From the Vault: Hellraiser

Robert and Joe have such sights to show you in this movie episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Join them as they discuss Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser” and the questions it raises about monastic traditions, flagellation, puzzle boxes and the science of pain. (Originally published 10/24/2019)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Time to go into the vault for a classic episode
of the show. This one originally aired on October nineteen
and it was about hell Raiser. Yeah, this one is
a lot of fun. It's seasonally appropriate and as I remember, Uh,
they always excellent. Any Reese uh engages in a little

(00:27):
cold opening for us here excellent. Couldn't ask for more?
What city is this? One of the four inquired. Frank
had difficulty guessing the speaker's gender with any certainty. Its clothes,
some of which were sown to and through its skin,
hit its private parts, and there was nothing in the
dregs of its voice or in its willfully disfigured features

(00:50):
that offered the least clue when it spoke. The hooks
that transfixed the flaps of its eyes and were wed
by an intricate system of chains passed through leshi and
bone alike two similar hooks through the lower lip. We're
teased by the motion exposing the glistening meat underneath. I
asked you a question, do you understand the figure beside

(01:12):
the first speaker demanded. Its voice, unlike that of its companion,
was light and breathy, the voice of an excited girl.
Every inch of its head had been tattooed with an
intricate grid, and at every intersection of horizontal and vertical
axes a jeweled pin driven through to the bone. Its
tongue was similarly decorated. Do you even know who we are?

(01:38):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
I Heart Radios How to Work. Hey, Welcome to Stuff
to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and
I'm Joe McCormick and Robert. I guess you've been reading
Clive Barker, right, that's right? Yes, Our cold Open ishi
Is was a passage from nineteen eighties six novella The

(02:01):
hell Bound Heart by Clive Barker, which he himself adapted
and directed in nine seven into the horror film We
All Know as Hell Raizor Wait a minute, there was
just one year gap in between writing the novella and
making the movie. Yeah, yeah, Clive Barker was on a
roll in the in the late eighties, like he was.
I mean, he's still on a roll. He's one of
these uh these creators. It really has has not visibly

(02:25):
slown down. Um, says Stephen King. Quote from that year,
he said, I've seen the future of horror and it
is Clive Barker. Yeah, yeah, quote quote the King. I
think that that that quote was actually in the trailer
for for hell Raiser the film, as was I am Pain. No, No,
I think he doesn't. He doesn't declare that he is
Pain until three year possibly four. Um, I'm imagining a

(02:49):
future crossover sequel. It's like Jetson's Meet the flint Stones,
but it's Judge dread meets Pinhead and they just alternate
back and forth with I am the Law and I
am pay that. That actually sounds like a great match up.
I actually I would be all surprised if it hasn't
been done or at least pitch, because Judge Dredd is
thrown down with like Alien before, and I think he's

(03:11):
met Batman. Pinhead's been in a number of comic books.
You could see the more nuanced side coming out of
each because you discovered that in small ways, Judge Dredd
is also Pain and Pinhead is also the Law. Yeah. Um,
so I want to you know, wax nostalgic for a
moment here. I didn't get into hell Razor movies until
probably because I was too young for them really prior

(03:34):
to that. Wait, how old was that though? Oh, don't
make me do math, Joe, But I was. I was
like in junior higher or so. Uh in ninety five,
and by that point, the first three films were already
out and Doug Bradley's Pinhead was already cemented as a
as a horror icon. Yeah. I mean he's up there
with like Freddie and Jason at that point. Yeah, like
in the nine Simpsons tree House of Horror episodes of

(03:57):
the Shinning episode, Oh, the Shinning is so good. In
Head is one of the horror icons that drags Homer
out of the refrigerator. Oh yeah, it's like it's like Jason, Freddie, Pinheads,
and just some werewolf or something. I think. So. Yeah,
it's like a quick scene. But like already by that point,
I think it had been decided that this, uh, this, this,

(04:19):
this creature, this entity had a role in the Halloween
pantheon of Hollywood. So you read the book before you
saw the movie. Um, I think I read the book
after I saw the movie. I remember reading it on
a school trip. Yeah, and it's a it's it's short,
it's a novella, but yeah, it was really it was
really impressive at the time. As our cold open illustrates,

(04:42):
it has a slightly different feel. It's the film hell
Raiser is essentially the hell Bound Heart. It is, you know,
Barker's own adaptation of it. But at the same time
there are differences, and one of the key differences is, uh,
this character of Pinhead, the hell Priest, whatever you want
to hall it is just called lead Cinobyte and the
first hell Raiser that the role played by Doug Bradley

(05:04):
in the novella it is, it has a slightly different
flare to it. Yeah. I was reading some things about
the production and it seems to me that the reason
Doug Bradley's Pinhead became such an icon in the movie
had to do with the practical necessities of filmmaking. Again,
it was something about like character, like the other Cinobytes

(05:27):
that appear in the film would have been given more dialogue,
but their makeup effects didn't allow it, right, because you
have like the Chatter and the butter being Cinobytes and
Butterball Butterball butter similar but but yeah, that makes sense
that the makeup prevented them from speaking, and Doug Bradley

(05:48):
could speak, though he couldn't walk around very well. Apparently
he had these black contact lenses in that made it
hard for him to see, and he was afraid of
tripping over the skirts of his of Cinobyte robe, so
he didn't move very easily. But he could talk, and
so he could say things like save your tears, it's
a waste of good suffering. Yeah, he has a very

(06:09):
commanding voice. Whereas in the original Develoo, the character that
would become Pinhead is described as this excited girl and
the nd the Cinobytes themselves come off. They still come
off is grotesque in their own way, but they're more
and they're more androgynous for starters. And then there is
this there's more, this sense that they are not as

(06:32):
demonic as they are just other worldly, like they have
lived in another realm of the senses for so long, uh,
that they just don't have anything in common with human
sense perception anymore. Right, They're there are explorers that go
beyond the boundaries of pleasure and pain. And that's a
lot of what we're gonna be talking about today when
we get to the science portion of today's episode. But

(06:54):
I know you're not done talking about hell Raiser, right,
Oh no, And I do want to just remind everybody
as far as The hell Bound Heart goes you can.
You can find it for yourself on Amazon or wherever
you get your book in all formats, including a dollar
ninety nine e book and both an audio book production
and a full blown like audio play production, so you
have no excuse not to go and grab a copy

(07:16):
of it if you want to check it out. I
also highly recommend the books of Blood. Uh. Those are
some There's some really great short stories in those collections. Uh.
But yeah, I've always been a Clive Barker fan. I
haven't read everything he's written, but it's just an unmatched creativity.
They're both on the written written page, but behind the
camera and visual art as well. Just before we came

(07:39):
in here, I was having a conversation with our colleague
Ben Bolan of stuff they don't want you to know
and ridiculous history, and he was asking what my favorite
Clive Barker was, and I had to admit I have
not read any For some reason, I just never gotten
into Barker. He was very surprised because he knows I
like horror fiction. But uh, I don't know. For some reason,
I just never went there, maybe because when I don't know,

(08:01):
when I first saw the movie Hell Raiser, I think
this was like my freshman year of college. I found
it actually very depressing. Yeah, well, I found it. It
was full of interesting imagery. I thought it was actually
kind of original and imaginative. But something about the world
it pictured it seemed very bleak to me. It was
like a world where nothing is good and everything goes

(08:23):
to hell and there's nothing to care about. Yeah, it's
a bleak, brooding film. And and I can see why
I was especially into it as like a brooding junior
high student and as a you know, a teen spoke
to you then yeah, I mean then also it felt,
you know, it's a cool d rebel. I think too,
because like Stephen King, I was stupid into Stephen King
at the time, and Stephen King has certainly be you know, graphic,

(08:46):
but but Barker always felt weirder, more counterculture in a
way that really resonated with me. And you know, there's
probably no better way to push back against small town
Southern Baptist upbringing than to turn to and you know,
the explosive, creative world of an openly gay British horror writer. Well,
and I will say it is uh despite its flaws.

