December 21, 2024 • 50 mins
The 1983 holiday film “A Christmas Story” warned us of the dangers associated with BB guns, bar soap and frozen flag poles – but it also introduced us to the Old Man’s prized leg lamp. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe dive into the deep, ancient and occult history of lamps and other objects shaped in the likeness of a human leg or foot. (originally published 12/23/2021)
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It is Saturday,
so we have another Vault episode for you. This one's
a bit older than some of the Vault episodes that
we roll out. This is an episode that originally published
twelve twenty three. Twenty twenty one seems like a very
long time ago, but I guess it wasn't really that
long ago. This is our episode the Ancient and Occult
(00:26):
History of the A Christmas Story leg Lamp. Yes, the
leg lamp from the nineteen eighty three holiday film A
Christmas Story. We get into it and we talk about
the deep, ancient and occult history of lamps and other
objects shaped in the likeness of a human leg or foot.
So it's a holiday celebration, so let's slip it on.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And this is
gonna be our last core, our last new core episode
of the year. And what do we have for you here?
Another holiday episode. And we really didn't know until just
a few days ago exactly what the Holiday episode would be.
We were talking about doing an episode on reindeer related stuff,
(01:22):
and maybe we'll do that next year. And then we
were talking about, well, let's we've done previous episode where
we talked about holiday inventions, Christmas inventions and so forth,
maybe we could do another one of those. And you know,
we started looking into some topics and we wound up
focusing entirely upon the nineteen eighty three holiday film A
(01:43):
Christmas Story.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Well not just on the movie, on the movie's most
sacred prop that's right.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I mean, for a little bit there we were thinking, well,
look at all the things that are to talk about
in a Christmas story. We could talk about soap poisoning,
freezing your tongue to a flag pole, the dangers posed
by BB guns, how furnace work.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
I gotta say, having looked into the medical literature on
soap poisoning, first of all, it is a real thing. Second,
that's some pretty dark territory. Not the most fun way
to head into the holidays.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Well, I mean, it's pretty dark. And Christmas story. You
know there he is, he's a child and he's blind,
and his parents feel such remorse for having him put
that bar of soap in his mouth.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Now from what I could tell in my brief investigation,
I don't think it's dangerous to put a bar of
soap in your mouth for a few minutes, but you
definitely don't want to like eat a significant amount of it.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Right, So, so soap poisoning is a thing.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yes, Okay, don't swallow soap.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
But like I said, we're not We're not focusing on
the soap here we're talking. We're going to be talking
about the old Man's major award. We're gonna be talking
about that leg lamp.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Now, Rob. I don't know if you've had this experience,
but I can say most of my exposure to a
Christmas story the movie comes in the form of a
sort of running, droning background ways that's going on at
a at a some kind of family house around Christmas
while it's just playing on an infinite loop on some
(03:07):
cable TV station that is turned on in a room
I might not even be in very much, But when
this happens, I noticed that this must have something to
do with like the patterns with which I come and
go into certain rooms in the house. So that would
be an interesting thing to study on its own. But
I will pretty frequently have the experience of seeing one
(03:27):
scene in the movie like five times in the same
day and it's always the same scene. And for me,
it has definitely been the scene where the old man
is in the house and a big crate arrives and
we get the lines about it being Fredgi Lay and
he digs through the straw and then pulls out this
glorious leg lamp.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah, I have I have a similar experience with a
Christmas story. It would there were there are There have
been some dedicated viewings of it, you know, throughout the years,
but most of it's just it's on TV during Christmas,
and therefore you watch it or you watch part of it,
and so when you actually set down and watch it
in its entirety, there will be these scenes that you
(04:09):
remember really vividly, and then there are scenes that you
didn't realize were part of the movie at all. That
sort of thing. I should probably inform everyone what this
movie is. A number of you were probably familiar with it,
some of you were not. This was a nineteen eighty
three holiday film that was based on the writings of
Jane Shepherd, particularly on the book In God We Trust
(04:29):
All Others Pay Cash. It's one Boy's account of childhood,
Holiday dreams, desires, and fears. It's a fun movie with
some solid laughs in. It's some good heart, but not
to a sappy degree, especially for a holiday film. And
in some ways you could almost think of it as
kind of like a proto Simpsons, you know, like it's
(04:51):
some of the gags that they get up to in
a Christmas story are the sorts of things that would
happen on The Simpsons later on. But of course the
Simpsons leans more into more, more into the satire and
more into like pop cultural references, you know what I'm
talking about. Like, can't you imagine an episode where Homer
gets some sort of obnoxious award that he wants to
display at the front of the house. Oh, Marge doesn't
(05:12):
like it, and maybe something terrible ends up happening to
the award and he blames her.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Yeah, now that you say that, I can't imagine that
being a plotline.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Okay, Yeah, I mean Ralphie is essentially a good boy,
whereas Bart is a bad boy, so you know we
have to take that into account as well.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah, Bart would not dream of getting a BB gun
for Christmas. He would just go And I don't know,
shoplift a BB gun or something.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Yeah, oh well, I mean I hope he learned his
lesson from that Christmas episode of The Simpsons where he
did shoplift.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Remember, Oh that's right. Oh I remember that One's actually
very sad because his mother is very disappointed in him.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
And yeah, yeah, we just huged that heart strings. Yeah,
it's a solid episode like that sort of Simpsons episode
reminds me a lot of this, though in a weird way.
That Simpsons episode is more serious than a Christmas story is.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Yeah, what is it he steals? It's like a video
games like the Bone Storm for whatever.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Yeah, it's like essentially like a Mortal Kombat type game
that just seems like the greatest thing ever. And they
have like the muscled Santa Claus and the commercial.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
So we're not going to give a Christmas story the
full weird house cinema treatment or anything here today, but
I do want to just point out real quickly a
few of the people involved in it because it's kind
of fun. First of all, I was directed by Bob Clark,
who also directed the notorious holiday proto slasher Black Christmas
in nineteen seventy four, which I have never seen, but
(06:36):
it had a great cast, including Olivia Hussey, Margo Kidder,
Kira Dulia from two thousand and one, A Space Odyssey,
and of course Weird House Cinema favorite John Saxon.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Everybody at home do a push up for John Saxon
right now.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
He also directed Death Dream Murder by Decree, which is
a Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper story, two Porky's movies,
two Baby Geniuses movies.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Oh, Porky's and Baby Geniuses.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yeah, yeah, but still there's some good stuff in there.
He passed away in two thousand and seven, but I
think a Christmas story is likely to remain.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
His legacy, Like this is the one that's going to.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Really stick, though I guess Black Christmas also has its
place in film history as well. Sure, and as far
as the cast, guy has a wonderful cast Christmas story,
But the two main characters worth pointing out for our purposes.
The old Man is played by the always terrific Darren McGavin.
This is the guy who played Could Shak the knights Stalker.
I think he was also in the Arnold Swarzenegger film
(07:36):
Raw Deal Okay, and the mom is played by Melinda Dillon,
who was in Harry and the Henderson's as well as
Spontaneous Combustion, which is one of the films that we
covered on Weird House Cinema this year.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Did she play like the creepy scientist? Am I right
about that?
Speaker 1 (07:55):
It's really hard to remember. Everybody else just kind of
grows him against the burning fire that is Dora's performance
in that. Brad Dorof is just so good.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, I just double check she's the German scientist. I
think at some point Brad Dorriff goes to her house
and maybe she catches on fire, and I don't.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Know, probably that's probably that's generally how it goes. But
I don't want to sell her short because Melinda Dylan
is a great actor as well. She was in Close
Encounters of the Third Kind and Absence of Malice in
nineteen eighty one. She was nominated for two Academy Awards
and one Tony Award.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Okay, but we don't want to leave anybody out. For
the like eight people in the audience who have never
seen this movie or even just seen this sequence in
the movie on five times in the same day on Christmas.
But what's the deal with the major award.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Well, it is, as we've been saying, a major award.
It is something he has won for his achievements in
a game. And what is the game, Joe.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Well, I think it's like it's like a trivia contest,
maybe done through the mail from a newspaper, though I
think it's worth of saying that he actually does not
supply most of the answers on the contest. He has
to ask Melinda Dylon and she actually knows the answers.
Then he fills them in and it sends it off
or something, and apparently wins this trivia contest by answering
(09:15):
questions like what is the name of the Lone Rangers
nephew's horse. But later in the film, after he receives
his major award, when people ask him how what it
was for, he says, it's for mind power.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yeah, so it's this wonderful design. It is a lamp
that is shaped like a woman's leg wearing a fishnet stocking,
with the shade resembling a kind of mini skirt or
short hoop dress or something. And as we learn in
the show, it's an item of much controversy in the
household and it's clear that Mom does not like this
(09:52):
lamp and certainly does not think it belongs at the
front of the house where neighbors can see it. You know,
it's already it's it's becoming a topic of discussion in
the neighborhood. And then what happens there is an accident.
Somebody is cleaning too close to the lamp and it
is accidentally destroyed.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Now, I think one of the great points of humor
in the movie is that it is never made clear
why a lamp shaped like a sexy leg is the
prize for winning this newspaper contest. Like there's no connection there,
Like why would this be what you get? And it's
just not explained.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, I mean it doesn't even say anything, you know,
on the lamp. It's not like the award is shaped
like a lamp. No, this is just a lamp that
shaped like a leg. But he is he is fond
of it. He thinks it is wonderful.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
She does not.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
It becomes it becomes a controversial issue between the two
of them. It is destroyed. An attempt to rebuild the
leg lamp seems possible, but we'll never know if it
was successful. We suspect that it was not, that this
is something that, once broken can never be repaired.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Well. I think also there's a little bit of subtlety there,
because when the old man is trying to repair it
with glue and failing, you sense in him a kind
of a kind of waning enthusiasm, where it may be,
in fact, that he is realizing that his wife was
correct and thinking that this lamp is rather tacky.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but he didn't want to admit it earlier. Right,
So this is this lamp. This is a hilarious part
of the film. This is based on the chapter My
Old Man and the Thilcivias Special Award that heralded the
birth of pop art from the nineteen sixty six novel
In God We Trust All.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Others pay cash.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
But it's really taken on a life of its own.
