December 23, 2021 • 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.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of My
Heart Radio. 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
(00:25):
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 and maybe we'll do that
next year. We and then we were talking about, well,
let's let's we've done previous episode where we talked about
holiday inventions, Christmas inventions and so forth, maybe we could
(00:46):
do another one of those, and um uh, you know,
we started looking into some topics and we wound up
focusing entirely upon the holiday film A Christmas Story, well
not just on the movie, on the movie's most sacred
prop that's right. And I mean for a little bit
they we were thinking, well, look at all the things
that are to talk about in a Christmas Story. We
(01:06):
could talk about soap poisoning, freezing your tongue to a flagpole,
the dangerous posed by BB guns, how furnaces work, I
gotta say I, 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 not not the most
fun way to head into the holidays. Well, I mean
(01:27):
it's pretty dark in the Christmas story. You know there
he is, he's a 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. 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, right, So,
so so poisoning is a thing. Yes, don't don't swallow soap.
(01:50):
But like I said, we're not We're not focusing on
the soap here. We're talking. We're gonna be talking about um,
the Old Man's Major Award. We're gonna be talking about
that leg amp now, Rob, I don't know if you've
had this experience, but I can say most of my
exposure to to a Christmas story the movie comes in
the form of a sort of running, droning background noise
(02:14):
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 cable TV station that 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
(02:35):
the house, so that that would be an interesting thing
to study on its own. But I will pretty frequently
have the experience of seeing one 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 and a big crate arrives, and it was we
get the lines about it being FREGGI lay and he
(02:59):
digs through the story and then pulls out this glorious
leg lamp. Yeah, I have I have a similar experience
with a Christmas story. Um, it would there were so
there are. There have been some dedicated viewings of it,
uh you know, throughout the years. Um, but most of
it it's just it's on TV during Christmas, and therefore
you watch it or you watch part of it, And
(03:19):
so when you actually sat down and watch it in
its entirety. There will be these scenes that you remember
really vividly, and then there are scenes that you didn't
realize we're part of the movie at all. That sort
of thing. I should probably inform everyone what this movie has.
A number of you are probably familiar with it's some
of you were not. Uh. This was a Nintree holiday
film that was based on the writings of GANE Shepherd,
(03:41):
particularly on the book In God We Trust All Others
Pay Cash. It's one boy's account of childhood holiday dreams,
desires and fears. It's a fun movie with with some
solid laughs in it, some some 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 a proto Simpsons, you know,
(04:03):
like it's it's 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 into the
satire and more into like pop cultural references, you know
what I'm talking about, Like, you can't you imagine an
episode where Homer gets some sort of obnoxious award that
(04:23):
he wants to display at the front of the house.
Marge doesn't like it, and uh and maybe something terrible
ends up happening to the award and he he blames her. Yeah,
and now that you say that, I can't imagine that
being a plotline, Okay, Yeah, I mean Ralphie is essentially
a good boy, uh, whereas Bart is a bad boy.
So uh, you know we have to take that into
account as well. Yeah, Bart would not dream of getting
(04:45):
a BB gun for Christmas. He would just go and
I don't know, shoplift to be begun or something. Yeah,
oh well, I mean I hope he learned his lesson
from that Christmas episodes of The Simpsons where he did shoplift. Remember,
Oh that's right, Oh I remember that. One's actually very
sad because his mother is very disappointed in him. And yeah, strings, Yeah,
it's it's a solid episode like that sort of Simpsons
(05:06):
episode reminds me a lot of of of this, though
in a weird way. That Simpsons episode is more serious
than Christmas story is. Yeah, what is it he steals?
It's like a video game. It's like the bone Storm
for whatever. 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. Yeah,
(05:29):
so we're not gonna give a Christmas story the full
weird how 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
nine four, which I have never seen, but it had
(05:50):
a It had a great cast, including Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder,
Kira Dulia from two thousand and one of Space Odyssey,
and of course weird How Cinema favorite John Saxon. Everybody
at home do a push up for John Saxon right now.
He also directed Death Dream Murder by Decree, which is
a Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Rippers story, two Porky's movies,
(06:13):
two Baby Geniuses movies, Porky's and Baby Geniuses. Yeah, yeah,
but still there's some good stuff in there. He he
passed away in two thousand seven, but I think a
Christmas story is likely to remain his his legacy, Like
this is the one that's gonna really stick. So I
guess Black Christmas also has its place in film history
as well. Sure, and uh, as far as the cast
(06:36):
has has a wonderful cast Christmas story, but the two
main characters worth pointing out for our purposes. The old
Man has played played by the always terrific Darren McGavin.
This is the guy who played Coleshack, the night Stalker
I think, who was also in the Arnold Schwartzenegger film
Raw Deal Okay. And the mom is played by Melinda Dillon,
(06:56):
who was in Harry and the Henderson's as well as
Spontaneous Come Austin, which is one of the films that
we covered on Weird House Cinema this year. Did she
play like the creepy scientist? She am? I right about that.
It's really hard to remember. Everybody else just kind of
uh grows dim against the burning fire. That is uh,
(07:17):
that is a Dora's performance in that. Brad Dorriff is
just so good. Yeah, I just double checked she she's
the German scientist. I think at some point Brad Doroff
goes to her house and maybe she catches on fire.
And I don't know, probably that's probably's generally how it goes. Um.
But I don't want to sell her short, because Melinda
Dillon is a great actor as well. She was she
was in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Absence
(07:39):
of Malice in that she was nominated for two Academy
Awards and one Tony Award. 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? Well, it is, as we've been saying,
a major award. It is something he has won for
(08:02):
his achievements, Uh, in a game. And what is the game, Joe, Well,
I think it's like it's like a trivia contest, maybe
done through the mail from a newspaper. H though I
think it's worth saying that, Uh, he actually does not
supply most of the answers on the contest. He has
to ask Melinda Dillon and she actually knows the answers.
(08:23):
Then he fills them in and it sends it off
or something, and apparently wins this trivia contest by answering
questions like what is the name of the Lone Rangers
and nephews 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. Yeah,
(08:44):
so it's 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 drafts or something. And um, as we as
we learned in the it's it's an item of much
controversy in the household. And um, and it's clear that
(09:05):
Mom does not like this lamp and certainly does not
think it belongs at the front of the house where
neighbors can see it. Uh, you know, it's already. Uh,
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. Now,
(09:26):
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 that, there's no connection there,
like why would this be what you get? Uh? And
it's just not explained. Yeah, I mean it doesn't even
say anything, um, you know on the lamp. It's not
(09:48):
like the award is shaped like a lamp. No, this
is just a lamp that shaped like a leg. Um.
But but he is, he is fond of it. He
thinks it is wonderful. She does not. It becomes a uh,
it becomes an a visual 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 we we we we suspect that it was not.
(10:11):
That this is something that, once broken, can never be repaired. 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 in thinking that this lamp is rather tacky. Yeah. Yeah,
(10:36):
but he didn't want to admit it earlier, right, So
this is this lamp. This is a a hilarious part
of the film. This is based on the chapter My
Old Man and the Sithest Special Award that heralded the
birth of pop art from the novel in God We
Trust all Others pay cash. But it's really taken on
a life of its own. Since then, Um, you can
(10:59):
now buy uh, like 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
all the lamp like, the lamp has become like this, um,
this weird symbol all its own. I was. I was
(11:19):
reading about it on read Craiger's blog Inventor's Digest, and
apparently Shepherd was inspired to create this fictional lamp based
on knee high soda ads that he remembered seeing in
magazine showing two shapely legs up to the knee. Uh.