(09:07):
I mean, I will talk about how I just rewatched
the movie uh and it did not match up with
my memories at all. I found it. I have to
admit I found it rather funny upon rewatching it, especially
a lot of the line delivery by the cinabytes and
it's over the top ponderousness that like, uh, there were
a whole there was a lot of unintentional laughter. But

(09:27):
I will say it is still a pretty imaginative concept.
It was like very original for its time. Let's now
that we're speaking on Pinhead's voice in the movie, let's
have a quick uh splash from the trailer will your
soul part? That's just a sample though, because most of

(09:49):
the original theatrical trailer is screaming okay, uh yeah. So
I guess should we briefly discussed the plot of the movie. Yes,
And for anybody who hasn't listened to a movie at
so we've done before we will get to uh, you know,
a lot more science and interpretation of of this particular
you know, cinematic installment. But but first we do need

(10:09):
to remind everybody about what's up in Hell Racer, because
it's easy forget, especially if you've seen a lot of
the sequels. Uh and and if you've seen some of
the later sequels then then truly God help you. But
the original plot line goes like this, do you have
a creepy uncle? Well, did your creepy uncle ever, say,
have an affair with your mom? And then use an

(10:30):
antique puzzle box to open a dimensional rift in your
grandma's house, summoning a weird sect of transdimensional Cincinnats in
your uncle's quest for new extremes of pleasure. Well, that
uncle is Frank Cotton, and yes, he's dragged away to
the realm of the Cinabytes so the order of the Gash,
and after a while manages to escape in a much

(10:50):
reduced state um and works out a plot to reclaim
his body. And that's essentially the plot line of Hell Racers. Right,
So you've got your core elements of this miss serious
puzzle box that is just a normal kind of cube
with some paintings on it. But if you manipulate it
in the right way, press here and turn there and
that kind of stuff. It starts opening up, and then

(11:11):
once it opens up, a familiar series of events unfolds,
where lights shine in through you know, cracks in the
walls and stuff chains with hooks at the ends of
them shoot out of the walls and grab you. And
then the Centabyites show up, and they're these people usually
with like shaved heads or just generally weird heads. Usually

(11:32):
something has happened to their head. They're wearing black leather
robes as if they're a combination of the there's sort
of like S and M priests. And they show up
and they're like, okay, it's time to take you away
to a dimension beyond sensation. It's time to experience pain
and pleasure indivisible. Right. Yeah, and they're you know, they're
they're very much there's a boundary confusion with them, right,

(11:53):
because they're both ghastly and beautiful in their own way.
They're erotic and grotesque at the same time. Yeah. And
the suggestion question, I think it's explored much more in
the book, is that these creatures are there part of
some weird, esoteric, other dimensional religious order that worships the
exploration of the extremes of sensation right then, and so

(12:16):
that they've gotten to the point where where they can
no longer tell the difference between pleasure and pain. It's
just sort of like experiences to the max all the time,
of whatever valence possible. Yeah, it's it's more it's not
like I'm gonna pull your skin off blooh. It's more like, oh,
I'm I'm sorry, I'm rude, I'm being rude. I should
pull your skin off, I should be a good host,

(12:37):
and this is the natural thing to do. Yeah, though
I feel like that, I think that's more there in
the book, which again I haven't read, but in the
movie it does come to feel more like they're there
to punish you sometimes. I don't know if this conceit
about them just being sort of experiment ers is really
consistent in the film now. I mean, even in the

(12:59):
first film, which is which is certainly the truest to
the original source material, even in that you can tell
that that Barker is leaning more into the idea of
them as movie monsters, though it's still it's still Clive
Barker's movie monsters, and Clive Barker is one of those
creators who has always loved his monsters most of all.
You know. But but still even in the film, you know,

(13:22):
the cinemabytes are not the most important aspect of the plot.
They're not the central antagonist. Even our heroine, uh, Kirstie
Cotton and her father Larry Cotton aren't as central to
the plot as Frank, the the individual who just described
the uncle and Chris, Kirstie's mom Julia. It's ultimately about

(13:43):
their dark love affair that ultimately transcends the boundaries of
life and death. Uh. You know, they're the characters at
the heart of all this, and and they're the ones
whose desires we most understand and even on some level
sympathize with, even though they are you know, dark, desperate
and depressing characters. Yeah, I think the deal is Frank
is just this guy who's seen it all. He's had

(14:04):
every hedonistic pleasure of the flesh possible. He's he you know,
he's beyond good and evil. He has no morality left.
He's just he's just like trying to to seek the
next highest possible sensation. Uh. And he's usually got a
knife out because he's just that kind of guy. Right.
And then Julia, on the other hand, played by the
the excellent Claire Higgins. In this she's you know, by

(14:28):
and large, the best performance in the film. There is
one scene where I don't know if they did this
on purpose, but the way they did her makeup and
her hair, she looks exactly like David Bowie and his
Aladdin sane persona. Oh huh, I I didn't notice that,
have to to look back at it. But but yeah,
she's wonderful in it. And in a same way her character.
Her character is also like trapped in a life of

(14:50):
tedium and boredom. Like her husband is this boring guy
who watched his boxing on television and and she just
seems to be, you know, putting up with him. Uh.
And and so thus comes her attraction to Frank. And
even when Frank comes back from the dead uh in
this you know, grotesque body, uh, you know, she still
ends up helping him. Oh and of course helping him

(15:11):
involves like killing a bunch of people again so he
can it's not exactly clear he can basically drink their
blood and thus reconstitute his original body. Yeah, Like, yeah,
it's it's a little vague, and I like that it's vague,
you know, weren't really sure exactly what the necromancy is
of all this, but that that is the thing. Frank
is essentially a necromancer. Uh and and has these these powers. Uh.

(15:34):
You know, looking back at at the film, it's you
really can't overstate the importance of Frank and Juliet. They
are the core of the film. They are its main characters,
and they are its main monsters. Yeah. The cinembytes show
up mostly in the third act as a kind of
almost as a kind of d S X machina. Yeah,
which is fitting because they are literally coming out of

(15:55):
the machine, right d S xbox in. Uh. Let's a
few of are things I want to say about the
film just rewatching it. Um, the music is fine, It's
a bit dramatic, but I've long wanted to see a
cut of it with the original score by Post and
tut Industrial Act Coil. This was the late Peter Christofferson
of who was also in Throbbing Gristle, and the late

(16:17):
John Balance was also in Psychic TV, so that they
had conducted the original put together the original score for
the film and the replacement score. This more traditional and
cinematic was supposedly a condition of additional funding that Barker
received in order to finish the special effects in the film.
Uh So, I would my musical taste lean far more

(16:39):
coil than they do traditional cinematic score. So, uh, you know,
when what I've heard of it, it sounds really interesting.
So that's that's that's one thought I have on it. Coil.
If you're not familiar with them, they were. They were
a big influence on the likes of say Trent Resner
Um and uh and of course Clive Barker was also
an influence on Trent Resider as well. I'd say Nine

(17:00):
Inch Nails is pretty thoroughly cinabyte music. Yeah, especially the
early stuff. Let's see what else about this film, Oh,
the costumes and the practical effects I think hold up
very well. They do. And I think this is this
is definitely a film where you look at it and
you I'm impressed by just how ambitious it really was,
perhaps overly ambitious, especially given the small budget and the

(17:21):
fact that Barker was, you know, adapting his own work
here directing it as well, and this was his He'd
done some screenwriting, but he had not directed anything previously.
And it's really, you know, it's they go for not
only they have the cinabytes in there and all these effects,
but also like a regeneration scene and additional demon monsters

(17:42):
that you know, if you were being like maybe a
little more careful with your budget, you might say, well,
do we need this monster? We already have this monster.
Maybe we can actually cut two whole monsters in two
big practical effects from the film and use those funds elsewhere.
But uh, still, you know it, it mostly comes together.
I'm not quite sure the purpose served by the monster

(18:03):
that's referred to as the engineer, which doesn't look anything
like an engineer. Instead, it's like a big sort of
larva that crawls down the hallway with a scary mouth
on the bottom part, chasing after people. Yeah, it's that's
something that the engineers mentioned in the novella. But it's
more it's like a being of light or something. It's
it's not a monster. So that like that I feel

