From the Vault: Science in the House of Wax

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is
Robert Land and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time
for an older episode of the show, this one from
the vault. It was called Science in the House of
Wax and it originally published on October one. This one
was all about like haunted wax museum movies. Yes, yes,
this is a fun one. We were, of course now

(00:27):
into our Halloween season here on Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
This is our first Halloween Vault episode, I believe, And
yeah this is this one was really cool. You get
into like what are wax figures? Why are wax figures?
How have they been used and thought about? Um throughout
human history? Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production

(00:49):
of My Heart Radio. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to
Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and time
Joe McCormick and hate It is finally October, our favorite
month of the year if you're new to the show.
Every October every year we spend the whole month, uh
talking about monster science, spooky stuff. And we have got

(01:13):
a firecracker to kick off this month. This year I
think because Robert, you and I both got wax fever.
That's right, we are going to be talking about wax. Uh.
In particular, we're going to be talking about wax and
human flesh, wax in the human form. What happens when
we make human bodies out of wax? How do we

(01:35):
feel about that? And we're gonna We're gonna gonna start
at the U. I guess at the the end of
this consideration, and like if this were like a drainage pipe,
we're going to find where it empties out into the
river of popular culture and genre film, because we're going
to talk about wax, horror movies, House of wax movies,

(01:57):
wax museum movies, the trade of wax in horror cinema.
I love your metaphor here, because yes, climbing in through
the sewer grade is the only way to infiltrate the
wax fortress. Uh. No, wait, did did you end up
watching the nineteen fifty three House of Wax? No? I
watched the wonderful trailer for it that contains no footage

(02:18):
from the film and just just a whole bunch of
crazy fonts and promises about what the film will consist
of and how it will change your life. Oh, man.
The lettering of the titles is actually one of the
best things in this movie. It's like very bright orange
and it's zooming out at the camera so that The
House of Wax nineteen fifty three is a Vincent Price

(02:40):
feature exploring the dark mania of wax crime, and it
is made truly exquisite by just scene after seeing of
of back to back three D effects money shots, where
there is there's like a solid five minutes in the
middle of the movie of a guy just doing paddleball
tricks straight into the camera lens, you know, like in

(03:00):
in Jason three D where he's like shoving the knife
towards the camera. It's it's that level of three D exploitation.
But other than that, it is a film about a
wax sculptor played by Vincent Price, who is obsessively devoted
to his craft, and he's got this belief that his
sculptures are somehow real people who can speak to him,

(03:21):
like he says he'd rather die than have his sculptures destroyed.
But then he's got this scheming, evil investor who wants
to burn down Prices Wax Museum and get the insurance cash.
And so he does this and Price gets injured in
the fire, and then he turns to wax crime, deciding
that he's gotta he's gotta kill people and use their

(03:42):
dead bodies to make wax figures for a brand new museum,
which is weird because it seems like that would kind
of take the artistry out of it, right, if you're
just using real dead bodies, Like it wasn't the whole
point that you were crafting them. Yes, and this is
but this is something that first of all, we'll see
time and time again in tax horror movies, the idea
that the wax figure is actually wax cast around a

(04:05):
human victim. And it's almost like a like a weird
backhanded compliment, like, like, the artistry is so perfect in
these they look so lifelike. They must be made out
of corps as you took a corpse, right, This isn't this,
This isn't a product of your skill. You're a murderer,
right right. Yeah, And and they're like whole scenes in
the movie where characters are just sitting around arguing about
whether or not this wax figure is a real person

(04:27):
or not. Uh, and it it spoiler alert, it is
it's a you know that that that's not Joan of Arc.
That's my friend Matilda who got murdered in the elevator
last week. A quick, quick fun fact about this film,
I was reading that it is uh, it's it's largely
responsible apparently for really uh bringing Vincent Price back into

(04:50):
these leading horror roles. Apparently prior to this, he was
doing a lot of you know, second and third billing
relatable characters and h because of this film we see
some of like the real horror films to come with
Vincent Price. That I have to say, Vincent Price, all
the likability always shines through it, no matter how deplorable

(05:11):
the character. Totally, Yeah, he's always that same lovable Vincent Price.
But I didn't realize that about his career. So maybe
he was like coming out of the era where he
had been the narrator in a made for TV adaptation
of a Christmas Carol. Yeah, the equivalent there. Yeah. But
then also, uh, there's a funny thing about this movie
is that it's notable for featuring a very young Charles

(05:33):
Bronson as a character named Igor, who is Price's assistant
in wax Crime, which seems a little bit on the nose.
But then also you know, there was a remake of this,
So actually I think the fifty three movie was technically
a remake of an earlier movie that you might mention
in a minute. But before I ever saw the fifty
three one, I saw many years ago the two thousand

