaker 1: for this, and it's just kind of like almost like

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Speaker 1: the the ancient Greek version of very rough photoshop that

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Speaker 1: one might encounter. Yes, some of the ancient Greek Medusa

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Speaker 1: imagery almost seems like, you know when people do that

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Speaker 1: like bad on purpose ms paint drawing of something, where

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Speaker 1: they like like take a square of somebody's head and

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Speaker 1: pasted onto a weird stick figure. Yeah, yeah, And but

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Speaker 1: I think it also kind of speaks to the idea

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Speaker 1: that these things were too, like the head of the

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Speaker 1: Gorgonian head was like a distinct image, a distinct pre

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Speaker 1: existing image, and therefore the incorporation of it with the

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Speaker 1: body would would be inherently rough and imperfect, and you

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Speaker 1: would only get a true joining of the two later on.

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Speaker 1: But but I want to come back to this idea

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Speaker 1: of of the Gorgonian head staring directly at the view

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Speaker 1: were of the art, but but in in modern like

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Speaker 1: cinematic interpretations. We see this as well. In fact, we

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Speaker 1: see it fantastically in Ray Ray Harry Housen's Medusa that

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Speaker 1: we encounter in the original nineteen one Clash of the Titans.

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Speaker 1: There is at least I think there's a There are

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Speaker 1: a couple of sequences, but there's one scene in particular

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Speaker 1: where she breaks the fourth wall and stares directly at

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Speaker 1: the audience. Yeah. It's like the Great Train Robbery, you know, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: or like Good Fellows when Joe Pesci shoots the gun

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Speaker 1: at the camera. Yeah. Like I think all you know,

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Speaker 1: those are examples of of things that are in the

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Speaker 1: tradition of the Gorgonian head as well. Yeah, but I

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Speaker 1: feel like Harry howsing in particular with with Clash eighty one, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, he and or the filmmakers, I think they

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Speaker 1: realize that it's not a gorgon unless it breaks the

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Speaker 1: fourth wall and does look directly at the audience. And

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Speaker 1: this is key because the Gorgonian head is in all

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Speaker 1: of these examples pure apotropaic magic. Yeah, totally. I mean,

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Speaker 1: apotropic magic is one of the most interesting subjects to me.

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Speaker 1: I I love thinking about this stuff. So apotropaic magic

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Speaker 1: means magic that is used to ward off evil or

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Speaker 1: threats or something like that. Uh. You know a classic

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Speaker 1: example that we'll get to more later that you know,

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Speaker 1: the types of talisman's that you could have to ward

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Speaker 1: off the evil eye. That will come up more in

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Speaker 1: a bit here. But yeah, I love this idea. Lemming

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Speaker 1: brings this up. You mentioned it, the idea that in

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Speaker 1: ancient art, if you look at a lot of the

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Speaker 1: representations of humanoid figures, humans and gods and stuff from

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Speaker 1: the ancient Near East in the Mesopotamian region, a whole

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Speaker 1: lot of it has uh figures depicted in profile facing

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Speaker 1: to the side. Think about ancient Egyptian artwork and a

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Speaker 1: lot of ancient Greek artwork that you're gonna have heads

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Speaker 1: facing to the side. The Medusa figure and the other

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Speaker 1: apotropic monster figures such as Humbaba are going to be

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Speaker 1: depicted in defiance of this art that often looks directly

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Speaker 1: at you. And it's almost as if the art is

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Speaker 1: seeing you back. You know, you're looking at it and

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Speaker 1: it's looking at you. And I think that the weirdness

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Speaker 1: of this may have to do with these ancient taboos

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Speaker 1: about the evil eye, about being looked at that like

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Speaker 1: having a piece of art that stares directly into your

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Speaker 1: face as you look at it is in a way

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Speaker 1: inherently threatening, whether the creature depicted as monstrous or not,

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Speaker 1: all the more so if it is monstrous. So I

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Speaker 1: was reading a bit about this in an essay by

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Speaker 1: a met museum curator to accompany an exhibit at the

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Speaker 1: Metropolitan Museum of Art on Medusa and hybrid Monsters and

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Speaker 1: art history. Her name is Kiki Carriglu, and the essay

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Speaker 1: was called Dangerous Beauty, Medusa and Classical Art. And the

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Speaker 1: way she describes it as so, she's talking about the

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Speaker 1: the archaic gorgon face, the face of the gorgon before

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Speaker 1: we get the later derived versions that are associated with

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Speaker 1: the full fledged a myth. She writes, quote, the archaic

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Speaker 1: gorgon is always full face moreover, glaring directly at the viewer.

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Speaker 1: This combination of frontality and monstrosity in a single immediately

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Speaker 1: recognizable figure is what makes the Greek Gorgon such an original,

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Speaker 1: invocative image of radical difference of the absolute other. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And so she talks about some of the the apotropaic

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Speaker 1: uses of the gorgon face that you know, you go

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Speaker 1: back in history a lot of the things that would

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Speaker 1: have the gorgon on it would be not just shields

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Speaker 1: used in battle, but but for example, funerary monuments, you know,

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Speaker 1: so the gorgon's face on the funeral or the tomb

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Speaker 1: door or something is an apotropaic emblem to protect the

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Speaker 1: tomb from evil. But also this was really interesting to me.

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Speaker 1: Carrot Lew talks about how there is a transition from

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Speaker 1: archaic Greek art to classical Greek art, wherein the classical

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Speaker 1: period Medusa was quote progressively transformed into an attractive young woman.

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Speaker 1: So beginning around the fifth century b c. E, art

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Speaker 1: representing Medusa began to transform from mainly terrifying be steel

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Speaker 1: heads with tusks and poor sign features and stuff like

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Speaker 1: that into increasingly humanoid, feminine and beautiful, and Carriglou points

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Speaker 1: out that this transition in representation over time applies actually

424
00:24:20,840 --> 00:24:24,720
Speaker 1: not just to Medusa, but is is sort of characteristic

425
00:24:25,160 --> 00:24:28,080
Speaker 1: of a an overall trend in Greek art in how

426
00:24:28,119 --> 00:24:33,480
Speaker 1: it depicts mythical female monsters and hybrids, including sphinxes like

427
00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:36,920
Speaker 1: the sphinx story that you get in the Legend of Oedipus,

428
00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:40,680
Speaker 1: but also sirens and the sea monster, skilla. You've got

429
00:24:40,720 --> 00:24:44,560
Speaker 1: these archaic depictions in which they are monstrous, in human,

430
00:24:44,920 --> 00:24:48,280
Speaker 1: gross and all that, and then around the fifth century

431
00:24:48,359 --> 00:24:55,200
Speaker 1: b c e. These monsters become more notably feminine and beautiful. Yeah,

432
00:24:55,280 --> 00:24:58,399
Speaker 1: it's an interesting transformation and one that is going to

433
00:24:58,480 --> 00:25:01,080
Speaker 1: be key to a number of these differ and interpretations

434
00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:03,080
Speaker 1: that we're going to be discussing, and the way that

435
00:25:03,160 --> 00:25:07,719
Speaker 1: Medusa was utilized by subsequent cultures. Absolutely, should we take

436
00:25:07,760 --> 00:25:10,119
Speaker 1: a break, Yeah, let's take a quick break, but we

437
00:25:10,160 --> 00:25:17,399
Speaker 1: will be right back with more of the Gorgon's. Thank alright,

438
00:25:17,440 --> 00:25:20,439
Speaker 1: we're back. So we started the episode today by reading

439
00:25:20,440 --> 00:25:24,159
Speaker 1: from a poem. That poem was a poem by Percy

440
00:25:24,200 --> 00:25:27,119
Speaker 1: Biss Shelley. It's called on the Medusa of Leonardo da

441
00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:30,199
Speaker 1: Vinci in the Florentine Gallery. And there's a funny thing

442
00:25:30,240 --> 00:25:33,760
Speaker 1: about this poem. Uh, there is no painting of Medusa

443
00:25:33,800 --> 00:25:35,960
Speaker 1: by Leonardo da Vinci, at least not that we have

444
00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:40,199
Speaker 1: right this. This painting, or or in all likelihood a

445
00:25:40,240 --> 00:25:44,000
Speaker 1: pair of paintings are lost works, which, especially when you're

446
00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:47,280
Speaker 1: talking about Leonardo da Vinci, there's just something endlessly fascinating

447
00:25:47,320 --> 00:25:50,000
Speaker 1: about that, right. The idea that there were. There are

448
00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:52,520
Speaker 1: these works that he created that you know, other people

449
00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:55,400
Speaker 1: saw in an attest to existing that are just no

450
00:25:55,440 --> 00:25:58,840
Speaker 1: longer with us. Um. But as I think, I think

451
00:25:58,840 --> 00:26:02,040
Speaker 1: even Shelley was not actually looking at a da Vinci painting.

452
00:26:02,080 --> 00:26:07,000
Speaker 1: He was mistaken, right right right, there were um so

453
00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:10,040
Speaker 1: there were at least two early paintings that were described

454
00:26:10,160 --> 00:26:13,240
Speaker 1: in I think in the Life of Leonardo da Vinci.

455
00:26:13,560 --> 00:26:18,240
Speaker 1: Uh this would have been um uh georgo Vasari's biography

456
00:26:18,240 --> 00:26:21,760
Speaker 1: of the artist. But then later there's a six painting

457
00:26:21,760 --> 00:26:25,159
Speaker 1: by a Flemish painter that has at times been wrongfully,

458
00:26:25,160 --> 00:26:28,600
Speaker 1: wrongfully attributed as the work of da Vinci. It's still,

459
00:26:28,600 --> 00:26:30,639
Speaker 1: you know, wonderful to behold, but it is it is

460
00:26:30,680 --> 00:26:34,240
Speaker 1: not authentically da Vinci. Um. But yeah, this painting would

461
00:26:34,240 --> 00:26:36,879
Speaker 1: go on to inspire Percy Shelley in the writing of

462
00:26:36,960 --> 00:26:39,760
Speaker 1: this poem. Now, one of the things about the sort

463
00:26:39,760 --> 00:26:43,040
Speaker 1: of lore surrounding da Vinci's painting is that is that

464
00:26:43,840 --> 00:26:47,639
Speaker 1: this painting or pair of paintings they they supposedly like,

465
00:26:47,960 --> 00:26:52,520
Speaker 1: really captured uh, you know, the beautiful terror, really captured

466
00:26:52,560 --> 00:26:56,040
Speaker 1: the magic of the Gorgonian head in a way that

467
00:26:56,160 --> 00:26:58,960
Speaker 1: like unsettled people when they saw it. Uh. So that

468
00:26:59,359 --> 00:27:03,000
Speaker 1: just makes the this, uh, this, these particular lost works

469
00:27:03,040 --> 00:27:06,280
Speaker 1: even more amazing to think about. Yeah, I believe I read.

470
00:27:06,760 --> 00:27:08,639
Speaker 1: I can't remember in which of our sources it was.