(18:24):
like comes off a little confusing in the picture, like
what is this and how's it connected with everything? Now?
I don't want to rag on the film too much,
but I will say that one of the things that
was funniest about it to me, is that Pinhead even
in the first movie. I mean, I think it gets
even more like this as the movies go on. Pinhead
gets increasingly fretified, Like he becomes like a wise cracking

(18:46):
you know, making jokes at the camera, kind of Freddy
Krueger character. But even in the first movie, almost everything
he says is this like threatening, lee pretentious kind of
line that could be a quote on the VHS bo
ex coover. It's all stuff like will tear your soul apart?
Or the box you opened it, we came? Or of course, uh,

(19:09):
the the inimitable I am pain Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like Freddie,
he has a lot of catch phrases and sort of
quote ready samples. Uh. And I've heard him in a
number of different DJ mixes as well, throwing a little
pinhead right. Uh. He also reminds me a bit of
nineties pro wrestlers in that regard. You know, he's like
the rock you know, he has the Rocks like more

(19:29):
post nineties, but still, you know, he has his his
catch phrases that he lashes out. You can imagine macho
man Randy Savage saying the box you opened it we came.
I actually just learned that Doug Bradley serves as the
authority figure in the indie British occult themed wrestling promotion
Blackcraft Wrestling. I don't know what that means. Well, look

(19:51):
it up, beild it exists. Um, it's like clearly he's
doing kind of like a he's not in a wrestling ring.
He's like showing up like they're doing a green screen
thing and he's you know, making matches and whatnot. But
it's it's Dug Bradley being Doug Bradley. But like he
officiates a match by saying you're suffering will be legendary
even in hell. Now, I will say that. In the

(20:13):
I think it's by the fourth one, he does have
a line about pain that that is I think it's
actually pretty good where he says, uh, quote, what you
think of as pain is only a shadow. Pain has
a face. Allow me to show it to you, Allow
me to show it to you, and uh and like
that that line, I think it is pretty good, Like
he gets at some of the the intangible aspects of pain,

(20:34):
the how difficult it is to understand another individual's pain
or relate your own. Of course, this is and this
is from how rays your inferno. Then he goes on
to say, uh, uh, gentleman, I am pain, and he
kind of he kind of ruins the moment. You know
it can go far. He can't help but go for
the catchphrase, ladies and gentlemen, I am pain. So in summary, uh,

(20:55):
this is what I'll say about How Raiser. It's a
it's a film. I have a lot of staut it
for and having rewatched it in the past week, I'd
say that that more things will work than don't work.
And it's still like it's it's astounding that that that
everyone is able to put this film together and then ultimately,
like clearly it resonated, even though like my personal taste,

(21:17):
I like the cinebyites of the novella more like Pinhead worked,
like Pinhead became a staple, like Pinhead is part of
American popular culture now. A couple of years ago I
went through the process. I don't know why I decided
I needed to do this, but I watched all of
the Hell Raiser sequels. I don't think that's a journey

(21:38):
people need to go on. There. There are fleeting pleasures
throughout them, like Part three has some pretty funny stuff.
Part four has some funny moments. Part three is kind
of like peak Freddie. Uh hell Raised, like they realized like, oh,
this is what we've created. We've created this, this this
this horror creature that you know the masses are in to.

(22:00):
Let's give him the film that this character deserves. Of course,
Part four is Pinhead Goes to Space, which is I
don't know, it's hard to sniff it that. Yeah, that
that film is notoriously a mess, but then it also
just has so many crazy things in it it's hard
to completely dismiss it. I kept wanting to see I

(22:21):
think I may have said this on the show before,
but Rachel and I have frequently talked about how there
needs to be a crossover again, franchise crossover, but not
with Judge Shred. This should be hell Raiser, and then
the air bud sequels they crossover. So you've got like
Golden Retriever puppies and they're playing with the box and
it's called hell Buddies, and so the cinembytes come out

(22:43):
and they're ready to do all their hooks and stuff,
but then they're conquered by the cuteness of the puppies.
So it's like I am all right. Well, on that note,
let's take our first break, and when we come back,
we're going to talk about puzzle boxes. Alright, we're back,
all right. So we know that Hell Raiser starts with

(23:04):
a mysterious puzzle box. It's this box that, uh, it
can be opened, but how you open it is apparently
not obvious, and people just fiddle around with it until
they figure out the secret, and then they end up
unleashing the hooks, the chains, the cineabytes and so forth. Yeah,
the first film and all subsequent films, they are generally
gonna be some scenes with somebody fiddling with the box.

(23:25):
And it doesn't seem to it seems to adhere to
unreal physics, which is fitting. It is a magical box
that opens a magical doorway through which magical beings then
enter um. So you know, I don't take any issue
with that at all. But of course, in the idea
itself is just irresistible. We love myths about boxes that
should not be opened, or the idea of a box

(23:48):
that resists opening is also tremendous as well. An enclosure
born of human ingenuity, it must be solved via human
ingenuity as well. Oh yeah, I mean, I think it's
a wonderful conceit are opening a story like this, that
there is this thing, it requires effort. It suggests that
there's kind of a that there's a beyond normal amount

(24:08):
of interest. Right. People seek out this box when they're
they're board with all of the sensations of Earth and
they want to go beyond. They want to see one
of other level they can reach. They have to find
this secret artifact. Yeah, and you know, ultimately, I think
we all have puzzle boxes like that in our lives
that we're trying to unravel. Right. But one of the

(24:29):
interesting things here is that, of course Clive Barker is
not just creating this out of nothing. He's he's drawing
on inspirations. One of the inspirations is clearly and you know,
especially I think they flesh this out a little bit
uh in in the fourth film, uh playing on the
tradition of philosophical toys uh, the that captivated to audiences
in the eighteenth century. And we've talked about some of

(24:51):
these on the show before, like the pooping duck, various automatons,
wind up clockwork devices. They don't really do anything. I mean,
they they don't you know, fulfill a purpose. They do things,
but those things that they do are merely to amuse us,
sort of make us think about, you know, the bio
mechanical nature of the world, or as a clockmaker, that

(25:12):
sort of thing, a machine that poses a question. Yeah,
and they're also testaments, of course, to the creator's talents.
How could someone so gifted with machinery make a musical
box such as this? But then there's a there's another
legacy of boxes that he's drawing out, and that is
the puzzle box, particularly the puzzle boxes of the Victorian period.

(25:35):
And I have to admit I really wasn't familiar with
with these at all, Like even you know, having seen
the hell Raiser movies, I never looked into anything anything
beyond the you know, the wind up clockwork stuff. But
there's a tradition of woodworking, uh trick boxes, puzzle boxes,
and they're pretty pretty phenomenal. So one example I came

(25:55):
across from said to be from the year nineteen hundred,
is a wooden book money box. So it looks like
a book that you would have on a shelf, like
a hard bound book, but it's made out of wood.
If you pick it up, take it off the shelf.
You see that there's a coin slot in top in
the top of it, so it's not being too secretive,
like I put money into this, but then how do

(26:15):
you get the money out? Well, to do that you
have to know the trick, and these older trick boxes
there generally there's just one way to do it. So
and this one you slide part of the book spine aside,
and that allows you to slide another little panel and
that opens the box and you can get the money inside. Uh.
It's clever, you know, kind of the woodworking version of
the various clockwork marvels that we were discussing earlier. But

(26:39):
then it ends up coming to it into its own
in the twentieth century because it's during this period that
you have woodworkers both in Europe, particularly in England and Switzerland,
but also in Japan, they really begin pushing the boundaries
of what's possible with a wooden puzzle box. Uh. In
the Japanese puzzle box this seemed to be some of

(27:00):
the most impressive. They typically look like ornate wooden boxes
with no visible hinges or lids, and then they may
require as few as three or more than a hundred
moves to open, so like sliding, yeah, like sliding this
little panel, like first of all, finding the panels to