(05:55):
five I guess final remake of House of Wax that
was marketed almost conclusively on the fact that Paris Hilton
was in it and you would get to see her die,
like literal literally, there were posters that said, see Paris die. Yeah,
this is a weird one to think back on, because
this was a time when Paris Hilton was at the
center of like media attention and this whole this film

(06:19):
was just sold entirely on this idea of celebrity death worship. Yeah.
I tried to rewatch it last night. It was a
brief experience of intense suffering, and I did not I
was we were not able to finish watching this. Uh.
It is probably the most mid two thousand's thing I
have ever seen. It's just two thousand five in a

(06:41):
pill form. So you've got Paris Hilton, You've got Chad.
Michael Murray is like the bad boy who turns out
to be good. In a pinch, and then there's a
character who's shoving a digital camcorder and everybody's face Remember
when every horror movie had that for some reason, it
would randomly intercut to grainy digital video for for no

(07:01):
apparent reason, and that the soundtrack, it was just constantly
coming in with, you know, sudden compressed guitars and the
butt rock voice just stabbing into your ears. Uh, it's it. Yeah,
I couldn't finish it. I was reading about it. Um,
this is when I have not watched But apparently the
wax Museum in the film is supposed to actually be

(07:22):
made of wax as well, which, um, it sounds stupid,
but it's stupid enough that I at least have to
commend it on committing to such a ludicrous notion. Uh yeah,
I don't know. I didn't get that far this time,
and I do not recall from the last time I
watched it, though it does feature a Paris Hilton made
of wax, or at least covered in wax. All of

(07:43):
the characters look a little bit waxy anyway, and I
would say, well, that's an intentional effect, you know, for
this film in particular, But really I think that was
just the visual style of mid two thousand's horror movies. Now, um,
let's see what We're not gonna be able to touch
on all the wax horror films in this episod. I
would really say much about him. I will say that
wax Work, which came out in it was a lot

(08:05):
of fun and had a pretty fun sequel as well.
It has the the guy from Gremlin and Gremlin's too,
and oh yeah, Zach Gag, Yeah, yeah, he played. He's
in both films, and David Warner plays the the wax Master,
the villain in the first one. The wax Work films
that I recall are are very they're kind of, you
know that genre of of of fantasy film that existed

(08:29):
at the time where it's like you're skipping channels and
you're being thrown into different realities. Yes, yes, I do.
That's what this was based on. It's like that plus
wax Museum horror film, and I remember it being kind
of fun. I haven't watched these since the nineties, but
I remember them being kind of fun late night of
viewing experience. So it's kind of like the montage at

(08:49):
the end of West Craven's Shocker yeah, I guess yeah, okay, um,
now I should I should also point out that the
nine five film Mad Loves Are in Peter Laure uh uh.
This is one of my favorite weird pictures and probably
my favorite new to me film that I saw this year.
It actually features a wax double of a popular performer

(09:12):
as a plot point. So you see it, You see
him popping up again and again at least as an
element in a weird or a horror movie plot. But but, but,
but just weird wax films in general, they seem to
go all the way back. It appears that wax museum
horror movies, uh, basically just are across the entire landscape

(09:33):
of cinematic tradition. The earliest example that I was able
to find was Figures This Siri with with the or
the Man with Wax Faces from nineteen three. And this
is a short silent French horror film based on a
short story by Andre de Lord, a French playwright of
the grand u gignal Um tradition, you know, the sort

(09:57):
of horror decapitation plays of the time. Gring y'all we
we talked to yes, yeah, with the uh, I think
we talked about this in our episode about the Masked Killers, right,
how like the Jason movies and all that sort of
grow out of the Grand Guineall tradition, which was like
just extremely gory stage plays, which interesting, interestingly enough, also

(10:19):
part of the plot to a Mad Love. Also another
kind of cool thing about this particular film. It was
apparently thought to be a lost film up until two
thousand seven. Oh wow. But even even during the nineteen twenties,
there were multiple other wax movies that came out in
this film's wake. Um there was n While Paris Sleeps
ninety wax Works nine seven Faces, and another film in

(10:43):
nineteen twenty nine title Chamber of Horrors, and subsequent decades
would prove you know that we had plenty of tolerance
for more wax films. Uh. I think that you pretty
much have wax films popping up in every subsequent decade
um of of of horror move history. So the idea
that wax figures are inherently creepy is not one of

(11:05):
these like new creepiness inventions or discoveries like how you know,
I don't know what year it was that everybody decided
clowns were creepy you know. Um, but this seems to
be like to go basically back as far as wax
figures go, right there, there's always sort of this understanding
that they had extreme horror potential. Yeah, well it's I

