Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're
Speaker 1: bringing you a vault episode today since we're out this week.
Speaker 1: This is part two of our series on MEDUSA. That's right.
Speaker 1: These were super fun episodes to put together, just trying
Speaker 1: to to untangle the myth, uh, to understand what what
Speaker 1: the myth is? You know, talking about everything from from
Speaker 1: ancient works of literature to modern horror fantasy films. So
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and enter the Gorgon's lair, and from
Speaker 1: a stone beside, a poisonous fft peeps idly into those
Speaker 1: Gorgonian eyes, wilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft
Speaker 1: of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise out of
Speaker 1: the cave. This hideous light had cleft, and he comes
Speaker 1: hastening like a moth that highs after a taper, and
Speaker 1: the midnight sky flares a light more dread an obscurity
Speaker 1: tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror. For from the serpent's
Speaker 1: gleams of brazen glare, kindled by that inextricable error, which
Speaker 1: makes a thrilling vapor of the air become a blank
Speaker 1: and ever shifting mirror of all the beauty and the terror.
Speaker 1: There a woman's countenance with serpent locks, gazing in death
Speaker 1: on heaven from those wet rocks. Welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey you
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 1: part two of our series on the Gorgon Medusa. That's right.
Speaker 1: In the last episode, we largely just recounted what can
Speaker 1: roughly be thought of as the canonical myth of Medusa
Speaker 1: as it emerged from the classical era, based on a
Speaker 1: few popular tellings of the myth from those days. Now
Speaker 1: it's time to get into possible origins of the myth,
Speaker 1: as well as various interpretations of the meaning behind it.
Speaker 1: Some of the meanings we've attributed it over time, but
Speaker 1: they're you know, there are also these cases where for
Speaker 1: the underlying power of myth that just keeps us coming
Speaker 1: back to reinterpret it. You know, there's just something about
Speaker 1: mythology in general, but especially with the Gorgon. There's something
Speaker 1: about the Gorgon myth that just keeps bringing us back
Speaker 1: keeps forcing us to reevaluate it. Yeah, it absolutely cannot
Speaker 1: be ignored. I mean, maybe it's because you can't look
Speaker 1: at it without dying, that people can't stop looking at it.
Speaker 1: It's like being told not to think about a taboo subject. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so, uh, it's clearly the image of Medusa is
Speaker 1: one of the most obsessed over and revisited images from
Speaker 1: all of Greek mythology. Yeah, and we're gonna explore a
Speaker 1: number of the different threads there. I think one of
Speaker 1: the great things about it is that all of the interpretations,
Speaker 1: I think pretty much all the interpretations were going to
Speaker 1: discuss here, they certainly have uh you know, a strong
Speaker 1: air of truth to them, like it feels right, and
Speaker 1: yet none of them feel like they explain it completely.
Speaker 1: There's always this sense of darkness and mystery uh, to
Speaker 1: Medusa that we can't quite grasp, you know, And and
Speaker 1: that's part of the this this part of the enigma
Speaker 1: of it. Well, yeah, exactly. I think that's really the
Speaker 1: appeal of these ancient archetypes, these archetypal stories and monsters. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's that they don't mean one thing. Instead, there's something
Speaker 1: that the kind of you know, there are a box
Speaker 1: that can be opened twenty different ways, and depending on
Speaker 1: you know which part of it you open, you you uh,
Speaker 1: you unlock different treasures from within. Yeah. Absolutely, And I
Speaker 1: want to remind everybody that one of one of our
Speaker 1: key sources in this these episodes was a book by
Speaker 1: David A. Lemming that's L. E. E. M. I n G.
Speaker 1: Titled Medusa in the Mirror Time from eighteen. So we'll
Speaker 1: refer back to that a few different times here, but
Speaker 1: we we also just recommend that book for anyone who
Speaker 1: wants a deeper dive into the nature of Medusa. Now
Speaker 1: we've got a really cool etymological lesson from your son,
Speaker 1: I believe. In between recording these two episodes. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this was really interesting. So I mentioned that he was
Speaker 1: reading a lot about mythology, uh. And I also mentioned
Speaker 1: a cool comic book series that he was really into
Speaker 1: titled The Olympians, And I neglected to mention the author
Speaker 1: last time, but it's George O'Connor. He's written eleven of these,
Speaker 1: each of them themed around a different god or goddess,
Speaker 1: and book to Athena concerns Medusa. I highly recommend those
Speaker 1: to anyone who just wants, you know, a nice uh
Speaker 1: visual representation of these myths for for a young reader
Speaker 1: or just for them themselves. But another series that my
Speaker 1: son was reading, these are all things like checked out
Speaker 1: of the library digitally, uh, during this quarantine period. There's
Speaker 1: a series called Science Comics, and he was reading one
Speaker 1: titled Science Comics Dinosaurs, Fossils and Feathers. And the book
Speaker 1: points out that one of the three um Gray sisters
Speaker 1: we referred to in the last episode is dino. That's
Speaker 1: d e i n O or d i n o,
Speaker 1: which can be translated as dread. So. In eighteen forty two,
Speaker 1: paleontologists Sir Richard Owen coined the term dinosaur, derived from
Speaker 1: the ancient Greek uh dinos, meaning terrible, potent or fearfully great,
Speaker 1: along with sauros, meaning lizard or reptile. Now, I don't
Speaker 1: think there's a stronger connection between the myth and the term,
Speaker 1: but Science Comics took the opportunity to include an image
Speaker 1: of the three Gray sisters in this book about dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: which was pretty awesome, uh, And I salute especially since
Speaker 1: it brought you these two subjects and my son is
Speaker 1: super into together in one book. Yeah, I never made
Speaker 1: that connection. Even when I saw the name translated at
Speaker 1: Dano or dina, however you say it it as meaning
Speaker 1: like terror or dread, I didn't. I didn't make the
Speaker 1: connection to the dread lizard. Yeah, so I I thought
Speaker 1: when he first told me about it, I didn't believe
Speaker 1: and I was like, what are you sure? And then
Speaker 1: he showed me the page and yet there they are
Speaker 1: just popping up in in in dinosaur books now, so
Speaker 1: you know, good for them. Well, I say, let's jump
Speaker 1: right back into uh to the head of the gore
Speaker 1: gun and pick up where we left off last time.
Speaker 1: So the last time you mentioned that we basically gave
Speaker 1: the outline of the myth. We talked about some of
Speaker 1: its major variations. Um, but one thing that I think
Speaker 1: we alluded to a little bit last time was the
Speaker 1: idea that there have been attempts to sort of route
Speaker 1: the myth in history to say, like, you know, there's
Speaker 1: some magical elements to this myth, but basically it really
Speaker 1: came from this actual historical event that happened. But I'll
Speaker 1: just I'll just make up right now. Yeah, Learning points
Speaker 1: out in his book that's several noted individuals throughout history,
Speaker 1: notably um Uh, Pla, fatus Uh, Diodorus of Sicily, Hosanias Uh, etcetera,
Speaker 1: have attempted to sort out the historical quote unquote truth
Speaker 1: of the myth. And this is kind of like geo mythology,
Speaker 1: the geomethology approach that we've discussed on the show before,
Speaker 1: you know, wondering what a particular myth really is about
Speaker 1: by seeking a literal version of the affairs of history.
Speaker 1: With geomethology, it tends to break down to looking at
Speaker 1: fossils for the answer, dinosaur fossils in forming the shape
Speaker 1: of a dragon, that sort of thing. Now, digego mythology
Speaker 1: is certainly a fascinating field, and we've discussed some wonderful
Speaker 1: ideas concerning the origins of various myths and monsters, but
Speaker 1: we also point out that it's often unbalanced to depend
Speaker 1: entirely upon geomethology, because myths and monsters, you know, certainly
Speaker 1: they can be borne out of you know, actual extent
Speaker 1: or extinct animals whose remains or uh, you know, description
Speaker 1: one has come across. But we also have to factor
Speaker 1: in human belief, human fears, human creativity, and just the
Speaker 1: layer upon layer of human culture that often builds these things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say, I mean. The thing about explanations like
Speaker 1: this that try to seek a rational, real world inspiration
Speaker 1: for some kind of mythological story or element we have,
Speaker 1: is I mean, for one thing, it's it's usually going
Speaker 1: to be highly speculative. You're you're just trying to find
Speaker 1: a story that could fit the evidence. Rarely do we
Speaker 1: have a case where, like from ancient history, we know that,
Speaker 1: oh we we believe this mythical dragon existed because we
Speaker 1: found bones buried in the ground or something like that
Speaker 1: that would give you a really strong clue what the
Speaker 1: actual inspiration was. The simple way I'd put it is,
Speaker 1: don't undersell human imagination, right, Like the fact that a
Speaker 1: strange creature or character or sequence of events happens in
Speaker 1: a myth doesn't mean that creature or character whatever has
Speaker 1: to be based on, uh, the storyteller having once seen
Speaker 1: something in the real world that shared this or that quality.