Since then, you can now buy replicas of the lamp,
reproductions of the rent lamp in various sizes. You can
get Christmas tree ornaments where the Christmas I mean you
can basically get Christmas tree ornaments of it, or even
Christmas lights of the lamp. Like the amp has become
(12:00):
like this weird symbol all its own. I was reading
about it on read Kraiger's blog Inventor's Digest, and apparently
Shepard was inspired to create this fictional lamp based on
knee high soda ads that he remembered seeing in magazines
showing two shapely legs up to the knee. He remembered
(12:23):
these from when he was a boy. And then for
the film production designer Ruben Fried, he did the rest
and the lamp is apparently protected by two different trademarks.
They've been mass produced over the years, and yes you
can buy them today as functional lamps. When this movie
came out, you could only dream of such a thing.
I think they made just a handful of these for
(12:43):
the film, but now it is achievable by anyone.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, But I believe I
read somewhere that the original lamp prop made for the
film no longer exists.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
That is what I was reading as well. Yeah, lost
to history like so many great works.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Like many of the art works of the Parthenon or
the great antiquities, they just fade to time.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Well, speaking of antiquities, obviously this can't be where the
story begins and ends, right, There has to be more
of it. There has to be more to the lamp
that is a leg, and the leg that is a lamp.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
By God, if there's not more to it, will make
more to it.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Absolutely well.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Let's go to the obvious place to discuss all of
this is to go way back and just talk about
lamps in general. The lamp in the movie is of
course an electric lamp with origins in the early nineteenth century,
but the history of illumination technology.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Goes way back. Obviously.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
You can think to our invention episodes on fire technology,
and indeed the most basic form of illumination technology is
of course a mere torch or a burning brand of
some sort, or even a very primitive burning stick. These
wall get it done. But according to Brian M. Fagan
and Garrett G. Fagan in the Seventy Great Inventions of
(14:03):
the Ancient World, wick burning lamps go back at least
as far as the late Paleolithic period. It's thirty thousands
through ten thousand years ago. All you need is a
reservoir of fuel and a wick made from plant fiber
or even something like human hair. And the fuel itself
can be any number of things. It can be oil,
(14:24):
it can be fat and sometimes salt was added to
oil to keep it from overheating. Tons of lamps survived
from the ancient world, as these were, of course widespread
and extremely useful pieces of technology. They illuminate your environment.
They turn nighttime, well not it doesn't turn nighttime into day,
but it provides some of the illumination that you would
(14:45):
have in the daytime in a nice concentrated form.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Yeah. And I think one of the things that's useful
about a lamp or like a candle. We've talked about
this in core episodes of the show before, is that
they provide light for a long period of time. They're
constructed so as to gradually slowly feed the fuel into
the flame, rather than have the fire just burned through
(15:11):
the fuel source as fast as it possibly can, like
it would with you know, many other things, like you know,
a lit stick or something.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
So the technology here, the device itself, allows you to
make the most out of your limited fuel. Now real quick,
I want to just mention the Fagans quickly. Brian Fagan,
of course, Brian M. Fagan is someone I cite a
lot on the show starters that Great Inventions.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Book is super useful.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
But he's written a number of volumes and still has
books coming out, including a new book with Nadia Durrani
titled Climate Chaos Lessons on Survival from Our Ancestors Now.
The other Fagan, though, Garrett G. Fagan, was an Irish
American ancient historian, best known for his social histories of
Roman bathing and the Spectacles of the Roman Arena. And
(15:58):
I could be wrong on this, but I do not
believe the these two Fagans are related at all. They
just happen to work together in this one chapter in
the seventy grade Inventions of the Ancient World that deals
with illumination technology.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Okay, so lamps go very far back into the Paleolithic period.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Right, and lamp technology of this basic sword can be
found from throughout Mesopotamia. And the shape of the reservoir varies,
so you can use basically found objects as your reservoir.
So seashells were often used because these were naturally occurring
shallow bowls with ridges to accommodate a wick at one end.
But then once you start making artificial reservoirs for your
(16:38):
oil or your fat, whatever you're burning your fuel, then
you're making them out of pottery or even metal, and
this allows for all manner of simple and ornate lamp designs.
And you know where we're going with that, right, Oh,
of course. Yeah, the obvious question is how many of
these lamps were.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
Shaped like legs?
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Well, are you going to tell me?
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Well, this is a difficult question to answer, Joe. Humans have,
of course always loved to craft things in the likeness
of animals and or themselves, and animal legs and feet
have always been a favorite motif. In fact, Fagan includes
an image of one in the book. It's a first
century CE brazier from Pompeii with beautiful like animal feet
(17:24):
supporting it. And of course we still see this today
with you know, tubs, anything. It's like it's the human
artisan can't help it. It's like, well, I have put
feet upon this device or this prop or this piece
of furniture. Could I not make those feet like actual feet?
And I guess you could even say there's a bit
of biomimicry there as well, like if you're going to
(17:45):
support an object with these like stumpy pods, well maybe
make them look like a foot.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
That's true. In fact, you've got me thinking about how
often the legs of you know, fancier pieces of furniture
are kind of shaped to be organic or flesh like
in a way. They might have kind of curves on them,
similar to a human leg or to an animal leg,
even if they're not explicitly trying to depict a human
(18:11):
or animal leg like with toes and stuff.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Right though, of course, there are plenty of explicit depictions
out there, whereas like it straight up looks like the
foot of a lion or a goat or what have you.
So looking around in the history of lamp designs, you know,
I'm sure I miss something interesting, But I've come across
(18:34):
two different examples of from Greek and Roman traditions that
are that are pretty interesting, particularly when dealing with the
Greek ascos and the Greek alabastron.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
So.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
An ascos is an ancient Greek pottery vessel used to
pour liquids such as oils, so it is not quite
a lamp, though it could have been used to store
lamp oil and could have been used to re fill lamps,
and many of these were decorated and decorational, sometimes in
the form of animals. And then an alabastron is similar.
(19:09):
It's a pottery vessel often used for holding oils or perfumes,
named for the carved alabaster containers from Egypt that started
the design. Key and the key thing here is that
these are generally elongated, so they are, by their very
nature in their sort of generic form, kind of leg shaped.
(19:30):
So you'll find both of these in various shapes and forms,
and they're littered throughout museums and collections around the world.
But I was able to find some images for starters.
There's a leg shaped ascos or alabastron that is or
was in the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto,
(19:51):
though I've had trouble finding out any additional information about it.
I might have to ask anyone out there who has
visited the Royal Ontario Museum or can visit it now
to go in and try and get me more answers
on this. But the image I found is indeed an alabastron,
or it appears to be an alabaster. It's hard to
figure out what the scale is here. It is shaped
(20:12):
like a essentially like a naked human leg, and it's
free standing. It looks like it had it maybe has
sandals drawn on it, and it was used to hold
oil or something.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
This gives new meaning to the expression that someone who
can hold their liquor has a quote hollow leg.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yes, this is indeed hollow leg. I wonder if that Yeah,
I didn't even think about that phrase. Now I was
able to find more information on another one. There is
a Greek pottery alabastron in the shape of a grieved
or armored leg from Corinth or Rhodes circa sixth century BCE.
And it's part or was part, I'm not sure of.
(20:53):
The Callos Collection in London included an image of this
for you to look.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
At as well. Joe.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
So this is less decorative, but also is not a
naked leg. It has armor on it.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Yeah, this is more like an ancient RoboCop leg.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
And the Callos Collection website shares the following quote. The
Callos example above is a very rare and fine alabastron
that takes the shape of a leg protected by a greeve,
dating to the sixth century BC. It is an interesting
example of a plastic vase from this period. And note
the use of the term plastic here. It's not modern
(21:31):
plastic obviously. This just means that it's molded, and this
is derived from the Greek verb placine, meaning to mold quote.
The greeve is outlined in black slip and tapers toward
the ankle area. The foot emerges beneath with carefully insized
details for the sandal and toes. Although primarily used as
(21:51):
a container, the form of this alabastron as a grieved
leg implies that it may also have been used at
or dedicated to a sanctuary as a votive offering. There
is a very similar example of this rare type in
the Museum of Farmacia in Portugal, and they include an
inventory number, and I was able to look it up.
(22:13):
It's number ten eighty nine to two, and you get
kind of a delightful rear view of this freestanding hollow leg.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
I was, okay, so it seems like a bunch of
ancient Greeks really pouring stuff out of legs.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Now, again, these are not lamps. They're merely containers that
may have contained lamp oil and may have been used
to refill lamps. But we're not done yet. So, as
the Pagans point out, the Roman period was a time
of pottery lamp mass production and lamps of every design
were used for not only practical reasons providing illumination when
you need it, but also purely esthetic reasons and even
(22:49):
religious and occult reasons. And that brings us to the
next example, the Roman foot lamp.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Ooh.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
I initially found these on the Farrabee Keeper blog by
Wayne Farrabee, a Brooklyn based rider, and I have to
say this is quite a good, good looking blog. Looks
like a lot of interesting content on here. If anyone
wants to check it out, it's uh Farabee Keeper dot org,
press dot com.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
And uh.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
The great thing here is that we're not just talking
about one lamp. We're not talking about Oh well, here's
the Roman foot lamp, and we we don't we have
no idea why they made this. Instead, we have several
different surviving lamps, and I've included images for you to
look at. Joe, I invite anyone out there to either
visit that Farrabee website or to to do Google image
searches so you can pull this up for yourself, because
(23:36):
these are these are wondrous and and really strange to
look at. They are lamps in the shape of a
human foot, as the name implies, with with with with
essentially a stopper or lid at the aperture where the
stump of the disembodied foot would be. And then there
(23:56):
is another aperture at the big toe, and it is
from this that the and and therefore the flame would emerge.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Right, So I guess you would hold this by the
handle at the back of the foot, so you're holding
it like behind the heel, and then you would have
the flame sticking out of the big toe at the front.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Yes, if you were holding it.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
But then, as we'll discuss, there are some questions regarding
exactly what one does with a foot lamp. But I'm
looking at it too. It also reminds me a bit
of depictions of the hand of Glory, the you know,
the occult item that is supposed to be like the
disembodied hand of a of a like a criminal's corpse,
that is then transformed into this magical item that burns
(24:39):
candle light from the fingertips and you know, has strange
energies and effects.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
Except this is not a hand. This is a foot.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
It's not a real glory.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
It's a ceramic foot, and you know it's a it's
a foot of pottery, and yeah, there is this flame
that is emitting from either in front of the toe
or from the toe itself on exactly how how the
sculptor or has has arranged it.