(11:27):
think that, Well, it's definitely gonna be one of the
things we explore in this episode. But clearly throughout the
history of cinema it's always been established, like there was
never a question. There was never like a pre wax
is creepy era in cinema. And we we should also
note that, um, that that prior to the nineteen twenties,
there was also just a history of wax chambers of

(11:48):
horror um that you would find in wax museums they
would have this rogues gallery of you know, generally serial
murderers and burglars and grave robbers in this tradition dates
back to uh, you know, even before that. So in
a way, wax was a medium for horror before cinema
became available to host all of our fears and our revulsions. Yeah,

(12:12):
that's reflected in in the fifty three price movie that
you know, they they're getting pressure from potential investors to say, like,
wouldn't you make a lot more money if your wax
museum was full of murderers and people going to executions.
And he does end up staging a lot of those scenes.
But I remember actually going to Madame Tusseau's and like,

(12:33):
I was just kind of shocked by how much of
it was just absolutely like puerile interest in in like
gross and violent stuff. Yeah, basically the the the Wax
Chamber of Horrors was the original Murder podcast. So yeah,
that's so I'm I'm joking, But of course I think

(12:53):
it does show the y that that interest has always
been there and we have to find a way to
express it culturally. I should also know that there's a
or air tradition here as well, most notably the wax
works by Charles S. Belden, which was the basis for
nineteen thirty three's Mystery of the Wax Museum and the
subsequent House of Wax Films and fifty three and two
thousand five. Now that there are a number of these

(13:15):
wax films that I have not seen, but I felt
like I needed to watch something new. I got so
excited about it, so I ended up watching a large
portion of the nineteen sixty nine film Nightmare in Wax.
Is this the one that's got Cameron Mitchell and the
photo looking like William Shatner with an I patch. I'm
glad you brought that up, because I think there's something

(13:35):
about I was thinking about this earlier that that Cameron
Mitchell is like he's very similar um to Shatner and
in many ways, you know, has similar similar sort of
body and stature and also you know, similar like like
stereotypically handsome face, except with Cameron Mitchell everything is just

(13:56):
a little more dangerous and unsettling. Like like you you
can you can trust a character played by William Shatner,
but you cannot trust a character played by Cameron Mitchell.
If Cameron Mitchell had played the captain of the starship Enterprise,
it would have been an entirely different universe. It would
have been a very a very dark star fleet. If
he was at the at the helm. He's a shatterer

(14:17):
with lurid secrets, yes, and in this film he he
gets he has a lot of time to shine as
much as anything shines in a film that is this
grubby looking and this grubby sounding. Um. It's uh, there
may be a cleaner cut of it out there. I
don't know, but the version I watched is the one
as of this recording currently on Amazon Prime, and it

(14:40):
is it is just it is grubby. It's I had
to put on the subtitles to understand what people were
saying part of the time, and it is, you know,
it's it's it's just the sound quality of the thing.
I wonder which is more visually unpleasant, this one or
the two thousand five movie, I think in different ways
like this one. This one has a lot of gels,
and it's like, again, the video qualities just kind of grubby.

(15:03):
There are a lot of scenes of a of a
gel lit Cameron Mitchell in this kind of dark satanic
robe with uh, scarred face I patch constantly just chain
smoking and drinking and having these just really insane, maniacal
monologues as he's either by himself or when he's tormenting

(15:25):
a victim. It's it's a weird one. I went ahead
and fast forward to the end just to see how
it wrapped up, and it just it just ends in
nightmare and madness. Um, it's a film that makes you
feel uneasy. Well, maybe we should talk about some of
the aspects that apparently have to show up in every
wax movie, right, yes, yeah, there there are certain certain

(15:46):
things you're always going to find. Um. Facial scarring or
deformity seems to always be there, seemingly linking the human
likeness in wax uh two in the in the idea
that it could melt and that it is um, you know,
imperfect medium in which to work, is not like stone,
comparing that to the actual fragility of human flesh. Um.

(16:07):
And on top of that, almost all of these movies
have some sort of a wax master behind it all.
Often the wax master is the one that is scarred,
and it's generally played by some sort of interesting character actor. Okay,
so the fifty three You've Got Vincent Price, he gets
he gets burned into fire and then his face is
scarred and then turns to wax crime. But he there's

(16:28):
a variation in the fifty three movie, which is that
he makes himself a wax face of his old face.
So for a significant part of the later part of
the movie, he's going around looking like regular Vincent Price.
But it's because he supposedly has this mask on. Yes, yeah,
and you see that that exact same situation pop up
in other wax master films. Uh the not always, but

(16:52):
certainly the Cameron Mitchell character here is is an example
of that. But but so some of the other characters
that have played wax masters include Peter Cushing, Um, David Warner,
also John Carradine. So you know, just gives you an
idea that the type of kid basically your your your
middle aged horror movie lead, the actor who will say yes.