Speaker 1: A lot of times we just make stuff up, like
Speaker 1: we dream up weird things. We you know, the mind
Speaker 1: mutates variations of things we've experienced in life. Naturally, it
Speaker 1: happens in dreams without us ever having seen you know,
Speaker 1: like a bat with human teeth or whatever it is
Speaker 1: that scared us in a dream. And so I think
Speaker 1: we don't. Uh. While it's fun to speculate about this
Speaker 1: kind of thing, we don't have to assume that myths
Speaker 1: and all that are are based directly on anything that
Speaker 1: happened in reality or that somebody saw. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and certainly there are plenty of examples where the geo
Speaker 1: mythological approach or that purely historical approach can be very informative.
Speaker 1: Monsters based on again previously extant species or specimens, descriptions
Speaker 1: that make their way from distant lands. Um. And of
Speaker 1: course many mythic exploits do have a basis, even a
Speaker 1: primary one, in actual kings and queens and in heroes
Speaker 1: that at one point in history may have been actual
Speaker 1: mortal people before you know, the mythology and legend took over.
Speaker 1: But but Living cautions that the rationalist approach quote provides
Speaker 1: one sort of explanation of the meaning of the Medusa's story,
Speaker 1: but tends to ignore the power of the mythic elements. Yes,
Speaker 1: so examples of this would include, like you know, ancient
Speaker 1: historians saying, ah, so the story of Perseus and Medusa
Speaker 1: really comes from Perseus being like, imagine there was this
Speaker 1: guy named Perseus, and he was a pirate, and he
Speaker 1: was trying to go to these islands in the Atlantic.
Speaker 1: One was that were each ruled by these queens who
Speaker 1: were the gore Gun sisters, uh and and so forth
Speaker 1: like that. I would say one problem with the rationalist
Speaker 1: historical approach is that very often it seems to me
Speaker 1: to just be making things up. So like, how to
Speaker 1: simply making up a non magical fictional origin story for
Speaker 1: a monster or character improve on the existing magical mythology? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And and ultimately is learning argues the power of myth
Speaker 1: is deeper than history, and and we can follow that
Speaker 1: in a couple of different actions. But first I thought
Speaker 1: we might discuss the origin of Medusa. That is perhaps
Speaker 1: most fascinating. And Lemmings book that of the disembodied head
Speaker 1: of Medusa and the idea that it predates Medusa's body.
Speaker 1: And I realized that sounds like some causality wrecking weirdness there,
Speaker 1: which you know you can certainly encounter in in mythology.
Speaker 1: But the more you think about this angle, I think
Speaker 1: the more it makes perfect sense. And here's the basic premise.
Speaker 1: The moment that really caps off the story of Medusa,
Speaker 1: as we recounted in the previous episode, is Athena's incorporating
Speaker 1: of her petrifying head into her own shield. Uh. That
Speaker 1: that Gorgonian face becoming part of her own emblem. And
Speaker 1: we know that Medusa's head and the Gorgonian head itself,
Speaker 1: these were common motifs on vice's sculptures and helmets, shields, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Were pieces of armor and uh, and not only for
Speaker 1: mythic heroes, but for common soldiers as well. And what's more,
Speaker 1: this practice of utilizing the Gorgon's head pre dates the
Speaker 1: more evolved versions of the Medusa myth. You know that
Speaker 1: the real story shaped elements that we refer back to
Speaker 1: again and again. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's hard to know for sure, but it seems,
Speaker 1: based on the evidence we have that before the fully
Speaker 1: formed story of Medusa existed, there was simply the Gorgonian,
Speaker 1: the magical image a protective amulet bearing this terrifying monstrous
Speaker 1: head with grinding teeth and a lolling tongue often tusks uh,
Speaker 1: sometimes kind of gender fluid. It could be it could
Speaker 1: be female, could be male with a beard, could incorporate
Speaker 1: some kind of snake imagery in the hair, but often not.
Speaker 1: It's just generally this terrifying face. So before there was
Speaker 1: the character, there was the ritual magical image. Even in
Speaker 1: Homer's Iliad, you know, one of the great literary sources
Speaker 1: giving us access to early information about Greek myths, you
Speaker 1: don't get the full Medusa story, you don't get a
Speaker 1: full ledged character. Instead, you just get this image, recurring
Speaker 1: the image of the disembodied head of the gorgon, which
Speaker 1: Homer describes as a thing grim and awful to behold. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so basically the idea is that Medusa pre existed is
Speaker 1: a terrifying, petrifying disembodied head um. Like you said, sometimes
Speaker 1: the gorgon was even bearded, and sometimes it was male. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it was a common decoration. And then the persea
Speaker 1: smith comes along, at least in part to provide a
Speaker 1: backstory for the monster, to to literally flesh her out,
Speaker 1: to give her a body so as to explain the
Speaker 1: absence of a body. So if this origin is correct,
Speaker 1: you know you can imagine cases where you have like
Speaker 1: soldiers hanging around the campfire and they've all got this
Speaker 1: terrifying head on their shields, and somebody's looking at the
Speaker 1: shields and being like, I wonder, I wonder who that is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's easy to imagine how a lot of
Speaker 1: these things come come around. You know. Storyteller is just
Speaker 1: sort of coming up with some thing to explain it,
Speaker 1: incorporating it into some other story they heard. Uh, and
Speaker 1: that monster was the Medusa, the very face on your shield,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, or it's or you could also
Speaker 1: compare it to what we do in the modern era
Speaker 1: with we have say a terrifying we'll say, certainly a
Speaker 1: more fleshed out intoday, but we have something like say
Speaker 1: Hannibal Lecter, and people are like, oh, this character is great. Uh,
Speaker 1: I want to learn more about him? What's his backstory?
Speaker 1: Where do you come from? Can we have a whole
Speaker 1: book that just explains where we came from? And? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know so and you can. You can look at
Speaker 1: examples of that numerous works, you know, and you make
Speaker 1: something that appeals to people, people want to keep tugging
Speaker 1: on that threat. Well, that's that's something I think a
Speaker 1: lot of times gets out of hand and is can
Speaker 1: be very unsatisfying because a lot of times people don't
Speaker 1: realize that the scarcity of a beloved element in a
Speaker 1: narrative is exactly what makes it so beloved. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: Hannibal Lecter in the original Silence of the Lamb's movie,
Speaker 1: I know it's not he was a character and other
Speaker 1: stuff before that, but and you know the Jonathan Demmi movie,
Speaker 1: I would say he's especially effective as a character because
Speaker 1: he's in the movie so little. He's you know, he's
Speaker 1: got less than twenty minutes of screen time or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would agree, yeah, and certainly in in both both
Speaker 1: the Book's Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs. It's
Speaker 1: very that's very much the case. He's a key character,
Speaker 1: but he's not your primary character. You're not spending just
Speaker 1: oodles of time with him. The mystery remains. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: you say, oh, I want a whole book about Hannibal Lector,
Speaker 1: I want to know his whole backstory because he's so cool,
Speaker 1: is so interesting, so mysterious, And then you get that
Speaker 1: and it's like, Okay, I mean the same thing that
Speaker 1: people are like, I want a Boba Fette movie, Like
Speaker 1: is that going to be as good as you think
Speaker 1: it is, yeah, exactly, but to bring it back to Medusa.
Speaker 1: So I think this idea that the the image of
Speaker 1: Medusa's severed head could in fact pre date the fully
Speaker 1: formed myth of Medusa's life and and you know her
Speaker 1: origins and uh and her role in the Perseus story. UH.
Speaker 1: Like that ordering is is interesting to consider because again
Speaker 1: it's something that's difficult to prove conclusively, but it does
Speaker 1: appear to be going on with a number of things
Speaker 1: in the history of myth and religion around the world.
Speaker 1: This was a point often made by the people known
Speaker 1: as the Cambridge Ritualists. In Lemming's book, he identifies specifically
Speaker 1: the scholar Jane Harrison as one pushing this idea that
Speaker 1: many myths that we have access to today very likely
Speaker 1: emerge as a response to rituals and practices rather than
Speaker 1: as the cause of them. And of course this would
Speaker 1: match up pretty well with the ordering of evidence that
Speaker 1: we have in the history of Medusa. Not that there
Speaker 1: was like a myth of Perseus and Medusa which gave
Speaker 1: rise to the use of Medusa emblems on shields and
Speaker 1: armor and money and stuff, but exactly the inverse, that
Speaker 1: there was a tradition of displaying a fearsome gorgon head
Speaker 1: on objects as a kind of ritual protective magic, and
Speaker 1: you know, to scare away the bad demons, to frighten
Speaker 1: your enemies, and so forth. And over time, these rituals,
Speaker 1: the art, the spells gave rise to a myth to
Speaker 1: explain it, Who is this scary head? We keep stamping
Speaker 1: on things? Where did she come from? And then as
Speaker 1: the myth changes, grows more complex and develops along with
Speaker 1: the cultural values and interests over time. So in that
Speaker 1: the myth of the gorgon's head is so ancient that
Speaker 1: Liming points out that it's its origins likely reside outside
Speaker 1: of Greece entirely. Now we should remind ourselves that that
Speaker 1: this is quite common in myth and religion. An idea
Speaker 1: or a deity from one culture grows into or is
Speaker 1: absorbed by another. For instance, gray eyed Athena is said
Speaker 1: to have sprung from Zeus's head, but we can be
Speaker 1: sure that she did not emerge wholesale from the Greek imagination.