Speaker 4 (25:04):
You know.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Now, what I would wonder is is this just like
because somebody wanted an interesting lamp and they made lamps
that look like looked like all kinds of things. Or
would a foot lamp have a particular significance in say
a religious or political context or something.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah, and that is that is the riddle that the
rest of us are left having to solve. So Pharaby
points out that the symbols and motifs of the ancient
Romans don't always make sense to us today, which I
think is a very fair point. And he says that
the best explanation that he could find were that these
were sort of literal footlights placed on the floor or
(25:44):
a ground, especially at the base of murals, which which
is interesting. It's still hard to figure out exactly like
what that means. It just you know, pure novelty. It's like, well,
it's it's a foot lamp, or it's a lamp that
goes on the ground where our feet are. Let's make
it in the shape of a foot is well, well
to call back to the Simpsons. That kind of reminds
me of why is there corn on the curtains in
(26:05):
the kitchen? I don't know kitchen food corn?
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Or imagine time traveler visiting our current age and finding
solar powered outdoor lights that look like mushrooms. Why do
they look like mushrooms? Well, I mean it basically comes
down to there on the ground where mushrooms are, so
why not make them look like mushrooms? It amuses us,
It just makes sense, yes, But I decided to look
(26:31):
into this a little bit deep deeper, and I looked
in a book titled Light and Darkness in Ancient Greek
Myth and Religion from twenty ten. This has numerous authors
on it, but is edited by Christopholis and Lavaniuk. And
they mentioned that Roman footlamps were used in incubation rituals,
citing a couple of sources as well that I tried
(26:52):
to follow, but I don't think they actually have English translations.
So incubation rituals or dream incubation rituals involve involved sleeping
in sacred places in order to receive dreams or visions.
And it seems that copious amounts of lamps were often
associated with many of the sites where you would engage
(27:12):
in incubation rituals, as described in a book by Sandra
Blakely titled God's Objects and Ritual Practice.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
I don't remember what episode it was in the past,
but somehow this came out, but I think we were
talking about ancient rituals for dream incubation, specifically with regard
to the Greek god of healing in medicine, Asclepius, where
people who were sick and wanted healing would come to
the temple of Asclepias and actually sleep in the temple
in order to like they'd make an offering or do
(27:42):
a ritual and they'd sleep in the temple in order
to receive a dream from the god as a form
of cure for their illness.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Yeah, there you go. That would be. That would be
dream and incubation. That's what we're talking about here. But
how do these lamps come into play? I found another
source that had some wonderful inside here, and this was
a nineteen forty six paper titled Material on the Cult
of Sirapis by Dorothy Kent Hill. And I'm going to
(28:13):
read a quote from it here. But first I want
to run through a couple of things here so that
everyone will know what's being referred to. So, first of all,
a Ureus is a curling snake motif, probably best recognized
as a symbol of divine authority on the heads of
Egyptian sarcophagus. So I think everyone's probably seen one of
(28:36):
these before, you know, like a hooded cobra or a
snake that is emerging from a head dress or from
the head of one of these artistic depictions.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Also known as a boss snake.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Okay, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
And then Syrapis. It was a Greco Egyptian deity. He
was introduced, but not necessarily created by Greek pharaoh Ptolemy
the First Soda as an attempt to unify Greek and
Egyptian culture. Specifically, as Geraldine Pinch points out, in Egyptian
mythology a Diza. He was meant to be a combination
of Appis and Osiris and Zeus and Dionysus. Now, Syrapus
(29:13):
is often depicted with something on his head that might
be confused by the casual viewer as maybe something that
is also involved in illumination, like it looks like you
look at images of him, and it kind of looks
like you're supposed to put a candle on top of
his head.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't really look like a hat or anything.
It just looks like there's some kind of like container,
bucket or something attached to his head in the form
that he's in now, as a piece of statuary or something.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
So at first I was thinking, well, maybe it's illumination
is involved in more ways than one here, But as
it turns out, Syrapis is often depicted with this thing
on his head called a modius, which is a basket
grain measure, a Greek symbol for the land of the dead. Now,
in this tech by Dorothy Kent Hill, she includes two
(30:04):
images of bronze lamps in the form of human feet,
and they're very much like we've described thus far, except
there's an extra interesting thing about them. So, yes, you
have the big toe or something just beyond the big
toe that is clearly designed for the wick to go
in and for flame to come out of. There is
(30:24):
the larger aperture at the stump of the disembodied foot.
But in both of these you also have a rod
that's basically going up from the base of the heel,
and this is something that she ends up reflecting on.
I should also add, at the top of this rod
that's emerging from the base of the heel, we see
(30:46):
once more this ureus symbol. We see the curled snake.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
Oh yeah, there it is what the hood flared.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
So this is what she had to say. Quote lamps
modeled after parts of the body, especially the foot, we're very,
very common in antiquity. Such a lamp might reflect no
more than a whimsical mood of a craftsman. But the
ureus immediately suggests a connection with the giant detached syrapus
feed recently studied by Dow and Upsen. On these monuments,
(31:15):
the ureus is usually curled somewhere in the neighborhood of
the ankle. Here it coils on a rod which rises
at the back of the foot. The space between the
top of the foot and the tail of the snake
is great enough to accommodate a small bust of syrapis,
which would correspond in position to the busts on some
of the stone feet. We have observed that something was
(31:36):
attached to the cover, and may now suggest a bust
of the god. As the most plausible candidate. If the
bust were placed in this position, the Uaeus would appear
to loom over the head of the god.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Wait a minute, so I feel like I must be
understanding this wrong. But does this mean this would be
a foot with a head on the leg of the
foot and then a snake over the head.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah. Yeah, that's what I am to understand here. It's
kind of like, here's a foot, let's put it. Or
maybe we should think in reverse. I have a bust
of a god I want to display. I want to
display it. I don't want to just lay it on
the floor though. I need something to hold it up,
and also I need to illuminate it. Well, I need
a foot, and I need a foot that emits fire.
(32:20):
And then you know they're able to work the Uaeus
into it as the rod that is holding the bust
above the foot. And there's more, because she writes quote,
the smoke rising before the god from the lamp would
create an eerie religious effect. Although Syrapis was by no
means the only deity honored on lamps, his frequent presence,
(32:42):
there is evidence for the probability of his guardianship over
this bronze foot referring to the example that she's talking
about in the article. Certainly, however, there are not good
grounds for connecting all foot shaped lamps with the Syrapis cult.
Interestingly enough, she also speculates she brings up Psalms one nineteen.
(33:04):
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a
light into my path, suggesting that you know, there are
various ways we could interpret a foot shaped lamp that
and again it comes back to the basic question like
how much of this is novelty, how much of it
is based in some reference that just has not survived
the ages, or indeed, I mean, I have to say this,
(33:25):
this idea of the lamp being used to illuminate and
create like a smoky effect before the image of a god. Uh, there,
there's something attractive about that. And and perhaps this idea too.
Yeah that it's like if well, if I'm going to
hold up the face of a god on some sort
of a stand, then I need it to be in
a foot as well. Like I there's something about the
(33:48):
compulsion there that is it's fascinating, Like would it be
wrong to hold up that bust of Serapis without a foot,
without a human foot at the bottom. Would there be
something kind of blasphemous about that?
Speaker 3 (34:00):
I wonder, Well, it's funny how the idea of a
pedestal is derived from pad like foot, but in this
case it's literally a foot.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Yeah, And this is interesting too to think of in
comparison to a Christmas story, because obviously, with a Christmas story,
part of the whole deal with the lamp is that
it is objectification of the female form. It's the idea
of like, here is just the leg of a woman
that is sexy, you know, without taking into new account
the rest of her as a physical, whole being and
(34:28):
of course as a person. In this it almost seems
like we have the reverse where it's like, well, if
we're going to have something else attached to this piece
of a god, we need it to also be a
physical piece of said god.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Perhaps, Okay, I'm going.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
With you now.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Realistically, I think that's about all the connects these ancient
foot lamps with a Christmas story. You know, probably no
more than to say, making objects, including lamps that look
like feeder legs, is just the sort of thing that
human artisans might do. But I think if we were
to be unrealistic about the action we could wonder that
perhaps what has happened here is the old man has
(35:05):
has entered into the worship of an ancient Greco Egyptian
god and wishes to bring the city of Cleveland under
his domain. His wife, however, clearly she serves the god Osiris,
who Syrapis, you know, partially replaces whereas it is introduced
to replace, and so she brings about the lamp's destruction
in a campaign to keep Cleveland under the sway of
(35:28):
the green skinned god.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
I think there's also some underworld stuff you can do
with him going into the basement to fight the furnace.
That seems to connect maybe somehow.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Oh but you know, we also have to think about
the fact that, okay, if the god Syrapis is also
still Osiris to some extent, I mean, part of the
whole myth of Osiris is that his body is dismembered.
You know, that's part of the whole you know, Osiris
myth cycle. It's about his death and resurrection. And of
course we see the lamp broken into pieces as well,
(36:00):
and an attempt, a failed attempt to resurrect it.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
That's very good, Kudos to you, Rob.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
I'm just interpreting the work of the gods.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Here, I'm just a messenger.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Now, on the subject of tenuous connections to ancient art,
I wanted to talk about leg sculpture a little bit
more broadly, and at the risk of getting sappy, I
also just have to say that the idea of sculpture
of the human form as a lamp got me thinking
about a line in one of my favorite poems. I'm
sure this is what I've brought up on the show before.
(36:40):
I don't remember when, but it's the poem The Archaic
Torso of Apollo by Rayner Maria Rilka. I'm sure I've
read this one at you before, Rob Adam.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Well, let's see. I read a little bit and i'll
see of it rings a bell.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Okay, Well, so this is the English translation by Stephen Mitchell.