(27:21):
figure out like which what does a piece of wood
that moves here? And then sliding it to the side,
sliding something else to the side, doing all these little
tricks in order to open up the ultimate interior of
the box. Um. Yeah, And and this was according to
wood Smith's Shop, which is a video series from wood
smith Magazine. Episode twelve O four is on YouTube. These

(27:43):
guys Chris and Phil hosted and uh, you know they're
they're going for the hell raiser audience by the way, Yeah,
they're They're exactly what you might imagine when you think
of like sort of I'm guessing like Midwestern um perhaps,
um you know wood wood wood workers, h you know
that that they show off one of these boxes, and
the craftsmanship is amazing, Like woodworking, I feel is an

(28:07):
area that I often take for granted, Like I see
a finished piece of furniture, be it something from Ikea
or something, you know, in a more robust and I
don't really think about all the skill that went into
making it. And perhaps that's why things like wooden puzzle
boxes exist to show you just how much skill is
involved in turning uh, you know, raw wood into something

(28:28):
that serves the purpose. Well, there's something counterintuitive about it
because we don't usually think of woodworking as is being
concerned with moving parts. Most often woodworking is, you know,
design and crafting of static elements, maybe with very few
moving parts, or some things that maybe there's a hinge
or something on a cabinet. But these combined elements of

(28:49):
of course, the kind of beautiful static art and design
of woodworking with the kinds of interlocking mechanisms you'd more
often see in machinery and metal. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So
you know, I can, I can describe them a little bit,
but I really you should look up some videos of
people manipulating these boxes and then hopefully, you know, get

(29:10):
your hands on a wooden puzzle box of your own,
because there are still people making them. There's an individual
by the name of Kagan Sound that's with a K
K A G A N S O U N D
at Kagan sound dot com. You can look him up.
He's apparently one of the foremost wooden puzzle box makers
in the world, and he's he's something of a modern
day Lemon shand if you will wait, well, that's from

(29:33):
the fourth movie, right. We find out that the creator
of the box is somebody named La mar Schand. I
think it's also revealed in the novella. Okay, it's it's
the Lament Configuration or the La mar Schand Box. Yes. Yeah.
There are also people that are apparently making puzzle boxes
out of Lego blox, which makes sense. Now. Some of
you might say, well, hey, how about the Rubik's Cute. Uh,

(29:55):
I don't know, Rubics four invention. I would say, like,
if you'd it just right, it opens up and there's
something inside. Well, that's the thing. It doesn't have an interior,
so it's not it's a puzzle cube, not a true
puzzle box. There is no inside to the Rubik's Cube.
It will not open up new realms of pleasure and sensation. No,
that's not true. If you solve it, you get all

(30:16):
the faces, solid colors. Hooks shoot out of the walls.
That's how you get the hooks. Um. Yeah. I should
also point out that it's not always completely clear in
the Hill Raiser books that the Lament Configuration has an
interior either, but there are shots in the film that
establish an interior to the box, and its interior is
described in the novella. So there are scenes in the
movie that I can imagine would have worked a lot

(30:38):
better in fiction when you didn't have to see them staged.
And one of them is the scene where the box
is solved in order to fix the problem, you know,
where the cinemabytes are sent back to their realm because
Kirsty Swanson like does the right things with the box.
I mean, it just looks funny when she's messing with
the box while the house is falling apart and pin

(31:00):
to saying no, don't do that. Yeah. Yeah. It's the
problems of translating the novella to to the film because
in the novella the box is also not described as
being really ornate, even it's really more has more in
common in the book with the these wooden puzzle boxes
we've described. Now, uh you know that the here's another

(31:22):
area to consider. So the Box of Lament is largely
positioned as a thing that must be solved in order
to open a gate to reveal a secret. But we
probably shouldn't forget that the cinepytes are also presented, especially
in the Novella as explorers. Uh, there's a sense of
curiosity to them. Uh, they're truly spaced out on sensation,
you might say. And uh so I'm wondering might we

(31:43):
consider the Lament configuration as a means of exploration as well,
because certainly puzzle boxes are used in various animal studies
by scientists, typically with a food reward at the center.
I believe we've discussed the sorts of boxes in the
study of Corvitts, where they'll be like generally, you know,
there's food in the middle of the box. There may

(32:04):
be some tools, or they have to make their own tool,
what have you. But they have to come up with
a way to free the prize from the box, which
is ultimately what Frank's trying to do with the Lament configuration. Now,
another noteworthy puzzle box from science history is a Thorndyke's
puzzle box. Uh. This is the work of an American
psychologist who was working at the same time as a

(32:26):
Pavlov and in the same area, you know, looking at
animals and their problem solving abilities and their behavior. And
he used this on cats in particular to test their
learning and problem solving abilities. They're essentially cages that can
be exited by performing at the correct task, hitting the
right mechanism, etcetera, in order to to step out of

(32:47):
the cage and get your food. Uh and uh. In
His main observation from all of this was the cat
would behave radically the first time use that you put
them in the box. The first time they were in
there for the experiment, but then they would learn so
in su sequent experiments they wouldn't. They would waste less
and less time in the box. They would just realize like, oh,
I'm in here again. I push this button. Then I
get out and I can get my food. And then

(33:08):
Thorndyke's work would lead to another noteworthy box, Skinner's Box,
in which the animal has to engage a mechanism in
order to be fed within the box, the work of
BF Skinner. So later installments of the hell Raiser franchise
explore to some degree the idea of the boxes a
place or thing that may contain us, but for the
most part not so much. But the the idea of

(33:29):
the puzzle boxes a means of exploring human desire. I
think that's kind of an interesting idea to consider. Well,
it makes me wonder if the box is also being
used to test us somehow. If it is being used
to test us, then to test the humans that you know,
play with it. Obviously the people doing the testing would
be the cinobytes, right, So maybe we should turn to
the cinabytes and think a little bit about about pain, experience, sensation,

(33:54):
and flagellation. Absolutely, all right, So let's just start with
the words centobyte, because is this this really gets into
a lot of what we're going to discuss here. A
cynobyte is merely a member of a religious group living
together in a monastic community. There are plenty of cynobytes. Technically,
there are plenty of cinnobytes in the world today and
they have They have nothing to do with the hell
raised their movie. If you've never seen it written out,

(34:16):
it is not spelled like cinnabun. Uh. It is c
e n o they had. The word apparently emerged in
the fifteenth century and it comes from the late Latin
colon obita. I'm saying that correctly. Uh, Basically you have
the Greek coin cohen plus bios life, so it basically
means the monastic life. Now, one obviously does see certain

(34:41):
levels of self inflicted pain, however, in monastic history, so
religious rights of flagellation or blood lighting can be found
throughout Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Native American, and other religious rights.
We we've covered some of these on the show, but
for there there are plenty of religious rights of pain

(35:02):
that can be found in the world and in human history,
just as there are various secular rights of pain that
can be found today within the realms of say performance
art or even you know b D s M for instance,
uh the later of which served as partial inspiration for
Clive Barker and likewise Barker's work, while Nott the influencing
b D s M to some degree as well. Oh

(35:23):
that's not surprising. Uh So I was looking around, yeah,
for more historical ideas about pain and pleasure indivisible as
the as pinhead says they explore, and I came across
a book by the American psychologist James H. Luba who
lived eighteen sixty eight to nineteen forty six, who focused
a lot of his work on the psychology of religion.