Speaker 1: Is is her roots seemed to go back through the
Speaker 1: various powerful goddesses of Proto into Indo Europeans sumere in culture.
Speaker 1: Living gives the specific example of Aphrodite uh and her
Speaker 1: likely connection to a nana and ishtar in ancient Sumerian Babylon,
Speaker 1: and Leming points out a few different traditions of Gorgonian
Speaker 1: heads that predate Medusa. Heads that gaze out at us
Speaker 1: with the steel faces and petrifying eyes. Uh. There reminds
Speaker 1: me a lot of the kind of lion face one
Speaker 1: makes in in yoga. But also you see similar faces
Speaker 1: that are made snarling faces that are made in various
Speaker 1: forms of dance or you know, bodily performance. As a scholar,
Speaker 1: Tobin Cibers described it, that's the emblem of of the
Speaker 1: stupefying look and and some of the examples that Leming
Speaker 1: points out. There's the Mesopotamian demon whom Baba uh quote,
Speaker 1: when he looks at someone, it is the look of death. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think with whom Baba you get a similar
Speaker 1: dynamic to Medusa, where there's this tradition of ritual imagery.
Speaker 1: It's this kind of like emon head that has some
Speaker 1: kind of ritual magical power and as as displayed on objects.
Speaker 1: But also, of course Himbaba appears as a character in
Speaker 1: the mythology shows up in the epic of Gilgamesh as
Speaker 1: as a villain that must be destroyed, right, and destroying
Speaker 1: they do. They in fact, they decapitate the monster, which
Speaker 1: is key in all of this as well. There's also
Speaker 1: the God Best of Egypt household protector God with possible
Speaker 1: sub Saharan origins, and despite the Egyptian dependency on side
Speaker 1: profile imagery, Bess is always depicted facing out towards the viewer.
Speaker 1: I want to come back to that. And additionally, some
Speaker 1: early Greek versions of the bodied Medusa apparently have the
Speaker 1: look of a pre existing head motif having been basically
Speaker 1: stamped onto a body, like you know, kind of kind
Speaker 1: of coming back to this idea of like let's let's
Speaker 1: just let's match this up, let's let's let's provide a
Speaker 1: body for this, and it's just kind of like almost
Speaker 1: like the ancient Greek version of very rough photoshop that
Speaker 1: one might encounter. Yes, some of the ancient Greek Medusa
Speaker 1: imagery almost seems like, you know when people do that
Speaker 1: like bad on purpose ms paint drawing of something, where
Speaker 1: they like like take a square of somebody's head and
Speaker 1: pasted onto a weird stick figure. Yeah. Yeah, And but
Speaker 1: I think it also kind of speaks to the idea
Speaker 1: that these things were too like the head of the
Speaker 1: Gorgonian head was like a distinct image, a distinct pre
Speaker 1: existing image, and therefore the incorporation of it with the
Speaker 1: body would would be inherently rough and imperfect, and you
Speaker 1: would only get a true joining of the two later on.
Speaker 1: But but I want to come back to this idea
Speaker 1: of of the Gorgonian head staring directly at the viewer
Speaker 1: of the art. But but in in modern like cinematic interpretations,
Speaker 1: we see this as well. In fact, we see it
Speaker 1: fantastically in Ray Ray Harryhausen's Medusa that we encounter in
Speaker 1: the original Clash of the Titans. There is at least
Speaker 1: I think there's there are a couple of sequences, but
Speaker 1: there's one scene in particular where she breaks the fourth
Speaker 1: wall and stares to rectly at the audience. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like the Great Train Robbery, you know, Yeah, or like
Speaker 1: Good Fellows when Joe Pesci shoots the gun at the camera. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like I think, all you know, those are examples of
Speaker 1: of things that are in the tradition of the Gorgonian
Speaker 1: head as well. Yeah, but I feel like Harry Howsing
Speaker 1: in particular with with Clash eighty one. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: he and he and or the filmmakers. I think they
Speaker 1: realize that it's not a gorgon unless it breaks the
Speaker 1: fourth wall and does look directly at the audience. And
Speaker 1: this is key because the Gorgonian head is in all
Speaker 1: of these examples pure apotropaic magic. Yeah, totally. I mean
Speaker 1: apotropaic magic is one of the most interesting subjects to me.
Speaker 1: I I love thinking about this stuff. So apotropaic magic
Speaker 1: means magic that is used to ward off evil or
Speaker 1: threats or something like that. Uh. You know a classic
Speaker 1: example that we'll get to more later. You know the
Speaker 1: types of talisman's that you could have to ward off
Speaker 1: the evil eye. That will come up more in a
Speaker 1: bit here. But yeah, I love this idea. Lemming brings
Speaker 1: this up human and the idea that in ancient art
Speaker 1: if you look at a lot of the representations of
Speaker 1: humanoid figures, humans and gods and stuff from the ancient
Speaker 1: Near East in the Mesopotamian region, a whole lot of
Speaker 1: it has UH figures depicted in profile facing to the side.
Speaker 1: Think about ancient Egyptian artwork, and a lot of ancient
Speaker 1: Greek artwork that you're gonna have heads facing to the side.
Speaker 1: The Medusa figure and the other apotropic monster figures such
Speaker 1: as Humbaba are going to be depicted in defiance of
Speaker 1: this art that often looks directly at you. And it's
Speaker 1: almost as if the art is seeing you back. You know,
Speaker 1: you're looking at it and it's looking at you. And
Speaker 1: I think that the weirdness of this may have to
Speaker 1: do with these ancient taboos about the evil eye, about
Speaker 1: being looked at. That like having a piece of art
Speaker 1: that stares directly into your face as you look at
Speaker 1: it is in a way inherently threatening, whether the creature
Speaker 1: depicted as monsters or not, all the more so if
Speaker 1: it is monstrous. So I was reading a bit about
Speaker 1: this in an essay by a met Museum curator to
Speaker 1: accompany an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on
Speaker 1: Medusa and Hybrid Monsters and art history. Her name is
Speaker 1: Kiki Carriglu, and the essay was called Dangerous Beauty, Medusa
Speaker 1: and Classical Art and the way she describes it as
Speaker 1: so she's talking about the the archaic gorgon face, the
Speaker 1: face of the gorgon before we get the later derived
Speaker 1: versions that are associated with the full fledged a myth.
Speaker 1: She writes, quote, the archaic gorgon is always full face moreover,
Speaker 1: glaring directly at the viewer. This combination of frontality and
Speaker 1: monstrosity and a single immediately recognizable figure is what makes
Speaker 1: the Greek gorgon such an original, invocative image of radical
Speaker 1: difference of the absolute other. Uh. And so she talks
Speaker 1: about some of the the apotropaic uses of the gorgon
Speaker 1: face that, you know, you go back in history, a
Speaker 1: lot of the things that would have the gorgon on
Speaker 1: it would be not just shields used in battle, but
Speaker 1: but for example, funerary monuments, you know, so the gorgon's
Speaker 1: face on the funeral or the tomb door or something
Speaker 1: is an apotropaic emblem to protect the tomb from evil.
Speaker 1: But also this was really interesting to me. Carrolu talks
Speaker 1: about how there is a transition from archaic Greek art
Speaker 1: to classical Greek art, wherein the classical period Medusa was
Speaker 1: quote progressively transformed into an attractive young woman. So, beginning
Speaker 1: around the fifth century b C, art representing Medusa began
Speaker 1: to transform from mainly terrifying be steel heads with tusks
Speaker 1: and poor sign features and stuff like that into increasingly humanoid,
Speaker 1: feminine and beautiful, and Caroglu points out that this transition
Speaker 1: in representation over time applies actually not just to Medusa,
Speaker 1: but is is sort of character ristic of a an
Speaker 1: overall trend in Greek art in how it depicts mythical
Speaker 1: female monsters and hybrids, including sphinxes like the sphinx story
Speaker 1: that you get in the Legend of Oedipus, but also
Speaker 1: sirens and the sea monster Skilla. You've got these archaic
Speaker 1: depictions in which they are monstrous in human, gross and
Speaker 1: all that, and then around the fifth century b C.
Speaker 1: These monsters become more notably feminine and beautiful. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: an interesting transformation and one that is going to be
Speaker 1: key to a number of these different interpretations that we're
Speaker 1: going to be discussing and the way that Medusa was
Speaker 1: utilized by subsequent cultures. Absolutely, should we take a break. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break, but we will be right
Speaker 1: back with more of the Gorgon's Thank alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So we started the episode today by reading from a poem.
Speaker 1: That poem was a poem by Percy Shelley. It's called
Speaker 1: on the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery.