471
00:27:08,680 --> 00:27:10,399
Speaker 1: It might have been in the liming, but one of

472
00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:13,560
Speaker 1: the sources we were looking at talked about how it

473
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:17,000
Speaker 1: might have been da Vinci's painting that was actually the

474
00:27:17,040 --> 00:27:21,080
Speaker 1: first to show Medusa not just with snakes entwined in

475
00:27:21,160 --> 00:27:24,600
Speaker 1: her hair, but with snakes as her hair. That's her,

476
00:27:24,760 --> 00:27:28,439
Speaker 1: that's all the hair she's got. Yeah. Interesting, and and

477
00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:31,040
Speaker 1: I I can't help but take the spectative leap too

478
00:27:31,200 --> 00:27:34,520
Speaker 1: and try to imagine, oh, well, maybe maybe these paintings

479
00:27:34,520 --> 00:27:38,080
Speaker 1: are lost because da Vinci, with his great art, was

480
00:27:38,119 --> 00:27:41,960
Speaker 1: able to legitimately capture the power of Medusa's gaze. And

481
00:27:42,040 --> 00:27:46,080
Speaker 1: these paintings actually petrified people, actually turned people to stone,

482
00:27:46,400 --> 00:27:47,880
Speaker 1: and so they had to be you know, locked away

483
00:27:47,960 --> 00:27:54,439
Speaker 1: or destroyed, right like a Renaissance van helsing. Yeah, as

484
00:27:54,480 --> 00:27:57,520
Speaker 1: far as I know, they haven't been utilized in horror fiction,

485
00:27:57,720 --> 00:28:01,440
Speaker 1: uh that way, but it seems like a given, like somebody,

486
00:28:01,560 --> 00:28:03,639
Speaker 1: if it hasn't been done already, somebody should do that

487
00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:06,840
Speaker 1: totally alright, So we talked a little bit earlier about

488
00:28:07,040 --> 00:28:09,800
Speaker 1: apotropeic magic and the evil eye. Let's let's come back

489
00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:12,760
Speaker 1: to the evil eye. Yeah. So so letting points out

490
00:28:12,840 --> 00:28:15,280
Speaker 1: that that uh, you know, this is all of course

491
00:28:15,280 --> 00:28:18,840
Speaker 1: connected to this concept of the evil eye. Meduce's gaze

492
00:28:18,840 --> 00:28:22,679
Speaker 1: has the power to petrify, and certainly the face is

493
00:28:22,840 --> 00:28:27,040
Speaker 1: key to the aforementioned u apotropaic magic. But as with

494
00:28:27,320 --> 00:28:29,760
Speaker 1: other evil eyes and myths such one of my favorites

495
00:28:29,880 --> 00:28:33,880
Speaker 1: is Balor of the Bailful Eye and Irish mythology, whose

496
00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:37,560
Speaker 1: his eye is this terrifying beam of death but is

497
00:28:38,160 --> 00:28:44,720
Speaker 1: covered by his long mutated brow. Uh. You know. You

498
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:47,080
Speaker 1: see this in other various cultures as well, where in

499
00:28:47,080 --> 00:28:49,400
Speaker 1: in some form or another, there is an eye that

500
00:28:49,600 --> 00:28:53,000
Speaker 1: curses whatever it looks at, and oftentimes it is disembodied,

501
00:28:53,560 --> 00:28:56,400
Speaker 1: which is what we see with the Gray Sisters. Oh yeah,

502
00:28:56,440 --> 00:28:59,440
Speaker 1: the Grays Sisters. Uh, they share one eye between them

503
00:28:59,480 --> 00:29:03,160
Speaker 1: and Perseus snatches it in order to to you know,

504
00:29:03,280 --> 00:29:06,920
Speaker 1: muscle them to get information out. One thing that's funny though,

505
00:29:06,960 --> 00:29:08,720
Speaker 1: is I can't remember if we talked about this in

506
00:29:08,720 --> 00:29:11,760
Speaker 1: the last episode or not. Um, what's going on with

507
00:29:11,800 --> 00:29:15,360
Speaker 1: the tooth, Like, what does the tooth do. Does the

508
00:29:15,400 --> 00:29:18,200
Speaker 1: tooth do anything? I don't know. The tooth feels a lot.

509
00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:22,520
Speaker 1: The tooth, for one thing, is often abandoned by by

510
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:26,880
Speaker 1: in reinterpretations, you know people, Yeah, they don't know quite

511
00:29:26,880 --> 00:29:29,800
Speaker 1: what to do with the tooth. The tooth to me, anyway,

512
00:29:29,960 --> 00:29:33,960
Speaker 1: feels like it's just part of a hag joke, you know, like, oh,

513
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:36,440
Speaker 1: they're old and they have you know, they don't have

514
00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:38,920
Speaker 1: any teeth. In fact, they have only one teeth that

515
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:42,520
Speaker 1: they all have to share. It has a you know, absurd,

516
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:45,920
Speaker 1: like susical kind of sense to it. Uh. I think

517
00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:47,800
Speaker 1: you're right about that. Yeah, it must just be like

518
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:50,440
Speaker 1: it was. It was a detail added for color that

519
00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:53,240
Speaker 1: then nobody could really figure out what to do with it. Yeah,

520
00:29:53,440 --> 00:29:56,320
Speaker 1: or certainly it's uh, you know the import has been

521
00:29:56,360 --> 00:29:59,880
Speaker 1: lost over time. Yeah, Like you can't chew with one tooth,

522
00:30:00,040 --> 00:30:02,080
Speaker 1: you gotta have at least two. Yeah, what are you

523
00:30:02,080 --> 00:30:04,760
Speaker 1: gonna do with it? Um? So anyway, we end up

524
00:30:04,760 --> 00:30:08,600
Speaker 1: focusing more on the eye. So the general belief is

525
00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:11,280
Speaker 1: that the concept of the evil eye arises from the

526
00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:15,680
Speaker 1: universal dislike of being stared at or of being stared down.

527
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:19,680
Speaker 1: And there's there's also something more to this, as discussed

528
00:30:19,800 --> 00:30:25,840
Speaker 1: by Jean Paul Sartra in Being and Nothingness. So Sartra

529
00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:29,240
Speaker 1: considered this key to the meaning of the medusa myth.

530
00:30:29,600 --> 00:30:34,560
Speaker 1: Medusa represents the objectifying gaze of the other, which robs

531
00:30:34,680 --> 00:30:38,000
Speaker 1: one of the self. So basically, you know, we're all

532
00:30:38,040 --> 00:30:40,640
Speaker 1: just bobbing about in the world, self obsessed. It's all

533
00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:43,080
Speaker 1: about us, it's our story and how we're interacting with

534
00:30:43,120 --> 00:30:46,040
Speaker 1: the world. But then there's this stare from another, this

535
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:51,479
Speaker 1: petrifying stare, and Sarta wrote that if one looks at something,

536
00:30:51,920 --> 00:30:54,920
Speaker 1: the one who looks is the center of consciousness. The

537
00:30:55,000 --> 00:30:59,040
Speaker 1: one who looks controls the world. But if another looks

538
00:30:59,400 --> 00:31:02,760
Speaker 1: back at a looker, if the looker knows that they

539
00:31:02,800 --> 00:31:06,640
Speaker 1: are looked upon, they become an objectified self in the

540
00:31:06,680 --> 00:31:10,440
Speaker 1: eyes of another. And so the staring other in this case,

541
00:31:10,480 --> 00:31:13,760
Speaker 1: say the Gorgonian head or the evil eye, the staring

542
00:31:13,920 --> 00:31:17,880
Speaker 1: other is the thief of consciousness. This is interesting, and

543
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:20,520
Speaker 1: I think this there's some truth to this that goes

544
00:31:20,560 --> 00:31:24,120
Speaker 1: beyond just uh you know. So Sartres trying to apply

545
00:31:24,280 --> 00:31:27,840
Speaker 1: this to his view of um uh you know, absurdity

546
00:31:27,960 --> 00:31:30,680
Speaker 1: and and chasing after the idea of the meaning of life,

547
00:31:30,760 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 1: which might be illusory, but uh, there's something to this

548
00:31:34,240 --> 00:31:37,120
Speaker 1: in our basic primal fears. Like as soon as as

549
00:31:37,160 --> 00:31:40,280
Speaker 1: soon as you realize you are being looked at, you

550
00:31:40,320 --> 00:31:44,520
Speaker 1: feel amazingly vulnerable. Being looked at in a way reminds

551
00:31:44,560 --> 00:31:47,800
Speaker 1: you that you yourself are a not just a subject

552
00:31:47,880 --> 00:31:51,400
Speaker 1: but an object, That you are impermanent, that your death

553
00:31:51,480 --> 00:31:55,200
Speaker 1: is inevitable, that you are subject to forces outside your control.

554
00:31:55,760 --> 00:31:58,760
Speaker 1: Being looked at and realizing you're being looked at is

555
00:31:58,920 --> 00:32:02,280
Speaker 1: in many ways the ultimate sort of like uh, terror

556
00:32:02,280 --> 00:32:04,600
Speaker 1: and loss of control. I mean, why is why is

557
00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:07,400
Speaker 1: one of the most terrifying things to people, like public

558
00:32:07,440 --> 00:32:10,680
Speaker 1: speaking or public appearances. You know, being up on a

559
00:32:10,760 --> 00:32:13,200
Speaker 1: stage in front of an audience of people looking at

560
00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:16,680
Speaker 1: them is horrifying. And it goes beyond just being afraid

561
00:32:16,720 --> 00:32:19,480
Speaker 1: that you're gonna say the wrong thing or something. There's

562
00:32:19,640 --> 00:32:21,800
Speaker 1: like this deep dread to it. It feels like it

563
00:32:21,840 --> 00:32:25,040
Speaker 1: gets down to something very basic and very threatening that

564
00:32:25,080 --> 00:32:26,920
Speaker 1: you can't even look at, almost as if it's the

565
00:32:26,960 --> 00:32:29,800
Speaker 1: image of Medusa. Yeah, yeah, and certainly if you were.

566
00:32:30,200 --> 00:32:33,080
Speaker 1: You know, there's sort of the casual objectification of everybody

567
00:32:33,080 --> 00:32:35,440
Speaker 1: and everything in the world. Again that goes back to

568
00:32:35,520 --> 00:32:37,920
Speaker 1: just the way that we think about ourselves and our narrative.

569
00:32:38,120 --> 00:32:40,680
Speaker 1: But then also if you're if you're actively engaging in

570
00:32:40,760 --> 00:32:46,160
Speaker 1: objectification and and the objectified individual looks back at you,

571
00:32:46,160 --> 00:32:49,120
Speaker 1: you know that it it has a powerful effect. Like

572
00:32:49,160 --> 00:32:53,880
Speaker 1: I think back to the Wrong Frick film from Baraka

573
00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:56,880
Speaker 1: and some of the other subsequent works like this with

574
00:32:57,360 --> 00:33:00,720
Speaker 1: in which you have these lengthy in they're not images,

575
00:33:00,760 --> 00:33:06,320
Speaker 1: they're they're like lengthy film portraits of individual staring directly

576
00:33:06,360 --> 00:33:09,040
Speaker 1: back at the camera, you know. And of course you

577
00:33:09,080 --> 00:33:12,760
Speaker 1: see this in portraiture as well, like the idea that

578
00:33:12,760 --> 00:33:15,239
Speaker 1: that the the subject is meeting your gaze, you can

579
00:33:15,240 --> 00:33:18,200
Speaker 1: have this profound effect, you know, you uh, you can

580
00:33:18,240 --> 00:33:22,040
Speaker 1: feel uncomfortable at times. Even so I think there is, yeah,

581
00:33:22,040 --> 00:33:25,120
Speaker 1: there's a lot of truth to what he is saying here. Now,

582
00:33:25,160 --> 00:33:27,120
Speaker 1: all this stuff we're talking about is at the level

583
00:33:27,120 --> 00:33:29,600
Speaker 1: of like human consciousness. You know, what kinds of things

584
00:33:29,640 --> 00:33:32,800
Speaker 1: we with our conscious minds realize about our own nature.