(35:43):
And this book was called The Psychology of Religious Mysticism.
And in this book there's part where he's in the
middle of a section about narcotics, consciousness, and mysticism, and
Luba begins to discuss the idea of pleasure in pain
or enjoyment and suffer ring, which is a major theme
of this movie and of the novel. And his hypothesis

(36:05):
is that quote, the apparent paradox of people seeking and
enjoying pain becomes intelligible when one takes into account the
passion for vivid consciousness. Uh. And so he of course
is this is in the context of religious experience. So
he mentions members of self flagellating Muslim sex of the quote,
painful ascetic practices of the yogi, or the violent dancing

(36:29):
frenzies of the mind ads. He says those quote all
may yield a sense of new or increased life. Now
what does he mean by that, Well, he explains further
by quoting a letter from Gothold Ephraim Lessing to Moses Mendelssohn,
which in which Lessing writes, quote, were agreed in this,
my dear friend, that all passions are either vehement cravings

(36:51):
or vehement loathings. And also that in every vehement craving
or loathing we acquire an increased consciousness of our reality,
and that this consciousness cannot but be pleasurable. Consequently, all
our passions, even the most painful, are as passions pleasurable. Uh,
which is kind of interesting explore more in a second,

(37:13):
But that I just realized that made me think of
a passage in The Brothers Karamazov that's all about uh,
a character talking about the pleasure one takes in taking offense. UH.
And I remember being like, Wow, how have I never
read this before? But it's so true that, like, in

(37:35):
getting mad about something unfair that has happened to you
or somebody who's been mean to you or something, there
is so often this feeling of like almost joy in
the way that you get worked up about it. Yeah,
And and there's a difference to like there's certainly there's
righteous anger. There's a situation where like, if you feel
like you've been wronged and you're you're having been wronged

(37:57):
is a part of a larger problem in the culture
in the world, then yeah, you can get in this
area of righteous anger. But I think more of what
you're talking about here are the petty things in life,
you know, where it's like the server at a restaurant
doesn't bring you your appetizer first, and you you have
been wrong, and you just start getting excited about how

(38:19):
mad you are and on some love like You're probably
not thinking, oh, I feel so alive, I'm so angry
at this server. But in a way that is happening.
But yeah, So what does Luba think is going on
with these these passions being pleasurable even when they're painful? Uh?
He writes that it's because these heightened states of awareness

(38:40):
and passion triggered by pain offer an escape from a
sort of baseline form of consciousness characterized by tedium, insensibility
and normal fatigue. Thus, for some people, normal states of
consciousness become so boring, so exhausting and tedious that the
self and election of pain actually unlocks a state of

(39:02):
mind that is to them preferable by contrast, and and
this becomes an important distinction in Luba's idea here. It's
that religious ecstasy in the self infliction of pain is
not actually an enjoyment directly of the pain itself, but
an enjoyment of a kind of rapturous and highly aware
state of mind that's brought about by the infliction of pain.

(39:25):
Quote not the pain nor the wound does the martyr enjoy,
but the exaltation that comes with the quivering of the flesh.
The quivering of the flesh. Oh you're a fan too, No,
I mean it's so it's interesting. I'll come back to
Hell Raiser in just a second. I mean, first, I
would point out that, of course this is in the

(39:45):
sort of like William James E and cast of like
broad observational psychology, which it doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong,
but it does mean that it should be thought of
more like interesting philosophical writings based on observations rather than
conclusions derived from grisly controlled experiments. But again not to
say he's wrong. It's just that it's not really science

(40:06):
by modern standards. It's more like philosophy and cultural criticism.
He could be onto something there, uh, And I do
think those observations maybe onto something. It's funny that it
lines up so well with the character of Frank in
Hell Raiser, a man who again in the movie we
we see a couple of scenes of him appearing disgusted
by normal hedonistic pleasure, like all of the regular pleasures

(40:29):
of the flesh that seemed to have they've failed for him,
they don't work anymore. Everything's boring. So according to Luba's
framework here, it could make sense for him to join
a self flagellating order devoted to the mortification of the flesh,
because maybe pain will unlock higher states of conscious awareness
and excitation that he wants to reach, but for which

(40:50):
the bridges of normal pleasure have collapsed. Yeah. Yeah, I
think that's a solid read on on Frank's character for sure,
you know. But also Julia is the sort of flip
side to that coin. She's the tedium side of it.
She is she lives this life of boredom and perhaps
some level of contempt for her boring husband as well,
um and ends up being sucked into this world of

(41:12):
of intense sensation as just as Frank has. But I
think in all this one thing we get to is
that it starts to become complicated to try to define
and understand pain. I think because when you ask what
is pain, it's something we all know about, you know,
there's no debating whether there is such a thing as pain.

(41:33):
But when you try to come up with a rigorous
definition of it that applies to every case, that becomes difficult.
I think it goes back to that quote from the
help Priest himself. What we think of pain is a shadow,
but pain has a face. Um who just but actually
like for us to actually define the lines of that face. Uh,

(41:55):
it's it's extremely difficult and a huge part of that.
And this is something we've talked about in the show.
For us, like the difficulty and even discussing pain, Like
I can talk about my pain, you can talk about
your pain, but it becomes very difficult for us to
properly understand each other's pain. Uh, and but properly related. Yeah,
And there are some contexts in which I think it's

(42:17):
simpler than others. But even in the simpler ones, say
like regular no susceptive body pain that you would feel
in the context of, uh, you know, getting pricked with
a needle or something in a clinical setting. Even then,
if we look to like best approximation type answers within
the medical world, you can get definitions like this one,
which is cited by the International Association for the Study

(42:39):
of Pain. Quote. Pain is an unpleasant, sensory and emotional
experience that is associated with actual or potential tissue damage
or described in such terms. Okay, so that's kind of complicated.
It's got multiple clauses in there. But also one of
the things that's difficult about that you immediately hit a

(43:00):
snag with the idea that pain is explicitly and necessarily
described as unpleasant. And this very definition would, of course,
I think that would apply to most cases. I mean
most cases when people say they're in pain, they think
of that as bad and they wanted to stop right. Well, yeah,
I mean part of it. You have the problem with
our our language, for instance, in in yoga. I practice yoga,

(43:24):
and something that's often touched on by the teachers is
that is the distinction between discomfort and pain, Like you
should work with discomfort, like discomfort is part of the practice.
But if you're feeling pain, then that means you need
to back off because you don't want to go into
that third area of injury of damage. Right. But a

(43:44):
lot of times it can be hard to tell the
difference between discomfort and pain. I mean, are they distinct
classes of things or is that a gradient with you know,
them being at two different sides of a scale. Uh.
And of course, the very definition that says that pain
is necessarily on pleasant would seem to rule out the
existence of pleasure in pain. It would either mean that

(44:05):
nobody actually does take pleasure in pain, and I think
lots of anecdotal evidence would seem to disagree with that right,
or that painful sensations that bring about pleasure are not
actually technically pain. But in that case, what are they?
What would you call them? I mean, it's a great
man once said pain don't hurt, So what are we

(44:25):
to make of that? Okay, so you quote Roadhouse and
he said, but I think that position in a way
is incoherent. He so he says pain don't hurt, but
then he spends the rest of the movie trying to
prevent the villain from inflicting pain on people. It's true,
I've got a real beef with Roadhouse. But I wonder
if that quote, like part of it is that what
he's trying to say is that for him, physical pain

(44:49):
does not have, at least in this case, an emotional context.
But I think it's in a way, it's like a
lot of things in the Roadhouse, Like maybe it's accidentally
clever because because it is getting at that distinction. For
for human beings, pain is both sensory, like purely sensory,
but also it has this enormous emotional context, right, yeah,

(45:09):
that it pain is a physical sensation, you know, there's
no susception in the nerves in the flesh, and so
it detects something that is an injury, could indicate an
injury or something like that. But then it also is
a motivation. It triggers avoidance behaviors. Yeah, like in the
the yoga example for instance, like the pain is there
to tell me, Hey, this thing you're doing to your arm,

(45:32):
uh is not in your normal practice. You should you
should be aware that if this continues, worst things could occur. Injury,
damage could occur. Again, that's normal functioning, not getting into
you know, disorders of pain. But again, yeah, for humans,
pain is a complex topic. Uh, physical sensation, but also
this emotional realm as well. And there are seemingly dimensions

(45:55):
of pain that are beyond the scope of less cognitively
advanced organisms. You know, not saying animals don't feel pain,
but and their animals do not necessarily have this emotional
context to their their suffering as well. Yeah, certainly not
in the same way. I mean, you can see that
a painful stimulus might cause a retreat or avoidance behaviors

(46:17):
and say a crab, but it's hard to believe that
a crab has the full spectrum of human like fear
and emotions that that you would get from feeling a
painful wound, which raises an interesting question. Would a being
more cognitively advanced than a human being have a greater
potential for suffering and pain? And maybe would that explain

(46:40):
something about the nature of many gods and myth and legends. Oh,
I mean this shows up in existing works of theology.
I mean I think it's something that's often used to
develop the Christian mythos, which is of course has a
big theology of the suffering of God. It says that
God came down into human form, was crucified on the
cross in the form of Jesus Christ, and then descended

(47:00):
into hell for three days and then was resurrected. And
in order to emphasize the immensity of the sacrifice, Christian
theologians often point out that this isn't just like a
human suffering, it's God himself suffering. And since God's state
of holiness and perfection was already infinitely greater than the humans,
it follows that when he descends to suffering and death.