Speaker 1: And there's a funny thing about this poem. Uh. There
Speaker 1: is no painting of Medusa by Leonardo da Vinci, at
Speaker 1: least not that we have right this this painting or
Speaker 1: or in all likelihood a pair of paintings are lost works, which,
Speaker 1: especially when you're talking about Leonardo da Vinci, there's just
Speaker 1: something endlessly fascinating about that, right, the idea that there
Speaker 1: were there are these works that he created that you know,
Speaker 1: other people saw in an attest to existing that are
Speaker 1: just no longer with us. Um. But I think I
Speaker 1: think even Shelley was not actually looking at a Da
Speaker 1: Vinci painting. He was mistaken, right right right, there were
Speaker 1: um so, there were at least two early paintings that
Speaker 1: were described in I think in a Life of Leonardo
Speaker 1: da Vinci. Uh this would have been um uh georgo
Speaker 1: Vasari's biography of the artist. But then later there's a
Speaker 1: six painting by a Flemish painter that has at times
Speaker 1: been wrongfully wrongfully attributed as the work of Da Vinci.
Speaker 1: It's still, you know, wonderful to behold, but it is.
Speaker 1: It is not authentically da Vinci um. But yeah, this
Speaker 1: painting would go on to inspire Percy Shelley in the
Speaker 1: writing of this poem. Now, one of the things about
Speaker 1: the sort of lore surrounding Da Vinci's painting is that
Speaker 1: is that this painting or pair of paintings they they
Speaker 1: supposedly like, really captured uh you know, the beautiful terror
Speaker 1: really captured the magic of the Gorgonian head in a
Speaker 1: way that like unsettled people when they saw it. So
Speaker 1: that just makes the this, uh, this these particular lost
Speaker 1: works even more amazing to think about. Yeah, I believe
Speaker 1: I read. I can't remember in which of our sources
Speaker 1: it was. It might have been in the liming, but
Speaker 1: one of the sources we were looking at talked about
Speaker 1: how it might have been Da Vinci's painting that was
Speaker 1: actually the first to show Medusa not just with snakes
Speaker 1: entwined in her hair, but with snakes as her hair
Speaker 1: that hurt. That's all the hair she's got. Yeah. Interesting,
Speaker 1: and and I I can't help but take the spectative
Speaker 1: leap too and try to imagine, oh, well, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: these paintings are lost because da Vinci, with his great
Speaker 1: art was able to legitimately capture the power of Medusa's gaze,
Speaker 1: and these paintings actually petrified people, actually turned people to stone,
Speaker 1: and so they had to be in a locked away
Speaker 1: or destroyed, right like a Renaissance van helsing yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: as far as I know, they haven't been utilized in
Speaker 1: horror fiction, uh that way, but it seems like a
Speaker 1: given like somebody and it hasn't been done already. Somebody
Speaker 1: should do that totally, alright. So we talked a little
Speaker 1: bit earlier about apotrepeg magic and the evil eye. Let's
Speaker 1: let's come back to the evil eye. Yeah, so so
Speaker 1: letting points out that that, uh, you know, this is
Speaker 1: all of course connected to this concept of the evil eye.
Speaker 1: Medusa's gaze has the power to petrify, and certainly the
Speaker 1: face is key to the aforementioned um apotropaic magic. But
Speaker 1: as with other evil eyes and myths such one of
Speaker 1: my favorites is Ballor of the Baleful Eye and Irish mythology,
Speaker 1: whose his eye is this terrifying beam of death but
Speaker 1: is covered by his long mutated brow. Uh you know.
Speaker 1: You see this in other various cultures as well, where
Speaker 1: in some form or another there is an eye that
Speaker 1: curses whatever it looks at, and oftentimes it is disembodied,
Speaker 1: which is what we see with the Gray Sisters. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: the Gray Sisters. Uh, they share one eye between them
Speaker 1: and Perseus snatches it in order to to you know,
Speaker 1: muscle them to get information out. One thing that's funny though,
Speaker 1: is I can't remember if we talked about this in
Speaker 1: the last episode or not. Um, what's going on with
Speaker 1: the tooth? Like, what does the tooth do? Does the
Speaker 1: tooth do anything? I don't know. The tooth feels a
Speaker 1: lot of the tooth, for one thing, is often abandoned
Speaker 1: by by in reinterpretations, you know, uh, just people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't know quite what to do with the tooth,
Speaker 1: and the tooth to me anyway, feels like it's just
Speaker 1: part of a hag joke, you know, like, oh, they're
Speaker 1: old and they have you know, they don't have any teeth.
Speaker 1: In fact, they have only one teeth that they all
Speaker 1: have to share. It has a you know, absurd, like
Speaker 1: susical kind of sense to it. I think you're right
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, it must just be like it was.
Speaker 1: It was a detail added for color that then nobody
Speaker 1: could really figure out what to do with it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: or certainly it's uh, you know, the import has been
Speaker 1: lost over time, Like you can't chow with one tooth,
Speaker 1: You've got to have at least two. Yeah, what are
Speaker 1: you gonna do with it? So anyway, we end up
Speaker 1: focusing more on the eye. So the general belief is
Speaker 1: that the concept of the evil eye arises from the
Speaker 1: universal dislike of being stared at or of being stared down.
Speaker 1: And there's there's also something more to this, as discussed
Speaker 1: by Jean Paul Satra in Being and Thingness. So Sarta
Speaker 1: considered this key to the meaning of the medusa myth.
Speaker 1: Medusa represents the objectifying gaze of the other, which robs
Speaker 1: one of the self. So basically, you know, we're all
Speaker 1: just bobbing about in the world, self obsessed. It's all
Speaker 1: about us, it's our story and how we're interacting with
Speaker 1: the world. But then there's this stare from another, this
Speaker 1: petrifying stare, and Sartra wrote that if one looks at something,
Speaker 1: the one who looks is the center of consciousness. The
Speaker 1: one who looks controls the world. But if another looks
Speaker 1: back at the looker, if the looker knows that they
Speaker 1: are looked upon, they become an objectified self in the
Speaker 1: eyes of another. And so the staring other in this case,
Speaker 1: say the Gorgonian head or the evil eye, the staring
Speaker 1: other is the thief of consciousness. This is interesting and
Speaker 1: I think this there's some truth to this that goes
Speaker 1: beyond just you know, so Sarta is trying to apply
Speaker 1: this to his view of um uh, you know, absurdity
Speaker 1: and and chasing after the idea of the meaning of life,
Speaker 1: which might be illusory, but uh, there's something to this
Speaker 1: in our basic primal fears, like as soon as as
Speaker 1: soon as you realize you are being looked at, you
Speaker 1: feel amazingly vulnerable. Being looked at in a way reminds
Speaker 1: you that you yourself are a not just a subject
Speaker 1: but an object, That you are impermanent, that your death
Speaker 1: is inevitable, that you are subject to forces outside your control.
Speaker 1: Being looked at and realizing you're being looked at is
Speaker 1: in many ways the ultimate sort of like uh, terror
Speaker 1: and loss of control, I mean why is why is
Speaker 1: one of the most terrifying things to people, like public
Speaker 1: speaking or public appearances, you know, being up on a
Speaker 1: stage in front of an audience of people looking at
Speaker 1: them is horrifying. And it goes beyond just being afraid
Speaker 1: that you're gonna say the wrong thing or something. There's
Speaker 1: like this deep dread to it. It feels like it
Speaker 1: gets down to something very basic and very threatening that
Speaker 1: you can't even look at. Almost as if it's the
Speaker 1: image of Medusa. Yeah, yeah, and certainly if you were
Speaker 1: you know, there's sort of the casual objectification of everybody
Speaker 1: and everything in the world. Again, that goes back to
Speaker 1: just the way that we think about ourselves and our narrative.
Speaker 1: But then also if you're if you're actively engaging in
Speaker 1: objectification and and the objectified individual looks back at you,
Speaker 1: you know that it it has a powerful effect. Like
Speaker 1: I think back to the Wrong Frick film from Baraka
Speaker 1: and some of the other subsequent works like this, with
Speaker 1: in which you have these lengthy they're not images, they're
Speaker 1: like lengthy film portraits of individual staring directly back at
Speaker 1: the camera. You know, And of course you see this
Speaker 1: in portraiture as well, like the idea that that the
Speaker 1: the subject is meeting your gaze. You can have this
Speaker 1: profound effect, you know, you um, you can feel uncomfortable
Speaker 1: at times, even so I think there is. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of truth to what he is saying here. Now,
Speaker 1: all this stuff we're talking about is at the level
Speaker 1: of like human consciousness. You know, what kinds of things
Speaker 1: we with our conscious minds realize about our own nature.
Speaker 1: When we suddenly feel looked at, you know, doesn't make
Speaker 1: you realize you're an object? Does it make you realize
Speaker 1: your impermanent, you're going to die and all that. But
Speaker 1: I would say even at the level of you know, animals,
Speaker 1: without that level of consciousness, probably there's there's more practical
Speaker 1: reality to the threat of being looked at. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we see something like this in the natural world. You know,
Speaker 1: the idea of the evil eye. It reminds one of
Speaker 1: eye spots, adaptations of or accidental pattern formation artifacts in
Speaker 1: a species that serve to either deceive potential predators or prey,
Speaker 1: or to draw a predator's attention away from more vulnerable
Speaker 1: parts of an animal. Now, with predators in particularly, uh,
Speaker 1: nothing beats a sure thing, right or a near sure thing.