I can't read the whole poem, but it's worth looking
up The Archaic torsov Apollo. It's a excellent poem. But
Stephen mitchell translation begins, we cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit, and yet his torso is
still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp in
(37:14):
which his gaze now turned low gleams in all its power.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
All right, all right.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
From here, he goes on to describe this the kind
of strange life flowing through this dismembered sculpture from ancient Greece,
and it ends with a line that's pretty famous in
this translation. It says, for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
So it's about Roka's experience of looking at this fragment
(37:44):
of an ancient sculpture of the human form that he
sees it. I think he sees it in the louver
one day and having this profound kind of stirring and
even frightening human connection with it. Now, the word that
appears as lamp in this English version I think I've
seen translated as candelabrum in others. But in any case,
(38:08):
I like this because the line in the poem seems
to be confessing the power of great sculpture, to suggest
that there's something more than just mimicry of the shape
of a human in great sculpture. It's not just that
great sculpture gets the outline and the form and the
contours of a human, right, It's that in great sculpture
(38:28):
something actually seems to be alive inside it, almost perceptibly
moving or lighting up. And I think this is the
case for Rilca. Even though the sculpture he's looking at
has arrived in the modern world in a totally degraded form,
he mentions that it has no head. He calls it
a torso. So I looked it up, and I think
(38:50):
the actual artwork that he's talking about here is usually
understood to be an artifact in the collection of the
Louver called the kuros of Melitas or the torso of Melitas.
So it is the torso of this nude male figure
that's a very common form of sculpture and in archaic
Greek art known as the kouros, and this one was
(39:11):
excavated from the remains of militias. It is missing its head,
it's missing both arms. It's missing one leg up to
the upper thigh and the other leg from above the knee. Rob,
I've got an image from a couple of angles for
you to look at just down below here.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Yeah, it is quite quite striking. Yeah, the lifelike muscle
definition on this torso.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
I agree. Even though it's like missing most of the
parts of the body, there's still something a little bit
haunting about it. I know what Rolka is talking about
because I see a kind of hint of that light
or animating life force in it, though in a muted
or half formed way, which I think is the ambiguity
that makes the sculpture an interesting subject for poetry. It's
(39:53):
what we can't fully see or know about it that
makes it unsettling and something kind of ring within our
chest when we look at it. And I think that's
the thing also that leads Rilka to say, you must
change your life. But this leads me to the fuller
observation I wanted to make connecting the leg lamp to
art history, which is that I think you could make
(40:15):
a pretty good case that when it comes to sculpture
of the human form, the legs are the life. Hmm okay,
now why would I say that. Here's the case I
want to make. One thing that's interesting about this sculpture,
the Curos of Melitis, is that it seems to come
from a period of transition in ancient Greek art, when
(40:37):
Greek art was moving from what modern art historians called
the Archaic period into what we now call the Classical period,
and this transition was sometime in the fifth century BCE
that seemed to be roughly the turning point, and so
rob to illustrate, I want to let you look at
a couple of statues of the human form, both from
ancient Greece, and so there's going to be one here
(41:00):
you can look at on the left that's typical of
the archaic style, and one on the right that's typical
of the classical style. These are both images I found
on the website of the Met Museum, so both things
in the collection there, but to describe them from you
out there listening at home, the older statue, I would
say is very rigid, with very straight upright posture. It
(41:23):
is looking straight forward at you with very square shoulders,
and the head is pointed straight towards you. So it's
very just an aligned body. In fact, I would say
that in a lot of ways it looks similar to
sculpture from ancient Egypt.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Yeah, it has a very two dimensional kind of appearance
to it. It's forward facing. It does not even though
it is itself a three dimensional object, it is not
really like owning that three dimensional space.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Right, And I want to be clear as I go
ahead that I would say For my part, I think
both of these styles are beautiful, both striking in their
own way. I certainly would not say that I think
one is somehow better than the other, but there is
a difference. So when you look at the second kind,
these sculptures that are typical of the classical style beginning
in the fifth century BCE. A good example of this,
(42:13):
if you want to look it up at home. One
is called the Dori Foos or the spear Bearer by
the ancient Greek sculptor Polyclitis p O L y k
l e I t o s. And these classical ones
are very different in that they have I would say,
this powerful lifelike quality that we see developing in this period.
(42:35):
It looks it looks like there is something alive and
even moving inside this totally still hunk of dead rock.
Speaker 4 (42:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
And I think if you've ever visited a sculpture garden
and organa does to see some of these classical works
reproductions of these classical works, you know exactly what we're
talking about. You know, It's that that feeling that this
is this is life that was captured and frozen. You know,
you look at it at one of these statues and
it looks as if it had just moved and it
(43:05):
wasn't even necessarily posing for the artist, you know.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Yeah, that's a great comparison. They often the classical sculptures
look as if, you know, you're a fly on the
wall and you have just frozen time in the middle
of a scene, and this is what was happening while say,
you know, the discus thrower was winding up to throw,
or somebody was leaning back to regard someone who had
just entered the room. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like the spear bear here, he's kind
of has the pose like, oh, are you sculpting me?
Speaker 4 (43:34):
I'm sorry, I was just standing here naked.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
Yeah. So the question is what makes the difference? How
do you go again? I think both styles are wonderful,
But what makes the difference from this style that is
striking as artwork but doesn't look lifelike to this kind
of the classical period that almost it feels like it
has a pulse, you know, it looks like there's something
just about to move. I think there are a number
(43:58):
of changes in artistic technique, and I fully admit that
there's a lot about classical art that I don't know
or understand. But I am to understand that one of
the most significant developments here is a change in the
approach to the depictions of legs, hips, and posture, which
would come to be known by later artists and scholars
(44:19):
as contra posto. So I was trying to find a
succinct definition of this. I found one on a website
for the National Galleries of Scotland. So this museum describes
contra posto as quote, a standing human figure carrying its
weight on one leg so that the opposite hip rises
to produce a relaxed curve in the body. Now, I
(44:43):
hope when I say that, you can kind of picture
that you realize, like, oh, yes, I have seen statues
like this where the figure being shown has all of
their weight shifted to their back leg and their other
leg is kind of lifted and bent, and this sort
of causes a shift, a corresponding sh in the position
of the hips, and then also causes a kind of
(45:03):
twist in the spine where it looks like the character
has been caught in the middle of turning or leaning
or relaxing or something. And the result is this powerful
striking quality of life caught in the middle of motion.
Speaker 4 (45:21):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
And again this is in contrast to the posture that
would have been common for standing sculptures of the human
form in Greek art of the period just before this,
the Archaic period, where again the curos, the nude male
figure would usually have a rigid, straight posture with weight
equally distributed on both legs. And again, for some reason,
while I think that is artistically beautiful, it doesn't look alive.
(45:46):
Something happens when you twist the form like that, the
adjustment of the legs so that the weight is on
one leg and not the other. It almost seems to
to peel back this opening in the shroud that separates
animate from inanimate. You shift the weight across the legs,
and the twist the hips and the spine accordingly, and
something just happens. Stone can become flesh, and sculpture can
(46:09):
sort of it can start to have that glow, that
unsettling quality of movement or soul.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
I don't think I'd really thought about this much before,
but yeah, absolutely. You look at you look at these
these statues, the ones that are the most lifelike, and
you do see this kind of you know, it's in
the legs often it's it's how though the weight is distributed.
I mean really one of the most iconic examples of
this would probably be Michelangelo's David. Oh yeah, where if
(46:35):
you look look at the legs and it's exactly what
we're talking about here.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
Well, yes, I think Actually, again, I admit I don't
know a ton about art history, but I think that
this is something that was consciously sort of noticed and
then recreated on purpose by Renaissance artists looking back to
classical art, like they sort of noticed this about the
legs and the posture and said like, oh, hey, you know,
let's the keys do like that, and even can up
(47:00):
kick it up a notch from there, because I think
the Renaissance artists took it a step further where there
would be sort of like a double twist in the
body like you see on the David, where the the
you know, the legs are the legs have the lower
bodies weight shifted one way and then the upper bodies
kind of kind of shifting back even in the other direction.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Yeah, yeah, I'm looking at a photo of it right now,
and yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
So there's my case. The legs are the life.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
It makes me want to go and uh and visit
a museum with a number of sculptures. I go to
the met and start looking at the legs more because
often there's the legs are not the the the obvious
focal point of the statue. Instead, you're drawn to well,
you're drawing to like the chest or or certainly with
the nude statues, you might you know, notice what is
there or isn't there concerning the groin. Oftentimes they have
(47:50):
a weapon, or they're holding like the head of a Medusa,
or they're fighting a centaur. There's generally a lot going on.
It's easy to miss the legs and not think about
these things. But now that it's been pointed out to me,
like I want to I want to go. I want
to look at the legs of some statues and see
to what extent their life is brought about by this effect.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
Yeah, totally. Once you notice it, you kind of can't
unsee it.
Speaker 4 (48:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
So to conclude, I guess you must change your life.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
And how would you connect all of this to a
Christmas story and the major award?
Speaker 3 (48:26):
Well, I told you it was going to be tenuous.
But okay, you know leg sculpture, right, that's what I got.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
All right now, Obviously we'd love to hear from everyone
out there. Do you do you have additional insights on
the history of lamps that look like legs or feet,
or the history of sculpture and an artifice depicting legs
and feet? Certainly right in, because we would love to
hear from you. Also, just additional thoughts on the deep
occult secrets that are hidden within the film A Christmas Story?
Speaker 3 (48:57):
Are you going to fall asleep with it? Playing to
inky bit? A dream that ooh yeah, bring you a
gift from the gods?
Speaker 1 (49:03):
It is a film with multiple like dream and vision
sequences in it, so im perfect for that.
Speaker 4 (49:10):
All right.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
Like we said, this will probably be the last new
episode of Stuff to Blow your mind for the year,
but we'll be back in January with all new episodes.
We're gonna We're gonna be I'm excited to see what
kind of topics we end up discussing. We have a
whole list of potential topics, stuff we've thought up, stuff
that you have submitted to us, So we have plenty
(49:33):
plenty of material to draw from and we're looking forward
to it. In the meantime, you can find all of
our episodes and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast
feed wherever you get your podcasts. Core episodes of the
show on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener mail on Monday's short
form Artifact on Wednesdays, and on Fridays, we do Weird
House Cinema. That's our time to set aside most practical
(49:54):
and serious concerns and just talk about a strange film.