(47:22):
That suffering is infinitely greater of an insult than it
would be to a normal human. So the parts of
our brain that respond a pleasure also react to sensations
of pain. This also further complicates things, and the line
between the two is sometimes a bit of a blur.
For instance, two thousand thirteen study from the University of
Oslo found that quote, the brain changed how it processed

(47:45):
moderate pain according to the context of what the alternative was.
If the pain was less than anticipated, then the brain
transformed the sensation into something comforting or even pleasurable. Likewise,
there was a two fourteen study from Northern Illinois Universty
that linked sado masochism the altered states of mind that
can be obtained. Their linked them with with those states

(48:07):
of mind you might achieve through yoga or meditation, you know,
which I think a lot of that makes sense. You're
talking about like just a feeling alive in the moment
of sensation, be that sensation you know, painful or pleasurable,
Like there is a is essentially a built in mindfulness
exercise to that. In the same way that if you
focus on your breath you are living entirely or at

(48:30):
least more so in the body than you are normally. Likewise,
if you you know, if you're you accidentally prick your finger,
you're you're living in the moment of that that that
that finger prick, like there's probably not a lot else
on your mind in that single instance. Oh. In fact,
that this actually comes up in the study I want
to talk about in a minute that has to do
with how pain pain has been shown to alter or

(48:54):
mediate our perception of our identity. Excellent, Uh, the same
two thousand fourteen study. The researchers and you know, they
suspected that pain inflicted in consensual sado masochism alters blood
flow in the brain, particularly to the dorso lateral prefrontal cortex,
would plays into our ability to distinguish self from other

(49:14):
As such, intense pain may result in feelings of oneness
with you know, the other individual or with humanity or
the universe, which it is interesting to think about. That
is really interesting. I mean that gets back into stuff
we talked about in our episodes on psychedelics, of course,
with the the sort of self other distinction that is

(49:35):
sometimes dissolved by changes in brain chemistry, but of course,
we know that not all changes in brain brain chemistry
have to come from ingesting chemicals from outside the body,
right right, Um, And again I do want to underline
the consensual aspect of that study. They are talking about
consensual acts of sado maschism here. Oh of course. Yeah. Now,

(49:56):
I figured it would be worth talking about other interesting
sign offic research that offers complications in our understanding and
experience of pain. One thing that I came across that
was really interesting to me is something that is known.
It's it's a cognitive heuristic known as the peak end phenomenon.
And so this is a psychological memory bias that says

(50:19):
that people don't in their memories mentally characterize and experience
by taking an average of the entire duration of the experience. Rather,
they mentally characterize an experience according to memories of a
couple of little things, and they tend very often to
be moments of peak intensity of the experience and then

(50:42):
the final moments of the experience. And this has been
found to apply to both pleasurable and painful experiences. Of course,
not all experiences. No psychological phenomenon applies to everything, but
to a lot in which it very often has strange consequences.
It's been documented a lot of times now, but one
important early study is by Daniel Kaneman, Barbara Frederickson, Charles Schreiber,

(51:07):
and Donald Riddelmeyer published in Psychological Science in called win
more pain is preferred to less adding a better end.
So in this study it was pretty simple. You've got
to test conditions that both induce pain. Again, like most
studies are pretty much all good studies, this is gonna
be non threatening pain, but it will be uncomfortable. And

(51:29):
what it is here is plunging your hand into cold
water and holding it there. So in test one, you
plunge your hand into cold water, which was fifteen degrees celsius,
and you hold it there for one minute. And then
in test two, you do exactly the same thing, plunge
into the fifteen degree celsius cold water, hold it there
for one minute, but then you also have to hold

(51:50):
it for an additional thirty seconds as the temperature in
the water is gradually slightly increased, though it's still cold,
more cold than its comfortab bowl. A majority of people,
a significant majority of people chose when they had the
choice to repeat one of the two tests, chose to
repeat the second test rather than the first, meaning they'd

(52:12):
rather the discomfort go on longer if the final moments
of the discomfort were slightly less intense. And other studies
have found versions of this in different context. It does
seem that we are willing to experience more pain or
discomfort for a longer period of time if the last

(52:33):
few moments of the pain are not as bad. And
this seems to suggest that there's some way that as
we form memories of painful or unpleasant experience, those memories
can be formed in such a way that objectively, more
pain chronologically measured seems like less pain because the ending
of it wasn't quite as bad, and the ending seems

(52:54):
to matter the most to us. But this also makes
perfect sense if you think of of pain as the
signal warning you about something that may happen about, you know,
continued stressing of this particular muscle, or continued exposure to
a dangerous element such as heat or cold. Oh that's
very interesting. I hadn't so. I'd seen it mainly interpreted

(53:15):
like what's causing this? The main interpretation I had seen
had been recency bias. Of course, you know, we tend
to uh know. Well, again, there are two things. It's
the peak intensity of the experience and the end. So
focusing on the end of the experience, it would be
the recency bias, right, is the things that happened more
recently seem more salient to us. Um But yeah, that

(53:36):
also makes sense, especially for registering pain, because pain is
a lot about what could happen. It's supposed to be
giving you warnings that are useful information in order for
you to protect your body. Right. But then again, at
the same time, as we were discussing and will continuous discuss,
the human pain is complex, so there are other elements

(53:56):
that I guess may skew that sort of thing. Oh,
of course, Yeah, so so that's that's an interesting possibility too.
And I should note that, of course, like a lot
of psychological phenomenon, the peak in phenomenon doesn't always apply
at every instance, but it's a general rule. It seems
like we followed this an awful lot. But if more
pain objectively measured seems in our minds like less pain,

(54:18):
at least in retrospect, then what is pain like? What
is the real pain? What is the real thing that
we want to try to lessen and avoid or in
some of these rare cases where people are enjoy or
taking enjoyment and pain, what is the kind they want
to experience? More pain in the memory or pain in
in the in the moment sensation, since those things don't

(54:39):
always necessarily match up. Yeah, that's true. I mean, this
is the kind of thing that I feel like this
happens anytime we look at pain or you really think
about pain. Is that it seems like our our language
of pain is severely lacking, like we just don't have
the proper vocabulary to get it all the different nuances here. Yeah, totally.
I mean it raises all kinds of questions, like, I mean,

(55:01):
even for yourself, if you're not trying to make a
judgment for other people, assuming pain is something you want
to avoid in this context, would you rather have less
pain in the moment or less pain in your memory
of an experience? I don't know how to like, I
really don't know how to answer that, right. I mean,
this is and this is the total human dimension of pain,

(55:23):
like the memory of pain, And this is the kind
of thing that yeah that you know, some animals are
gonna have to deal with a certain animals is gonna
have to deal with to some level. But but humans
and pain and memory and the ability to to mentally
time travel back to that pain and then to to likewise,
you know, imagine encountering that pain in the future like

(55:44):
that defines so much of what we do. Absolutely, now
I've got another study to talk about with pain. But
should we take a break first and then come back.
Let's do it. Alright, we're back. We're continuing to spin
off of Hell Raiser and the Hell Bound Hard and
discuss the nature of pain, pleasure in pain indivisible as

(56:05):
the Cinobytes would say. So one study I came across
that I thought had some interesting bits, and it was
called The Positive Consequences of Pain, a Biopsychosocial Approach by Bastion, Jetton, Hornsey,
and Lechness from the Social Psychology Review in twoteen. And
here this is a big review article. So it's like