Speaker 1: If an attack does not go exactly as planned, a
Speaker 1: number of consequences can occur. Prey might get away, in
Speaker 1: which case energy and time is wasted. Other prey might
Speaker 1: be alerted and frightened away as well, we're still an
Speaker 1: alert prey animal could have the chance to counterattack and
Speaker 1: inflict damage, and such an injury can prove deadly. Cheetahs,
Speaker 1: for instance, rarely go after something like an ostrich because
Speaker 1: while the payoff for a successful hunt is really good,
Speaker 1: injury can mean starvation when your kills depend on high
Speaker 1: speed attacks. Yeah, I mean for a lot of predation
Speaker 1: in the natural world, especially of like large land animals,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be going after healthy adults most of
Speaker 1: the time. That's a that's a dangerous game. You want
Speaker 1: to pick off like juveniles or the sick and infirm
Speaker 1: if you can, right and uh. And if you're going
Speaker 1: to pick something off, it's better if it doesn't have
Speaker 1: its full attention on you, right uh. So you know,
Speaker 1: keeping an eye on your enemy at all times is
Speaker 1: a great tactic, though that's that's quite a resource drain.
Speaker 1: So fooling your enemy into thinking it's being watched at
Speaker 1: all times that's an even better tactic. And we see
Speaker 1: this incount us examples of ey spot evolution. Now, to
Speaker 1: be clear, not all eye spots are there to mimic
Speaker 1: watching eyes sometimes they're there to to fool a predator
Speaker 1: again into attacking a less vulnerable part of the animal,
Speaker 1: or they play into mate selection, et cetera. But in
Speaker 1: some cases, yes, eye spots seem to serve as anti
Speaker 1: predator adaptations. And we also see examples of this strategy's
Speaker 1: effectiveness outside of natural adaptation. So, for instance, individuals who
Speaker 1: happened to work in Bengal tiger country have long reported
Speaker 1: success with backwards wooden masks masks of of a human
Speaker 1: face that they wear in the back of their heads
Speaker 1: in an attempt to ward off ambush attacks. Plus, various
Speaker 1: animal species evolved eye spots that in many cases may
Speaker 1: serve to protect them from creeping predators like this. Um.
Speaker 1: One really cool story of in which one uses eyes
Speaker 1: like this involves Australian conservation biologist Dr Neil Jordan's who
Speaker 1: has been experimenting with the use of painted on eye
Speaker 1: spots to protect grazing cattle from lion attacks. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is basically just eyes painted on the rumps of cattle
Speaker 1: and this is all in an effort to cut down
Speaker 1: on lion human interactions that can be harmful or deadly
Speaker 1: on both sides. You know, basically, since lions are ambush hunters,
Speaker 1: they depend on surprise attacks and if they think they've
Speaker 1: been had, they'll abandon the hunt. Or at least that's
Speaker 1: the theory that they're still uh working on. Now, if
Speaker 1: that works, that's not just the protection for the cattle,
Speaker 1: that's obviously a protection for the lions or you know,
Speaker 1: the conservation object here, because what like, if a lion
Speaker 1: attacks cattle, they are at risk of being severely retaliated
Speaker 1: against by farmers and ranchers. Exactly. Yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: all an effort and this was through the Botswana Predator
Speaker 1: of Conservation Trust. This is the Jordan is involved with here,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's about ultimately trying to cut down on
Speaker 1: the conflict between the lions and the farmers and ultimately
Speaker 1: trying to protect both their triss. But of course, direct
Speaker 1: eye contact with your with your with this particular species
Speaker 1: is not always good. Um. You know, just as direct
Speaker 1: eye contact with an animal that sees you as prey
Speaker 1: might deter attack, such eye contact might encourage aggression from
Speaker 1: a creature that sees who was a potential threat. Um.
Speaker 1: We see this with dogs for instance. And then of
Speaker 1: course there are plenty of known examples with with primates,
Speaker 1: particularly guerrillas. Uh. In fact, in one case back in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, the Rotterdam Zoo engaged in this wonderful
Speaker 1: reversal of those tiger fooling masks. They were, uh, these
Speaker 1: these eye shades that look like averted eyes, that make
Speaker 1: you look like with cartoon eyes, like you're looking to
Speaker 1: the side. Uh. And they did this to cut down
Speaker 1: on cases of gorillas responding violently to human eye contact. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. That makes me wonder to be in the
Speaker 1: guerrilla enclosures there. If you're like a status concerned gorilla
Speaker 1: and like just people are constantly walking up staring directly
Speaker 1: at you all day, that must be stressful. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: staring is powerful stuff. I mean, I think even those
Speaker 1: of us with domestic pets in our house can attest
Speaker 1: to just you know how powerful a stair can be.
Speaker 1: If you just start staring at say your cat or
Speaker 1: your dog. I'm not you know, it's not going to
Speaker 1: result in chaos, but you're gonna get it. You're gonna
Speaker 1: get a rise out of them. They're gonna realize I'm
Speaker 1: being stared at? Why am I being stared at? And
Speaker 1: then likewise they'll also turn that around on you at times.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, Charlie knows when he's being looked at.
Speaker 1: If I'm looking at something else in the room and
Speaker 1: then I suddenly look at him, he will often just
Speaker 1: start wagging his tail as soon as my eyes go
Speaker 1: to him. So when we're when we're dealing with with staring,
Speaker 1: you know, we're you know, we're not dealing with a
Speaker 1: trivial or even purely human uh conundrum, though certainly the
Speaker 1: human experience makes it all the more complicated. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we're getting into into something deep that deals with who
Speaker 1: we are and how we interact with the world around us. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not actually surprising to me the more
Speaker 1: that I think about it, that the idea of a
Speaker 1: stare was infused with malevolent magical power throughout the ancient world.
Speaker 1: The idea of that the evil eye that you know,
Speaker 1: you could certain people could look at you in a
Speaker 1: certain way that would curse you or make you sick
Speaker 1: or you know, bring harm magical harm in some way.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of belief that if you don't grow
Speaker 1: up in a culture with that, you know, the belief
Speaker 1: something like that It can feel weird at first until
Speaker 1: you start to think about it. Then it just starts,
Speaker 1: almost as if you know, coming up from some ancient instinct.
Speaker 1: It's just starts to feel more and more true and
Speaker 1: real the more you think about it. Yeah, absolutely, at
Speaker 1: least for me. All Right, we're gonna take one more break,
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back. Thank alright, we're back. So
Speaker 1: at this point, let's turn to Uh, the section that
Speaker 1: we're thinking of is the underlying darkness, getting digging into
Speaker 1: the meat behind the head of the Medusa, getting into
Speaker 1: this idea of what what is there, what keeps drawing
Speaker 1: us in? And what are we what are we contemplating
Speaker 1: when we contemplate this image or this myth. So Living
Speaker 1: spends a fair amount of time in the book looking
Speaker 1: at both the varying ways that the myth has been
Speaker 1: interpreted and reinterpreted throughout history, and the idea that there
Speaker 1: is something deeply intriguing behind the myth quote a shadow
Speaker 1: being an archetypical figure who speaks meaningfully to us all.