He remembered these from from being from when he was
a boy, and then for the film production designer Ruben
(11:42):
freed Uh he did the rest and the lamp is
apparently protected by two different trademarks. Uh, they've been mass
produced over the years, and yes you can buy them
today as functional lamps. When this movie came out, you
can only dream of such a thing. I think they
made like just a handful of these for the film,
But now it is a achievable by anyone. Now, correct
(12:02):
me if I'm wrong, But I believe I read somewhere
that the original lamp prop made for the film no
longer exists. That is what I was reading as well. Yeah,
lost to history, like so many great works, like many
of the artworks of the Parthenon, or just think the
great antiquities, They just fade to time. Well, speaking of antiquities,
(12:22):
obviously this 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. By god, if there's
not more to it, will make more to it. Absolutely Well,
let's go to the obvious place to discuss all of
this is to go way back and just talk about
(12:42):
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 goes way back. Obviously
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
(13:02):
some sword, or even a very primitive you know, burning stick. Uh.
You know these wall get it done. But according to
Brian M. Fagan and Garrett G. Fagan um in the
UH in the seventy grade inventions of the ancient world,
um wick burning lamps go back at least as far
as the late Paleolithic period. It's thirty thousands through ten
(13:26):
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. That can be oil, it can
be fat, and sometimes salt was added to oil to
keep it from overheating. Uh. Tons of lamps survived from
the ancient world as these were, of course widespread and
(13:48):
extremely useful pieces of technology. Uh. They illuminate your environment.
They turn uh night time or not. It doesn't turn
nighttime into day, but you know, it provides some of
the illumination that you would have in the day time.
In a nice concentrated form. Yeah. And I think one
of the things that's useful about a lamp or like
a candle. We've talked about this on the core episodes
(14:10):
of the show before, is that they they provide moderate
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 the fuel
source as fast as it possibly can, like it would
with you know, many other things like a you know,
a lit stick or something. Yeah. So the technology here,
(14:32):
the the device itself allows you to make the most
out of your limited fuel. Now real quick, I want
to want to just mention the Fagans quickly. Um Brian Fagan,
of course, Brian and Fagan is is is someone I
sade a lot on the show. Um Starters. That Great
Inventions book is super useful. But he's written a number
of volumes and still has books coming out, including a
(14:54):
new book with Nadia Durrani titled Climate Chaos Lessons on
Survival from Our Aunts. Ester's now the other Fagan, though
Garrett ge Fagan was an Irish American ancient historian best
known for his social histories of Roman bathing and the
spectacles of the Roman arena. And I could be wrong
on this, but I do not believe these two fagans
(15:14):
are related at all. They just happened to work together
in this one chapter, uh, in the seventy grade Inventions
of the Ancient World that deals with illumination technology. Okay,
So lamps go very far back, for into the Paleolithic period, right,
and lamp technology of this basic sword can be found
from throughout Mesopotamia. And the shape of the reservoir varies,
(15:38):
so you can 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 oil or your fat, whatever you're burning
your fuel. Um, then you're making them out of pottery
(15:59):
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 of course. Yeah. The obvious question
is how many of these lamps were shaped like legs? Well,
are you going to tell me? Well, this is a
difficult question to answer Joe. Humans have, of course always
(16:21):
love to craft things in the likeness of animals and
or themselves, and animal legs and feet have always been
a favorite motif. In fact, uh Fagan includes an image
of one in the book. It's a first century CE
brazier from Pompeii with beautiful like animal feet supporting it.
And of course we still see this today with you know,
(16:41):
tubs anything. It's like, it's like the human artistan can't
help it. It's like, why have put feet upon this
device or this prop or this piece of furniture? Uh?
Could I not make those feet like actual feet? Uh?
And I guess you can even say there's a bit
of biomimicry there as well, Like if you're going to
support an object with these like stumpy pods, uh, well,
(17:04):
maybe make them look like a foot. 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 flush 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 or animal leg.
(17:26):
Like with toes and stuff, right, though of course, there
are plenty of explicit depictions out there where it's like
it's 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, um, you know, I'm
sure I missed something interesting, But I've come across two
(17:48):
different examples of uh from from from Greek and Roman
traditions that are that are pretty interesting, particularly when dealing
with the Greek ascos and the Greek alabastron. So. An
ascos is an ancient Greek pottery vessel used to pour
liquids such as oils, so it is not quite a lamp,
(18:10):
though it could have been used to store lamp oil
and could have been used to refill lamps, and many
of these were decorated and decorational, sometimes in the form
of animals. And then an alabastron is similar. It's a
pottery vessel often used for holding oils or perfumes, named
for the carved alabaster containers from Egypt that started the design.
(18:32):
Key and the key thing here is that these are
generally elongated. So um, they are just by their very
nature and their sort of generic form kind of leg shaped.
So you'll find both the of these in various shapes
and forms, and and they're littered throughout museums and collections
around the world. But I was able to find some
(18:53):
images of for starters, there's a leg shaped ascos or
alabasa strown that is or was in the collection of
the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, though I've had trouble
finding out any additional information about it. I might have
to ask anyone out there who has has visited the
Royal Ontario Museum or or can visit it now, to
(19:16):
go in and try and get me more answers on this.
But the image I found is indeed uh an alabastron,
or it appears to be an alabaster. It's hard to
figure out what the scale is here. It is shaped
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 uh and it was yeah, used
(19:37):
to hold oil or something. This gives new meaning to
the the expression that someone who can hold their liquor
has a quote hollow leg. Yes, this is indeed hollow leg.
I wonder if that. Yeah, I didn't even think about
that that that phrase. Um. Now I was able to
find more information on another one. There is a Greek
pottery alabastron in the shape of aggrieved or armored leg
(20:00):
from Corinth or Rhodes circus sixth century b c E.
And it's part or was part I'm not sure of.
The Callos Collection in London included an image of this,
uh for you to look at as well, Joe. So,
so this is less decorative um and but also is
not a naked leg. It has you know, armor on it. Yeah,
(20:22):
this is more like an ancient RoboCop leg. Yeah. And
the Callos Collection website shares the following quote. The Callos
example above is a very rare and fine alabasterone that
takes the shape of a leg protected by a grieve,
dating to the sixth century b c E. It is
an interesting example of a plastic vase from this period.
(20:42):
And note the use of the term plastic here. Uh,
it's not modern plastic obviously. This just means that it's molded,
and this is derived from the Greek verb plastine, meaning
to mold. Quote. The grief is outlined in black slip
and tapers towards the ankle area. The foot emerges beneath,
with carefully insize details for the sandal and toes. Although
(21:04):
primarily used as a container, the form of this alabastron
as a grieved leg implies that it may also have
been used um at or dedicated to a sanctuary as
a votive offering. There is a very similar example of
this rare type in the Museum of Pharmacia in Portugal,
and they include an inventory number, and I was able
(21:26):
to look it up. Its number uh ten two, and
you get kind of a delightful rear view of this
free standing hollow leg. Okay, so it seems like a
bunch of ancient Greeks really, uh, pouring stuff out of legs. Yeah. Now, again,
these are not lamps. They're merely containers that may have
contained lamp oil and may have been used to refill lamps.
(21:48):
But we're not done yet. So, as the Pagan's point out,
the Roman period was a time of of pottery lamp
mass production, and lamps of every design were used for
not only practical reasons you know, provide illumination when you
need it, but also purely esthetic reasons and even religious
and occult reasons, and that brings us to the next example,
the Roman foot lamp. I initially found these on the
(22:12):
Ferraby Keeper blog by Wayne Ferraby, a Brooklyn based writer,
and I have to say this is quite a good,
good looking blog. Looks like a lot of interesting content
on here. Anyone wants to check it out, it's uh
Ferraby Keeper dot WordPress dot com. And uh. 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
(22:33):
lamp and we we don't we have no idea why
they made this. Instead, we have several different surviving lamps,
and uh, I've include images for you to look at. Joe.