(56:27):
looking at existing literature to collect examples of ways that
pain has been documented to have some positive effects. And
of course you can't list all of them, and and
maybe some of these are better held up by evidence
than others. But these are the things that the broad
categories that they found some evidence of one is might

(56:48):
be pretty straightforward, but it's kind of interesting. Pain often
enhances subsequent pleasure by providing a contrasting experience. Pain causes
people to rate pleasurable variences in the aftermath of the
pain as more pleasurable than they otherwise would. Yeah. Like,
an example of this that ties in directly with some

(57:08):
of the methods used in these experiments is that if
you go to ah to certain saunas, there will be
a cold water pool, like a chilling water pool, in
which you may immerse all or parts of your body
and then in and then once you've overcome with the
displeasure of that, then you may go and climb into
the hot tub, and then the hot tub will be

(57:30):
more pleasurable for the discomfort that you have had in
the cold tub. Yeah. I don't know to what extent
this plays a role in the mythology of the cinabytes,
because it seems like they're sort of pursuing pain for
its own sake in some cases, right, Like they're not
always following it up with a nice sauna or something.
Oh yeah, we never see them just giving a nice
gentle bag massage, right. Yeah. The hooks shoot out the

(57:51):
hooks and then it's like, ah, but then after that
you get to go have some ice cream. Okay. Another
thing from their list is they say there's evidence that
pain increases sensory sensitivity. It sort of increases our sampling
rate of sensations from the physical world. In some cases,
this can be good. Yeah, I mean this makes sense,
right If your if your body is receiving or resonating

(58:13):
with the signal that something something is potentially damaging the body,
then it makes sense that the century awareness is also
ratcheted up in order to take in what may be
harming the body. Right. Another one they point out pretty
interesting is that pains sometimes blocks or alleviates our sense
of guilt, which could otherwise prevent us from experiencing pleasure. Robert,

(58:36):
I think you had some details on a study that
looked into this, right, yes, I do. This is a study.
This one came before the other one. This is from
two thousand and eleven, but it's also from Brock Bastion,
the lead author of the other study. A real um
you know Hollywood leading man name. Uh that sounds like
an action here. Uh So basically Brockbastion of the University

(59:02):
of Queensland Australia set out to understand uh, you know,
what's going on with pain In this situation, Beastion's team
recruited young male and female test subjects under the guise
of a mental and physical acuity study. The researchers asked
the test subjects to write a personal essay about a
time in which they ostracize someone, and the aim here
was to make them feel guilty or immoral. Meanwhile, a

(59:25):
control group wrote personal essays about a routine memory. You know,
nothing painful, just a memory, And the researchers instructed both
the immoral volunteers and the control group to hold their
hands in a bucket of ice water for as long
as they could stand it, and others dip their hands
in a soothing bucket warm water. So the question is
would immoral test subjects punish themselves with longer dips in

(59:47):
the cold water? The the individuals who just had to
write a personal essay about a time that they were
awful would and then would they feel better afterwards? And
the answer ends up being yes on both counts. Uh.
Those who were primed to feel shape aim about past
actions dip their hands in the cold water for longer durations,
and they described the dip as more painful and express
reduced feelings of guilt afterwards. So Rock Bastion argues that

(01:00:11):
this experiment illustrates our culturally altered understanding of pain. We've
come to process it not only is negative and environmental feedback,
but is justice and punishment. So on a psychological level, Uh,
you know, a little bit of self inflected pain rebalances
the scales. Uh. Now, I would say, on one hand,

(01:00:31):
this is the kind of like intuition confirming social psychology
research that always makes me think, like I'd like to
see that replicated, you know, a few times. But but yeah,
assuming that the results hold up, that that is interesting
that like the pain would have this this effect on
our self critical judgments, which also, of course gives another

(01:00:53):
explanation of why self infliction of pain rituals might be
so common in certain religious orders, especially people who take
sins of the flesh very seriously. Yeah, we see, we
see and read about an example of self flagellation in Burdo.
Echo is the name of the rose. Yes, and of
course in that in the movie adaptation, uh, the girl

(01:01:15):
is played by the same actor who would play a
Cinabyte in the fourth hell Racer movie. Really, so, there's
your vital on Burdo echo hell rasor connection love it? Okay,
a few more things mentioned in this study. Uh So.
One thing they say is that pain. There's some evidence
that pain quote brings cognitive resources online, so it helps

(01:01:38):
increase our cognitive effective control of ourselves. They say that pain.
That this one was interesting and we hinted at it earlier.
They say that pain enables identity management, and one example
they give here is that physical pain in the body
can sometimes interrupt what the authors call quote high level

(01:01:59):
awareness of a symbolically mediated, temporarily extended identity. In other words,
the kind of thinking about oneself that leads to negative,
repetitive introspection, worry, self consciousness. That physical pain increases awareness
of the immediate physical body and decreases the immediate salience

(01:02:19):
of these kinds of worries. That the negative introspection about oneself,
and this this horrible symbolic entity known as a person
tied up in this idea of a soul, which really
we should we so we should thank the cynobytes for
tearing the soul apart. Like in the movie It you
Know it comes off as more with this threat. Right,
I'm gonna tell you we're going to tear your soul apart.

(01:02:40):
What really we should be saying the saying thank you.
That's the kind of ego loss I've been searching for.
That's why I picked up the limit configuration. Right, That's
how you finally achieve the higher state of consciousness. Okay,
and a couple of other things they mentioned. This one
I think is pretty straightforward, but it's true pain can
be interpreted as demonstrating virtue such as courage, toughness, dedication.

(01:03:01):
The symbolic value of withstanding pain can sometimes override the
physical discomfort of the pain itself. Though at the same time,
worth pointing out that's a great way to wind up
in that that third category of injured if you were
just you know, like I'm too I'm too masculine. Uh,
you know, I'm too powerful to listen to the pain signal. Well,

(01:03:22):
now you have the injury and damage signal, and you
have to deal with that, right, Yes, And they also
note several ways in which it appears that pain promotes
affiliation between people, you know. They say the expression of
pain can sometimes increase empathy and care for others. And
the expressions of pain can trigger social connections and they
can strengthen bonding and solidarity and in the later you

(01:03:43):
know how raizor movies. This this holds true, right because
once the cinebytes are done with you like you are
one of them. Yeah, I guess that's true. Now, I
do want to stress on a briefly serious note that
while we're talking about these uh possibly recognized psychological benefits
of different kinds of pain, we should stress us that
none of the potential benefits of pain should be interpreted
as excuses to continue practices of actual self injury, uh

(01:04:08):
you know, meaning like the deliberate damaging of your body
tissues such as cutting or burning. If you are practicing
self injury or considering it, including of course non suicidal
self injury, this is not something to deal with on
your own. This is something that's important to talk to
people about, talk to friends of family members or mental
health professional if at all possible. There are other ways

(01:04:29):
to get relief from the underlying issues that lead to
this coping mechanism, and they're far less dangerous. Absolutely, um
no on this On the same night. You know, we
do have listeners who who have you know taken part
in b D s M. We've also heard from listeners
who have done hook suspension. But I think it's it's
very important to note like these are these are avenues

(01:04:51):
that one should you know, enter into with safety in mind.
And also if you you know, if you go into
any of these things, uh, you know, safety is going
to be a part all of those ventures. Like how
to essentially utilize pain without leading to that area of
damage um of you know of injury or certainly infection. Um,

(01:05:12):
so certainly do your research. It's also worth stressing that
that some levels of physical pain, that the pain is
not always the right word, can certainly be acquired through exercise.
Oh yeah, I mean, I just want to say one
of the studies I was looking at, though, it was
very clear to say that I think at the time
exercise had not been found to be like an empirically
reliable way of curing self injury pattern behavior that anecdotally

(01:05:36):
it was often reported by patients that exercise was had
been substituted for self injury. Yeah. I would say that,
like basically, if you if you were inspired by anything
you heard here and you want to try something, well,
first of all, the cold water. I think it is
a great avenue to consider. But also, yeah, just you know,
most levels of exercise, you know you hear about like