Speaker 1: As we said right at the beginning, I mean Medusa
Speaker 1: has been obsessed over and and reinterpreted basically in every
Speaker 1: generation of humans. I mean It is interesting how essentially
Speaker 1: the the the dominant cultural values of every age find
Speaker 1: a new way to say what the Medusa myth means. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's we just keep exploring it and re exploring it
Speaker 1: as a potential metaphor for cultural ideas. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just counterintuitive enough. It has all these different hooks that
Speaker 1: we can latch onto. It involves several tropes that resonate
Speaker 1: throughout global culture. The animate head, the beheading of a monster,
Speaker 1: a female monster with wild you know, primordial roots, a
Speaker 1: male hero who must overcome her. And in this last example,
Speaker 1: Lemming argues that Perseus and Medusa is essentially Marduk and
Speaker 1: Tiamatt all over again. Yeah, and if you're not familiar,
Speaker 1: Marduk and Tiamatt are key to the enemy a leish
Speaker 1: the Babylonian Hmspotamian myth in which Tiamat is this, you know,
Speaker 1: primordial being of the sea, much like Medusa's father Pontus
Speaker 1: was this primordial being of the sea. And then Tiamatt
Speaker 1: gives birth to all the gods, and the gods end
Speaker 1: up in the kind of rebellion war, and she turns
Speaker 1: into this dragon sea monster type creature, and she has
Speaker 1: to be slain by a hero from the civilization, by Marduke,
Speaker 1: who represents the you know, the city of Babylon and
Speaker 1: the order, the new order of the new gods. Right,
Speaker 1: and of course the gender aspects of of the Perseus
Speaker 1: and Medusa that they're very difficult to ignore, and it
Speaker 1: makes sense that they would be later explored in ways
Speaker 1: that this simply we're not part of the patriarchal ancient
Speaker 1: Greek worldview, right, but there's still something essential concerning male
Speaker 1: female interaction. Here. Lemming argues an ancient feminine power is
Speaker 1: destroyed by a new masculine one, specifically the destruction of
Speaker 1: a matriarchal triple goddess concept, which is actually reflected twice
Speaker 1: in the myth, you know, both with the three Gorgons
Speaker 1: and the three Gray Sisters. So uh. In this, he argues,
Speaker 1: Meduces based on the lineage of a matriarchal Gaia, while
Speaker 1: Perseus is the offspring of the male Zeus. Later retellings
Speaker 1: by rationalists such as Diodorus would build on this as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think a really salient way of interpreting this myth
Speaker 1: is uh. This is something that Lemming points out specifically
Speaker 1: in the context of of the recurring motif of decapitation
Speaker 1: in so many different myths, the chopping off of the
Speaker 1: head of the monster that it very often happens. It's
Speaker 1: accomplished by a hero who represents some kind of like
Speaker 1: a new order of the gods, that is, that is
Speaker 1: more orderly and civilized against some kind of primordial earthly
Speaker 1: old religion or old type of divine being. And there
Speaker 1: are a ton of examples. You know, there's like David
Speaker 1: decapitating Goliath in the epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh and Inky
Speaker 1: do decapitate this forest monster humbaba uh. In the story
Speaker 1: of Sir Gawain and the Green Knights, or Gawen decapitates
Speaker 1: the Green Knight, and the Green Knight I think is
Speaker 1: often taken to embody some kind of like the old
Speaker 1: religions of the land, like the pre Christianized land. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's very much the Green man Um of course. Uh, Joe,
Speaker 1: have you seen the film sort of The Valuant? No?
Speaker 1: I haven't. Oh, it's wonderful because you have Miles o'keith
Speaker 1: is Sir Gawin, and then you have Sean Connery himself
Speaker 1: as the Green Night, and it's a great scene where
Speaker 1: his head is lopped off and then he picks his
Speaker 1: head back up, puts it on his body and starts
Speaker 1: talking again. That's great. I mean that also kind of
Speaker 1: mirrors Medusa, right because like the head still is able
Speaker 1: to act even after it's been cut off, Like the
Speaker 1: Medusa head is still a weapon that can be used. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the disembodied head is this uh this trope as well,
Speaker 1: but yeah, anyway to bring it back. So, of course, uh,
Speaker 1: you've got the two sides. Like Medusa here represents the
Speaker 1: old order. The guy INDs the creatures that are from
Speaker 1: the Earth and original and kind of monstrous and chaotic
Speaker 1: and untamed. Whereas the the Olympians, represented by Zeus and Athena. Uh,
Speaker 1: they give rise to Perseus, and Perseus is their human hero.
Speaker 1: He fights for the Olympian order, the new gods, the people,
Speaker 1: you know, the new kids in town who are in charge. Now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now there's this other notion to the and this is
Speaker 1: heavily built upon during the medieval period. The Medusa is
Speaker 1: also an embodied even of feminine danger. In the medieval tradition.
Speaker 1: This all ties in with concepts of courtly love and
Speaker 1: and so forth. From medieval commentators. Letting tells us that
Speaker 1: Medusa did not seem to really be a sexual being
Speaker 1: to the ancient Greeks, though though certainly there is this
Speaker 1: trend to make her more and more feminine that we
Speaker 1: already alluded to. But medieval authors made her into this
Speaker 1: embodiment of feminine danger, a true film vitel in the
Speaker 1: proper sense of the term. Uh. This this this force
Speaker 1: that could lure you away from the righteous path. And
Speaker 1: and this makes even more sense when you consider Athena
Speaker 1: as her opposite, a paragon of what a patriarchal society
Speaker 1: wants women to be and and approves of them being. So.
Speaker 1: Athena is strong, but she's also chased. She's bashful, uh
Speaker 1: as when description put it, and she is unemotional. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Lemmings shows example after example of how you see this
Speaker 1: throughout medieval rights. When medusas imagined she is, she is
Speaker 1: the threat of sexual attraction to women, which you know,
Speaker 1: a lot this was a strong theme and a lot
Speaker 1: of especially like medieval Christian writing. You know can trace
Speaker 1: this back to St. Augustine. Really that most writings about
Speaker 1: righteousness seemed to be addressed to men, and they characterize
Speaker 1: women as basically, is this this this unaccountable force of
Speaker 1: danger that will tempt you away from righteousness. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it should come as no surprise that a lot of
Speaker 1: these themes end up being re explored, re examined, and
Speaker 1: sometimes you know, twisted around and reuteralized by by feminist
Speaker 1: authors and commentators that would come later. Absolutely, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: also even some other trends as well. Um, but I
Speaker 1: want to touch on some other interpretations that leming Uh
Speaker 1: discusses in the book, and he points out that seventeenth
Speaker 1: century philosopher Francis Bacon saw the medusa myth, or at
Speaker 1: least like to use it as a solid metaphor for
Speaker 1: the proper rules of war. Okay, so choose a winnable fight,
Speaker 1: attack when unexpected. Yeah, I love how one of the
Speaker 1: rules of war here is sneak up on your enemy
Speaker 1: while they're sleeping. Yes, very cool, Bacon. Uh. Karl Marks
Speaker 1: saw the gorgon head as a symbol of capitalism and
Speaker 1: all of its evils. Fredrik Nicie saw it as a
Speaker 1: symbol of Appollonian struggle against rampant dionyson is um Uh,
Speaker 1: So order and discipline versus chaos and hedonism. Now for
Speaker 1: for my money, the psychoanalytical views of Medusa are are
Speaker 1: really quite interesting though, And uh we see these from
Speaker 1: the likes of Sigmund Freud, Carl Young and others. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One guess, if you're not already familiar what Freud thinks
Speaker 1: Medusa is related to. Yeah, yeah, it's it's gonna involve sex.
Speaker 1: So um advisory. If you're not ready for a big
Speaker 1: old slice of Freud, then you might want to skip
Speaker 1: this next part. But you know, I think if you're game,
Speaker 1: then this is interesting. So in n Freud wrote an
Speaker 1: s a titled Medusa's Head or dos medusan Hat, which
Speaker 1: was published in after his death. Um, so it all,
Speaker 1: you know, basically comes down to sex and development. In particular,
Speaker 1: he saw the Medusa as an embodiment of male castration fears.
Speaker 1: I alluded to this in our last episode. We were
Speaker 1: discussing the snakes hanging from belts of the Gorgons in
Speaker 1: ancient depictions, and I think one of the reasons I
Speaker 1: found them a little disturbing, or at least, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I found them disturbing is that
Speaker 1: there is this sort of castration anxiety inherent in the
Speaker 1: imagery and and this is key to Freud's view of
Speaker 1: the monster. So Freud considered castration fear to be a
Speaker 1: prime immobilizing factor in a male's life, originating in a
Speaker 1: boy's first view of his mother naked. The absence of
Speaker 1: a penis and the unavoidable realization that the penis can
Speaker 1: certainly not exist on a human has an effect. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's they realize it can be lost. Uh. Freud continued.
Speaker 1: It also that decapitation is a symbol for castration. And
Speaker 1: I think this makes sense, honestly, because no matter how
Speaker 1: many horror films you watch, you don't really see anyone
Speaker 1: going around without a head all that often it's hard
Speaker 1: to relate to that kind of a uh, you know,
Speaker 1: fatal injury. Um. But you do encounter people all the
Speaker 1: time that presumably do not have a penis. Females are all,
Speaker 1: in the mind of the Freud envisioned may of old
Speaker 1: child here castrated individuals. Um. Furthermore, there's this knowledge that
Speaker 1: one can live without the member in question, and plenty
Speaker 1: of people born with it have managed this. Now it
Speaker 1: goes without saying obviously, like a lot of Freud, this
Speaker 1: is a very male centric way of interpreting the myth
Speaker 1: right that like, he imagines that the young boys sees
Speaker 1: the world in these in these uh strange gender terms
Speaker 1: and sort of views women as men who are lacking
Speaker 1: something and has this psycho sexual terror about it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and definitely we're not We're not saying this is the
Speaker 1: way to view the world, but this is this is
Speaker 1: what Freud wrote and uh uh. He also further argued
Speaker 1: that snakes or phallic symbols, all right, and uh that
Speaker 1: a plethora of phallic symbols also translates to castration fears.