Speaker 3 (49:58):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent to your producer,
Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in
touch with us with feedback on this episode or any
other suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It is Saturday,
so we have another Vault episode for you. This one's
a bit older than some of the Vault episodes that
we roll out. This is an episode that originally published
twelve twenty three. Twenty twenty one seems like a very
long time ago, but I guess it wasn't really that
long ago. This is our episode the Ancient and Occult
(00:26):
History of the A Christmas Story leg Lamp. Yes, the
leg lamp from the nineteen eighty three holiday film A
Christmas Story. We get into it and we talk about
the deep, ancient and occult history of lamps and other
objects shaped in the likeness of a human leg or foot.
So it's a holiday celebration, so let's slip it on.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And this is
gonna be our last core, our last new core episode
of the year. And what do we have for you here?
Another holiday episode. And we really didn't know until just
a few days ago exactly what the Holiday episode would be.
We were talking about doing an episode on reindeer related stuff,
(01:22):
and maybe we'll do that next year. And then we
were talking about, well, let's we've done previous episode where
we talked about holiday inventions, Christmas inventions and so forth,
maybe we could do another one of those. And you know,
we started looking into some topics and we wound up
focusing entirely upon the nineteen eighty three holiday film A
(01:43):
Christmas Story.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Well not just on the movie, on the movie's most
sacred prop that's right.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I mean, for a little bit there we were thinking, well,
look at all the things that are to talk about
in a Christmas story. We could talk about soap poisoning,
freezing your tongue to a flag pole, the dangers posed
by BB guns, how furnace work.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
I gotta say, having looked into the medical literature on
soap poisoning, first of all, it is a real thing. Second,
that's some pretty dark territory. Not the most fun way
to head into the holidays.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Well, I mean, it's pretty dark. And Christmas story. You
know there he is, he's a child and he's blind,
and his parents feel such remorse for having him put
that bar of soap in his mouth.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Now from what I could tell in my brief investigation,
I don't think it's dangerous to put a bar of
soap in your mouth for a few minutes, but you
definitely don't want to like eat a significant amount of it.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Right, So, so soap poisoning is a thing.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yes, Okay, don't swallow soap.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
But like I said, we're not We're not focusing on
the soap here we're talking. We're going to be talking
about the old Man's major award. We're gonna be talking
about that leg lamp.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Now, Rob. I don't know if you've had this experience,
but I can say most of my exposure to a
Christmas story the movie comes in the form of a
sort of running, droning background ways that's going on at
a at a some kind of family house around Christmas
while it's just playing on an infinite loop on some
(03:07):
cable TV station that is turned on in a room
I might not even be in very much, But when
this happens, I noticed that this must have something to
do with like the patterns with which I come and
go into certain rooms in the house. So that would
be an interesting thing to study on its own. But
I will pretty frequently have the experience of seeing one
(03:27):
scene in the movie like five times in the same
day and it's always the same scene. And for me,
it has definitely been the scene where the old man
is in the house and a big crate arrives and
we get the lines about it being Fredgi Lay and
he digs through the straw and then pulls out this
glorious leg lamp.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah, I have I have a similar experience with a
Christmas story. It would there were there are There have
been some dedicated viewings of it, you know, throughout the years,
but most of it's just it's on TV during Christmas,
and therefore you watch it or you watch part of it,
and so when you actually set down and watch it
in its entirety, there will be these scenes that you
(04:09):
remember really vividly, and then there are scenes that you
didn't realize were part of the movie at all. That
sort of thing. I should probably inform everyone what this
movie is. A number of you were probably familiar with it,
some of you were not. This was a nineteen eighty
three holiday film that was based on the writings of
Jane Shepherd, particularly on the book In God We Trust
(04:29):
All Others Pay Cash. It's one Boy's account of childhood,
Holiday dreams, desires, and fears. It's a fun movie with
some solid laughs in. It's some good heart, but not
to a sappy degree, especially for a holiday film. And
in some ways you could almost think of it as
kind of like a proto Simpsons, you know, like it's
(04:51):
some of the gags that they get up to in
a Christmas story are the sorts of things that would
happen on The Simpsons later on. But of course the
Simpsons leans more into more, more into the satire and
more into like pop cultural references, you know what I'm
talking about. Like, can't you imagine an episode where Homer
gets some sort of obnoxious award that he wants to
display at the front of the house. Oh, Marge doesn't
(05:12):
like it, and maybe something terrible ends up happening to
the award and he blames her.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Yeah, now that you say that, I can't imagine that
being a plotline.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Okay, Yeah, I mean Ralphie is essentially a good boy,
whereas Bart is a bad boy, so you know we
have to take that into account as well.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah, Bart would not dream of getting a BB gun
for Christmas. He would just go And I don't know,
shoplift a BB gun or something.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Yeah, oh well, I mean I hope he learned his
lesson from that Christmas episode of The Simpsons where he
did shoplift.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Remember, Oh that's right. Oh I remember that One's actually
very sad because his mother is very disappointed in him.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
And yeah, yeah, we just huged that heart strings. Yeah,
it's a solid episode like that sort of Simpsons episode
reminds me a lot of this, though in a weird way.
That Simpsons episode is more serious than a Christmas story is.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Yeah, what is it he steals? It's like a video
games like the Bone Storm for whatever.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Yeah, it's like essentially like a Mortal Kombat type game
that just seems like the greatest thing ever. And they
have like the muscled Santa Claus and the commercial.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
So we're not going to give a Christmas story the
full weird house cinema treatment or anything here today, but
I do want to just point out real quickly a
few of the people involved in it because it's kind
of fun. First of all, I was directed by Bob Clark,
who also directed the notorious holiday proto slasher Black Christmas
in nineteen seventy four, which I have never seen, but
(06:36):
it had a great cast, including Olivia Hussey, Margo Kidder,
Kira Dulia from two thousand and one, A Space Odyssey,
and of course Weird House Cinema favorite John Saxon.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Everybody at home do a push up for John Saxon
right now.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
He also directed Death Dream Murder by Decree, which is
a Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper story, two Porky's movies,
two Baby Geniuses movies.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Oh, Porky's and Baby Geniuses.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yeah, yeah, but still there's some good stuff in there.
He passed away in two thousand and seven, but I
think a Christmas story is likely to remain.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
His legacy, Like this is the one that's going to.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Really stick, though I guess Black Christmas also has its
place in film history as well. Sure, and as far
as the cast, guy has a wonderful cast Christmas story,
But the two main characters worth pointing out for our purposes.
The old Man is played by the always terrific Darren McGavin.
This is the guy who played Could Shak the knights Stalker.
I think he was also in the Arnold Swarzenegger film
(07:36):
Raw Deal Okay, and the mom is played by Melinda Dillon,
who was in Harry and the Henderson's as well as
Spontaneous Combustion, which is one of the films that we
covered on Weird House Cinema this year.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Did she play like the creepy scientist? Am I right
about that?
Speaker 1 (07:55):
It's really hard to remember. Everybody else just kind of
grows him against the burning fire that is Dora's performance
in that. Brad Dorof is just so good.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, I just double check she's the German scientist. I
think at some point Brad Dorriff goes to her house
and maybe she catches on fire, and I don't.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Know, probably that's probably that's generally how it goes. But
I don't want to sell her short because Melinda Dylan
is a great actor as well. She was in Close
Encounters of the Third Kind and Absence of Malice in
nineteen eighty one. She was nominated for two Academy Awards
and one Tony Award.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Okay, but we don't want to leave anybody out. For
the like eight people in the audience who have never
seen this movie or even just seen this sequence in
the movie on five times in the same day on Christmas.
But what's the deal with the major award.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Well, it is, as we've been saying, a major award.
It is something he has won for his achievements in
a game. And what is the game, Joe.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Well, I think it's like it's like a trivia contest,
maybe done through the mail from a newspaper, though I
think it's worth of saying that he actually does not
supply most of the answers on the contest. He has
to ask Melinda Dylon and she actually knows the answers.
Then he fills them in and it sends it off
or something, and apparently wins this trivia contest by answering
(09:15):
questions like what is the name of the Lone Rangers
nephew's horse. But later in the film, after he receives
his major award, when people ask him how what it
was for, he says, it's for mind power.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yeah, so it's this wonderful design. It is a lamp
that is shaped like a woman's leg wearing a fishnet stocking,
with the shade resembling a kind of mini skirt or
short hoop dress or something. And as we learn in
the show, it's an item of much controversy in the
household and it's clear that Mom does not like this
(09:52):
lamp and certainly does not think it belongs at the
front of the house where neighbors can see it. You know,
it's already it's it's becoming a topic of discussion in
the neighborhood. And then what happens there is an accident.
Somebody is cleaning too close to the lamp and it
is accidentally destroyed.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Now, I think one of the great points of humor
in the movie is that it is never made clear
why a lamp shaped like a sexy leg is the
prize for winning this newspaper contest. Like there's no connection there,
Like why would this be what you get? And it's
just not explained.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, I mean it doesn't even say anything, you know,
on the lamp. It's not like the award is shaped
like a lamp. No, this is just a lamp that
shaped like a leg. But he is he is fond
of it. He thinks it is wonderful.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
She does not.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
It becomes it becomes a controversial issue between the two
of them. It is destroyed. An attempt to rebuild the
leg lamp seems possible, but we'll never know if it
was successful. We suspect that it was not, that this
is something that, once broken can never be repaired.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Well. I think also there's a little bit of subtlety there,
because when the old man is trying to repair it
with glue and failing, you sense in him a kind
of a kind of waning enthusiasm, where it may be,
in fact, that he is realizing that his wife was
correct and thinking that this lamp is rather tacky.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but he didn't want to admit it earlier. Right,
So this is this lamp. This is a hilarious part
of the film. This is based on the chapter My
Old Man and the Thilcivias Special Award that heralded the
birth of pop art from the nineteen sixty six novel
In God We Trust All.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Others pay cash.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
But it's really taken on a life of its own.