585
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:35,400
Speaker 1: When we suddenly feel looked at, you know, doesn't make

586
00:33:35,400 --> 00:33:37,920
Speaker 1: you realize you're an object? Does it make you realize

587
00:33:37,920 --> 00:33:40,160
Speaker 1: your impermanent, you're going to die and all that? But

588
00:33:40,200 --> 00:33:42,360
Speaker 1: I would say even at the level of you know,

589
00:33:42,440 --> 00:33:46,840
Speaker 1: animals without that level of consciousness, probably there's there's a

590
00:33:46,840 --> 00:33:51,040
Speaker 1: more practical reality to the threat of being looked at. Right. Yeah,

591
00:33:51,560 --> 00:33:54,960
Speaker 1: we see something like this in the natural world, you know,

592
00:33:55,000 --> 00:33:57,920
Speaker 1: the idea of the evil eye. It reminds one of

593
00:33:57,960 --> 00:34:03,960
Speaker 1: eye spots, adaptations of or accidental pattern formation artifacts in

594
00:34:04,040 --> 00:34:08,280
Speaker 1: a species that served to either deceive potential predators or prey,

595
00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:12,400
Speaker 1: or to draw a predator's attention away from more vulnerable

596
00:34:12,480 --> 00:34:16,239
Speaker 1: parts of an animal. Now with predators in particularly, uh,

597
00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:19,200
Speaker 1: nothing beats a sure thing, right or a near sure thing.

598
00:34:19,239 --> 00:34:22,080
Speaker 1: If an attack does not go exactly as planned, a

599
00:34:22,200 --> 00:34:25,360
Speaker 1: number of consequences can occur. The prey might get away,

600
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:28,520
Speaker 1: in which case energy and time is wasted. Other prey

601
00:34:28,640 --> 00:34:31,880
Speaker 1: might be alerted and frightened away as well. We're still

602
00:34:31,920 --> 00:34:34,880
Speaker 1: an alert prey animal could have the chance to counterattack

603
00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:38,920
Speaker 1: and inflict damage and such an injury can prove deadly. Cheetahs,

604
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:41,759
Speaker 1: for instance, rarely go after something like an ostrich because

605
00:34:41,800 --> 00:34:44,920
Speaker 1: while the payoff for a successful hunt is is really good,

606
00:34:45,239 --> 00:34:49,120
Speaker 1: injury can mean starvation when your kills depend on high

607
00:34:49,200 --> 00:34:51,920
Speaker 1: speed attacks. Yeah, I mean, for a lot of predation

608
00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:54,920
Speaker 1: in the natural world, especially of like large land animals.

609
00:34:54,960 --> 00:34:58,160
Speaker 1: You're not gonna be going after healthy adults most of

610
00:34:58,160 --> 00:35:00,640
Speaker 1: the time. That's a that's a danger risk game. You

611
00:35:00,680 --> 00:35:03,319
Speaker 1: want to pick off like juveniles or the sick and

612
00:35:03,360 --> 00:35:06,239
Speaker 1: infirm if you can, right and uh. And if you're

613
00:35:06,239 --> 00:35:08,480
Speaker 1: gonna pick something off, it's better if it doesn't have

614
00:35:08,520 --> 00:35:11,239
Speaker 1: its full attention on you, right. Um. So you know,

615
00:35:11,360 --> 00:35:14,200
Speaker 1: keeping an eye on your enemy at all times is

616
00:35:14,239 --> 00:35:17,160
Speaker 1: a great tactic, though that's that's quite a resource drain.

617
00:35:17,239 --> 00:35:20,680
Speaker 1: So fooling your enemy into thinking it's being watched at

618
00:35:20,719 --> 00:35:23,279
Speaker 1: all times, that's an even better tactic. And we see

619
00:35:23,320 --> 00:35:27,560
Speaker 1: this in countless examples of eyespot evolution. Now, to be clear,

620
00:35:27,680 --> 00:35:30,400
Speaker 1: not all eye spots are there to mimic watching eyes.

621
00:35:30,480 --> 00:35:33,239
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're there to to fool a predator again into

622
00:35:33,280 --> 00:35:35,759
Speaker 1: attacking a less vulnerable part of the animal, or they

623
00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:39,000
Speaker 1: play into mate selection, et cetera. But in some cases, yes,

624
00:35:39,160 --> 00:35:43,279
Speaker 1: i spots seem to serve as anti predator adaptations. And

625
00:35:43,320 --> 00:35:46,960
Speaker 1: we also see examples of the strategy's effectiveness outside of

626
00:35:47,080 --> 00:35:51,640
Speaker 1: natural adaptation. So, for instance, individuals who happen to work

627
00:35:51,640 --> 00:35:55,960
Speaker 1: in Bengal tiger country have long reported success with backwards

628
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:59,359
Speaker 1: wooden masks, masks of of a human face that they

629
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:01,520
Speaker 1: wear in the back their heads in an attempt to

630
00:36:01,560 --> 00:36:06,680
Speaker 1: ward off ambush attacks. Plus various animal species UH evolved

631
00:36:06,680 --> 00:36:08,880
Speaker 1: eye spots that in many cases may serve to protect

632
00:36:08,960 --> 00:36:12,800
Speaker 1: them from creeping predators like this. UM. One really cool

633
00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:17,640
Speaker 1: story of in which one uses eyes like this involves

634
00:36:17,840 --> 00:36:22,160
Speaker 1: Australian conservation biologist Dr Neil Jordan's who has been experimenting

635
00:36:22,160 --> 00:36:25,000
Speaker 1: with the use of painted on eye spots to protect

636
00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:29,480
Speaker 1: grazing cattle from lion attacks. UH. This is basically just

637
00:36:29,640 --> 00:36:34,560
Speaker 1: eyes painted on the rumps of cattle and this is

638
00:36:34,600 --> 00:36:36,960
Speaker 1: all in an effort to cut down on lion human

639
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:40,560
Speaker 1: interactions that can be harmful or deadly on both sides.

640
00:36:41,040 --> 00:36:44,320
Speaker 1: You know. Basically, since lions are ambush hunters, they depend

641
00:36:44,320 --> 00:36:46,720
Speaker 1: on surprise attacks and if they think they've been had,

642
00:36:46,880 --> 00:36:49,480
Speaker 1: they'll abandon the hunt, or at least that's the theory

643
00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:52,800
Speaker 1: that they're still uh working on. Now. If that works,

644
00:36:52,880 --> 00:36:55,480
Speaker 1: that's not just the protection for the cattle. That's obviously

645
00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:58,719
Speaker 1: a protection for the lions or you know, the conservation

646
00:36:59,480 --> 00:37:02,720
Speaker 1: object here, because what like, if a lion attacks cattle,

647
00:37:02,840 --> 00:37:06,520
Speaker 1: they are at risk of being severely retaliated against by

648
00:37:06,560 --> 00:37:09,600
Speaker 1: farmers and ranchers. Exactly. Yeah, it's it's it's all an

649
00:37:09,600 --> 00:37:13,360
Speaker 1: effort and this was through the Botswana Predator Conservation Trust

650
00:37:14,320 --> 00:37:17,040
Speaker 1: that Jordan is involved with here. And yeah, it's about

651
00:37:17,120 --> 00:37:19,920
Speaker 1: ultimately trying to cut down on the conflict between the

652
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:23,919
Speaker 1: lions and the farmers and ultimately trying to protect both

653
00:37:23,960 --> 00:37:26,960
Speaker 1: their interests. But of course direct eye contact with your

654
00:37:27,040 --> 00:37:30,640
Speaker 1: with you with this particular species is not always good. Um.

655
00:37:30,640 --> 00:37:32,760
Speaker 1: You know, just as direct eye contact with an animal

656
00:37:32,800 --> 00:37:35,480
Speaker 1: that sees you as prey might deter attack, such eye

657
00:37:35,480 --> 00:37:38,239
Speaker 1: contact might encourage aggression from a creature that sees you

658
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:42,240
Speaker 1: was a potential threat. Um. We we see this with dogs,

659
00:37:42,280 --> 00:37:45,000
Speaker 1: for instance. And then of course there are plenty of

660
00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:49,600
Speaker 1: known examples with with primates, particularly guerillas. Uh. In fact,

661
00:37:49,600 --> 00:37:52,680
Speaker 1: in one case back in two thousand seven, the Rotterdam

662
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:57,080
Speaker 1: Zoo engaged in this wonderful reversal of those tiger fooling masks.

663
00:37:57,360 --> 00:38:00,840
Speaker 1: They were uh, these these eye shades that look like

664
00:38:00,920 --> 00:38:04,000
Speaker 1: averted eyes, that make you look like with cartoon eyes,

665
00:38:04,040 --> 00:38:06,359
Speaker 1: like you're looking to the side. Uh. And they did

666
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:09,920
Speaker 1: this to cut down on cases of gorillas responding violently

667
00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:13,160
Speaker 1: to human eye contact. Oh that's interesting. That makes me

668
00:38:13,160 --> 00:38:16,960
Speaker 1: wonder to be in the gorilla enclosures there. If you're

669
00:38:17,040 --> 00:38:20,160
Speaker 1: like a status concerned gorilla and like just people are

670
00:38:20,200 --> 00:38:23,200
Speaker 1: constantly walking up staring directly at you all day, that

671
00:38:23,280 --> 00:38:26,520
Speaker 1: must be stressful. Yeah, I mean, staring is powerful stuff.

672
00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:29,200
Speaker 1: I mean, I think even those of us with domestic

673
00:38:29,239 --> 00:38:31,839
Speaker 1: pets in our house can attest to just you know

674
00:38:31,920 --> 00:38:34,160
Speaker 1: how powerful a stair can be. If you just start

675
00:38:34,239 --> 00:38:37,040
Speaker 1: staring at say your cat or your dog. I'm not

676
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:39,319
Speaker 1: you know, it's not gonna result in chaos, but you're

677
00:38:39,320 --> 00:38:41,279
Speaker 1: gonna get it. You're gonna get a rise out of them.

678
00:38:41,280 --> 00:38:43,279
Speaker 1: They're gonna realize I'm being stared at. Why am I

679
00:38:43,320 --> 00:38:46,279
Speaker 1: being stared at? And then likewise they'll also turn that

680
00:38:46,360 --> 00:38:50,240
Speaker 1: around on you at times. Oh yeah, I mean, Charlie

681
00:38:50,280 --> 00:38:52,600
Speaker 1: knows when he's being looked at. If I'm looking at

682
00:38:52,640 --> 00:38:54,839
Speaker 1: something else in the room and then I suddenly look

683
00:38:54,880 --> 00:38:57,280
Speaker 1: at him, he will often just start wagging his tail

684
00:38:57,480 --> 00:38:59,799
Speaker 1: as soon as my eyes go to him. So when

685
00:38:59,800 --> 00:39:03,000
Speaker 1: we're when we're dealing with with staring, you know, we're

686
00:39:03,040 --> 00:39:05,759
Speaker 1: you know, we're not dealing with a trivial or even

687
00:39:05,800 --> 00:39:11,560
Speaker 1: purely human conundrum, though certainly the human experience makes it

688
00:39:12,000 --> 00:39:15,400
Speaker 1: all the more complicated. But yeah, we're getting into into

689
00:39:15,440 --> 00:39:18,399
Speaker 1: something deep that deals with who we are and how

690
00:39:18,440 --> 00:39:21,359
Speaker 1: we interact with the world around us. Absolutely, I mean,

691
00:39:21,719 --> 00:39:24,239
Speaker 1: it's not actually surprising to me the more that I

692
00:39:24,239 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 1: think about it, that the idea of a stare was

693
00:39:28,320 --> 00:39:32,759
Speaker 1: infused with malevolent magical power throughout the ancient world. The

694
00:39:32,800 --> 00:39:35,000
Speaker 1: idea of that that the evil eye that you know,

695
00:39:35,120 --> 00:39:37,600
Speaker 1: you could certain people could look at you in a

696
00:39:37,600 --> 00:39:40,160
Speaker 1: certain way that would curse you or make you sick,

697
00:39:40,280 --> 00:39:42,879
Speaker 1: or you know, bring harm magical harm in some way.