(01:05:57):
feeling the burn, right, um, you know, experiencing some level
of discomfort during a workout, and perhaps the soreness that
you would experienced in the following forty eight hours. Like
you know, that's a I think that's that's an area
where one might pursue some of what we're talking about,
and that comes with a lot of added benefits for
your life and your mental health as well. Right, yeah,

(01:06:19):
and if you're doing it right, you know, you're not
injuring yourself in the process. Like so much of what
we're talking about, Like it really resonates with with my
own yoga practice, is that you know that I I
can feel myself, you know, putting myself into this this
level of discomfort, staying clear of the area of injury,

(01:06:40):
and in doing so, like feeling this heightened uh state
of existence you know, uh, like I feel more in
tune with my body and my surrounding and with the
people in the room with me that are also engaging
in this uh, in this practice that are also experiencing
the same thing. Um. So yeah, I would. I would say, yeah, don't,
don't do what what Pinhead does, go to a yoga

(01:07:04):
studio instead. Well, I would be curious in your yoga practice.
Do you find the reduction of the negative aspects of self,
self introspection and the ability to self regulate your identity
processes through this the discomfort brought about in yoga? Absolutely, Yeah,
that's that's one of the main reasons I do it

(01:07:25):
for sure. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. And maybe I gotta
give yoga to try one of these days. Oh, you
gotta give it more than one try, because I hated
it the first time I did. So. Anywhere in talent
does like horror yoga? Like horror themed yoga. There's our
former co host, Christian would go to a death metal yoga.
I've heard of that. It's not the same. Yeah, you want,

(01:07:46):
you want a full horror themed yoga, pumpkin head yoga yoga? Yeah,
I don't know. Well, there's there's so many forms of yoga.
I feel like there is room for that that brand
of yoga as well. Okay, I think we may have
done it for pain here, but I think we could
briefly talk about skinless critters do you want to do that?

(01:08:06):
Oh yeah, well yeah, Frank in the film spends a
lot of time skin less. You know, it comes back
as a shriveled corpse, and then he's able to drink
enough blood to regenerate, but then he needs to acquire
a new skin. He keeps thinking he's going to get skinned,
but then he never Like one victim after another, he's like,
he's got to have skin. This time he's almost there,
and then still no skin. Right. And in the second movie,

(01:08:29):
which which I have not seen in a long time,
but I remember as being fun, Uh, test, I don't
know if I remember fun. I remember fun. Basically, it's
like it's Ernest goes to Hell. They go to Hell.
It's not well, they go to Hell, Yes, but Earnest.
I don't think it's quite an Earnest movie. Um, but no.

(01:08:51):
In that film, we encounter Frank again and we encounter Julia,
and Julia now also has this skin less and has
to acquire a skin, and at one point she's able
to slip away by sort of uh you know, being
like like sort of leaving her skin behind, shedding her skin,
and uh, it is interesting to to then look to

(01:09:11):
the natural world and see that. We do see a
practice like this as a defense mechanism in certain organisms.
We've talked about autatonomy before on the show, the amazing
biological ability to shed part of one's body to facilitate
escape from a predator. The most classic example being a
lizard shedding its tail. Yeah, you sort of give the

(01:09:35):
predator a consolation prize, yeah, or a distraction. There are
a few different interpretations of it, right, it's a compromise.
It gets the tail, you get to survive. But there's
also there are also two species of African spiny mice
that slouch off portions of their furry flesh when they're
grabbed by a predator. Uh So, so you know, it's

(01:09:56):
one thing to see this in a lizard, but then
here's a here's a mammal that does it. It's it's flesh,
it's not a limb that it's going to regrow. It's
just a big portion of its skin that pulls aside.
So as I saw explained in nature, uh, these self
flaying mice simply slip out of portions of their own
hide and rapidly regrow complete suits of hair, follical skin,

(01:10:18):
sweat glands, for and even cartilage to fill in the gaps.
And we see some of that regenerative power in Julia
Cotton in hell Razor too. But Frank he'd never seemed
to have quite learned that ability on his own. Now
he had to steal his brother's skin. Now we find
another rather uh skilled skin shucker, if you will, in

(01:10:42):
the form of a particular gecko species from Madagascar. Uh.
These are fish scaled geckos. I'm gonna attempt the species name.
This is what when we need uh mark mandinka in
the studio. But it's a gecko Lepis megallepis. And basically
they have these giant, kind of oversized looking fish scales

(01:11:04):
on their body and uh and and basically if something
tries to capture them, they shed the skin. And it
actually makes it difficult to study them because you have
to researchers have to collect specimens with special cotton based traps.
And even these are are not quite delicate enough to
prevent injury. Like they'll basically shed some of their skin
at the drop of a hat. It's a bomber. You

(01:11:25):
need to find a way to calm them down before
you catch them. Yeah, well, I mean but basically they
they're like, I don't want to be caught period. Yeah,
you know, so there's a lot like Frank in that
that situation. Frank does not want to be recaptured by
the cinepipes. Uh. And of course, not only are these
both of these these these these different animals of the
mice and the geckos, not only are they interesting in

(01:11:45):
their own right, uh, this is another one of those
areas as with you know, lizards regrowing their tails and
other regenerative uh powers in nature, Like there is a
potential here to to figure out how to employ regenerative
met coal um technology in humans down the line, like
salamander research. Yeah, yeah, that's sort of things. So you know,

(01:12:08):
we could reach the I don't know about regrowing a
human's complete skin, but certainly we're getting into that area
of possibility. But the skin comes off really easily in
Hell Raiser, I don't know if you've noticed this, and
in a lot of horror films, um, well, there are
two things that happened way too easily. First of all,
someone can be impaled on something super easily. And then

(01:12:29):
also and in person's entire skin can be pulled off,
you know, with relative ease. So as far as impaling
and stabbing and stuff goes, horror movies seem to forget
that people have bones. You ever noticed that. It's like
where the bones somebody trips and a table leg all
the way through the body, like just straight through, yeah,
right through all the bones, in the chest, through the heart.

(01:12:50):
Everything is if the human body is made out of
balsa wood. Robert, this has been mighty fun to discuss today.
But I notice hooks and chain is emerging from the
studio walls to that's the sign that we have to
call it there. Obviously, we we could continue to talk
about the nature of pain here. Uh. So hey, if

(01:13:10):
you want, if you want more, check out some of
our past episodes on pain. Uh and I'm sure we'll
come back around to pain in the future. There are
a number of things we've touched on here that we
could flesh out in a future episode. Unintended yes, yeah,
I mean when you're talking hell Raiser, all puns are intended.
So uh. In the meantime, if you want to check
out other episodes, where can you find them? What? You

(01:13:31):
can find them in Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That's our website. You can also find them wherever you
get your podcasts. Uh and hey, if you're on that
thing they call Facebook, you can find the Facebook group
for Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's the Stuff to
Blow your Mind discussion module. That's a fun place to
interact with other listeners. Uh and uh and occasionally the

(01:13:51):
hosts themselves. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producers,
Seth Nicholas Johnson. Thanks Joe, Hey, this is Seth hopping
in real quick. Just say a quick thank you to
Annie Reese for providing the voice of our Cinembyte at
the beginning of their the lead Cinebyte the Proto Pinhead. Um.
If you want to hear more from Annie doing awesome
things with her voice, you should listen to her podcasts,

(01:14:14):
That Sminty Stuff Mom Never Told You, and Savor all
this month. Just like we're doing our Halloween themed episodes,
they're doing their Halloween themed episodes and they're all really great.
There's some stuff on female monsters, the feminism of the
Alien franchise, female serial killers, the Winchester House. Um, let's
see apple cider, the turnips. You know turnips were the

(01:14:35):
original jack lanterns. Just saying these are all really cool
things that you will learn if you go listen to
uh Annie on her other podcasts, Sminty and Savor. Go
do that. Everyone All right Back to you, Joe. If
you would like to get in touch with us with
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

(01:14:57):
Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind is a
production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
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