I invite anyone out there to either visit that Ferraby
website or to to do Google image searches so you
can pull this up for yourself, because these are These
are wondrous and and really strange to look at. They
(22:54):
are lamps in the shape of of a human foot,
as the name implies, with them with with with essentially
a stopper or lid um at the aperture where the
stump of the disembodied foot would be. And then there's
another aperture at the big toe, and it is from
this that the wick and therefore the flame would emerge. Right,
(23:17):
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. Yes,
if you were holding it. But then, as we'll discuss,
there are some questions regarding exactly what one does with
a foot lamp um. But but I'm looking at it too.
(23:37):
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 the the disembodied hand
of a like a criminals corpse that is then transformed
in this into this magical item that burns candle light
from the fingertips and you know, has strange energies and effects.
(23:57):
Except this is not a hand. This is a foot.
It's not a real glory. It's a ceramic foot and uh,
you know it's it's a it's a foot of pottery
and uh and yeah, there's this flame that is emitting
from either in front of the toe or from the
toe itself. It depends on exactly how how the sculptor
or has has has arranged it. You know. Now, what
(24:21):
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. Yeah, and that is that
is the riddle that that that the rest of us
are left having to solve. So Farraby points out that
(24:45):
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 uh and he he says that
the best explanation that he could find where that these
were sort of literal footlights placed on the floor or ground,
especially at the base of murals, which which is inter
It's still hard to figure out exactly like what that means.
(25:06):
It just you know, pure novelty. It's like, well, it's
it's a foot lamp, or it's a it's a lamp
that goes on the ground where our feet are. Let's
make it in the shape of a foot as well. Well.
To call back to the Simpsons, that kind of reminds
me of why is their corn on the curtains in
the kitchen? I don't know, kitchen food corn? Yeah? Or
imagine um time travel or visiting our current agent finding
(25:28):
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. Um,
so why not make them look like mushrooms? It amuses us,
It just makes sense, yes, But I decided to look
into this a little bit deep deeper, and I looked
in a book titled Light and Darkness and Ancient Greek
(25:50):
myth and Religion from two thousand ten. Uh. This is
numerous authors on it, but is edited by Christophilis and Levaniuk.
And they mentioned that Roman foot lamps were used in
incubation rituals, citing a couple of sources as well that
I tried to follow, but I don't think they actually
have English translations. So incubation rituals or dream incubation rituals
(26:13):
involved 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 in incubation rituals, as described in a
book by Sandra Blakely titled God's Objects and Ritual Practice.
(26:35):
I don't remember what episode it was in the past,
but somehow this came up, but I think we were
talking about ancient rituals for dream incubation, specifically with regard
to the Greek god of healing and medicine, a Sclepius,
where people who were sick and wanted healing would come
to the temple of Asclepius and actually sleep in the
temple in order to like they'd make an offering or
(26:56):
do 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. Yeah, there you go.
That would be That would be dreaming 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. Uh, And this was a NIX paper titled
(27:21):
Material on the Cult of Sarapis by Dorothy Kent Hill.
And um, I'm gonna read a quote from it here,
but first I want to run through a couple of
things here so that everyone will will know what what's
being referred to. So, first of all, Ureus is a
curling snake motif probably best recognized as a symbol of
(27:43):
divine authority on the heads of of of of Egyptian
sarcophagus is. Uh So, I think everyone's probably seen one
of these before, you know, like a like a hooded
cobra or a snake that is emerging from a head
dress or from the head of one of these artistic depictions,
also known as a boss snake. Okay, Yeah. And then
(28:03):
Sarapis 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 a generaldine. Pinch points out, in Egyptian mythology a
di z he was meant to be a combination of
APIs and Osiris and Zeus and Dionysus. Now, Sarapus is
(28:27):
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. Yeah. Yeah,
And it doesn't really look like a hat or anything.
It just looks like there's some kind of like container
(28:48):
or bucket or something attached to his head in in
the form that he's in now, as a as a
piece of statuary or something. Yeah. So at first I
was thinking, well, maybe it's illumination is involved in more
ways than one here, But as it turns out, Sarapus
is often depicted with this um with this thing on
his head called a modius, which is a basket grain measure,
(29:09):
a Greek symbol for the land of the dead. Now,
in this text by by Dorothy Kent hill Um, she
includes two images of bronze lamps in the form of
human feet and that they're very much like we've we've
described thus far, except there there's an extra interesting thing
(29:29):
about them. So, yes, you have the the big toe
or or something just beyond the big toe that is
clearly designed for the wick to go in for flame
to come out of. There is the uh, 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 uh
(29:50):
and and this is something that that she ends up
reflecting on. I should also add at the top of
this this rod that's emerging from the base of the heel,
we see once once more this ureus symbol. We see
the curled snake. Oh yeah, there it is with the
hood flared. So this is what what she had to say. Quote.
(30:10):
Lamps modeled after parts of the body, especially the foot,
were very common in antiquity. Such a lamp might reflect
no more than a whimsical mood of a craftsman, But
the ureus immediately suggest a connection with the giant detached
surappus feed recently studied by dal and Upsen. On these monuments,
the ureus is usually curled somewhere in the neighborhood of
(30:32):
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 sarapis,
which would correspond in position to the busts on some
of the stone feet. We have observed that something was
attached to the cover, and they now suggest a bust
(30:53):
of the god as the most plausible candidate. If the
bust were placed in this position, the ureus would appear
to loom over the head of the god. Wait a minute,
so I feel like I must be understanding this wrong.
But does this mean this would be a foot with
the head on the on the leg of the foot,
and then a snake over the head. Yeah. Yeah, that's
(31:14):
that's what I am. I am to understand here. It's
kind of like, here's a foot, let's put it. Or
or maybe we should think in reverse. I have a
bust of a of a god. I want to display. Um.
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. And and then you know they're able to
(31:36):
work the urus into it as the 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
Sarapis was by no means the only deity honored on
lamps his frequent presence, there is evidence for the probability
(31:58):
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 Sarapis cult. Interestingly enough, she also speculates
she she brings up Psalms one nineteen the world thy
word is a lamp into my feet and a light
(32:20):
into my path um, suggesting that you know, there are
various ways we could interpret a foot shaped lamp um
that in and and uh, and 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, this idea of
(32:41):
of the lamp being used to um to illuminate and
create like a smoky effect before the the image of
a god. Uh, there's something attractive about that. And and
perhaps this idea too, Yeah, that it's like if well,
if I'm gonna 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
(33:01):
something about the compulsion there that is that's fascinating. Like,
it would it be wrong to to to to to
hold up that bust of Sarapis without a foot, without
a human foot at the bottom. Would there be something
kind of blasphemous about that? 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. Yeah,
(33:23):
And this is 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, um, you know, without taking
into account the rest of her as a physical whole
being and of course as a person um. In this
(33:45):
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. Perhaps, Okay, I'm going
with you. Now, Realistically, I think that's about all the
connects this these ancient foot lamps with a Christmas story,
you know, probably no more than to say, making objects,
(34:06):
including lamps it 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 connection,
we could we could wonder that perhaps what has happened
here is the old man has 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,
(34:29):
clearly she serves the god Osiris, who Sarapis, you know,
partially replaces whereas it is introduced to replace, and so
she brings about the lamps destruction in a campaign to
keep Cleveland under the sway of the green skin god. Yeah.
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. Oh, but you know,
(34:53):
we also have to think about the fact that, Okay,
if if the god Sarapis is also still Osiris into
some to some extent, I mean, part of the whole
myth of Osiris is that his body is dismembered. Uh.
You know that's part of the whole Uh. You know
osiris myth cycle. It's about his death and resurrection, and
of course we see the lamp broken into pieces as well,
(35:14):
and an attempt, a failed attempt to resurrect it. That
that's very good, kudo kudos to you. I'm I'm just
I'm just interpreting the work of the gods here, I'm
just a messenger. Yes. Now, on the subject of tenuous
(35:34):
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. I don't remember when, but
(35:55):
it's the poem The Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rainer
Maria Rilka. I'm sure I've read this one at you before. Rob.