(17:15):
Another important aspect of wax movies is if you can
afford it, you've got to have a cauldron of wax,
and someone needs to either go into that cauldron of
wax or be suspended over it. Yep, yep, all correct,
though I got a bone to pick with that cauldron
thing in a minute here when I get into some
chemistry of wax. But I've got another element that has

(17:35):
to appear in all these movies, which is that the
palace of wax must burn. You know, there's a fire,
and you get to watch the wax figures melting grotesquely.
Because of the textural similarity of wax to skin, it
sometimes looks surprisingly like a real human melting. I don't
think a real human would melt quite like that. But

(17:57):
you know, something about it looks organic, you know it does.
It does look like just a normal type of inanimate object.
It's something kind of like alive and coming apart. Uh.
And it almost makes me wonder if, like all these
wax movies where the wax figures always melt, could be
the source of the melt movie trend. Oh yeah, I
think that's that's a good point. But I want to

(18:18):
add another thing, which is that I don't know for sure,
but I think it's possible that this common set piece
of the wax Palace burning down is inspired by real
historical events because I found an archived article from the
Guardian from I guess it was the Manchester Guardian at
the time, from March nineteenth nine about a fire at

(18:41):
Madame Tousseau's in London from that year, so it looks
like there so there was a fire at this wax museums,
very famous popular wax museum in London. The fire started
in the evening around ten thirty one night and then
firefighters showed up. They had it extinguished by midnight, but
there was a lot of damage and while it was
burning it reportedly turned into a huge spectacle with the

(19:02):
Guardian reporting that possibly ten thousand people assembled in the
neighborhood to watch watch the fire or be nearby. That
number sounds high to me. I don't know how that
was estimated, but then again, I guess they did not
have TV at the time. But there's there's some real
gems from this article, so I just want to read
a few quotes. One of them is quote the fire

(19:23):
brigade was under the command of a Mr. A. R. Dyer,
who was brought to the scene from a theater where
he had been spending the evening with some friends. Despite
the fact that he was in evening dress, he took
an active part in the operations. So you've you've got,
I guess, a guy into like a fancy tuxedo commanding
the firefighters at at Tussau's and then um, once the

(19:45):
firefighters start to get the blaze under under control, it
says that the men of the Salvage Corps started running
in and grabbing wax figures out of the exhibits to
bring them out to safety. The Salvage Corps where things
there were like a force that worked in concert firefighters
at the time, where the firefighters be trying to put
out the blaze and the Salvage Corps which would be

(20:05):
running in trying to grab stuff to prevent property damage
and loss. I don't know if they were somehow funded
by insurance companies there something that it seems possible, but
to read a quote from this article, two of the
salvage Corps men were seen struggling along with a huge
cage containing a green parrot, which after a moment or two,
hopped onto its perch and began to show signs of

(20:27):
a return to perkiness. This was apparently a famous green
parrot of Madame Tusso's, and there was another report in
the Evening Post that says, after the parrot was I
guess that it had been sort of rendered sluggish by
some smoke inhalation, but once they got it back outside,
it sort of perked back up. And this, uh, this
report in the Evening Post says, then it startled everyone

(20:50):
by remarking, this is a rotten business. I can't do
a parrot voice, but rotten business. And then one more
longer quote from that Guardian article, members of the crowd
inquired after the safety of Charlie Peace, Crippen and other
notorious criminals from the Chamber of Horrors, so people are
out there yelling like, how's Crippen doing? Is he? Okay

(21:12):
um uh? The side of the salvage men shouldering the
wax models was a strange one. An eyewitness who lives
opposite Madame Tousseau has said in an interview that the
fire was a wonderful spectacle. Strong red and golden flames
leapt fifty feet from the roof of the building. The
wax models could be distinctly heard sizzling. It is strange

(21:33):
to think of the number of imminent and highly respectable
people being burned in effigy in London. Madame Tusseau's famous
wax works spread its net far and wide, with at
least forty people of the present Parliament and scores of
notabilities outside were represented in wax in these burning galleries.
Criminals represented in the Chamber of Horrors, however, will have

(21:53):
no feelings in the matter, as they are all dead. Well.
This is great because this does also get into some
of the ideas we're going to discuss concerning the likeness
that has been created in wax and it's relationship to
the living human or the deceased human and whatever the
case may be. You know, there's some photos online that

(22:14):
are alleging to be of the aftermath of the fire
at Madame Tusso's. They appear to be of like various
like charred and partial remains of wax figures. I'm not
I couldn't confirm that they were definitely from uh this
actual fire, but wherever they're from, they really do look
absolutely horrific. It's it's one of the most nightmarish things