698
00:39:43,640 --> 00:39:45,759
Speaker 1: It's the kind of belief that if you don't grow

699
00:39:45,800 --> 00:39:48,200
Speaker 1: up in a culture with that, you know, the belief

700
00:39:48,320 --> 00:39:50,720
Speaker 1: something like that, it can feel weird at first until

701
00:39:50,840 --> 00:39:52,920
Speaker 1: you start to think about it. Then it just starts

702
00:39:53,280 --> 00:39:56,360
Speaker 1: almost as if you know, coming up from some ancient instinct.

703
00:39:56,440 --> 00:39:59,160
Speaker 1: It's just starts to feel more and more true and

704
00:39:59,280 --> 00:40:02,680
Speaker 1: real the where you think about it. Yeah, absolutely, at

705
00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:04,959
Speaker 1: least for me. All Right, we're gonna take one more break,

706
00:40:05,000 --> 00:40:10,680
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back. All right, we're back. So

707
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:14,520
Speaker 1: at this point, let's turn to Uh. The section that

708
00:40:14,560 --> 00:40:19,360
Speaker 1: we're thinking of is the underlying darkness, getting digging into

709
00:40:19,400 --> 00:40:22,919
Speaker 1: the meat behind the head of the Medusa, getting into

710
00:40:22,960 --> 00:40:26,160
Speaker 1: this idea of you know what, what is there, what

711
00:40:26,320 --> 00:40:28,839
Speaker 1: keeps drawing us in? And what are we what are

712
00:40:28,840 --> 00:40:32,200
Speaker 1: we contemplating when we contemplate this image or this myth.

713
00:40:32,840 --> 00:40:34,799
Speaker 1: So Living spends a fair amount of time in the

714
00:40:34,800 --> 00:40:36,960
Speaker 1: book looking at both the varying ways that the myth

715
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:41,080
Speaker 1: has been interpreted and reinterpreted throughout history, and the idea

716
00:40:41,120 --> 00:40:44,560
Speaker 1: that there is something deeply intriguing behind the myth quote

717
00:40:44,840 --> 00:40:49,200
Speaker 1: a shadow being an archetypical figure who speaks meaningfully to

718
00:40:49,360 --> 00:40:51,600
Speaker 1: us all. As we said right at the beginning, I

719
00:40:51,600 --> 00:40:57,480
Speaker 1: mean Medusa has been obsessed over and and reinterpreted basically

720
00:40:57,520 --> 00:41:01,880
Speaker 1: in every generation of humans. I mean it is interesting

721
00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:06,040
Speaker 1: how essentially the the the dominant cultural values of every

722
00:41:06,160 --> 00:41:09,680
Speaker 1: age find a new way to say what the Medusa

723
00:41:09,760 --> 00:41:13,000
Speaker 1: myth means. Yeah, it's we just keep exploring it and

724
00:41:13,040 --> 00:41:16,400
Speaker 1: re exploring it as a potential metaphor for cultural ideas.

725
00:41:16,760 --> 00:41:19,960
Speaker 1: You know, it's just counterintuitive enough. It has all these

726
00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:24,200
Speaker 1: different hooks that we can latch onto. It involves several

727
00:41:24,239 --> 00:41:28,560
Speaker 1: tropes that resonate throughout global culture. The animate head, the

728
00:41:28,600 --> 00:41:32,279
Speaker 1: beheading of a monster, a female monster with wild uh

729
00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:36,160
Speaker 1: you know, primordial roots, a male hero who must overcome her.

730
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:39,680
Speaker 1: And in this last example, Lemming argues that Perseus and

731
00:41:39,760 --> 00:41:43,680
Speaker 1: Medusa is essentially Marduk and Tiamat all over again. Yeah,

732
00:41:43,719 --> 00:41:46,560
Speaker 1: and if you're not familiar, Marduk and Tiamatt are key

733
00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:51,200
Speaker 1: to the Enema a leish, the Babylonian hm Mesopotamian myth

734
00:41:51,239 --> 00:41:55,120
Speaker 1: in which Tiamat is this, you know, primordial being of

735
00:41:55,160 --> 00:41:58,839
Speaker 1: the sea, much like Medusa's father Pontus was this primordial

736
00:41:58,920 --> 00:42:01,960
Speaker 1: being of the sea. And then Tiamatt gives birth to

737
00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:04,360
Speaker 1: all the gods, and the gods end up in the

738
00:42:04,440 --> 00:42:07,280
Speaker 1: kind of rebellion war, and she turns into this dragon

739
00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:10,200
Speaker 1: sea monster type creature, and she has to be slain

740
00:42:10,400 --> 00:42:14,640
Speaker 1: by a hero from the civilization, by Marduke, who represents

741
00:42:14,680 --> 00:42:17,759
Speaker 1: the you know, the city of Babylon and the order,

742
00:42:17,880 --> 00:42:21,400
Speaker 1: the new order of the new gods. Right, And of course,

743
00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:24,320
Speaker 1: the gender aspects of of the Perseus and meduce that

744
00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:26,880
Speaker 1: they're very difficult to ignore, and it makes sense that

745
00:42:26,960 --> 00:42:30,000
Speaker 1: they would be later explored in ways that this simply

746
00:42:30,040 --> 00:42:33,520
Speaker 1: we're not part of the patriarchal ancient Greek worldview, right,

747
00:42:33,719 --> 00:42:37,799
Speaker 1: but there's still something essential concerning male female interaction. Here,

748
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:42,080
Speaker 1: Leming argues an ancient feminine power is destroyed by a

749
00:42:42,160 --> 00:42:46,920
Speaker 1: new masculine one, specifically the destruction of a matriarchal triple

750
00:42:47,040 --> 00:42:50,239
Speaker 1: goddess concept, which is actually reflected twice in the myth,

751
00:42:50,480 --> 00:42:53,080
Speaker 1: you know, both with the three Gorgons and the three

752
00:42:53,200 --> 00:42:58,120
Speaker 1: Gray Sisters. So uh. In this, he argues, Meduces based

753
00:42:58,160 --> 00:43:01,759
Speaker 1: on the lineage of a matriarchal while Perseus is the

754
00:43:01,840 --> 00:43:06,160
Speaker 1: offspring of the male Zeus. Later retellings by rationalists such

755
00:43:06,160 --> 00:43:09,279
Speaker 1: as Diodorus would build on this as well. Yeah, I

756
00:43:09,320 --> 00:43:13,720
Speaker 1: think a really salient way of interpreting this myth is uh.

757
00:43:13,800 --> 00:43:16,040
Speaker 1: This is something that Lemming points out specifically in the

758
00:43:16,080 --> 00:43:20,960
Speaker 1: context of of the recurring motif of decapitation in so

759
00:43:21,040 --> 00:43:23,520
Speaker 1: many different myths, the chopping off of the head of

760
00:43:23,560 --> 00:43:28,319
Speaker 1: the monster that it very often happens. It's accomplished by

761
00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:32,360
Speaker 1: a hero who represents some kind of like new order

762
00:43:32,440 --> 00:43:35,600
Speaker 1: of the gods, that is, that is more orderly and

763
00:43:35,760 --> 00:43:41,440
Speaker 1: civilized against some kind of primordial earthly old religion or

764
00:43:41,480 --> 00:43:45,399
Speaker 1: old type of divine being. And there are a ton

765
00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:49,360
Speaker 1: of examples, you know, there's like David decapitating Goliath in

766
00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:53,560
Speaker 1: the epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh and Inky do decapitate this

767
00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:57,440
Speaker 1: forest monster hum baba uh. In the story of Sir

768
00:43:57,480 --> 00:44:00,399
Speaker 1: Gawin and the Green Knights, or Gawan decapitates the Green Knight,

769
00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:02,319
Speaker 1: and the Green Knight I think is often taken to

770
00:44:02,920 --> 00:44:06,760
Speaker 1: embody some kind of like the old religions of the land,

771
00:44:06,840 --> 00:44:10,040
Speaker 1: like the pre Christianized land. Yeah, he's very much the

772
00:44:10,080 --> 00:44:13,560
Speaker 1: Green man Um of course. Uh, Joe, have you seen

773
00:44:13,600 --> 00:44:17,640
Speaker 1: the film sort of The Valiant, No, I haven't. Oh,

774
00:44:17,680 --> 00:44:21,560
Speaker 1: it's wonderful because you have Miles O'Keefe is Sir Gawain

775
00:44:21,920 --> 00:44:24,560
Speaker 1: and then you have Sean Connery himself as the Green Knight,

776
00:44:24,640 --> 00:44:26,480
Speaker 1: and it's a great scene where his head is lopped

777
00:44:26,480 --> 00:44:28,520
Speaker 1: off and then he picks his head back up, puts

778
00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:31,200
Speaker 1: it on his body and starts talking again. That's great.

779
00:44:31,239 --> 00:44:34,280
Speaker 1: I mean that also kind of mirrors Medusa, right, because

780
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:36,799
Speaker 1: like the head still is able to act even after

781
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:39,080
Speaker 1: it's been cut off, Like the Medusa head is still

782
00:44:39,080 --> 00:44:44,640
Speaker 1: a weapon that can be used. Yeah. Yeah, the disembodied

783
00:44:44,640 --> 00:44:47,520
Speaker 1: head is this uh this trope as well, but yeah,

784
00:44:47,880 --> 00:44:50,399
Speaker 1: anyway to bring it back so of course, uh, you've

785
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:54,200
Speaker 1: got the two sides. Like Medusa here represents the old order,

786
00:44:54,280 --> 00:44:57,720
Speaker 1: the guy ends the creatures that are from the earth

787
00:44:57,800 --> 00:45:01,239
Speaker 1: and original and kind of monstrous and chaotic and untamed.

788
00:45:01,640 --> 00:45:05,680
Speaker 1: Whereas the the Olympians, represented by Zeus and Athena. Uh,

789
00:45:05,719 --> 00:45:09,120
Speaker 1: they give rise to Perseus, and Perseus is their human hero.

790
00:45:09,320 --> 00:45:12,760
Speaker 1: He fights for the Olympian order, the new gods, the people,

791
00:45:12,800 --> 00:45:16,200
Speaker 1: you know, the new kids in town who are in charge. Now. Yeah,

792
00:45:16,280 --> 00:45:19,400
Speaker 1: now there's this other notion to that, and this is

793
00:45:19,400 --> 00:45:23,360
Speaker 1: heavily built upon during the medieval period. The Medusa is

794
00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:27,520
Speaker 1: also an embodiment of feminine danger in the medieval tradition.