Let's see read a little bit and i'll see if
it rings a bell. Okay, well, so this is the
English translation by Stephen Mitchell. I can't read the whole poem.
But but it's worth looking up the archaic torso of Apollo.
It's an excellent poem. But Stephen Mitchell translation begins, we
(36:18):
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 which his gaze, now turned low,
gleams in all its power. Alright, alright. From here, he
goes on to describe this the kind of strange life
(36:39):
flowing through this uh, this dismembered UH sculpture from from
ancient Greece, and it ends with a line that's pretty
famous in 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 Rolka's experience of looking
at this UH fragment of an a a sculpture of
(37:01):
the human form, that he sees it. I think he
sees it in the louver one day and UH 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
kendelabrum in others. But in any case, I like this
(37:22):
because the line in the poems 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 the outline and the form and the contours of
human right, It's that in great sculptures, something actually seems
(37:43):
to be alive inside it, almost perceptibly moving or lighting up.
And I think this is the case for Rilka, even
though the sculpture he's looking at has arrived in the
modern world in a totally degraded form. He mentioned that
it has no head. He calls it a torso. So
I looked it up, and I think the actual artwork
(38:05):
that he's talking about here is usually understood to be
an artifact in the collection of the Louver called the
couross 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 in an archaic Greek art,
known as the corross, and this one was excavated from
(38:26):
the remains of Melitas. 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. Yeah, it
is quite quite striking. Yeah, that did the life like
muscle definition on this torso I agree. Even though it's
(38:47):
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 that light or animating life force
in it, though in a in a muted or half
formed way, which I think is the ambiguity that makes
the sculpture an interesting subject for poetry. It's it's what
(39:08):
we we can't fully see or know about it that
makes it unsettling, and something kind of rings within our
chest when we look at it. And I think that's
the thing also that leads real good to say, you
must change your life. But but this leads me to
to the fuller observation I wanted to make connecting the
leg lamp to art history, which is that I think
(39:28):
you could make a pretty good case that when it
comes to sculpture of the human form, the legs are
the life. Now, why would I say that? Here's the
case I want to make. Uh. One thing that's interesting
about this sculpture, the coross of Melita's, is that it
seems to come from a period of transition in in
(39:50):
ancient Greek art, when Greek art was moving from what
modern art historians called the Archaic period into what we
now call the Classical period. And this train position was
sometime in the fifth century BC 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
(40:13):
there's gonna be one here 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. Uh.
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
(40:34):
very straight upright posture. It is looking straight forward at
you with very square shoulders, and the head is pointed
straight towards you. So it's 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. Yeah.
It it has a very two dimensional kind of appearance
(40:56):
to it. It's forward facing. Um, it does not even
though it is itself a three dimensional object, it is
not really like owning that three dimensional space, 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.
(41:19):
So when you look at the second kind, the sculptures
that are typical of the classical style beginning in the
fifth century b c E. A good example of this,
if you want to look it up at home. One
is called the dory f Os or the spear Bearer
by the ancient Greek sculptor Polyclitus p O L y
K L E I t O S. And these classical
(41:41):
ones are very different in that they have I would say,
this powerful lifelike quality that we see developing in this period.
It looks it looks like there is something alive and
even moving inside this this totally still hunk of dead rock. Yeah.
And I think if you've ever visited a sculpture garden,
(42:01):
gotten over and or got to do to see some
of these classical works reproductions of the 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,
uh and frozen. You know that you look at it
at one of these statues and it looks as if
it had just moved and it wasn't even necessarily posing
for the artist, you know. Yeah, that's a great comparison.
(42:24):
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 and
and this is what was happening while say, you know,
the discus thrower was was winding up to throw, or
somebody was leaning back to regard someone who had just
entered the room. Does that make sense? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
(42:44):
Like the spear bear here, he's kind of as the
post like, oh are you sculpting me? I'm sorry, I
was just standing here naked. 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
(43:05):
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 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 I
am to understand that one of the most significant developments
here is a change in the approach to the depictions
(43:27):
of legs, hips, and posture, which would come to be
known by later artists and scholars as contra posto. So
I was trying to find a scinct 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,
(43:50):
so that the opposite hip rises to produce a relaxed
curve in the body. Now, I hope when I say
that you can kind of picture lies 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 a shift, a corresponding
(44:13):
shift in the position of the hips, and then also
causes a kind of twist in the spine where it
looks like the character has been caught in the middle
of turning or leaning or or relaxing or something. And
the result is this, this powerful striking quality of life
caught in the middle of motion. Yeah. Absolutely. And again
(44:37):
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 coross the the nude male figure would
usually have a rigid, straight posture with weight equally distributed
on both legs. Uh. And for again, for some reason,
while I think that is artistically beautiful, it doesn't look
(44:59):
a lie. If 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 peel back this opening in the shroud
that separates animate from inanimate. You you shift the weight
across the legs and the twist the hips in the
spine accordingly, and something just happens. Stone can become flesh,
(45:22):
and sculpture can sort of it can start to have
that glow, that unsettling quality of movement or soul. I
don't think I'd really thought about this much before, but yeah, absolutely,
you look at you look at these, uh these statues,
the ones that are the most lifelike. Can you do
see this kind of Uh, it's it's in the legs.
Often it's it's how though the weight is distributed. I
(45:43):
mean really one of the most iconic examples of this
would probably be Michaelangelo's David Um. Oh yeah, where if
you you look look at the legs and it's exactly
what we're talking about here. Well, yes, I think actually,
uh again, I admit I don't know a ton about
art history, but I think that this is something that
was kind anxiously sort of noticed and then recreated on
purpose by Renaissance artists looking back to classical art, Like
(46:07):
they they sort of noticed this about the legs and
the posture and said like, oh, hey, you know, let's
do like that and even kicking up, kicking 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
(46:28):
way and then the upper bodies kind of kind of
shifting back even in the other direction. Yeah, yeah, I'm
looking at a photo of it right now, and yeah, absolutely,
So there's my case. The legs are the life. It
makes me want to go and uh and and visit
a museum with a number of sculptures. I go to
the mat and started looking at the legs more because
often there's the legs are not the the the obvious
(46:52):
focal point of the statue. Instead, you're drawn to um
what you're drawn to, like the chest or you're 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 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
(47:13):
legs and not think about these things. But but now
that it's been pointed out to me like I I
want to I want to go. I want to look
at the legs of some statues and see see to
what extent there uh there, you know their life is
brought about by this effect. Yeah, totally. Once you notice it,
you kind of can't unsee it. Yeah. So to conclude,
I guess you must change your life. And uh, and
(47:36):
how would you connect all of this to a Christmas
story and the major reward? Well, I told you it
was gonna be tenuous, but okay, you know leg sculpture, right, Uh,
that's what I got, all right, I know. 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 of
(47:56):
sculpture and um and 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 uh secrets that
are hidden within the film A Christmas Story? Are you
going to fall asleep with it playing? To incubate a
dream that? Yeah, bring you a gift from the gods.
(48:17):
It is a film with multiple like dream and vision
sequences in it, so be kind of perfect for that.
All right, Like we said this, 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. Uh, we're gonna We're gonna be excited.
I'm excited to see what kind of topics we end
(48:39):
up discussing. We have a whole list of potential topics.
Stuff we've thought up, stuff that that you have submitted
to us, so we have we have plenty, plenty of
material to draw from and we're looking forward to it. Uh.
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
(49:02):
on Wednesdays, and on Fridays, we do Weird How Cinema.