Speaker 1: And this actually this reminded me of something um that
Speaker 1: I had read about previously. I believe this was in
Speaker 1: Walter Stephen's book Demon Lovers, Witchcraft, Sex in the Crisis
Speaker 1: of Belief, where he was discussing castration anxiety myths of
Speaker 1: penis theff by witches um that was common during the
Speaker 1: era of European witchcraft persecution. The idea was that witches
Speaker 1: would go around stealing penises from men and then collect
Speaker 1: them in birds nests high in trees. Again, we see
Speaker 1: a grouping a plethora of phallic emblems that is involved
Speaker 1: in a in a myth or a story that embodies
Speaker 1: castration fears of of men during this particular era. Now,
Speaker 1: Freud's not done here. He also contends that an erection
Speaker 1: is a reminder that once has a penis, So the
Speaker 1: petrification aspects of the of Medusa Smith tie in here,
Speaker 1: and he argues that the the the apatropeic power of
Speaker 1: the gorgon's head emblem is the emblem of female genitalia
Speaker 1: and male castration anxiety. You know, I would say, when
Speaker 1: you see it all laid out like this, at least
Speaker 1: to me, Freud's take seems kind of ridiculous, like the
Speaker 1: Medusa represents like castration anxiety and the young man's psycho
Speaker 1: sexual horror at female anatomy as as Freud imagines it um.
Speaker 1: But then also the severing of the head represents castion
Speaker 1: castration anxiety. I think this is one of those cases
Speaker 1: where Freud probably sounds more convincing if you're reading him
Speaker 1: build his own case rather than seeing it all presented
Speaker 1: and disinterested summary. Yeah, but probably so. And it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where it's like it's really interesting to read,
Speaker 1: and i'd and I'd be willing to entertain that that
Speaker 1: that there is something to this you know in the
Speaker 1: you know, the shadow archetypepe of of Medusa as we
Speaker 1: encounter it. But you know, I, as with these other things,
Speaker 1: as would say geo mythology. You know, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: put all my eggs in this one basket. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean I think a lot of what what Freud talks
Speaker 1: about it you could in a way think of as
Speaker 1: a kind of psycho mythology. He's like, Uh, the stuff
Speaker 1: he's saying is not like based on controlled experiments or anything.
Speaker 1: He's he's sort of like weaving a story that makes
Speaker 1: sense to him about you know, how anxiety is about
Speaker 1: sex and how people think about sex and death and
Speaker 1: stuff pervades all of the imagery that we come up with. Now.
Speaker 1: Other thinkers, though, would echo at least some aspects of
Speaker 1: Freud's take here, uh, including a French feminist critic Sarah Kaufman,
Speaker 1: who wrote of the mixed horror and pleasure that women's
Speaker 1: genitals arousing men now. Carl Jung, for his part, his
Speaker 1: interpretation was less sexual, but it's still can concern the
Speaker 1: power of the unconscious. He saw Medusa as a chaotic
Speaker 1: element tied to create civity and destruction, and in general,
Speaker 1: Medusa and Athena as archetypes connected to how women are viewed.
Speaker 1: And speaking of how women are viewed, there there's, of
Speaker 1: course a lot of feminist consideration of Medusa, including Kaufman,
Speaker 1: who we just mentioned. One example that Lemon brings up
Speaker 1: is that of New York University law professor Amy Adler,
Speaker 1: author of Medusa A Glimpse of the Woman in First
Speaker 1: Amendment Law. Oh this part was interesting, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So Adler touches on the fact that the U. S.
Speaker 1: Supreme Court considers live nude dancing unprotected by the First Amendment,
Speaker 1: while pornographic film is protected, and so the the idea here,
Speaker 1: uh is Adler lays it out, is that live female
Speaker 1: nudity is is still too threatening to petrifying for the
Speaker 1: male observer. But just as the mirrored shield of Athena
Speaker 1: allows percy Us to gaze upon Medusa without being turned
Speaker 1: to stone, so too does the medium of film allow
Speaker 1: the male to consider female nudity without fear. The mirrored
Speaker 1: shield of Athena is the male gaze itself. It tams
Speaker 1: the female body, making it passive and quote removing its
Speaker 1: power to return the male viewers gaze. Yeah, I thought
Speaker 1: that was a really interesting read on this. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: did too, And again it gets back to the power
Speaker 1: of being stared back out by the thing that is
Speaker 1: objectified by the person that is objectified. And of course,
Speaker 1: in addition to this, I mean Lemon chronicles that there
Speaker 1: are a ton of ways that Medusa has been sort
Speaker 1: of recaptured by feminists thought, especially throughout the second half
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, basically just as as a figure
Speaker 1: to be sympathized with and celebrated rather than as like
Speaker 1: the monster of the storied. You know, to recognize that
Speaker 1: like Medusa is if we take the story literally the
Speaker 1: wronged party. And in a way this all comes back
Speaker 1: to it's very similar to the Romantic take because so
Speaker 1: in the Romantic period we there was a lot of
Speaker 1: rethinking of the Medusa story that sympathized with Medusa. And
Speaker 1: I think the Percy Shelley poem that we started by
Speaker 1: reading today is one of those works of literature. Absolutely
Speaker 1: in the same way that say, Percy Shelley and Prometheus
Speaker 1: Unbound would show you know, his and his generations large
Speaker 1: sympathies with sort of the rebel parties or the characters
Speaker 1: who might have been considered villains and previous tellings of
Speaker 1: stories uh that you know the story of Prometheus Unbound
Speaker 1: as a play in which the Prometheus, who defies the gods, uh,
Speaker 1: is sort of like he and his allies are the
Speaker 1: heroes and and Jove, the king of the gods, is
Speaker 1: the villain and he gets slapped down by the demogorgan,
Speaker 1: you know, something previously imagined as a demon, but which
Speaker 1: Shelley imagined instead as this kind of like potency or
Speaker 1: void of potential. And now a fairly recent twist on
Speaker 1: on Medusa imagery is that is a sculpture that I
Speaker 1: think you've seen. I think it was on the stuff
Speaker 1: to remind discussion module at some point. Uh. It was
Speaker 1: by a Luciano god body um a an Argentine Argentine
Speaker 1: Italian artist based in Buenos Aires, and basically he did
Speaker 1: a reversal of the of the classic statue of of
Speaker 1: Perseus holding the head of Medusa, but in his statue
Speaker 1: it is Medusa holding the decapitated head of Percy. I
Speaker 1: like it, yeah, because you know, we've touched on on
Speaker 1: all the problematic aspects of of Medusa. Her character, you know,
Speaker 1: is this this victimized uh woman who is made into
Speaker 1: a monster that is further victimized and ultimately, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: violently murdered by a male hero. And this at least
Speaker 1: turns that around and allows her to get the upper hand.
Speaker 1: And so that just there's something refreshing about this particular statue.
Speaker 1: You know. I like art like this because I think
Speaker 1: a lot of times we're we're faced with a dilemma
Speaker 1: and the you know, comes up a lot when we're
Speaker 1: dealing with ancient myths, where you have a story that
Speaker 1: you want to be able to sort of retell and
Speaker 1: re explore and celebrate in a way. But of course,
Speaker 1: you know, like most ancient myths, it it has some
Speaker 1: kind of either explicit or implicit values that are really
Speaker 1: not our values anymore. And uh, and so like what
Speaker 1: do you do with that? Do you do you try
Speaker 1: to like change the myth? Do you do you try
Speaker 1: to like ignore parts of it that that feel icky today?
Speaker 1: And I think my take is that, like you let
Speaker 1: the myth be the myth, and and that's what it is.
Speaker 1: But you also create complementary art, right, Like you don't
Speaker 1: try to change the story of Perseus and Medusa, but
Speaker 1: you can also write a novel in which Medusa kills
Speaker 1: Perseus or make an awesome statue in which she's got
Speaker 1: his head by the hair. Yeah. Absolutely, And as we've
Speaker 1: discussed in the first episode on Medusa, like, this is
Speaker 1: how mythology works. This is how the telling and the
Speaker 1: retelling these stories has always worked. So you totally have
Speaker 1: license to do this. Plus public domain, right, oh public domain?
Speaker 1: Is hessy it gonna come and sue you? Well, no, no,
Speaker 1: I do want to know what happens after this, because
Speaker 1: there were several things depending on on Perseus after the encounter.
Speaker 1: So does Medusa go from here and like help out
Speaker 1: Danny and uh you know all that stuff? Or is
Speaker 1: that just left on its own? Now? Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: what's kind of beautiful about this, right, this could be
Speaker 1: the very beginning of a story. You could have a
Speaker 1: novel or at least, you know, a short story or
Speaker 1: novella of Medusa that begins with her defeating Perseus. M
Speaker 1: because then what happens because certainly Athena is still in play,
Speaker 1: still presumably more than happy to work against Medusa. Um.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, basically, yeah, if somebody write this so
Speaker 1: I can read it, this sounds great Athena is like
Speaker 1: the terminator. It can she cannot be bargained with, She
Speaker 1: cannot be reasoned with, and will not stop until you
Speaker 1: are dead unless you go to Mount Olympus and you
Speaker 1: get her first. That's true. Yeah, after all, the Goregonian
Speaker 1: head is a ultimately a God created power. It works
Speaker 1: on titans, why not on the gods themselves? All right?