Since then, you can now buy replicas of the lamp,
reproductions of the rent lamp in various sizes. You can
get Christmas tree ornaments where the Christmas I mean you
can basically get Christmas tree ornaments of it, or even
Christmas lights of the lamp. Like the amp has become
(12:00):
like this weird symbol all its own. I was reading
about it on read Kraiger's blog Inventor's Digest, and apparently
Shepard was inspired to create this fictional lamp based on
knee high soda ads that he remembered seeing in magazines
showing two shapely legs up to the knee. He remembered
(12:23):
these from when he was a boy. And then for
the film production designer Ruben Fried, he did the rest
and the lamp is apparently protected by two different trademarks.
They've been mass produced over the years, and yes you
can buy them today as functional lamps. When this movie
came out, you could only dream of such a thing.
I think they made just a handful of these for
(12:43):
the film, but now it is achievable by anyone.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, But I believe I
read somewhere that the original lamp prop made for the
film no longer exists.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
That is what I was reading as well. Yeah, lost
to history like so many great works.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Like many of the art works of the Parthenon or
the great antiquities, they just fade to time.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Well, speaking of antiquities, obviously this can't be where the
story begins and ends, right, There has to be more
of it. There has to be more to the lamp
that is a leg, and the leg that is a lamp.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
By God, if there's not more to it, will make
more to it.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Absolutely well.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Let's go to the obvious place to discuss all of
this is to go way back and just talk about
lamps in general. The lamp in the movie is of
course an electric lamp with origins in the early nineteenth century,
but the history of illumination technology.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Goes way back. Obviously.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
You can think to our invention episodes on fire technology,
and indeed the most basic form of illumination technology is
of course a mere torch or a burning brand of
some sort, or even a very primitive burning stick. These
wall get it done. But according to Brian M. Fagan
and Garrett G. Fagan in the Seventy Great Inventions of
(14:03):
the Ancient World, wick burning lamps go back at least
as far as the late Paleolithic period. It's thirty thousands
through ten thousand years ago. All you need is a
reservoir of fuel and a wick made from plant fiber
or even something like human hair. And the fuel itself
can be any number of things. It can be oil,
(14:24):
it can be fat and sometimes salt was added to
oil to keep it from overheating. Tons of lamps survived
from the ancient world, as these were, of course widespread
and extremely useful pieces of technology. They illuminate your environment.
They turn nighttime, well not it doesn't turn nighttime into day,
but it provides some of the illumination that you would
(14:45):
have in the daytime in a nice concentrated form.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Yeah. And I think one of the things that's useful
about a lamp or like a candle. We've talked about
this in core episodes of the show before, is that
they provide light for a long period of time. They're
constructed so as to gradually slowly feed the fuel into
the flame, rather than have the fire just burned through
(15:11):
the fuel source as fast as it possibly can, like
it would with you know, many other things, like you know,
a lit stick or something.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
So the technology here, the device itself, allows you to
make the most out of your limited fuel. Now real quick,
I want to just mention the Fagans quickly. Brian Fagan,
of course, Brian M. Fagan is someone I cite a
lot on the show starters that Great Inventions.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Book is super useful.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
But he's written a number of volumes and still has
books coming out, including a new book with Nadia Durrani
titled Climate Chaos Lessons on Survival from Our Ancestors Now.
The other Fagan, though, Garrett G. Fagan, was an Irish
American ancient historian, best known for his social histories of
Roman bathing and the Spectacles of the Roman Arena. And
(15:58):
I could be wrong on this, but I do not
believe the these two Fagans are related at all. They
just happen to work together in this one chapter in
the seventy grade Inventions of the Ancient World that deals
with illumination technology.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Okay, so lamps go very far back into the Paleolithic period.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Right, and lamp technology of this basic sword can be
found from throughout Mesopotamia. And the shape of the reservoir varies,
so you can use basically found objects as your reservoir.
So seashells were often used because these were naturally occurring
shallow bowls with ridges to accommodate a wick at one end.
But then once you start making artificial reservoirs for your
(16:38):
oil or your fat, whatever you're burning your fuel, then
you're making them out of pottery or even metal, and
this allows for all manner of simple and ornate lamp designs.
And you know where we're going with that, right, Oh,
of course. Yeah, the obvious question is how many of
these lamps were.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
Shaped like legs?
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Well, are you going to tell me?
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Well, this is a difficult question to answer, Joe. Humans have,
of course always loved to craft things in the likeness
of animals and or themselves, and animal legs and feet
have always been a favorite motif. In fact, Fagan includes
an image of one in the book. It's a first
century CE brazier from Pompeii with beautiful like animal feet
(17:24):
supporting it. And of course we still see this today
with you know, tubs, anything. It's like it's the human
artisan can't help it. It's like, well, I have put
feet upon this device or this prop or this piece
of furniture. Could I not make those feet like actual feet?
And I guess you could even say there's a bit
of biomimicry there as well, like if you're going to
(17:45):
support an object with these like stumpy pods, well maybe
make them look like a foot.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
That's true. In fact, you've got me thinking about how
often the legs of you know, fancier pieces of furniture
are kind of shaped to be organic or flesh like
in a way. They might have kind of curves on them,
similar to a human leg or to an animal leg,
even if they're not explicitly trying to depict a human
(18:11):
or animal leg like with toes and stuff.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Right though, of course, there are plenty of explicit depictions
out there, whereas like it straight up looks like the
foot of a lion or a goat or what have you.
So looking around in the history of lamp designs, you know,
I'm sure I miss something interesting, But I've come across
(18:34):
two different examples of from Greek and Roman traditions that
are that are pretty interesting, particularly when dealing with the
Greek ascos and the Greek alabastron.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
So.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
An ascos is an ancient Greek pottery vessel used to
pour liquids such as oils, so it is not quite
a lamp, though it could have been used to store
lamp oil and could have been used to re fill lamps,
and many of these were decorated and decorational, sometimes in
the form of animals. And then an alabastron is similar.
(19:09):
It's a pottery vessel often used for holding oils or perfumes,
named for the carved alabaster containers from Egypt that started
the design. Key and the key thing here is that
these are generally elongated, so they are, by their very
nature in their sort of generic form, kind of leg shaped.
(19:30):
So you'll find both of these in various shapes and forms,
and they're littered throughout museums and collections around the world.
But I was able to find some images for starters.
There's a leg shaped ascos or alabastron that is or
was in the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto,
(19:51):
though I've had trouble finding out any additional information about it.
I might have to ask anyone out there who has
visited the Royal Ontario Museum or can visit it now
to go in and try and get me more answers
on this. But the image I found is indeed an alabastron,
or it appears to be an alabaster. It's hard to
figure out what the scale is here. It is shaped
(20:12):
like a essentially like a naked human leg, and it's
free standing. It looks like it had it maybe has
sandals drawn on it, and it was used to hold
oil or something.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
This gives new meaning to the expression that someone who
can hold their liquor has a quote hollow leg.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yes, this is indeed hollow leg. I wonder if that Yeah,
I didn't even think about that phrase. Now I was
able to find more information on another one. There is
a Greek pottery alabastron in the shape of a grieved
or armored leg from Corinth or Rhodes circa sixth century BCE.
And it's part or was part, I'm not sure of.
(20:53):
The Callos Collection in London included an image of this
for you to look.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
At as well. Joe.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
So this is less decorative, but also is not a
naked leg. It has armor on it.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Yeah, this is more like an ancient RoboCop leg.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
And the Callos Collection website shares the following quote. The
Callos example above is a very rare and fine alabastron
that takes the shape of a leg protected by a greeve,
dating to the sixth century BC. It is an interesting
example of a plastic vase from this period. And note
the use of the term plastic here. It's not modern
(21:31):
plastic obviously. This just means that it's molded, and this
is derived from the Greek verb placine, meaning to mold quote.
The greeve is outlined in black slip and tapers toward
the ankle area. The foot emerges beneath with carefully insized
details for the sandal and toes. Although primarily used as
(21:51):
a container, the form of this alabastron as a grieved
leg implies that it may also have been used at
or dedicated to a sanctuary as a votive offering. There
is a very similar example of this rare type in
the Museum of Farmacia in Portugal, and they include an
inventory number, and I was able to look it up.
(22:13):
It's number ten eighty nine to two, and you get
kind of a delightful rear view of this freestanding hollow leg.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
I was, okay, so it seems like a bunch of
ancient Greeks really pouring stuff out of legs.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Now, again, these are not lamps. They're merely containers that
may have contained lamp oil and may have been used
to refill lamps. But we're not done yet. So, as
the Pagans point out, the Roman period was a time
of pottery lamp mass production and lamps of every design
were used for not only practical reasons providing illumination when
you need it, but also purely esthetic reasons and even
(22:49):
religious and occult reasons. And that brings us to the
next example, the Roman foot lamp.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Ooh.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
I initially found these on the Farrabee Keeper blog by
Wayne Farrabee, a Brooklyn based rider, and I have to
say this is quite a good, good looking blog. Looks
like a lot of interesting content on here. If anyone
wants to check it out, it's uh Farabee Keeper dot org,
press dot com.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
And uh.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
The great thing here is that we're not just talking
about one lamp. We're not talking about Oh well, here's
the Roman foot lamp, and we we don't we have
no idea why they made this. Instead, we have several
different surviving lamps, and I've included images for you to
look at. Joe, I invite anyone out there to either
visit that Farrabee website or to to do Google image
searches so you can pull this up for yourself, because
(23:36):
these are these are wondrous and and really strange to
look at. They are lamps in the shape of a
human foot, as the name implies, with with with with
essentially a stopper or lid at the aperture where the
stump of the disembodied foot would be. And then there
(23:56):
is another aperture at the big toe, and it is
from this that the and and therefore the flame would emerge.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Right, So I guess you would hold this by the
handle at the back of the foot, so you're holding
it like behind the heel, and then you would have
the flame sticking out of the big toe at the front.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Yes, if you were holding it.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
But then, as we'll discuss, there are some questions regarding
exactly what one does with a foot lamp. But I'm
looking at it too. It also reminds me a bit
of depictions of the hand of Glory, the you know,
the occult item that is supposed to be like the
disembodied hand of a of a like a criminal's corpse,
that is then transformed into this magical item that burns
(24:39):
candle light from the fingertips and you know, has strange
energies and effects.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
Except this is not a hand. This is a foot.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
It's not a real glory.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
It's a ceramic foot, and you know it's a it's
a foot of pottery, and yeah, there is this flame
that is emitting from either in front of the toe
or from the toe itself on exactly how how the
sculptor or has has arranged it.