(22:35):
I've ever seen. Yeah, it's just like bodies and lifelike heads,
and they're just kind of clearly they're just kind of
like thrown up against the wall um temporarily. But it
it is bizarre to look at. Is that it is
unsettling because they are they are lifelike and yet lifeless. Now,
there's an interesting thing that I want to get into
for a minute, if you don't mind a brief chemistry diversion,

(22:58):
which is the fact that all of these movies feature
a roasting, burning, melting hell of wax at some point.
It kind of raises an issue about the chemistry of wax.
What actually happens when wax burns, like what happens in
a candle. I think this is something that I probably
should have been able to intuit the answer to, but

(23:20):
I went most of my life, I think, not really
knowing the question of how a candle works or you know,
what what is being what is happening when a candle
burns down? Because this is key be you know, we
have to to realize that when when we we get
into the discussions of of wax bodies that have been created,
like one of our primary relationships with wax would have

(23:42):
long been the candle. And and so we bring that
knowledge of what a candle appears to do to our
I think, to our consideration of wax bodies and wax art, etcetera. Yeah,
and a candle is, despite being a very mundane object,
it's actually a little bit more mysterious and mystical the
more you look into it, and it's actually a wonderful
scientific invention. Uh So, So technically, you know, you've got

(24:05):
a lot of different chemical compounds that are called wax.
There's not just one thing that is wax. Wax is
the umbrella category for malleable organic compounds that are solid
at room temperature and lipophilic, meaning that you know they're
they're not going to dissolve in water. They will only
dissolve in oil or other nonpolar solvents. And basically almost

(24:26):
all waxes, I think perhaps all, at least almost all,
are hydrocarbons. They're made up of hydrogen and carbon atoms.
The most common type that you will find for various
consumer items and uses today is probably paraffin wax, which
is a modern industrial product that's derived from petroleum, first
created in the early eighteen hundreds, but people have been

(24:48):
using other types of wax for thousands of years. There
are a lot of types of wax that are derived
from animal products. For example, we're going to talk about
the ancient Egyptians in a bit, but they were certainly
lords of bees wax. And then there's land an l in,
which is a type of wool wax. It is secreted
from glands in the skin of animals like sheep I
believe called the sebaceous glands, which is that's a good

(25:10):
word for your tool belt. But there's also spermaceti, which
is a historically very important wax that came out of
the heads of whales like sperm whales and bottlenose whales,
which some people once believed was literally the congealed semen
of the whales stored in its head. For some reason,
it's not it's a waxing material. But so you probably

(25:31):
know from experience that candle wax, whatever it's made of,
generally is not flammable in the sense that you know
oily rags or something. Are you You can't hold a
flame up to the wax edge of a candle, uh
and and watch it just catch fire. Instead, it's going
to melt and run down the side, right. Nevertheless, the

(25:52):
wax is the fuel for the candle flame. When a
candle burns, the fuel that's burning is the wax that
the candles made of. And the crucial factor here is
that wax is not flammable in its solid or liquid state.
It has to be vaporized into its constituent hydrogen and
carbon molecules in order to catch fire. So the way

(26:12):
it works is once you light the wick, the flame
melts a little bit of the solid wax around the
base of the wick, and then once the wax is melted,
it gets drawn up into the wick via capillary action
just kind of like kind of like the way that
water is drawn up the length of a celery stalk,
and then this liquid wax gets even hotter as it
gets sucked up into the area where the fire is,

(26:34):
and it undergoes a second phase change into the gaseous
form of its constituent molecules, and then the fire happens.
The heat of the flame causes those gaseous molecules to
react with the oxygen in the air, and this creates
more fire. It keeps the flame going, and as long
as new wax can be drawn up into the wick,
the flame can keep burning. Candles are actually a rather

(26:56):
ingenious invention, but there's also something kind of un any
to them even in their monday and form, which is that,
unlike wood or coal or a lot of the other
things that we burn on purpose, candles burn without leaving
any ash or any solid you know, detritus. The wax
that burns simply disappears completely into thin air. And this

(27:19):
is certainly a quality of candles and wax that that
influences our magical thinking regarding wax. Oh yeah, this will
definitely come up again, certainly with ancient Egypt and things
like that. But um, this actually leads to a very
fun and easy science experiment that like if you've got kids,
and you want to try this at home. I just
did this myself earlier today. You ever noticed, how so

(27:40):
when you first attempt to light a candle when the
wax is still completely solid, it can kind of take
a while, right, Like, you have to hold the flame
against the wick. You have to put it right there
on the wick, and usually have to hold it there
for several seconds or the candle won't light. But if
you leave a candle burning for a few minutes, first
of all, you might notice that the flame burns almost

(28:02):
perfectly clean with no smoke. You know, it's it's kind
of a miraculous looking thing when you notice it. Most
of the time, if there's a fire, you're going to
see smoke coming off of it. But then if you
blow out the candle, suddenly you will see smoke. It'll
be smoke rising off the wick. What is that stuff? Well,
primarily this is vaporized wax. This is wax converted to