That's our time to set aside most practical and serious
concerns and just talk about a strange film which thanks
as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
topic for the future, just to say hello. You can
email us at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind
(49:25):
dot com Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you're listening to your favorite shows. No, no, not
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of My
Heart Radio. 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
(00:25):
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 and maybe we'll do that
next year. We and then we were talking about, well,
let's let's we've done previous episode where we talked about
holiday inventions, Christmas inventions and so forth, maybe we could
(00:46):
do another one of those, and um uh, you know,
we started looking into some topics and we wound up
focusing entirely upon the holiday film A Christmas Story, well
not just on the movie, on the movie's most sacred
prop that's right. And I mean for a little bit
they we were thinking, well, look at all the things
that are to talk about in a Christmas Story. We
(01:06):
could talk about soap poisoning, freezing your tongue to a flagpole,
the dangerous posed by BB guns, how furnaces work, I
gotta say I, 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 not not the most
fun way to head into the holidays. Well, I mean
(01:27):
it's pretty dark in the Christmas story. You know there
he is, he's a 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. 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, right, So,
so so poisoning is a thing. Yes, don't don't swallow soap.
(01:50):
But like I said, we're not We're not focusing on
the soap here. We're talking. We're gonna be talking about um,
the Old Man's Major Award. We're gonna be talking about
that leg amp now, Rob, I don't know if you've
had this experience, but I can say most of my
exposure to to a Christmas story the movie comes in
the form of a sort of running, droning background noise
(02:14):
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 cable TV station that 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
(02:35):
the house, so that that would be an interesting thing
to study on its own. But I will pretty frequently
have the experience of seeing one 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 and a big crate arrives, and it was we
get the lines about it being FREGGI lay and he
(02:59):
digs through the story and then pulls out this glorious
leg lamp. Yeah, I have I have a similar experience
with a Christmas story. Um, it would there were so
there are. There have been some dedicated viewings of it,
uh you know, throughout the years. Um, but most of
it it's just it's on TV during Christmas, and therefore
you watch it or you watch part of it, And
(03:19):
so when you actually sat down and watch it in
its entirety. There will be these scenes that you remember
really vividly, and then there are scenes that you didn't
realize we're part of the movie at all. That sort
of thing. I should probably inform everyone what this movie has.
A number of you are probably familiar with it's some
of you were not. Uh. This was a Nintree holiday
film that was based on the writings of GANE Shepherd,
(03:41):
particularly on the book In God We Trust All Others
Pay Cash. It's one boy's account of childhood holiday dreams,
desires and fears. It's a fun movie with with some
solid laughs in it, some some 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 a proto Simpsons, you know,
(04:03):
like it's it's 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 into the
satire and more into like pop cultural references, you know
what I'm talking about, Like, you can't you imagine an
episode where Homer gets some sort of obnoxious award that
(04:23):
he wants to display at the front of the house.
Marge doesn't like it, and uh and maybe something terrible
ends up happening to the award and he he blames her. Yeah,
and now that you say that, I can't imagine that
being a plotline, Okay, Yeah, I mean Ralphie is essentially
a good boy, uh, whereas Bart is a bad boy.
So uh, you know we have to take that into
account as well. Yeah, Bart would not dream of getting
(04:45):
a BB gun for Christmas. He would just go and
I don't know, shoplift to be begun or something. Yeah,
oh well, I mean I hope he learned his lesson
from that Christmas episodes of The Simpsons where he did shoplift. Remember,
Oh that's right, Oh I remember that. One's actually very
sad because his mother is very disappointed in him. And yeah, strings, Yeah,
it's it's a solid episode like that sort of Simpsons
(05:06):
episode reminds me a lot of of of this, though
in a weird way. That Simpsons episode is more serious
than Christmas story is. Yeah, what is it he steals?
It's like a video game. It's like the bone Storm
for whatever. 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. Yeah,
(05:29):
so we're not gonna give a Christmas story the full
weird how 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
nine four, which I have never seen, but it had
(05:50):
a It had a great cast, including Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder,
Kira Dulia from two thousand and one of Space Odyssey,
and of course weird How Cinema favorite John Saxon. Everybody
at home do a push up for John Saxon right now.
He also directed Death Dream Murder by Decree, which is
a Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Rippers story, two Porky's movies,
(06:13):
two Baby Geniuses movies, Porky's and Baby Geniuses. Yeah, yeah,
but still there's some good stuff in there. He he
passed away in two thousand seven, but I think a
Christmas story is likely to remain his his legacy, Like
this is the one that's gonna really stick. So I
guess Black Christmas also has its place in film history
as well. Sure, and uh, as far as the cast
(06:36):
has has a wonderful cast Christmas story, but the two
main characters worth pointing out for our purposes. The old
Man has played played by the always terrific Darren McGavin.
This is the guy who played Coleshack, the night Stalker
I think, who was also in the Arnold Schwartzenegger film
Raw Deal Okay. And the mom is played by Melinda Dillon,
(06:56):
who was in Harry and the Henderson's as well as
Spontaneous Come Austin, which is one of the films that
we covered on Weird House Cinema this year. Did she
play like the creepy scientist? She am? I right about that.
It's really hard to remember. Everybody else just kind of
uh grows dim against the burning fire. That is uh,
(07:17):
that is a Dora's performance in that. Brad Dorriff is
just so good. Yeah, I just double checked she she's
the German scientist. I think at some point Brad Doroff
goes to her house and maybe she catches on fire.
And I don't know, probably that's probably's generally how it goes. Um.
But I don't want to sell her short, because Melinda
Dillon is a great actor as well. She was she
was in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Absence
(07:39):
of Malice in that she was nominated for two Academy
Awards and one Tony Award. 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? Well, it is, as we've been saying,
a major award. It is something he has won for
(08:02):
his achievements, Uh, in a game. And what is the game, Joe, Well,
I think it's like it's like a trivia contest, maybe
done through the mail from a newspaper. H though I
think it's worth saying that, Uh, he actually does not
supply most of the answers on the contest. He has
to ask Melinda Dillon and she actually knows the answers.
(08:23):
Then he fills them in and it sends it off
or something, and apparently wins this trivia contest by answering
questions like what is the name of the Lone Rangers
and nephews 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. Yeah,
(08:44):
so it's 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 drafts or something. And um, as we as
we learned in the it's it's an item of much
controversy in the household. And um, and it's clear that
(09:05):
Mom does not like this lamp and certainly does not
think it belongs at the front of the house where
neighbors can see it. Uh, you know, it's already. Uh,
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. Now,
(09:26):
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 that, there's no connection there,
like why would this be what you get? Uh? And
it's just not explained. Yeah, I mean it doesn't even
say anything, um, you know on the lamp. It's not
(09:48):
like the award is shaped like a lamp. No, this
is just a lamp that shaped like a leg. Um.
But but he is, he is fond of it. He
thinks it is wonderful. She does not. It becomes a uh,
it becomes an a visual 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 we we we we suspect that it was not.
(10:11):
That this is something that, once broken, can never be repaired. 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 in thinking that this lamp is rather tacky. Yeah. Yeah,
(10:36):
but he didn't want to admit it earlier, right, So
this is this lamp. This is a a hilarious part
of the film. This is based on the chapter My
Old Man and the Sithest Special Award that heralded the
birth of pop art from the novel in God We
Trust all Others pay cash. But it's really taken on
a life of its own. Since then, Um, you can
(10:59):
now buy uh, like 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
all the lamp like, the lamp has become like this, um,
this weird symbol all its own. I was. I was
(11:19):
reading about it on read Craiger's blog Inventor's Digest, and
apparently Shepherd was inspired to create this fictional lamp based
on knee high soda ads that he remembered seeing in
magazine showing two shapely legs up to the knee. Uh.