Speaker 4 (25:04):
You know.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Now, what I would wonder is is this just like
because somebody wanted an interesting lamp and they made lamps
that look like looked like all kinds of things. Or
would a foot lamp have a particular significance in say
a religious or political context or something.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah, and that is that is the riddle that the
rest of us are left having to solve. So Pharaby
points out that the symbols and motifs of the ancient
Romans don't always make sense to us today, which I
think is a very fair point. And he says that
the best explanation that he could find were that these
were sort of literal footlights placed on the floor or
(25:44):
a ground, especially at the base of murals, which which
is interesting. It's still hard to figure out exactly like
what that means. It just you know, pure novelty. It's like, well,
it's it's a foot lamp, or it's a lamp that
goes on the ground where our feet are. Let's make
it in the shape of a foot is well, well
to call back to the Simpsons. That kind of reminds
me of why is there corn on the curtains in
(26:05):
the kitchen? I don't know kitchen food corn?
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Or imagine time traveler visiting our current age and finding
solar powered outdoor lights that look like mushrooms. Why do
they look like mushrooms? Well, I mean it basically comes
down to there on the ground where mushrooms are, so
why not make them look like mushrooms? It amuses us,
It just makes sense, yes, But I decided to look
(26:31):
into this a little bit deep deeper, and I looked
in a book titled Light and Darkness in Ancient Greek
Myth and Religion from twenty ten. This has numerous authors
on it, but is edited by Christopholis and Lavaniuk. And
they mentioned that Roman footlamps were used in incubation rituals,
citing a couple of sources as well that I tried
(26:52):
to follow, but I don't think they actually have English translations.
So incubation rituals or dream incubation rituals involve involved sleeping
in sacred places in order to receive dreams or visions.
And it seems that copious amounts of lamps were often
associated with many of the sites where you would engage
(27:12):
in incubation rituals, as described in a book by Sandra
Blakely titled God's Objects and Ritual Practice.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
I don't remember what episode it was in the past,
but somehow this came out, but I think we were
talking about ancient rituals for dream incubation, specifically with regard
to the Greek god of healing in medicine, Asclepius, where
people who were sick and wanted healing would come to
the temple of Asclepias and actually sleep in the temple
in order to like they'd make an offering or do
(27:42):
a ritual and they'd sleep in the temple in order
to receive a dream from the god as a form
of cure for their illness.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Yeah, there you go. That would be. That would be
dream and incubation. That's what we're talking about here. But
how do these lamps come into play? I found another
source that had some wonderful inside here, and this was
a nineteen forty six paper titled Material on the Cult
of Sirapis by Dorothy Kent Hill. And I'm going to
(28:13):
read a quote from it here. But first I want
to run through a couple of things here so that
everyone will know what's being referred to. So, first of all,
a Ureus is a curling snake motif, probably best recognized
as a symbol of divine authority on the heads of
Egyptian sarcophagus. So I think everyone's probably seen one of
(28:36):
these before, you know, like a hooded cobra or a
snake that is emerging from a head dress or from
the head of one of these artistic depictions.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Also known as a boss snake.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Okay, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
And then Syrapis. It was a Greco Egyptian deity. He
was introduced, but not necessarily created by Greek pharaoh Ptolemy
the First Soda as an attempt to unify Greek and
Egyptian culture. Specifically, as Geraldine Pinch points out, in Egyptian
mythology a Diza. He was meant to be a combination
of Appis and Osiris and Zeus and Dionysus. Now, Syrapus
(29:13):
is often depicted with something on his head that might
be confused by the casual viewer as maybe something that
is also involved in illumination, like it looks like you
look at images of him, and it kind of looks
like you're supposed to put a candle on top of
his head.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't really look like a hat or anything.
It just looks like there's some kind of like container,
bucket or something attached to his head in the form
that he's in now, as a piece of statuary or something.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
So at first I was thinking, well, maybe it's illumination
is involved in more ways than one here, But as
it turns out, Syrapis is often depicted with this thing
on his head called a modius, which is a basket
grain measure, a Greek symbol for the land of the dead. Now,
in this tech by Dorothy Kent Hill, she includes two
(30:04):
images of bronze lamps in the form of human feet,
and they're very much like we've described thus far, except
there's an extra interesting thing about them. So, yes, you
have the big toe or something just beyond the big
toe that is clearly designed for the wick to go
in and for flame to come out of. There is
(30:24):
the larger aperture at the stump of the disembodied foot.
But in both of these you also have a rod
that's basically going up from the base of the heel,
and this is something that she ends up reflecting on.
I should also add, at the top of this rod
that's emerging from the base of the heel, we see
(30:46):
once more this ureus symbol. We see the curled snake.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
Oh yeah, there it is what the hood flared.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
So this is what she had to say. Quote lamps
modeled after parts of the body, especially the foot, we're very,
very common in antiquity. Such a lamp might reflect no
more than a whimsical mood of a craftsman. But the
ureus immediately suggests a connection with the giant detached syrapus
feed recently studied by Dow and Upsen. On these monuments,
(31:15):
the ureus is usually curled somewhere in the neighborhood of
the ankle. Here it coils on a rod which rises
at the back of the foot. The space between the
top of the foot and the tail of the snake
is great enough to accommodate a small bust of syrapis,
which would correspond in position to the busts on some
of the stone feet. We have observed that something was
(31:36):
attached to the cover, and may now suggest a bust
of the god. As the most plausible candidate. If the
bust were placed in this position, the Uaeus would appear
to loom over the head of the god.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Wait a minute, so I feel like I must be
understanding this wrong. But does this mean this would be
a foot with a head on the leg of the
foot and then a snake over the head.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah. Yeah, that's what I am to understand here. It's
kind of like, here's a foot, let's put it. Or
maybe we should think in reverse. I have a bust
of a god I want to display. I want to
display it. I don't want to just lay it on
the floor though. I need something to hold it up,
and also I need to illuminate it. Well, I need
a foot, and I need a foot that emits fire.
(32:20):
And then you know they're able to work the Uaeus
into it as the rod that is holding the bust
above the foot. And there's more, because she writes quote,
the smoke rising before the god from the lamp would
create an eerie religious effect. Although Syrapis was by no
means the only deity honored on lamps, his frequent presence,
(32:42):
there is evidence for the probability of his guardianship over
this bronze foot referring to the example that she's talking
about in the article. Certainly, however, there are not good
grounds for connecting all foot shaped lamps with the Syrapis cult.
Interestingly enough, she also speculates she brings up Psalms one nineteen.
(33:04):
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a
light into my path, suggesting that you know, there are
various ways we could interpret a foot shaped lamp that
and again it comes back to the basic question like
how much of this is novelty, how much of it
is based in some reference that just has not survived
the ages, or indeed, I mean, I have to say this,
(33:25):
this idea of the lamp being used to illuminate and
create like a smoky effect before the image of a god. Uh, there,
there's something attractive about that. And and perhaps this idea too.
Yeah that it's like if well, if I'm going to
hold up the face of a god on some sort
of a stand, then I need it to be in
a foot as well. Like I there's something about the
(33:48):
compulsion there that is it's fascinating, Like would it be
wrong to hold up that bust of Serapis without a foot,
without a human foot at the bottom. Would there be
something kind of blasphemous about that?
Speaker 3 (34:00):
I wonder, Well, it's funny how the idea of a
pedestal is derived from pad like foot, but in this
case it's literally a foot.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Yeah, And this is interesting too to think of in
comparison to a Christmas story, because obviously, with a Christmas story,
part of the whole deal with the lamp is that
it is objectification of the female form. It's the idea
of like, here is just the leg of a woman
that is sexy, you know, without taking into new account
the rest of her as a physical, whole being and
(34:28):
of course as a person. In this it almost seems
like we have the reverse where it's like, well, if
we're going to have something else attached to this piece
of a god, we need it to also be a
physical piece of said god.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Perhaps, Okay, I'm going.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
With you now.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Realistically, I think that's about all the connects these ancient
foot lamps with a Christmas story. You know, probably no
more than to say, making objects, including lamps that look
like feeder legs, is just the sort of thing that
human artisans might do. But I think if we were
to be unrealistic about the action we could wonder that
perhaps what has happened here is the old man has
(35:05):
has entered into the worship of an ancient Greco Egyptian
god and wishes to bring the city of Cleveland under
his domain. His wife, however, clearly she serves the god Osiris,
who Syrapis, you know, partially replaces whereas it is introduced
to replace, and so she brings about the lamp's destruction
in a campaign to keep Cleveland under the sway of
(35:28):
the green skinned god.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
I think there's also some underworld stuff you can do
with him going into the basement to fight the furnace.
That seems to connect maybe somehow.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Oh but you know, we also have to think about
the fact that, okay, if the god Syrapis is also
still Osiris to some extent, I mean, part of the
whole myth of Osiris is that his body is dismembered.
You know, that's part of the whole you know, Osiris
myth cycle. It's about his death and resurrection. And of
course we see the lamp broken into pieces as well,
(36:00):
and an attempt, a failed attempt to resurrect it.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
That's very good, Kudos to you, Rob.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
I'm just interpreting the work of the gods.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Here, I'm just a messenger.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Now, on the subject of tenuous connections to ancient art,
I wanted to talk about leg sculpture a little bit
more broadly, and at the risk of getting sappy, I
also just have to say that the idea of sculpture
of the human form as a lamp got me thinking
about a line in one of my favorite poems. I'm
sure this is what I've brought up on the show before.
(36:40):
I don't remember when, but it's the poem The Archaic
Torso of Apollo by Rayner Maria Rilka. I'm sure I've
read this one at you before, Rob Adam.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Well, let's see. I read a little bit and i'll
see of it rings a bell.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Okay, Well, so this is the English translation by Stephen Mitchell.