(28:24):
its vaporized form, condensing into little droplets in the air
as it rises off with the wick. And now it
can't react with the oxygen in the air anymore because
the flame is gone. But if you hold a flame
up to a candle that you have just blown out
while the wax vapor is still rising off of the wick.
You will notice that it lights much more easily than

(28:45):
it did at first. In fact, it happens almost instantly,
and you probably don't even have to touch the lighter
lighter flame to the wick. You can just hold it close.
And the difference is that now the candle has been
burning for a few minutes, there's already wax in its
liquid form and even in its gaseous form rising in
that smoke. And this brings me back to the fact
that the fact of those bubbling cauldrons in the wax movies,

(29:08):
you know, the fact that vaporized wax is so flammable
is one of those reasons that that all of those
movie scenes with a bubbling cauldron of wax are scary. Like,
if you're trying to heat and melt wax for sculpting,
I think people are usually advised to do it over
a double boiler, you know, so you have water boiling
on the bottom, and you're using the steam from that
to heat your your boiler with the wax to prevent

(29:30):
accidentally heating the wax to the point where it becomes
extremely flammable and dangerous um. And if you know, if
it does get to that point, if you have wax
reaching its flashpoint, it's also not the kind of fire
that can be easily put out, say by throwing water
on it, because throwing water onto lipid based fires can
be very dangerous, make it worse. This is excellent advice

(29:51):
for any would be wax masters out there looking to
set up their secret dungeon studio. Yeah, don't play around
with wax. Now, again, we're not able to reference every
wax horror film that's that's come out. You know, you're
trying to sort of stick to the the generalities here,
but I should I do want to point out that
there's a really cool wax based entity that shows up

(30:11):
in TV's Doom Patrol, which is a current television series
based on the comic book and in this case particularly
Grant Morrison's run with the title. There's this character named
Candle Maker that's this wax dripping candelabra headed being with
with like candle light on its head and in the
pits of its eyes um and it in the comics

(30:32):
it's described as being an edgregor. This is a thing
that's created by unconscious tensions surrounding historical crisises such as
the threat of nuclear nuclear annihilation, and the comic version
is quite ghastly as well. But the TV version also
creates this wonderful ambiguity of melting flesh and or candle wax,
and there's as it begins to tear into all the

(30:55):
characters around it, there's also a lot of melted wax
and anigans in the way it dispatches people and like
leaves them covered in now dried wax behind it. Man,
that's a great idea for a monster. Yeah, it's pretty good.
I was not familiar with it prior to checking out
this show because I had never actually never read Grant
Morrison's run on Doom Patrol. But yeah, it's it's a

(31:17):
wonderful creation and it's it's brought to uh to life
rather nicely in the show. Should we take a break
and then come back to talk more wax? Let's do it?
Thank alright, we're back. So we talked about the pop culture,
the end of it, the genre film end of this situation.

(31:38):
But let's talk a little bit about the idea of
of wax and magic wax and in ancient magic with
with a focus on the human form. So years ago
we did uh that many years ago, what a few
years ago, we did an episode titled The Tears of Ray,
all about the ancient Egyptian art of beekeeping and the

(31:58):
various uses that the ancient Egyptians had for wax and
for honey, both of which were considered that the tears
of the god Ray. And we chatted with author Jeane
Kritzky about it because he had written this fabulus book
titled The Tears of Ray and uh and certainly we
encourage you to check out that episode to hear that interview,
but we're also going to refer back to some of

(32:19):
what we discussed concerning wax in that episode. All right,
So Egyptian physicians would use bees wax to treat wounds.
They would also give you a wax amulet to burn.
As we discussed already, it burns brightly, it burns up
completely symbolically and by extension magically. You know, the ideas

(32:40):
it consumes the illness or the thing that is created
in its likeness is now just magically evaporated from the
world through fire. Yeah, and apparently this is not something
that only happened in ancient Egypt. There there have been
traditions in a number of different religions. I think in
in pre Christian Rome there were also like cases of
people burning wax effigies of saying organ of the body

(33:03):
or something like that to try to get a blessing
from the gods or to defeat an illness of some kind. Uh.
And and it seems to be there's something about the
way that the wax would disappear completely that made it
seem more magical. Right, yes, you know, well we'll get
into that in more detail. But but certainly you see
that in the pre Christian tradition and then as an

(33:23):
element of Christianity with the use of votive candles um.
But but yeah, the Egyptians were super into it. They
used the wax, these wax for for a number of
different purposes. I mean, they used it isn't isn't adhesive.
They also used it as an embalming agent, a light source,
and an artistic medium. So already we can see the
idea of wax being used in many cases in physical