795
00:45:27,560 --> 00:45:30,560
Speaker 1: This all ties in with concepts of courtly love and

796
00:45:30,560 --> 00:45:34,400
Speaker 1: and so forth from medieval commentators. Lemming tells us that

797
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:37,400
Speaker 1: Medusa did not seem to really be a sexual being

798
00:45:37,600 --> 00:45:40,719
Speaker 1: to the ancient Greeks, though though certainly there is this

799
00:45:40,800 --> 00:45:42,920
Speaker 1: trend to make her more and more feminine that we

800
00:45:42,960 --> 00:45:47,120
Speaker 1: already alluded to. But medieval authors made her into this

801
00:45:47,320 --> 00:45:51,120
Speaker 1: embodiment of feminine danger, a true film vitel in the

802
00:45:51,160 --> 00:45:54,800
Speaker 1: proper sense of the term. Uh. This this this force

803
00:45:54,880 --> 00:45:58,239
Speaker 1: that could lure you away from the righteous path and

804
00:45:58,239 --> 00:46:01,400
Speaker 1: and this makes even more sense when you consider Athena

805
00:46:01,480 --> 00:46:05,920
Speaker 1: as her opposite, a paragon of what a patriarchal society

806
00:46:06,200 --> 00:46:09,840
Speaker 1: wants women to be and and approves of them being.

807
00:46:10,239 --> 00:46:15,320
Speaker 1: So Athena is strong, but she's also chased. She's bashful,

808
00:46:15,600 --> 00:46:20,279
Speaker 1: uh as when description put it, and she is unemotional. Yeah.

809
00:46:20,400 --> 00:46:22,960
Speaker 1: Lemmons shows example after example of how you see this

810
00:46:23,080 --> 00:46:27,560
Speaker 1: throughout medieval writings. When Medusa's imagined she is she is

811
00:46:27,640 --> 00:46:31,640
Speaker 1: the threat of sexual attraction to women, which you know,

812
00:46:31,680 --> 00:46:34,359
Speaker 1: a lot this was a strong theme and a lot

813
00:46:34,400 --> 00:46:37,759
Speaker 1: of especially like medieval Christian writing, you know, trace this

814
00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:42,279
Speaker 1: back to St. Augustine. Really that most writings about righteousness

815
00:46:42,320 --> 00:46:45,680
Speaker 1: seemed to be addressed to men and they characterize women

816
00:46:45,760 --> 00:46:50,320
Speaker 1: as basically, is this this, this unaccountable force of danger

817
00:46:50,480 --> 00:46:54,040
Speaker 1: that will tempt you away from righteousness? Yeah, So it

818
00:46:54,239 --> 00:46:56,080
Speaker 1: should come as no surprise that a lot of these

819
00:46:56,080 --> 00:46:59,280
Speaker 1: themes end up being re explored, re examined, and sometimes

820
00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:03,719
Speaker 1: you know, twist it around and reuteralized by by feminist

821
00:47:03,920 --> 00:47:07,440
Speaker 1: authors and commentators that would come later. Absolutely, Yeah, and

822
00:47:07,480 --> 00:47:10,600
Speaker 1: also even some other trends as well. Um, but uh,

823
00:47:10,800 --> 00:47:13,320
Speaker 1: I want to touch on some other interpretations that liming

824
00:47:13,520 --> 00:47:16,440
Speaker 1: Uh discusses in the book. He points out that seventeenth

825
00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:20,160
Speaker 1: century philosopher Francis Bacon saw the Medusa myth, or at

826
00:47:20,239 --> 00:47:22,920
Speaker 1: least like to use it as a solid metaphor for

827
00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:27,680
Speaker 1: the proper rules of war. Okay, so choose a winnable fight,

828
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:30,520
Speaker 1: attack when unexpected. Yeah, I love how one of the

829
00:47:30,560 --> 00:47:32,919
Speaker 1: rules of war here is sneak up on your enemy

830
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:37,800
Speaker 1: while they're sleeping. Yes, very cool Bacon. Uh. Karl Marx

831
00:47:37,920 --> 00:47:40,600
Speaker 1: saw the gorgon head as a symbol of capitalism and

832
00:47:40,640 --> 00:47:43,520
Speaker 1: all of its evils. Uh. Frederck Nicie saw it as

833
00:47:43,520 --> 00:47:47,160
Speaker 1: a symbol of Appollonian struggle against rampant dionyson is um

834
00:47:47,440 --> 00:47:52,520
Speaker 1: uh so order and discipline versus chaos and hedonism. Now

835
00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:56,480
Speaker 1: for for my money, the psychoanalytical views of Medusa are

836
00:47:56,520 --> 00:47:59,120
Speaker 1: are really quite interesting though, and uh we see these

837
00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:03,560
Speaker 1: from the likes of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and others. Yeah.

838
00:48:03,800 --> 00:48:06,960
Speaker 1: One guess, if you're not already familiar what Freud thinks

839
00:48:07,040 --> 00:48:11,480
Speaker 1: Medusa is related to. Yeah, yeah, it's it's gonna involve sex.

840
00:48:11,840 --> 00:48:14,520
Speaker 1: So um advisory if you're not ready for a big

841
00:48:14,600 --> 00:48:17,400
Speaker 1: old slice of Freud then you might want to skip

842
00:48:17,400 --> 00:48:19,879
Speaker 1: this next part. But you know, I think if you're game,

843
00:48:19,920 --> 00:48:24,040
Speaker 1: then this is interesting. So in n Freud wrote an

844
00:48:24,120 --> 00:48:28,960
Speaker 1: essay titled Medusa's Head or Dos Medus and Hoppt, which

845
00:48:29,280 --> 00:48:34,120
Speaker 1: was published in nineteen after his death. Um so it all,

846
00:48:34,560 --> 00:48:37,839
Speaker 1: you know, basically comes down to sex and development. In particular,

847
00:48:37,880 --> 00:48:42,080
Speaker 1: he saw the Medusa as an embodiment of male castration fears.

848
00:48:43,040 --> 00:48:45,120
Speaker 1: I alluded to this in our last episode. We were

849
00:48:45,200 --> 00:48:48,360
Speaker 1: discussing the snakes hanging from belts of the Gorgons in

850
00:48:48,440 --> 00:48:50,920
Speaker 1: ancient depictions, and I think one of the reasons I

851
00:48:50,920 --> 00:48:53,600
Speaker 1: found them a little disturbing, or at least, you know,

852
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:55,880
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I found them disturbing is that

853
00:48:55,960 --> 00:48:59,520
Speaker 1: there is this sort of castration anxiety inherent in the imagery.

854
00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:02,600
Speaker 1: And and this is key to Freud's view of the monster.

855
00:49:03,200 --> 00:49:07,120
Speaker 1: So Freud considered castration fear to be a prime immobilizing

856
00:49:07,160 --> 00:49:10,640
Speaker 1: factor in a male's life, originating in a boy's first

857
00:49:10,719 --> 00:49:14,040
Speaker 1: view of his mother naked. The absence of a penis

858
00:49:14,080 --> 00:49:17,600
Speaker 1: and the unavoidable realization that the penis can certainly not

859
00:49:17,800 --> 00:49:21,279
Speaker 1: exist on a human has an effect. Uh, it's they

860
00:49:21,320 --> 00:49:24,840
Speaker 1: realize it can be lost. Uh. Freud contended also that

861
00:49:24,920 --> 00:49:28,640
Speaker 1: decapitation is a symbol for castration. And I think this

862
00:49:28,719 --> 00:49:31,640
Speaker 1: makes sense, honestly, because no matter how many horror films

863
00:49:31,680 --> 00:49:34,960
Speaker 1: you watch, you don't really see anyone going around without

864
00:49:34,960 --> 00:49:37,279
Speaker 1: a head all that often. It's hard to relate to

865
00:49:37,320 --> 00:49:41,360
Speaker 1: that kind of a uh, you know, fatal injury. Um.

866
00:49:41,400 --> 00:49:44,399
Speaker 1: But you do encounter people all the time that presumably

867
00:49:44,800 --> 00:49:47,440
Speaker 1: do not have a penis. Females are all, in the

868
00:49:47,480 --> 00:49:53,920
Speaker 1: mind of the Freud envisioned male old child here castrated individuals. Um. Furthermore,

869
00:49:54,040 --> 00:49:57,320
Speaker 1: there's this knowledge that one can live without the member

870
00:49:57,360 --> 00:50:00,239
Speaker 1: in question, and plenty of people born with that have

871
00:50:00,360 --> 00:50:03,680
Speaker 1: managed this. Now it goes without saying obviously, like a

872
00:50:03,719 --> 00:50:06,000
Speaker 1: lot of Freud, this is a very male centric way

873
00:50:06,040 --> 00:50:09,239
Speaker 1: of interpreting the myth right that like, he imagines that

874
00:50:09,320 --> 00:50:12,240
Speaker 1: the young boys sees the world in these in these

875
00:50:12,320 --> 00:50:16,480
Speaker 1: uh strange gender terms and sort of views women as

876
00:50:16,800 --> 00:50:20,120
Speaker 1: men who are lacking something and has this psycho sexual

877
00:50:20,239 --> 00:50:23,200
Speaker 1: terror about it. Yeah. Yeah, and definitely we're not we're

878
00:50:23,239 --> 00:50:25,040
Speaker 1: not saying this is the way to view the world,

879
00:50:25,040 --> 00:50:29,080
Speaker 1: but this is this is what Freud wrote and uh uh.

880
00:50:29,400 --> 00:50:33,520
Speaker 1: He also further argued that snakes or phallic symbols um

881
00:50:33,560 --> 00:50:36,920
Speaker 1: all right, and uh that a plethora of phallic symbols

882
00:50:36,960 --> 00:50:41,239
Speaker 1: also translates to cancer, castration fears. And this actually this

883
00:50:41,320 --> 00:50:46,040
Speaker 1: reminded me of something um that I had read about previously.

884
00:50:46,440 --> 00:50:49,920
Speaker 1: I believe this was in Walter Steven's book Demon Lovers, Witchcraft,

885
00:50:49,960 --> 00:50:53,840
Speaker 1: Sex in the Crisis of Belief, where he was discussing castration, anxiety,

886
00:50:53,920 --> 00:50:57,760
Speaker 1: myths of penis theff by witches um that was common

887
00:50:57,840 --> 00:51:01,240
Speaker 1: during the era of European witchcraft persecut Ushan. The idea

888
00:51:01,360 --> 00:51:04,080
Speaker 1: was that witches would go around stealing penises from men

889
00:51:04,520 --> 00:51:07,400
Speaker 1: and then collect them in birds nests high in trees.