I can't read the whole poem, but it's worth looking
up The Archaic torsov Apollo. It's a excellent poem. But
Stephen mitchell translation begins, we cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit, and yet his torso is
still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp in
(37:14):
which his gaze now turned low gleams in all its power.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
All right, all right.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
From here, he goes on to describe this the kind
of strange life flowing through this dismembered sculpture from ancient Greece,
and it ends with a line that's pretty famous in
this translation. It says, for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
So it's about Roka's experience of looking at this fragment
(37:44):
of an ancient sculpture of the human form that he
sees it. I think he sees it in the louver
one day and having this profound kind of stirring and
even frightening human connection with it. Now, the word that
appears as lamp in this English version I think I've
seen translated as candelabrum in others. But in any case,
(38:08):
I like this because the line in the poem seems
to be confessing the power of great sculpture, to suggest
that there's something more than just mimicry of the shape
of a human in great sculpture. It's not just that
great sculpture gets the outline and the form and the
contours of a human, right, It's that in great sculpture
(38:28):
something actually seems to be alive inside it, almost perceptibly
moving or lighting up. And I think this is the
case for Rilca. Even though the sculpture he's looking at
has arrived in the modern world in a totally degraded form,
he mentions that it has no head. He calls it
a torso. So I looked it up, and I think
(38:50):
the actual artwork that he's talking about here is usually
understood to be an artifact in the collection of the
Louver called the kuros of Melitas or the torso of Melitas.
So it is the torso of this nude male figure
that's a very common form of sculpture and in archaic
Greek art known as the kouros, and this one was
(39:11):
excavated from the remains of militias. It is missing its head,
it's missing both arms. It's missing one leg up to
the upper thigh and the other leg from above the knee. Rob,
I've got an image from a couple of angles for
you to look at just down below here.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Yeah, it is quite quite striking. Yeah, the lifelike muscle
definition on this torso.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
I agree. Even though it's like missing most of the
parts of the body, there's still something a little bit
haunting about it. I know what Rolka is talking about
because I see a kind of hint of that light
or animating life force in it, though in a muted
or half formed way, which I think is the ambiguity
that makes the sculpture an interesting subject for poetry. It's
(39:53):
what we can't fully see or know about it that
makes it unsettling and something kind of ring within our
chest when we look at it. And I think that's
the thing also that leads Rilka to say, you must
change your life. But this leads me to the fuller
observation I wanted to make connecting the leg lamp to
art history, which is that I think you could make
(40:15):
a pretty good case that when it comes to sculpture
of the human form, the legs are the life. Hmm okay,
now why would I say that. Here's the case I
want to make. One thing that's interesting about this sculpture,
the Curos of Melitis, is that it seems to come
from a period of transition in ancient Greek art, when
(40:37):
Greek art was moving from what modern art historians called
the Archaic period into what we now call the Classical period,
and this transition was sometime in the fifth century BCE
that seemed to be roughly the turning point, and so
rob to illustrate, I want to let you look at
a couple of statues of the human form, both from
ancient Greece, and so there's going to be one here
(41:00):
you can look at on the left that's typical of
the archaic style, and one on the right that's typical
of the classical style. These are both images I found
on the website of the Met Museum, so both things
in the collection there, but to describe them from you
out there listening at home, the older statue, I would
say is very rigid, with very straight upright posture. It
(41:23):
is looking straight forward at you with very square shoulders,
and the head is pointed straight towards you. So it's
very just an aligned body. In fact, I would say
that in a lot of ways it looks similar to
sculpture from ancient Egypt.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Yeah, it has a very two dimensional kind of appearance
to it. It's forward facing. It does not even though
it is itself a three dimensional object, it is not
really like owning that three dimensional space.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Right, And I want to be clear as I go
ahead that I would say For my part, I think
both of these styles are beautiful, both striking in their
own way. I certainly would not say that I think
one is somehow better than the other, but there is
a difference. So when you look at the second kind,
these sculptures that are typical of the classical style beginning
in the fifth century BCE. A good example of this,
(42:13):
if you want to look it up at home. One
is called the Dori Foos or the spear Bearer by
the ancient Greek sculptor Polyclitis p O L y k
l e I t o s. And these classical ones
are very different in that they have I would say,
this powerful lifelike quality that we see developing in this period.
(42:35):
It looks it looks like there is something alive and
even moving inside this totally still hunk of dead rock.
Speaker 4 (42:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
And I think if you've ever visited a sculpture garden
and organa does to see some of these classical works
reproductions of these classical works, you know exactly what we're
talking about. You know, It's that that feeling that this
is this is life that was captured and frozen. You know,
you look at it at one of these statues and
it looks as if it had just moved and it
(43:05):
wasn't even necessarily posing for the artist, you know.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Yeah, that's a great comparison. They often the classical sculptures
look as if, you know, you're a fly on the
wall and you have just frozen time in the middle
of a scene, and this is what was happening while say,
you know, the discus thrower was winding up to throw,
or somebody was leaning back to regard someone who had
just entered the room. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like the spear bear here, he's kind
of has the pose like, oh, are you sculpting me?
Speaker 4 (43:34):
I'm sorry, I was just standing here naked.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
Yeah. So the question is what makes the difference? How
do you go again? I think both styles are wonderful,
But what makes the difference from this style that is
striking as artwork but doesn't look lifelike to this kind
of the classical period that almost it feels like it
has a pulse, you know, it looks like there's something
just about to move. I think there are a number
(43:58):
of changes in artistic technique, and I fully admit that
there's a lot about classical art that I don't know
or understand. But I am to understand that one of
the most significant developments here is a change in the
approach to the depictions of legs, hips, and posture, which
would come to be known by later artists and scholars
(44:19):
as contra posto. So I was trying to find a
succinct definition of this. I found one on a website
for the National Galleries of Scotland. So this museum describes
contra posto as quote, a standing human figure carrying its
weight on one leg so that the opposite hip rises
to produce a relaxed curve in the body. Now, I
(44:43):
hope when I say that, you can kind of picture
that you realize, like, oh, yes, I have seen statues
like this where the figure being shown has all of
their weight shifted to their back leg and their other
leg is kind of lifted and bent, and this sort
of causes a shift, a corresponding sh in the position
of the hips, and then also causes a kind of
(45:03):
twist in the spine where it looks like the character
has been caught in the middle of turning or leaning
or relaxing or something. And the result is this powerful
striking quality of life caught in the middle of motion.
Speaker 4 (45:21):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
And again this is in contrast to the posture that
would have been common for standing sculptures of the human
form in Greek art of the period just before this,
the Archaic period, where again the curos, the nude male
figure would usually have a rigid, straight posture with weight
equally distributed on both legs. And again, for some reason,
while I think that is artistically beautiful, it doesn't look alive.
(45:46):
Something happens when you twist the form like that, the
adjustment of the legs so that the weight is on
one leg and not the other. It almost seems to
to peel back this opening in the shroud that separates
animate from inanimate. You shift the weight across the legs,
and the twist the hips and the spine accordingly, and
something just happens. Stone can become flesh, and sculpture can
(46:09):
sort of it can start to have that glow, that
unsettling quality of movement or soul.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
I don't think I'd really thought about this much before,
but yeah, absolutely. You look at you look at these
these statues, the ones that are the most lifelike, and
you do see this kind of you know, it's in
the legs often it's it's how though the weight is distributed.
I mean really one of the most iconic examples of
this would probably be Michelangelo's David. Oh yeah, where if
(46:35):
you look look at the legs and it's exactly what
we're talking about here.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
Well, yes, I think Actually, again, I admit I don't
know a ton about art history, but I think that
this is something that was consciously sort of noticed and
then recreated on purpose by Renaissance artists looking back to
classical art, like they sort of noticed this about the
legs and the posture and said like, oh, hey, you know,
let's the keys do like that, and even can up
(47:00):
kick it up a notch from there, because I think
the Renaissance artists took it a step further where there
would be sort of like a double twist in the
body like you see on the David, where the the
you know, the legs are the legs have the lower
bodies weight shifted one way and then the upper bodies
kind of kind of shifting back even in the other direction.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Yeah, yeah, I'm looking at a photo of it right now,
and yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
So there's my case. The legs are the life.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
It makes me want to go and uh and visit
a museum with a number of sculptures. I go to
the met and start looking at the legs more because
often there's the legs are not the the the obvious
focal point of the statue. Instead, you're drawn to well,
you're drawing to like the chest or or certainly with
the nude statues, you might you know, notice what is
there or isn't there concerning the groin. Oftentimes they have
(47:50):
a weapon, or they're holding like the head of a Medusa,
or they're fighting a centaur. There's generally a lot going on.
It's easy to miss the legs and not think about
these things. But now that it's been pointed out to me,
like I want to I want to go. I want
to look at the legs of some statues and see
to what extent their life is brought about by this effect.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
Yeah, totally. Once you notice it, you kind of can't
unsee it.
Speaker 4 (48:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
So to conclude, I guess you must change your life.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
And how would you connect all of this to a
Christmas story and the major award?
Speaker 3 (48:26):
Well, I told you it was going to be tenuous.
But okay, you know leg sculpture, right, that's what I got.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
All right now, Obviously we'd love to hear from everyone
out there. Do you do you have additional insights on
the history of lamps that look like legs or feet,
or the history of sculpture and an artifice depicting legs
and feet? Certainly right in, because we would love to
hear from you. Also, just additional thoughts on the deep
occult secrets that are hidden within the film A Christmas Story?
Speaker 3 (48:57):
Are you going to fall asleep with it? Playing to
inky bit? A dream that ooh yeah, bring you a
gift from the gods?
Speaker 1 (49:03):
It is a film with multiple like dream and vision
sequences in it, so im perfect for that.
Speaker 4 (49:10):
All right.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
Like we said, this will probably be the last new
episode of Stuff to Blow your mind for the year,
but we'll be back in January with all new episodes.
We're gonna We're gonna be I'm excited to see what
kind of topics we end up discussing. We have a
whole list of potential topics, stuff we've thought up, stuff
that you have submitted to us, So we have plenty
(49:33):
plenty of material to draw from and we're looking forward
to it. In the meantime, you can find all of
our episodes and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast
feed wherever you get your podcasts. Core episodes of the
show on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener mail on Monday's short
form Artifact on Wednesdays, and on Fridays, we do Weird
House Cinema. That's our time to set aside most practical
(49:54):
and serious concerns and just talk about a strange film.
Speaker 3 (49:58):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent to your producer,
Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in
touch with us with feedback on this episode or any
other suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
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