(33:45):
contact with the flesh of the living and the dead,
and also and also is something out of which to
form likenesses of living flesh. Um. But but there were
a number of magical connotations here as well, and part
of that I think comes down to the and and
certainly uh Jean Chritsky made this argument that a lot

(34:05):
of it comes down to the particular properties of wax.
It's it's malleable, it's insoluble in water, it doesn't discolor
and doesn't lose shape after being molded into its desired form,
and in that respect, wax figures can last for centuries.
But also if you place it in the sun, it's
color can change, which Kritsky believes might have been highly
desirable as well, given the importance of the god Ray

(34:29):
and the and the Sun in Egyptian mythology. So it's
almost like the god Is is continuing to work his
magic on the products of his of his hidden industry, right.
And then of course there's this idea that it leaves
no ash behind, that it burns cleanly and almost magically. Apparently,

(34:49):
the the Salt Papyrus describes how wax quote could be
used to ensure the destruction of Seth, the god of confusion,
disorder and violence, and then order of Osiris. So you'd
simply make a bees wax likeness of your enemies, and
you would burn them to kill the name of Seth. Now,
the very nature of these likenesses or figurines would seem

(35:11):
to suggest that we're probably not likely to possess a
lot of them, right, Yeah, that's apparently one of the issues.
If it is a like a small statue that's meant
to be burned and consumed, they're not going to be
that many that remain. But still we see plenty of
other wax sculptures that apparently had other uses wax ambulance
and whatnot, that show up um in the remains of

(35:35):
ancient egypt Um. And then there are also various stories
as well. For instance, there's a Twelfth Dynasty myth that
tells of a priest by the name of Webinair, which
always sounds a bit like I always read it and
I picture Webinar in my in my head, But it
isn't that a terrible word? I want to purge Webinar
from my mind. I wish I didn't know it. Well now,

(35:58):
it's it's kind of life, right. But at anyway, this
particular priest made a wax crocodile, also using herbs and spells,
and he threw it into a pond where his life's
lover was bathing. It came to life, swallowed the lover,
and then vanished. A week later, he called the croc
up from the depths, and then he touched it and
the animal turned back into a wax model, disgorging the lover.

(36:20):
The pharaoh watched all of this as had happened and decided, well,
actually the lover should die. So the model was transformed
into a croc again, ate the lover again, and then
left for good. Make up your mind, so anyway, that's
certainly check out Gen Kritzki's book if you want more
about the ancient Egyptian use of wax and honey. But
but basically the idea is there were a lot of

(36:41):
magical ideas about what waxes, and I think it can help.
These ideas can also highlight some of just the universal
aspects of wax that make it attractive to the human imagination. Yeah,
one of the things we didn't even really get deep
into here, but also worth looking up. You know you've
never seen him before. Um uh, look up the the
Fiume mummy portraits. These are some some of the most

(37:03):
striking paintings I think that that are extant from the
ancient world. I mean, just like it's hard to believe
the level of color and detail that's still visible on
them given how old they are. Um and a lot
of these paintings were made with a process that was
able to preserve the color of the paint because the
painting incorporated wax, like instead of just regular paint, it

(37:26):
used something called incaustic painting, which I think is where
you you mix bees wax together with your pigments and
this produces a type of painting that is you know,
more durable over time, which is which is interesting because
one of the critiques and the criticisms is often made
against wax based art is that it is it is
so impermanent, the idea that is just going to melt away.

(37:47):
It's not going to stand the test of time. Uh clearly,
you know, as we've discussed so far and we'll continue
to discuss, there are there are a number of examples
of wax art that has stood the test of time totally.
And yes, once again, if you have never looked up
the fire mummy portraits, that they are absolutely worth a look.
It's just shocking. So if we fast forward to medieval Europe.

(38:07):
We we see a world where where wax still has
is important for a host of reasons, including the use
of wax tablets, seilence candles, torches. You know, although the
basic material uses for wax you might expect, but also
they became useful in the creation of death masks. Man,
I love a death mask. It's a it's an interesting

(38:29):
you know, I think complex topic because it comes down
to that big question, how do we remember the dead? Uh?
You know, because as with all of our memories, memories
of faces are subject to change, erasure, elaboration and more, uh,
you know, and plus their their differences in neural abilities
to summon visual images. To today, we have photos and
we have videos to help us maintain the likeness of

(38:50):
the deceased. But there was a time when, you know,
other than painting, um and and other artistic traditions. You know,
what were you going to do? Well? Like, certainly, if
wanted a realistic depiction of an individual's face, Uh, you
only had so many options. One of those options would
come to be, at least for some members of society,

(39:12):
the death mask. I mean, one of the most interesting
things about it to me, I guess is the question
it raises of um does one want to be remembered
as one looked at the time of death? You know,
like is that the image of you that should be preserved. Yeah,
that is a difficult question to answer. I mean, that's
ultimately one that that probably comes up in um considerations