890
00:51:07,960 --> 00:51:11,840
Speaker 1: Again we see a grouping a plethora of phallic emblems

891
00:51:11,880 --> 00:51:14,239
Speaker 1: that is involved in a in a myth or a

892
00:51:14,360 --> 00:51:18,719
Speaker 1: story that embodies castration fears of of men during this

893
00:51:18,760 --> 00:51:22,120
Speaker 1: particular era. Now, Freud's not done here. He also contends

894
00:51:22,200 --> 00:51:24,520
Speaker 1: that an erection is a reminder that one still has

895
00:51:24,520 --> 00:51:28,640
Speaker 1: a penis, So the petrification aspects of the of Medusa

896
00:51:28,719 --> 00:51:33,160
Speaker 1: Smith tie in here, and he argues that the the

897
00:51:33,160 --> 00:51:36,719
Speaker 1: the apotropaic power of the gorgon's head emblem is the

898
00:51:36,719 --> 00:51:42,000
Speaker 1: emblem of female genitalia. And male castration anxiety. You know,

899
00:51:42,040 --> 00:51:44,279
Speaker 1: I would say, when you see it all laid out

900
00:51:44,320 --> 00:51:46,839
Speaker 1: like this, at least to me, Freud's takes seems kind

901
00:51:46,840 --> 00:51:51,719
Speaker 1: of ridiculous, like the Medusa represents like castration anxiety and

902
00:51:51,760 --> 00:51:55,279
Speaker 1: the young man's psycho sexual horror at female anatomy as

903
00:51:55,360 --> 00:51:59,720
Speaker 1: as Freud imagines it um. But then also the severing

904
00:51:59,760 --> 00:52:03,279
Speaker 1: of the head represents cast castration anxiety. I think this

905
00:52:03,360 --> 00:52:06,440
Speaker 1: is one of those cases where Freud probably sounds more

906
00:52:06,480 --> 00:52:09,239
Speaker 1: convincing if you're reading him build his own case rather

907
00:52:09,320 --> 00:52:13,160
Speaker 1: than seeing it all presented and disinterested summary. Yeah, but

908
00:52:13,320 --> 00:52:15,520
Speaker 1: probably so. And it's one of those things where it's

909
00:52:15,560 --> 00:52:18,040
Speaker 1: like it's really interesting to read, and i'd and I'd

910
00:52:18,080 --> 00:52:20,960
Speaker 1: be willing to entertain that that that there is something

911
00:52:21,080 --> 00:52:23,720
Speaker 1: to this, you know, in the you know, the shadow

912
00:52:23,840 --> 00:52:28,799
Speaker 1: archetype of of Medusa as we encounter it. But you know, I,

913
00:52:29,800 --> 00:52:32,200
Speaker 1: as with these other things, as would say geo mythology,

914
00:52:32,360 --> 00:52:33,960
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not gonna put all my eggs in

915
00:52:33,960 --> 00:52:36,359
Speaker 1: this one basket. Yeah, I mean I think a lot

916
00:52:36,440 --> 00:52:39,480
Speaker 1: of what what Freud talks about it you could in

917
00:52:39,520 --> 00:52:41,759
Speaker 1: a way think of as a kind of psycho mythology

918
00:52:42,520 --> 00:52:45,319
Speaker 1: He's like, Uh, the stuff he's saying is not like

919
00:52:45,440 --> 00:52:48,719
Speaker 1: based on controlled experiments or anything. He's he's sort of

920
00:52:48,760 --> 00:52:52,080
Speaker 1: like weaving a story that makes sense to him about

921
00:52:52,239 --> 00:52:55,920
Speaker 1: you know, how anxiety is about sex and how people

922
00:52:55,960 --> 00:53:00,080
Speaker 1: think about sex and death and stuff pervades all of

923
00:53:00,120 --> 00:53:03,799
Speaker 1: the imagery that we come up with. Now. Other thinkers, though,

924
00:53:03,960 --> 00:53:07,879
Speaker 1: would echo at least some aspects of Freud's take here, uh,

925
00:53:07,920 --> 00:53:11,600
Speaker 1: including a French feminist critics Sarah Kaufman, who wrote of

926
00:53:11,640 --> 00:53:15,680
Speaker 1: the mixed horror and pleasure that women's genitals arousing men now.

927
00:53:15,760 --> 00:53:18,880
Speaker 1: Carl Jung, for his part of his interpretation was less sexual,

928
00:53:18,960 --> 00:53:21,480
Speaker 1: but it's still can concerned the power of the unconscious.

929
00:53:21,680 --> 00:53:24,480
Speaker 1: He saw Medusa as a chaotic element tied to creativity

930
00:53:24,560 --> 00:53:29,480
Speaker 1: and destruction, and in general Medusa and Athena as archetypes

931
00:53:29,520 --> 00:53:32,799
Speaker 1: connected to how women are viewed, and speaking of how

932
00:53:32,840 --> 00:53:34,640
Speaker 1: women are viewed there, there's of course, a lot of

933
00:53:34,640 --> 00:53:38,360
Speaker 1: feminist consideration of Medusa, including Kaufman, who we just mentioned.

934
00:53:38,920 --> 00:53:41,719
Speaker 1: One example that Lemming brings up is that of New

935
00:53:41,800 --> 00:53:46,040
Speaker 1: York University law professor Amy Adler, author of Medusa, A

936
00:53:46,120 --> 00:53:49,680
Speaker 1: Glimpse of the Woman in First Amendment Law Oh this

937
00:53:49,800 --> 00:53:53,000
Speaker 1: part was interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Adler touches on

938
00:53:53,040 --> 00:53:56,280
Speaker 1: the fact that the U. S. Supreme Court considers live

939
00:53:56,400 --> 00:54:01,320
Speaker 1: NW dancing unprotected by the First Amendment, while pornographic film

940
00:54:01,600 --> 00:54:05,400
Speaker 1: is protected, and so the the idea here, uh, as

941
00:54:05,440 --> 00:54:10,680
Speaker 1: Adler lays it out, is that live female nudity is

942
00:54:10,680 --> 00:54:14,280
Speaker 1: is still too threatening to petrifying for the male observer.

943
00:54:14,840 --> 00:54:18,640
Speaker 1: But just as the mirrored shield of Athena allows Percys

944
00:54:18,719 --> 00:54:22,480
Speaker 1: to gaze upon Medusa without being turned to stone, so

945
00:54:22,600 --> 00:54:25,960
Speaker 1: too does the medium of film allow the male to

946
00:54:26,040 --> 00:54:30,960
Speaker 1: consider female nudity without fear. The mirrored shield of Athena

947
00:54:31,200 --> 00:54:34,800
Speaker 1: is the male gaze itself. It tames the female body,

948
00:54:35,040 --> 00:54:38,920
Speaker 1: making it passive and quote removing its power to return

949
00:54:39,080 --> 00:54:42,520
Speaker 1: the male viewers gaze. Yeah. I thought that was a

950
00:54:42,520 --> 00:54:45,279
Speaker 1: really interesting read on this. Yeah, I did too, And

951
00:54:45,320 --> 00:54:48,280
Speaker 1: again it gets back to the power of being stared

952
00:54:48,360 --> 00:54:51,040
Speaker 1: back out by the thing that is objectified by the

953
00:54:51,120 --> 00:54:54,200
Speaker 1: person that is objectified. And of course, in addition to this,

954
00:54:54,280 --> 00:54:56,759
Speaker 1: I mean Lemon chronicles that there are a ton of

955
00:54:56,800 --> 00:55:00,400
Speaker 1: ways that Medusa has been sort of recap shared by

956
00:55:00,400 --> 00:55:03,960
Speaker 1: feminist thought, especially throughout the second half of the twentieth century.

957
00:55:04,160 --> 00:55:07,080
Speaker 1: Basically just as as a figure to be sympathized with

958
00:55:07,200 --> 00:55:10,480
Speaker 1: and celebrated rather than as like the monster of the storied.

959
00:55:10,600 --> 00:55:14,319
Speaker 1: You know, to recognize that like uh, Medusa is if

960
00:55:14,360 --> 00:55:17,680
Speaker 1: we take the story literally, the wronged party. And in

961
00:55:17,719 --> 00:55:20,360
Speaker 1: a way this all comes back to it's very similar

962
00:55:20,400 --> 00:55:24,000
Speaker 1: to the Romantic take, because so in the Romantic period

963
00:55:24,120 --> 00:55:27,360
Speaker 1: we there was a lot of rethinking of the Medusa

964
00:55:27,440 --> 00:55:30,440
Speaker 1: story that's sympathized with Medusa. And I think the Percy

965
00:55:30,480 --> 00:55:32,719
Speaker 1: Shelley poem that we started by reading today is one

966
00:55:32,719 --> 00:55:36,080
Speaker 1: of those works of literature in the same way that say,

967
00:55:36,280 --> 00:55:39,799
Speaker 1: Percy Shelley and Prometheus Unbound would show, you know, his

968
00:55:39,920 --> 00:55:43,960
Speaker 1: and his generations large sympathies with sort of the rebel

969
00:55:44,160 --> 00:55:47,640
Speaker 1: parties or the characters who might have been considered villains

970
00:55:47,680 --> 00:55:50,719
Speaker 1: and previous tellings of stories uh that you know, the

971
00:55:51,200 --> 00:55:54,760
Speaker 1: story of Prometheus Unbound as a play in which the Prometheus,

972
00:55:54,760 --> 00:55:58,279
Speaker 1: who defies the gods uh is sort of like he

973
00:55:58,400 --> 00:56:01,239
Speaker 1: and his allies are the Heros and and Jove, the

974
00:56:01,320 --> 00:56:03,880
Speaker 1: king of the gods is the villain, and he gets

975
00:56:03,880 --> 00:56:07,520
Speaker 1: slapped down by the demogorgan, you know, something previously imagined

976
00:56:07,520 --> 00:56:10,680
Speaker 1: as a demon, but which Shelley imagined instead as this

977
00:56:10,800 --> 00:56:15,520
Speaker 1: kind of like potency or or void of potential. And

978
00:56:15,640 --> 00:56:21,319
Speaker 1: now a fairly recent twist on on Medusa imagery is

979
00:56:21,400 --> 00:56:23,840
Speaker 1: that is a sculpture that I think you've seen. I

980
00:56:23,840 --> 00:56:25,399
Speaker 1: think it was on the Stuff to Be in Mind

981
00:56:25,440 --> 00:56:28,839
Speaker 1: discussion module at some point. Uh. It was by Luciano

982
00:56:29,239 --> 00:56:34,120
Speaker 1: god body Um, an Argentine Argentine Italian artist based in

983
00:56:34,160 --> 00:56:37,600
Speaker 1: Buenos Aires, and basically he did a reversal of the

984
00:56:37,719 --> 00:56:42,800
Speaker 1: of the classic statue of of Perseus holding the head

985
00:56:43,280 --> 00:56:46,800
Speaker 1: of Medusa, but in his statue it is Medusa holding

986
00:56:46,840 --> 00:56:51,600
Speaker 1: the decapitated head of Percy. I like it, yeah, because

987
00:56:51,880 --> 00:56:56,120
Speaker 1: you know, we've touched on on all the problematic aspects

988
00:56:56,280 --> 00:57:01,680
Speaker 1: of of Medusa. Her character, you know, is this this victimized, uh,

989
00:57:02,040 --> 00:57:04,880
Speaker 1: woman who has made into a monster that is further

990
00:57:05,000 --> 00:57:08,880
Speaker 1: victimized and ultimately uh, you know, violently murdered by a

991
00:57:08,960 --> 00:57:12,799
Speaker 1: male hero. And this at least turns that around and

992
00:57:13,080 --> 00:57:14,800
Speaker 1: allows her to get the upper hand. And so that

993
00:57:14,920 --> 00:57:18,200
Speaker 1: just there's something refreshing about this particular statue. You know.