He remembered these from from being from when he was
a boy, and then for the film production designer Ruben
(11:42):
freed Uh he did the rest and the lamp is
apparently protected by two different trademarks. Uh, they've been mass
produced over the years, and yes you can buy them
today as functional lamps. When this movie came out, you
can only dream of such a thing. I think they
made like just a handful of these for the film,
But now it is a achievable by anyone. Now, correct
(12:02):
me if I'm wrong, But I believe I read somewhere
that the original lamp prop made for the film no
longer exists. That is what I was reading as well. Yeah,
lost to history, like so many great works, like many
of the artworks of the Parthenon, or just think the
great antiquities, They just fade to time. Well, speaking of antiquities,
(12:22):
obviously this 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. By god, if there's
not more to it, will make more to it. Absolutely Well,
let's go to the obvious place to discuss all of
this is to go way back and just talk about
(12:42):
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 goes way back. Obviously
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
(13:02):
some sword, or even a very primitive you know, burning stick. Uh.
You know these wall get it done. But according to
Brian M. Fagan and Garrett G. Fagan um in the
UH in the seventy grade inventions of the ancient world,
um wick burning lamps go back at least as far
as the late Paleolithic period. It's thirty thousands through ten
(13:26):
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. That can be oil, it can
be fat, and sometimes salt was added to oil to
keep it from overheating. Uh. Tons of lamps survived from
the ancient world as these were, of course widespread and
(13:48):
extremely useful pieces of technology. Uh. They illuminate your environment.
They turn uh night time or not. It doesn't turn
nighttime into day, but you know, it provides some of
the illumination that you would have in the day time.
In a nice concentrated form. Yeah. And I think one
of the things that's useful about a lamp or like
a candle. We've talked about this on the core episodes
(14:10):
of the show before, is that they they provide moderate
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 the fuel
source as fast as it possibly can, like it would
with you know, many other things like a you know,
a lit stick or something. Yeah. So the technology here,
(14:32):
the the device itself allows you to make the most
out of your limited fuel. Now real quick, I want
to want to just mention the Fagans quickly. Um Brian Fagan,
of course, Brian and Fagan is is is someone I
sade a lot on the show. Um Starters. That Great
Inventions book is super useful. But he's written a number
of volumes and still has books coming out, including a
(14:54):
new book with Nadia Durrani titled Climate Chaos Lessons on
Survival from Our Aunts. Ester's now the other Fagan, though
Garrett ge Fagan was an Irish American ancient historian best
known for his social histories of Roman bathing and the
spectacles of the Roman arena. And I could be wrong
on this, but I do not believe these two fagans
(15:14):
are related at all. They just happened to work together
in this one chapter, uh, in the seventy grade Inventions
of the Ancient World that deals with illumination technology. Okay,
So lamps go very far back, for into the Paleolithic period, right,
and lamp technology of this basic sword can be found
from throughout Mesopotamia. And the shape of the reservoir varies,
(15:38):
so you can 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 oil or your fat, whatever you're burning
your fuel. Um, then you're making them out of pottery
(15:59):
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 of course. Yeah. The obvious question
is how many of these lamps were shaped like legs? Well,
are you going to tell me? Well, this is a
difficult question to answer Joe. Humans have, of course always
(16:21):
love to craft things in the likeness of animals and
or themselves, and animal legs and feet have always been
a favorite motif. In fact, uh Fagan includes an image
of one in the book. It's a first century CE
brazier from Pompeii with beautiful like animal feet supporting it.
And of course we still see this today with you know,
(16:41):
tubs anything. It's like, it's like the human artistan can't
help it. It's like, why have put feet upon this
device or this prop or this piece of furniture? Uh?
Could I not make those feet like actual feet? Uh?
And I guess you can even say there's a bit
of biomimicry there as well, Like if you're going to
support an object with these like stumpy pods, uh, well,
(17:04):
maybe make them look like a foot. 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 flush 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 or animal leg.
(17:26):
Like with toes and stuff, right, though of course, there
are plenty of explicit depictions out there where it's like
it's 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, um, you know, I'm
sure I missed something interesting, But I've come across two
(17:48):
different examples of uh from from from Greek and Roman
traditions that are that are pretty interesting, particularly when dealing
with the Greek ascos and the Greek alabastron. So. An
ascos is an ancient Greek pottery vessel used to pour
liquids such as oils, so it is not quite a lamp,
(18:10):
though it could have been used to store lamp oil
and could have been used to refill lamps, and many
of these were decorated and decorational, sometimes in the form
of animals. And then an alabastron is similar. It's a
pottery vessel often used for holding oils or perfumes, named
for the carved alabaster containers from Egypt that started the design.
(18:32):
Key and the key thing here is that these are
generally elongated. So um, they are just by their very
nature and their sort of generic form kind of leg shaped.
So you'll find both the of these in various shapes
and forms, and and they're littered throughout museums and collections
around the world. But I was able to find some
(18:53):
images of for starters, there's a leg shaped ascos or
alabasa strown that is or was in the collection of
the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, though I've had trouble
finding out any additional information about it. I might have
to ask anyone out there who has has visited the
Royal Ontario Museum or or can visit it now, to
(19:16):
go in and try and get me more answers on this.
But the image I found is indeed uh an alabastron,
or it appears to be an alabaster. It's hard to
figure out what the scale is here. It is shaped
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 uh and it was yeah, used
(19:37):
to hold oil or something. This gives new meaning to
the the expression that someone who can hold their liquor
has a quote hollow leg. Yes, this is indeed hollow leg.
I wonder if that. Yeah, I didn't even think about
that that that phrase. Um. Now I was able to
find more information on another one. There is a Greek
pottery alabastron in the shape of aggrieved or armored leg
(20:00):
from Corinth or Rhodes circus sixth century b c E.
And it's part or was part I'm not sure of.
The Callos Collection in London included an image of this,
uh for you to look at as well, Joe. So,
so this is less decorative um and but also is
not a naked leg. It has you know, armor on it. Yeah,
(20:22):
this is more like an ancient RoboCop leg. Yeah. And
the Callos Collection website shares the following quote. The Callos
example above is a very rare and fine alabasterone that
takes the shape of a leg protected by a grieve,
dating to the sixth century b c E. It is
an interesting example of a plastic vase from this period.
(20:42):
And note the use of the term plastic here. Uh,
it's not modern plastic obviously. This just means that it's molded,
and this is derived from the Greek verb plastine, meaning
to mold. Quote. The grief is outlined in black slip
and tapers towards the ankle area. The foot emerges beneath,
with carefully insize details for the sandal and toes. Although
(21:04):
primarily used as a container, the form of this alabastron
as a grieved leg implies that it may also have
been used um at or dedicated to a sanctuary as
a votive offering. There is a very similar example of
this rare type in the Museum of Pharmacia in Portugal,
and they include an inventory number, and I was able
(21:26):
to look it up. Its number uh ten two, and
you get kind of a delightful rear view of this
free standing hollow leg. Okay, so it seems like a
bunch of ancient Greeks really, uh, pouring stuff out of legs. Yeah. Now, again,
these are not lamps. They're merely containers that may have
contained lamp oil and may have been used to refill lamps.
(21:48):
But we're not done yet. So, as the Pagan's point out,
the Roman period was a time of of pottery lamp
mass production, and lamps of every design were used for
not only practical reasons you know, provide illumination when you
need it, but also purely esthetic reasons and even religious
and occult reasons, and that brings us to the next example,
the Roman foot lamp. I initially found these on the
(22:12):
Ferraby Keeper blog by Wayne Ferraby, a Brooklyn based writer,
and I have to say this is quite a good,
good looking blog. Looks like a lot of interesting content
on here. Anyone wants to check it out, it's uh
Ferraby Keeper dot WordPress dot com. And uh. 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
(22:33):
lamp and we we don't we have no idea why
they made this. Instead, we have several different surviving lamps,
and uh, I've include images for you to look at. Joe.