Speaker 1: So I wanted to end today just by real quickly
Speaker 1: jumping off to a couple of other things that are
Speaker 1: really only tangentially related to Medusa. They don't have to
Speaker 1: do so much with the myth, but are just scientific
Speaker 1: concepts that have been related to it in various ways.
Speaker 1: So last year, which would be twenty nineteen, there was
Speaker 1: a new finding published in the Journal of Virology about
Speaker 1: a recently discovered so called giant virus. Now, giant viruses
Speaker 1: in general are are very interesting subject. For a long time,
Speaker 1: pretty much all the viruses that we knew about were
Speaker 1: sub microscopic, you know, extremely small, very simple compared even
Speaker 1: to single celled organisms like bacteria. Viruses in general are
Speaker 1: not thought usually to be alive. I guess it depends
Speaker 1: on how you define alive, but they're generally not thought
Speaker 1: to be alive, because what they do is that they
Speaker 1: contain packages of genetic material that can take over a
Speaker 1: host cell and sort of turn that cell into a
Speaker 1: factory for making more viruses. But they don't have the
Speaker 1: machinery to survive and reproduce on their own. They can't eat,
Speaker 1: they can't breathe, they can't reproduce without a host cell.
Speaker 1: In a way, a biological virus is a lot like
Speaker 1: a computer virus. As a good point of comparison, it
Speaker 1: can't spread if it's just burned onto a CD sitting
Speaker 1: on your desk, right. It needs to be planted into
Speaker 1: active hardware, needs to be on a machine that is
Speaker 1: running and connected to something in order to spread. But
Speaker 1: in recent years, we've discovered that there are some viruses
Speaker 1: that are bigger and hardier and more complex than previously
Speaker 1: known viruses, and these are now usually referred to as
Speaker 1: giant viruses. Uh. There there are a lot larger than
Speaker 1: normal viruses, sometimes even larger as large as or larger
Speaker 1: than bacteria. And uh sometimes they look kind of like
Speaker 1: furry d twenties. Like I've got a picture here for
Speaker 1: you to look at, Robert. This is a picture of
Speaker 1: the one I'm gonna get to in just a minute.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's like got all these spikes all over,
Speaker 1: but it looks basically like you could roll it for
Speaker 1: a critical hit. Yeah. Yeah, when, especially when it's illustrated
Speaker 1: in bright yellow and red, it looks like a natural twenty.
Speaker 1: Uh So, whereas a normal virus might have numbers of
Speaker 1: genes and the single digits, you know, some viruses might
Speaker 1: have like five genes or nine genes, giant viruses can
Speaker 1: have hundreds of genes or a thousand genes. And in
Speaker 1: two thousand three, researchers in France published a description of
Speaker 1: the Acanthamba polyphaga mimi virus, a relatively huge virus that
Speaker 1: prays on amba which I believe this virus was discovered
Speaker 1: in a water cooling tower. I'm not sure about that,
Speaker 1: but I think so. Um many of the other giant
Speaker 1: viruses that have been discovered since then, we're found in
Speaker 1: these weird, extreme places. I was reading an article in
Speaker 1: the Atlantic by Sarah Jong from March twenty nineteen, and
Speaker 1: it mentioned that, uh, these things had also turned up
Speaker 1: in an Austrian sewage plant, as well as water off
Speaker 1: the Chilean coast. And you may have heard this one
Speaker 1: in thirty thousand year old Siberian permafrost. Uh. The strain
Speaker 1: from this permafrost was a giant virus called Pithovirus subericum.
Speaker 1: And even after being trapped in ice for tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of years, this giant virus was still infectious when
Speaker 1: they yeah, they thought it out, and they set some
Speaker 1: amibas out as bait next to it, and the pith
Speaker 1: of virus apparently went to work. The ambas died off
Speaker 1: and then their dead bodies contained fragments of this giant virus.
Speaker 1: And the story. I mean, I've seen some researchers kind
Speaker 1: of poo poo this to say, like this is not
Speaker 1: the main thing to worry about with climate change, but uh,
Speaker 1: they may be right, but it does just make me
Speaker 1: wonder what kind of goodies we're gonna release as we
Speaker 1: keep thawing stuff that's been frozen for tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of years through climate change. Um. And I believe this
Speaker 1: was this actually was the premise of a horror movie
Speaker 1: by Larry Peasenden. What was the name of that? I was, Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't think I know this one. It was called
Speaker 1: The Last Winter, Uh, and it had it starred Ron Perlman. Oh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Fessenden did a He did a killer catfish movie called Beneath.
Speaker 1: I mean, you should watch you Beneath. It's it's I
Speaker 1: don't want to spoil too much. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's kind of satirical. But there's one part where these
Speaker 1: characters are trapped on a boat as this like google
Speaker 1: eyed catfish is picking them off one by one and
Speaker 1: at one point one of them screams of the catfish,
Speaker 1: like what do you want from us? Oh? Nice? But anyway,
Speaker 1: So that Sarah's Young article I mentioned, it's primarily focused
Speaker 1: on the this virus that was newly described in twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen by Japanese researchers in the Journal of Virology and
Speaker 1: um So. Apparently, this giant virus came from a sample
Speaker 1: of mud that was taken from a hot spring some
Speaker 1: in Japan, and here's how it ties back in. The
Speaker 1: new virus has been named the Medusa virus. It's named
Speaker 1: after a response it elicits from Amiba's when it attacks. So.
Speaker 1: A researcher named Massa Haru Takamura at the Tokyo University
Speaker 1: of Science noticed that when he observed this giant virus
Speaker 1: attacking ambas of the species A can't the Meba Casta castellani.
Speaker 1: Some of the amibas would get infected and they would
Speaker 1: burst open and spill their contents everywhere when they died,
Speaker 1: But some of the amibas would instead shrink down and
Speaker 1: basically turned to stone. They would form a type of
Speaker 1: hard mineral shell known as a cyst. So the giant
Speaker 1: virus can in some cases petrify the host the Medusa
Speaker 1: effect in action. Uh. And I should mention that Jong's
Speaker 1: article shows a picture of Takamura where he's got his
Speaker 1: computer desktop in the background, and the background of the
Speaker 1: desktop is Rubens painting of Medusa's severed head. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that was posed on purpose us or if
Speaker 1: he just happened to have that there anyway, Um, he's
Speaker 1: a little bit obsessed with this myth or something. But anyway,
Speaker 1: this viral discovery was mainly interesting because of some complex
Speaker 1: features of the virus itself. So that this virus, the
Speaker 1: Medusa virus, had his stones, which are these protein features
Speaker 1: usually found in more complex eukaryotic cells cells like plants
Speaker 1: and animals and amibas, and it's used for coiling and
Speaker 1: organizing DNA to make it compact when you've got a
Speaker 1: lot of DNA in a cell nucleus. Normally a virus
Speaker 1: doesn't need something like this. Also, there was repeated there
Speaker 1: was evidence of repeated gene transfer throughout history between this
Speaker 1: giant virus and it's Amiba host. The Amiba genome had
Speaker 1: genes originally from the virus, the virus genome had genes
Speaker 1: originally from the amiba. And then there was also a
Speaker 1: gene coding for DNA polymerase, which is used in complex
Speaker 1: living cells to synthesize d N A and the researchers
Speaker 1: believe that this d A polymerase gene could tell us
Speaker 1: really interesting things potentially about the history of eukaryotic life
Speaker 1: and its relationship to viruses. To quote from Takamorrow, don't
Speaker 1: know if he's right, but what he says is quote.
Speaker 1: Genomics research of the giant virus indicates that there is
Speaker 1: likely a relationship between the Medusa virus and the origin
Speaker 1: of eukaryotic life. And another one of the researchers, Dr
Speaker 1: Ginkia Yoshiqua from Kyoto University, says that that our DNA polymerase,
Speaker 1: the DNA polymerase of eukaryotes. Quote probably originated from Medusa
Speaker 1: virus or one of its relatives. Now that's their take.
Speaker 1: But that's a very interesting possibility that like this key
Speaker 1: feature of the cells that form more complex life on
Speaker 1: Earth could have come from viruses. Oh wow. And if
Speaker 1: we turned back to the myth, which again is has
Speaker 1: just been applied to this discovery. Uh, you know, but
Speaker 1: once one can't help but think about the connections here
Speaker 1: to this idea of of Medusa as this guy in entity, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that this would mean we we are all
Speaker 1: children of Medusa. Hail Medusa. All right. So there you
Speaker 1: have it, Medusa in two parts. Uh. Here on stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your mind, obviously, we'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: everybody out there. Um, how you interpret the myth of
Speaker 1: Medusa and Perseus. How some of this information we've presented
Speaker 1: altars or backs up your interpretation, changes your interpretation? What
Speaker 1: are your favorite Meduces from art, uh, from cinema, from
Speaker 1: comic books, etcetera. We'd love to to hear from you
Speaker 1: about all of that. In the meantime, if you want
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: you can find us wherever you get your podcasts and
Speaker 1: wherever that happens to be, just make sure that you rate, review,
Speaker 1: and subscribe. Those are the things you can do that
Speaker 1: will help support the show huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback about
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hi, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
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