994
00:57:18,280 --> 00:57:20,840
Speaker 1: I like art like this because I think a lot

995
00:57:20,840 --> 00:57:24,120
Speaker 1: of times we're we're faced with a dilemma and you know,

996
00:57:24,160 --> 00:57:26,440
Speaker 1: it comes up a lot when we're dealing with ancient myths,

997
00:57:26,480 --> 00:57:29,560
Speaker 1: where you have a story that you want to be

998
00:57:29,640 --> 00:57:33,720
Speaker 1: able to sort of retell and re explore and celebrate

999
00:57:33,760 --> 00:57:36,000
Speaker 1: in a way. But of course, you know, like most

1000
00:57:36,000 --> 00:57:39,720
Speaker 1: ancient myths, it it has some kind of either explicit

1001
00:57:39,840 --> 00:57:43,480
Speaker 1: or implicit values that are really not our values anymore.

1002
00:57:44,120 --> 00:57:46,800
Speaker 1: And uh, and so like what do you do with that?

1003
00:57:46,880 --> 00:57:49,640
Speaker 1: Do you do you try to like change the myth?

1004
00:57:49,760 --> 00:57:52,120
Speaker 1: Do you do you try to like ignore parts of

1005
00:57:52,120 --> 00:57:55,560
Speaker 1: it that that feel icky today? And I think my

1006
00:57:55,680 --> 00:57:58,640
Speaker 1: take is that, like you let the myth be the myth,

1007
00:57:59,200 --> 00:58:01,760
Speaker 1: and and that's what it is. But you also create

1008
00:58:01,880 --> 00:58:04,760
Speaker 1: complementary art, right, Like you don't try to change the

1009
00:58:04,800 --> 00:58:07,800
Speaker 1: story of Perseus and Medusa, but you can also write

1010
00:58:07,800 --> 00:58:10,480
Speaker 1: a novel in which Medusa kills Perseus or make an

1011
00:58:10,480 --> 00:58:14,200
Speaker 1: awesome statue in which she's got his head by the hair. Yeah. Absolutely,

1012
00:58:14,240 --> 00:58:16,960
Speaker 1: And as we've discussed in the first episode on Medusa,

1013
00:58:17,240 --> 00:58:19,640
Speaker 1: like this is how mythology works, This is how the

1014
00:58:19,920 --> 00:58:22,520
Speaker 1: telling and the retelling of these stories has always worked.

1015
00:58:22,560 --> 00:58:29,160
Speaker 1: So you totally have license to do this. Plus public domain, right, Oh,

1016
00:58:29,240 --> 00:58:34,280
Speaker 1: public domain? Is Hessia going to come and sue you. Well, no, no,

1017
00:58:34,400 --> 00:58:36,560
Speaker 1: I do want to know what happens after this, because

1018
00:58:36,720 --> 00:58:40,720
Speaker 1: there were several things depending on on Perseus after the encounter.

1019
00:58:41,000 --> 00:58:43,960
Speaker 1: So does Medusa go from here and like help out

1020
00:58:44,000 --> 00:58:47,040
Speaker 1: Danny and uh you know all that stuff? Or is

1021
00:58:47,440 --> 00:58:50,000
Speaker 1: that just left on its own? Now? Yeah, that's that's

1022
00:58:50,040 --> 00:58:51,800
Speaker 1: what's kind of beautiful about this, right, This could be

1023
00:58:51,800 --> 00:58:54,520
Speaker 1: the very beginning of a story. You could have a

1024
00:58:54,600 --> 00:58:56,360
Speaker 1: novel or at least so you know, short story or

1025
00:58:56,440 --> 00:59:01,720
Speaker 1: novella of Medusa that begins with her defeating Csu. Because

1026
00:59:01,720 --> 00:59:04,720
Speaker 1: then what happens because certainly Athena is still in play,

1027
00:59:05,200 --> 00:59:09,160
Speaker 1: still presumably more than happy to work against Medusa. Um,

1028
00:59:09,360 --> 00:59:12,160
Speaker 1: and then yeah that basically, yeah, if somebody write this

1029
00:59:12,200 --> 00:59:14,600
Speaker 1: so I can read it, this sounds great. Athena is

1030
00:59:14,640 --> 00:59:17,400
Speaker 1: like the terminator, it can she cannot be bargained with,

1031
00:59:17,480 --> 00:59:20,080
Speaker 1: She cannot be reasoned with, and will not stop until

1032
00:59:20,120 --> 00:59:22,760
Speaker 1: you are dead unless you go to Mount Olympus and

1033
00:59:22,840 --> 00:59:26,840
Speaker 1: you get her first. Yeah. After all, the Goregonian head

1034
00:59:27,400 --> 00:59:31,760
Speaker 1: is a ultimately a god created power. It works on titans,

1035
00:59:32,240 --> 00:59:34,480
Speaker 1: why not on the gods themselves? All right? So I

1036
00:59:34,520 --> 00:59:37,520
Speaker 1: wanted to end today just by real quickly, uh, jumping

1037
00:59:37,520 --> 00:59:39,760
Speaker 1: off to a couple of other things that are really

1038
00:59:39,800 --> 00:59:42,400
Speaker 1: only tangentially related to Medusa. They don't have to do

1039
00:59:42,480 --> 00:59:45,760
Speaker 1: so much with the myth, but are just scientific concepts

1040
00:59:45,800 --> 00:59:48,840
Speaker 1: that have been related to it in various ways. So

1041
00:59:49,520 --> 00:59:52,600
Speaker 1: last year, which would be twenty nineteen, there was a

1042
00:59:52,600 --> 00:59:55,800
Speaker 1: new finding published in the Journal of Virology about a

1043
00:59:55,880 --> 01:00:01,520
Speaker 1: recently discovered so called giant virus. Now, giant viruses in

1044
01:00:01,560 --> 01:00:04,360
Speaker 1: general are are very interesting subject. For a long time.

1045
01:00:04,400 --> 01:00:07,479
Speaker 1: Pretty much all the viruses that we knew about where

1046
01:00:07,560 --> 01:00:12,400
Speaker 1: sub microscopic, you know, extremely small, very simple compared even

1047
01:00:12,400 --> 01:00:16,440
Speaker 1: to single celled organisms like bacteria. Viruses in general are

1048
01:00:16,520 --> 01:00:20,120
Speaker 1: not thought usually to be alive. I guess it depends

1049
01:00:20,120 --> 01:00:22,640
Speaker 1: on how you define alive, but they're generally not thought

1050
01:00:22,640 --> 01:00:25,320
Speaker 1: to be alive because what they do is that they

1051
01:00:25,360 --> 01:00:29,960
Speaker 1: contain packages of genetic material that can take over a

1052
01:00:30,000 --> 01:00:32,920
Speaker 1: host cell and so to turn that cell into a

1053
01:00:33,000 --> 01:00:36,640
Speaker 1: factory for making more viruses. But they don't have the

1054
01:00:36,720 --> 01:00:39,919
Speaker 1: machinery to survive and reproduce on their own. They can't eat,

1055
01:00:40,040 --> 01:00:43,760
Speaker 1: they can't breathe, they can't reproduce without a host cell.

1056
01:00:44,320 --> 01:00:46,640
Speaker 1: In a way, a biological virus is a lot like

1057
01:00:46,680 --> 01:00:49,560
Speaker 1: a computer virus has a good point of comparison. It

1058
01:00:49,640 --> 01:00:52,360
Speaker 1: can't spread if it's just burned onto a CD sitting

1059
01:00:52,360 --> 01:00:55,400
Speaker 1: on your desk, right. It needs to be planted into

1060
01:00:55,880 --> 01:00:58,920
Speaker 1: active hardware. It needs to be on a machine that

1061
01:00:59,080 --> 01:01:02,160
Speaker 1: is running and can acted to something in order to spread.

1062
01:01:02,600 --> 01:01:04,880
Speaker 1: But in recent years, we've discovered that there are some

1063
01:01:04,960 --> 01:01:08,600
Speaker 1: viruses that are bigger and hardier and more complex than

1064
01:01:08,640 --> 01:01:11,680
Speaker 1: previously known viruses, and these are now usually referred to

1065
01:01:11,760 --> 01:01:14,960
Speaker 1: as giant viruses. Uh. There there are a lot larger

1066
01:01:14,960 --> 01:01:18,400
Speaker 1: than normal viruses, sometimes even larger as large as or

1067
01:01:18,520 --> 01:01:22,200
Speaker 1: larger than bacteria, and uh sometimes they look kind of

1068
01:01:22,240 --> 01:01:26,760
Speaker 1: like furry d twenties than like, I've got a picture

1069
01:01:26,760 --> 01:01:28,200
Speaker 1: here for you to look at, Robert. This is a

1070
01:01:28,240 --> 01:01:30,480
Speaker 1: picture of the one I'm gonna get to in just

1071
01:01:30,520 --> 01:01:32,760
Speaker 1: a minute. But yeah, it's like guts all these spikes

1072
01:01:32,760 --> 01:01:35,440
Speaker 1: all over. But it looks basically like you could roll

1073
01:01:35,480 --> 01:01:38,160
Speaker 1: it for a critical hit. Yeah. Yeah, when, especially when

1074
01:01:38,160 --> 01:01:42,439
Speaker 1: it's uh illustrated in bright yellow and red, it looks

1075
01:01:42,480 --> 01:01:45,560
Speaker 1: like a natural twenty. Uh So, whereas a normal virus

1076
01:01:45,680 --> 01:01:48,440
Speaker 1: might have numbers of genes and the single digits, you know,

1077
01:01:48,560 --> 01:01:51,960
Speaker 1: some viruses might have like five genes or nine genes.

1078
01:01:52,040 --> 01:01:56,040
Speaker 1: Giant viruses can have hundreds of genes or a thousand genes.

1079
01:01:56,760 --> 01:02:00,400
Speaker 1: And in two thousand three, researchers in France blished a

1080
01:02:00,440 --> 01:02:06,920
Speaker 1: description of the acanthamba polyphaga mimi virus, a relatively huge

1081
01:02:07,040 --> 01:02:10,680
Speaker 1: virus that prays on amba, which I believe this virus

1082
01:02:10,720 --> 01:02:13,480
Speaker 1: was discovered in a water cooling tower. I'm not sure

1083
01:02:13,480 --> 01:02:15,800
Speaker 1: about that, but I think so. Um many of the

1084
01:02:15,800 --> 01:02:18,720
Speaker 1: other giant viruses that have been discovered since then, we're

1085
01:02:18,760 --> 01:02:22,000
Speaker 1: found in these weird, extreme places. I was reading an

1086
01:02:22,040 --> 01:02:26,080
Speaker 1: article in the Atlantic by Sarah Jong from March twenty nineteen,

1087
01:02:26,520 --> 01:02:29,479
Speaker 1: and it mentioned that, uh, these things had also turned

1088
01:02:29,560 --> 01:02:32,959
Speaker 1: up in an Austrian sewage plant, as well as water

1089
01:02:33,040 --> 01:02:35,480
Speaker 1: off the Chilean coast. And you may have heard this

1090
01:02:35,520 --> 01:02:40,600
Speaker 1: one in thirty thousand year old Siberian permafrost. Uh. The

1091
01:02:40,640 --> 01:02:45,520
Speaker 1: strain from this permafrost was a giant virus called Pythovirus subiricum.