I invite anyone out there to either visit that Ferraby
website or to to do Google image searches so you
can pull this up for yourself, because these are These
are wondrous and and really strange to look at. They
(22:54):
are lamps in the shape of of a human foot,
as the name implies, with them with with with essentially
a stopper or lid um at the aperture where the
stump of the disembodied foot would be. And then there's
another aperture at the big toe, and it is from
this that the wick and therefore the flame would emerge. Right,
(23:17):
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. Yes,
if you were holding it. But then, as we'll discuss,
there are some questions regarding exactly what one does with
a foot lamp um. But but I'm looking at it too.
(23:37):
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 the the disembodied hand
of a like a criminals corpse that is then transformed
in this into this magical item that burns candle light
from the fingertips and you know, has strange energies and effects.
(23:57):
Except this is not a hand. This is a foot.
It's not a real glory. It's a ceramic foot and uh,
you know it's it's a it's a foot of pottery
and uh and yeah, there's this flame that is emitting
from either in front of the toe or from the
toe itself. It depends on exactly how how the sculptor
or has has has arranged it. You know. Now, what
(24:21):
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. Yeah, and that is that
is the riddle that that that the rest of us
are left having to solve. So Farraby points out that
(24:45):
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 uh and he he says that
the best explanation that he could find where that these
were sort of literal footlights placed on the floor or ground,
especially at the base of murals, which which is inter
It's still hard to figure out exactly like what that means.
(25:06):
It just you know, pure novelty. It's like, well, it's
it's a foot lamp, or it's a it's a lamp
that goes on the ground where our feet are. Let's
make it in the shape of a foot as well. Well.
To call back to the Simpsons, that kind of reminds
me of why is their corn on the curtains in
the kitchen? I don't know, kitchen food corn? Yeah? Or
imagine um time travel or visiting our current agent finding
(25:28):
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. Um,
so why not make them look like mushrooms? It amuses us,
It just makes sense, yes, But I decided to look
into this a little bit deep deeper, and I looked
in a book titled Light and Darkness and Ancient Greek
(25:50):
myth and Religion from two thousand ten. Uh. This is
numerous authors on it, but is edited by Christophilis and Levaniuk.
And they mentioned that Roman foot lamps were used in
incubation rituals, citing a couple of sources as well that
I tried to follow, but I don't think they actually
have English translations. So incubation rituals or dream incubation rituals
(26:13):
involved 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 in incubation rituals, as described in a
book by Sandra Blakely titled God's Objects and Ritual Practice.
(26:35):
I don't remember what episode it was in the past,
but somehow this came up, but I think we were
talking about ancient rituals for dream incubation, specifically with regard
to the Greek god of healing and medicine, a Sclepius,
where people who were sick and wanted healing would come
to the temple of Asclepius and actually sleep in the
temple in order to like they'd make an offering or
(26:56):
do 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. Yeah, there you go.
That would be That would be dreaming 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. Uh, And this was a NIX paper titled
(27:21):
Material on the Cult of Sarapis by Dorothy Kent Hill.
And um, I'm gonna read a quote from it here,
but first I want to run through a couple of
things here so that everyone will will know what what's
being referred to. So, first of all, Ureus is a
curling snake motif probably best recognized as a symbol of
(27:43):
divine authority on the heads of of of of Egyptian
sarcophagus is. Uh So, I think everyone's probably seen one
of these before, you know, like a like a hooded
cobra or a snake that is emerging from a head
dress or from the head of one of these artistic depictions,
also known as a boss snake. Okay, Yeah. And then
(28:03):
Sarapis 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 a generaldine. Pinch points out, in Egyptian mythology a
di z he was meant to be a combination of
APIs and Osiris and Zeus and Dionysus. Now, Sarapus is
(28:27):
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. Yeah. Yeah,
And it doesn't really look like a hat or anything.
It just looks like there's some kind of like container
(28:48):
or bucket or something attached to his head in in
the form that he's in now, as a as a
piece of statuary or something. Yeah. So at first I
was thinking, well, maybe it's illumination is involved in more
ways than one here, But as it turns out, Sarapus
is often depicted with this um with this thing on
his head called a modius, which is a basket grain measure,
(29:09):
a Greek symbol for the land of the dead. Now,
in this text by by Dorothy Kent hill Um, she
includes two images of bronze lamps in the form of
human feet and that they're very much like we've we've
described thus far, except there there's an extra interesting thing
(29:29):
about them. So, yes, you have the the big toe
or or something just beyond the big toe that is
clearly designed for the wick to go in for flame
to come out of. There is the uh, 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 uh
(29:50):
and and this is something that that she ends up
reflecting on. I should also add at the top of
this this rod that's emerging from the base of the heel,
we see once once more this ureus symbol. We see
the curled snake. Oh yeah, there it is with the
hood flared. So this is what what she had to say. Quote.
(30:10):
Lamps modeled after parts of the body, especially the foot,
were very common in antiquity. Such a lamp might reflect
no more than a whimsical mood of a craftsman, But
the ureus immediately suggest a connection with the giant detached
surappus feed recently studied by dal and Upsen. On these monuments,
the ureus is usually curled somewhere in the neighborhood of
(30:32):
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 sarapis,
which would correspond in position to the busts on some
of the stone feet. We have observed that something was
attached to the cover, and they now suggest a bust
(30:53):
of the god as the most plausible candidate. If the
bust were placed in this position, the ureus would appear
to loom over the head of the god. Wait a minute,
so I feel like I must be understanding this wrong.
But does this mean this would be a foot with
the head on the on the leg of the foot,
and then a snake over the head. Yeah. Yeah, that's
(31:14):
that's what I am. I am to understand here. It's
kind of like, here's a foot, let's put it. Or
or maybe we should think in reverse. I have a
bust of a of a god. I want to display. Um.
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. And and then you know they're able to
(31:36):
work the urus into it as the 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
Sarapis was by no means the only deity honored on
lamps his frequent presence, there is evidence for the probability
(31:58):
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 Sarapis cult. Interestingly enough, she also speculates
she she brings up Psalms one nineteen the world thy
word is a lamp into my feet and a light
(32:20):
into my path um, suggesting that you know, there are
various ways we could interpret a foot shaped lamp um
that in and and uh, and 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, this idea of
(32:41):
of the lamp being used to um to illuminate and
create like a smoky effect before the the image of
a god. Uh, there's something attractive about that. And and
perhaps this idea too, Yeah, that it's like if well,
if I'm gonna 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
(33:01):
something about the compulsion there that is that's fascinating. Like,
it would it be wrong to to to to to
hold up that bust of Sarapis without a foot, without
a human foot at the bottom. Would there be something
kind of blasphemous about that? 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. Yeah,
(33:23):
And this is 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, um, you know, without taking
into account the rest of her as a physical whole
being and of course as a person um. In this
(33:45):
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. Perhaps, Okay, I'm going
with you. Now, Realistically, I think that's about all the
connects this these ancient foot lamps with a Christmas story,
you know, probably no more than to say, making objects,
(34:06):
including lamps it 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 connection,
we could we could wonder that perhaps what has happened
here is the old man has 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,
(34:29):
clearly she serves the god Osiris, who Sarapis, you know,
partially replaces whereas it is introduced to replace, and so
she brings about the lamps destruction in a campaign to
keep Cleveland under the sway of the green skin god. Yeah.
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. Oh, but you know,
(34:53):
we also have to think about the fact that, Okay,
if if the god Sarapis is also still Osiris into
some to some extent, I mean, part of the whole
myth of Osiris is that his body is dismembered. Uh.
You know that's part of the whole Uh. You know
osiris myth cycle. It's about his death and resurrection, and
of course we see the lamp broken into pieces as well,
(35:14):
and an attempt, a failed attempt to resurrect it. That
that's very good, kudo kudos to you. I'm I'm just
I'm just interpreting the work of the gods here, I'm
just a messenger. Yes. Now, on the subject of tenuous
(35:34):
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. I don't remember when, but
(35:55):
it's the poem The Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rainer
Maria Rilka. I'm sure I've read this one at you before. Rob.