1092
01:02:45,600 --> 01:02:48,200
Speaker 1: And even after being trapped in ice for tens of

1093
01:02:48,240 --> 01:02:52,439
Speaker 1: thousands of years, this giant virus was still infectious. When

1094
01:02:52,440 --> 01:02:54,800
Speaker 1: they yeah, they thought it out, and they set some

1095
01:02:54,880 --> 01:02:57,760
Speaker 1: amibas out as bait next to it, and the pith

1096
01:02:57,800 --> 01:03:01,000
Speaker 1: of virus apparently went to work. The amib has died off,

1097
01:03:01,360 --> 01:03:05,080
Speaker 1: and then their dead bodies contained fragments of this giant virus.

1098
01:03:05,120 --> 01:03:07,920
Speaker 1: And the story. I mean, I've seen some researchers kind

1099
01:03:07,920 --> 01:03:10,040
Speaker 1: of poo poo this to say, like this is not

1100
01:03:10,240 --> 01:03:13,320
Speaker 1: the main thing to worry about with climate change, but uh,

1101
01:03:13,600 --> 01:03:15,200
Speaker 1: they may be right, but it does just make me

1102
01:03:15,240 --> 01:03:17,480
Speaker 1: wonder what kind of goodies we're gonna release as we

1103
01:03:17,560 --> 01:03:20,440
Speaker 1: keep thawing stuff that's been frozen for tens of thousands

1104
01:03:20,440 --> 01:03:24,360
Speaker 1: of years through climate change. Um, and I believe this

1105
01:03:24,360 --> 01:03:27,320
Speaker 1: This actually was the premise of a horror movie by

1106
01:03:28,280 --> 01:03:33,080
Speaker 1: Larry of Peasenden. What was the name of that? I was, Oh,

1107
01:03:33,120 --> 01:03:34,919
Speaker 1: I don't think I know this one. It was called

1108
01:03:34,920 --> 01:03:38,760
Speaker 1: The Last Winter. Uh and it had it starred Ron Perlman. Oh. Yeah.

1109
01:03:38,840 --> 01:03:43,240
Speaker 1: Fessenden did a He did a killer catfish movie called Beneath.

1110
01:03:45,280 --> 01:03:49,560
Speaker 1: You should watch Beneath. It's it's I don't want to

1111
01:03:49,560 --> 01:03:52,240
Speaker 1: spoil too much. I mean, I think it's kind of satirical,

1112
01:03:52,320 --> 01:03:56,240
Speaker 1: but there's one part where these characters are trapped on

1113
01:03:56,280 --> 01:03:59,160
Speaker 1: a boat as this like Google eyed Catfish is picking

1114
01:03:59,200 --> 01:04:01,680
Speaker 1: them off one by one and at one point one

1115
01:04:01,680 --> 01:04:04,200
Speaker 1: of them screams of the catfish, like what do you

1116
01:04:04,240 --> 01:04:10,000
Speaker 1: want from us? But anyway, So that Sarah Young article

1117
01:04:10,000 --> 01:04:12,960
Speaker 1: I mentioned it is primarily focused on the this virus

1118
01:04:13,000 --> 01:04:16,600
Speaker 1: that was newly described in twenty nineteen by Japanese researchers

1119
01:04:16,640 --> 01:04:19,600
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Virology and um So. Apparently, this

1120
01:04:19,680 --> 01:04:22,760
Speaker 1: giant virus came from a sample of mud that was

1121
01:04:22,800 --> 01:04:25,840
Speaker 1: taken from a hot spring somewhere in Japan, and here's

1122
01:04:25,840 --> 01:04:28,320
Speaker 1: how it ties back in. The new virus has been

1123
01:04:28,440 --> 01:04:32,560
Speaker 1: named the Medusa virus. It's named after a response it

1124
01:04:32,640 --> 01:04:36,440
Speaker 1: elicits from amiba's when it attacks. So a researcher named

1125
01:04:36,640 --> 01:04:41,320
Speaker 1: Massa Haru Takamura at the Tokyo University of Science noticed

1126
01:04:41,360 --> 01:04:44,720
Speaker 1: that when he observed this giant virus attacking ambas of

1127
01:04:44,760 --> 01:04:48,840
Speaker 1: the species A can't Amba Casta castellani, some of the

1128
01:04:48,880 --> 01:04:51,560
Speaker 1: amibas would get infected and they would burst open and

1129
01:04:51,600 --> 01:04:54,520
Speaker 1: spill their contents everywhere when they died. But some of

1130
01:04:54,560 --> 01:04:59,160
Speaker 1: the amibas would instead shrink down and basically turned to stone.

1131
01:04:59,200 --> 01:05:02,160
Speaker 1: They would form a type of hard mineral shell known

1132
01:05:02,200 --> 01:05:05,440
Speaker 1: as a cyst. So the giant virus can in some

1133
01:05:05,480 --> 01:05:11,600
Speaker 1: cases petrify the host the Medusa effect in action. Uh

1134
01:05:11,640 --> 01:05:14,640
Speaker 1: And I should mention that Jong's article shows a picture

1135
01:05:14,680 --> 01:05:17,960
Speaker 1: of Takamura where he's got his computer desktop in the background,

1136
01:05:18,400 --> 01:05:21,680
Speaker 1: and the background of the desktop is Rubens painting of

1137
01:05:21,720 --> 01:05:23,880
Speaker 1: Medusa's severed head. I don't know if that was posed

1138
01:05:23,880 --> 01:05:27,080
Speaker 1: on purpose or if he just happened to have that there. Anyway, Um,

1139
01:05:27,360 --> 01:05:29,520
Speaker 1: he's a little bit obsessed with this myth or something.

1140
01:05:29,560 --> 01:05:33,280
Speaker 1: But anyway, this viral discovery was mainly interesting because of

1141
01:05:33,320 --> 01:05:37,280
Speaker 1: some complex features of the virus itself. So that this virus,

1142
01:05:37,280 --> 01:05:40,600
Speaker 1: the Medusa virus, had um his stones, which are these

1143
01:05:40,720 --> 01:05:45,400
Speaker 1: protein features usually found in more complex eukaryotic cells cells

1144
01:05:45,440 --> 01:05:48,800
Speaker 1: like plants and animals and amiba's and it's used for

1145
01:05:49,240 --> 01:05:52,600
Speaker 1: coiling and organizing DNA to make it compact when you've

1146
01:05:52,640 --> 01:05:54,960
Speaker 1: got a lot of DNA in a cell nucleus. Normally

1147
01:05:55,000 --> 01:05:58,080
Speaker 1: a virus doesn't need something like this. Also, there was

1148
01:05:58,200 --> 01:06:01,760
Speaker 1: repeat There was evidence of repeat did gene transfer throughout

1149
01:06:01,800 --> 01:06:05,880
Speaker 1: history between this giant virus and it's Amiba host. The

1150
01:06:05,920 --> 01:06:09,960
Speaker 1: Amiba genome had genes originally from the virus. The virus

1151
01:06:10,080 --> 01:06:13,880
Speaker 1: genome had genes originally from the amiba. And then there

1152
01:06:13,960 --> 01:06:18,000
Speaker 1: was also a gene coding for DNA polymerase, which is

1153
01:06:18,560 --> 01:06:22,800
Speaker 1: used in complex living cells to synthesize DNA, and the

1154
01:06:22,840 --> 01:06:26,280
Speaker 1: researchers believe that this DNA polymerase gene could tell us

1155
01:06:26,600 --> 01:06:31,240
Speaker 1: really interesting things potentially about the history of eukaryotic life

1156
01:06:31,240 --> 01:06:34,600
Speaker 1: and its relationship to viruses. To quote from Takamorrow, don't

1157
01:06:34,640 --> 01:06:37,720
Speaker 1: know if he's right, but what he says is quote,

1158
01:06:37,800 --> 01:06:40,840
Speaker 1: genomics research of the giant virus indicates that there is

1159
01:06:40,960 --> 01:06:44,720
Speaker 1: likely a relationship between the Medusa virus and the origin

1160
01:06:44,920 --> 01:06:48,880
Speaker 1: of eukaryotic life. And another one of the researchers, Dr

1161
01:06:48,960 --> 01:06:55,640
Speaker 1: Ginkia Yoshiqua, from Kyoto University, says that that our DNA polymerase,

1162
01:06:55,720 --> 01:07:00,360
Speaker 1: the DNA polymerase of eukaryotes quote, probably originated from Dusa

1163
01:07:00,440 --> 01:07:03,439
Speaker 1: virus or one of its relatives. Now that's their take,

1164
01:07:03,520 --> 01:07:07,240
Speaker 1: but that's a very interesting possibility that like this key

1165
01:07:07,320 --> 01:07:10,640
Speaker 1: feature of the cells that form more complex life on

1166
01:07:10,680 --> 01:07:14,680
Speaker 1: Earth could have come from viruses. Oh wow. And then

1167
01:07:14,680 --> 01:07:17,520
Speaker 1: if we turned back to the myth, which again is

1168
01:07:17,600 --> 01:07:21,120
Speaker 1: has just been you know, applied to this discovery. Uh,

1169
01:07:21,160 --> 01:07:23,360
Speaker 1: you know, once one can't help but think about the

1170
01:07:23,400 --> 01:07:27,240
Speaker 1: connections here to the this idea of of Medusa as

1171
01:07:27,360 --> 01:07:29,919
Speaker 1: this guy in entity, right, I mean, because this would

1172
01:07:29,920 --> 01:07:32,920
Speaker 1: mean we we are all children of Medusa. Hail Medusa,

1173
01:07:34,080 --> 01:07:38,200
Speaker 1: all right? So there you have it, Medusa in two parts. Uh.

1174
01:07:38,520 --> 01:07:41,400
Speaker 1: Here on Stuff to Blow your Mind. Obviously, we'd love

1175
01:07:41,440 --> 01:07:45,040
Speaker 1: to hear from everybody out there. Um, how you interpret

1176
01:07:45,360 --> 01:07:48,920
Speaker 1: the myth of Medusa and Perseus. How some of this

1177
01:07:48,960 --> 01:07:53,080
Speaker 1: information we've presented altars or backs up your interpretation, changes

1178
01:07:53,120 --> 01:07:56,919
Speaker 1: your interpretation? What are your favorite Medusas from art, uh,

1179
01:07:57,120 --> 01:08:00,800
Speaker 1: from cinema, from comic books. That's that we'd love to

1180
01:08:00,920 --> 01:08:03,800
Speaker 1: hear from you about all of that. In the meantime,

1181
01:08:03,840 --> 01:08:05,400
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff

1182
01:08:05,400 --> 01:08:07,520
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, you can find us wherever you

1183
01:08:07,560 --> 01:08:10,760
Speaker 1: get your podcasts and wherever that happens to be. Just

1184
01:08:10,840 --> 01:08:14,560
Speaker 1: make sure that you rate, review, and subscribe. Those are

1185
01:08:14,720 --> 01:08:16,519
Speaker 1: the things you can do that will help support the

1186
01:08:16,520 --> 01:08:19,479
Speaker 1: show huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer

1187
01:08:19,520 --> 01:08:22,080
Speaker 1: Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in

1188
01:08:22,120 --> 01:08:24,720
Speaker 1: touch with us with feedback about this episode or any other,

1189
01:08:24,880 --> 01:08:27,800
Speaker 1: to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hi.

1190
01:08:27,880 --> 01:08:30,639
Speaker 1: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1191
01:08:30,680 --> 01:08:40,680
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

1192
01:08:40,720 --> 01:08:43,400
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My

1193
01:08:43,439 --> 01:08:46,519
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

1194
01:08:46,520 --> 01:09:03,960
Speaker 1: wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. The Proper Cha