Let's see read a little bit and i'll see if
it rings a bell. Okay, well, so this is the
English translation by Stephen Mitchell. I can't read the whole poem.
But but it's worth looking up the archaic torso of Apollo.
It's an excellent poem. But Stephen Mitchell translation begins, we
(36:18):
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 which his gaze, now turned low,
gleams in all its power. Alright, alright. From here, he
goes on to describe this the kind of strange life
(36:39):
flowing through this uh, this dismembered UH sculpture from from
ancient Greece, and it ends with a line that's pretty
famous in 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 Rolka's experience of looking
at this UH fragment of an a a sculpture of
(37:01):
the human form, that he sees it. I think he
sees it in the louver one day and UH 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
kendelabrum in others. But in any case, I like this
(37:22):
because the line in the poems 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 the outline and the form and the contours of
human right, It's that in great sculptures, something actually seems
(37:43):
to be alive inside it, almost perceptibly moving or lighting up.
And I think this is the case for Rilka, even
though the sculpture he's looking at has arrived in the
modern world in a totally degraded form. He mentioned that
it has no head. He calls it a torso. So
I looked it up, and I think the actual artwork
(38:05):
that he's talking about here is usually understood to be
an artifact in the collection of the Louver called the
couross 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 in an archaic Greek art,
known as the corross, and this one was excavated from
(38:26):
the remains of Melitas. 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. Yeah, it
is quite quite striking. Yeah, that did the life like
muscle definition on this torso I agree. Even though it's
(38:47):
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 that light or animating life force
in it, though in a in a muted or half
formed way, which I think is the ambiguity that makes
the sculpture an interesting subject for poetry. It's it's what
(39:08):
we we can't fully see or know about it that
makes it unsettling, and something kind of rings within our
chest when we look at it. And I think that's
the thing also that leads real good to say, you
must change your life. But but this leads me to
to the fuller observation I wanted to make connecting the
leg lamp to art history, which is that I think
(39:28):
you could make a pretty good case that when it
comes to sculpture of the human form, the legs are
the life. Now, why would I say that? Here's the
case I want to make. Uh. One thing that's interesting
about this sculpture, the coross of Melita's, is that it
seems to come from a period of transition in in
(39:50):
ancient Greek art, when Greek art was moving from what
modern art historians called the Archaic period into what we
now call the Classical period. And this train position was
sometime in the fifth century BC 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
(40:13):
there's gonna be one here 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. Uh.
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
(40:34):
very straight upright posture. It is looking straight forward at
you with very square shoulders, and the head is pointed
straight towards you. So it's 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. Yeah.
It it has a very two dimensional kind of appearance
(40:56):
to it. It's forward facing. Um, it does not even
though it is itself a three dimensional object, it is
not really like owning that three dimensional space, 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.
(41:19):
So when you look at the second kind, the sculptures
that are typical of the classical style beginning in the
fifth century b c E. A good example of this,
if you want to look it up at home. One
is called the dory f Os or the spear Bearer
by the ancient Greek sculptor Polyclitus p O L y
K L E I t O S. And these classical
(41:41):
ones are very different in that they have I would say,
this powerful lifelike quality that we see developing in this period.
It looks it looks like there is something alive and
even moving inside this this totally still hunk of dead rock. Yeah.
And I think if you've ever visited a sculpture garden,
(42:01):
gotten over and or got to do to see some
of these classical works reproductions of the 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,
uh and frozen. You know that you look at it
at one of these statues and it looks as if
it had just moved and it wasn't even necessarily posing
for the artist, you know. Yeah, that's a great comparison.
(42:24):
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 and
and this is what was happening while say, you know,
the discus thrower was was winding up to throw, or
somebody was leaning back to regard someone who had just
entered the room. Does that make sense? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
(42:44):
Like the spear bear here, he's kind of as the
post like, oh are you sculpting me? I'm sorry, I
was just standing here naked. 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
(43:05):
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 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 I
am to understand that one of the most significant developments
here is a change in the approach to the depictions
(43:27):
of legs, hips, and posture, which would come to be
known by later artists and scholars as contra posto. So
I was trying to find a scinct 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,
(43:50):
so that the opposite hip rises to produce a relaxed
curve in the body. Now, I hope when I say
that you can kind of picture lies 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 a shift, a corresponding
(44:13):
shift in the position of the hips, and then also
causes a kind of twist in the spine where it
looks like the character has been caught in the middle
of turning or leaning or or relaxing or something. And
the result is this, this powerful striking quality of life
caught in the middle of motion. Yeah. Absolutely. And again
(44:37):
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 coross the the nude male figure would
usually have a rigid, straight posture with weight equally distributed
on both legs. Uh. And for again, for some reason,
while I think that is artistically beautiful, it doesn't look
(44:59):
a lie. If 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 peel back this opening in the shroud
that separates animate from inanimate. You you shift the weight
across the legs and the twist the hips in the
spine accordingly, and something just happens. Stone can become flesh,
(45:22):
and sculpture can sort of it can start to have
that glow, that unsettling quality of movement or soul. I
don't think I'd really thought about this much before, but yeah, absolutely,
you look at you look at these, uh these statues,
the ones that are the most lifelike. Can you do
see this kind of Uh, it's it's in the legs.
Often it's it's how though the weight is distributed. I
(45:43):
mean really one of the most iconic examples of this
would probably be Michaelangelo's David Um. Oh yeah, where if
you you look look at the legs and it's exactly
what we're talking about here. Well, yes, I think actually,
uh again, I admit I don't know a ton about
art history, but I think that this is something that
was kind anxiously sort of noticed and then recreated on
purpose by Renaissance artists looking back to classical art, Like
(46:07):
they they sort of noticed this about the legs and
the posture and said like, oh, hey, you know, let's
do like that and even kicking up, kicking 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
(46:28):
way and then the upper bodies kind of kind of
shifting back even in the other direction. Yeah, yeah, I'm
looking at a photo of it right now, and yeah, absolutely,
So there's my case. The legs are the life. It
makes me want to go and uh and and visit
a museum with a number of sculptures. I go to
the mat and started looking at the legs more because
often there's the legs are not the the the obvious
(46:52):
focal point of the statue. Instead, you're drawn to um
what you're drawn to, like the chest or you're 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 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
(47:13):
legs and not think about these things. But but now
that it's been pointed out to me like I I
want to I want to go. I want to look
at the legs of some statues and see see to
what extent there uh there, you know their life is
brought about by this effect. Yeah, totally. Once you notice it,
you kind of can't unsee it. Yeah. So to conclude,
I guess you must change your life. And uh, and
(47:36):
how would you connect all of this to a Christmas
story and the major reward? Well, I told you it
was gonna be tenuous, but okay, you know leg sculpture, right, Uh,
that's what I got, all right, I know. 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 of
(47:56):
sculpture and um and 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 uh secrets that
are hidden within the film A Christmas Story? Are you
going to fall asleep with it playing? To incubate a
dream that? Yeah, bring you a gift from the gods.
(48:17):
It is a film with multiple like dream and vision
sequences in it, so be kind of perfect for that.
All right, Like we said this, 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. Uh, we're gonna We're gonna be excited.
I'm excited to see what kind of topics we end
(48:39):
up discussing. We have a whole list of potential topics.
Stuff we've thought up, stuff that that you have submitted
to us, so we have we have plenty, plenty of
material to draw from and we're looking forward to it. Uh.
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
(49:02):
on Wednesdays, and on Fridays, we do Weird How Cinema.
That's our time to set aside most practical and serious
concerns and just talk about a strange film which thanks
as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
topic for the future, just to say hello. You can
email us at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind
(49:25):
dot com Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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