(39:36):
of even modern funeral um traditions. You know, certainly, if
your body has been embalmed, you're not going to be
uh laid out to look like you did at the
moment of death or anything so ghastly, but so it's
gonna be your body at that final state of life.
Like if you are an older individual, it is going
to be your aged body, not your youthful um you know,

(39:59):
vigorous body, cetera. Like it's a very common practice now
even at you know, an open casket funeral, like people
can come and visit the body as it looks in death,
but very often there will be a photograph or a
number of photographs, like right there beside the coffin of
the person younger, you know, when they when they were
in their prime. So yeah, I don't know that I
would necessarily want to be remembered exclusively based on how

(40:22):
I looked after death. But I mean, I guess that
was often the best time to get in there and
and make a cast of the thing. Uh. You would
first of all, you would see even back in Roman days,
you would see whax sometimes used to preserve the features
of a deceased person for the purpose of of modeling
or sculpture, just to you know, to to sort of
keep it all together long enough to to model a

(40:43):
copy of it. But if you're going to create a
straight up death mask based on a person's face, you're
gonna need to create a mold. Um. Uh. And plaster
was often used, just as plasters used today for for
facial casts. You know. So certainly everybody's seen a a
makeup f X documentary at this point and seem that
performed on your your your favorite actor, uh, you know

(41:06):
or two. But um, but on top of using plaster,
wax could also be used. I was looking particularly at
iris I J. M. Gainsum's Death Mass Unlimited, which appeared
in the British Medical Journal in nine five uh and
point out the they would sometimes pour wax over the
features and these would often the resulting um death mass

(41:30):
that they created would would then be used as a
source for use in other artistic works. But by the
eighteen hundreds, um, we saw a change. The mass became
sought after in and all of themselves. The creation of
this life like um face uh, and the resulting plaster
or metal version of the face was used as an
object of remembrance in and of itself, not merely as

(41:52):
a model for other treatments. That's interesting. I wonder if
that has anything to do with changing attitudes around the
same time toward I don't know, like objective accuracy and
the capturing of images. Say, like, you know, also in
the eighteen hundreds were getting the first photography as opposed
to portraiture. Yeah, yeah, this is a good point. It's

(42:14):
it's it's the difference between the Yeah, the painting that
you have commissioned and perhaps had some insight into exactly
how you are represented, and then just the abstract reality
of the plaster cast that is made of your face.
After you die, you know, you're not even around to say,
can we can we do something about these eyebrows here? Can?
I would like this mole removed? It said, right, like, nope,

(42:36):
this is what you um what what you act is
what you get. Well, yeah, I mean, it's like in
the modern era, we tend to think a photo of
a person is somehow more real than a painting of them,
you know, it's somehow more realistically captures what they looked like,
that was the real them. And I guess you could
probably say the same thing about a death mask versus

(42:58):
you know, when a somewhat interpret did sculpture. Right now, now,
the face is ultimately only one part of the scenario
here and what we'll come back to it. But there's
also this this rich history of anatomical wax replicas as
it concerns organs and other parts of the body, you know, hands, etcetera. Yeah,
and we were reading a really interesting paper about this

(43:21):
by a scholar named ROBERTA. Balestri erro in the Journal
of Anatomy called Anatomical Models and wax venuses Art masterpieces
or scientific craft works. And Robert I really liked this
paper that I thought this was so interesting. It was
all about the history of of how human anatomy has

(43:41):
been rendered in wax sculptures and to what degree those
sculptures incorporate elements of or are considered examples of fine art. Yeah,
it's a wonderful paper. It's available in full for free
online no paywall, and it has it also has illustrations
of these work, has photographs of the various wax works

(44:02):
that the author is referring to. Now, one of the
areas that ballestri Errow begins with is going back to
burnable effigies of wax, and the author notes that pre
Christian votive offerings quote could be of any kind, but
often reproduced parts of the human body, representing healthy or
diseased organs. Now, one thing that blestri Arrow points out

(44:24):
in this particular paper is how between the thirteenth and
seventeenth century of Florentine and foreign nobles in Florence would
commission life sized colored wax figures of themselves, which were
then dressed in clothes. They would you know, you could
give them wigs and basically create a stand in for
yourself that would just hang out in church as an

(44:46):
act of devotion. Um, this this is so, this is
so weird, this is amazing. You remember the episodes we
did a few years back about religious technology. So you
would have, for example, the prayer wheel. You know that
in a way, this is trying to create a machine
that can accomplish a religious or or supernatural objective by

(45:07):
doing prayers for you at a greater rate than a
person could. But I also wonder if there's some sort
of vague idea of religious technology here, where if you
can create a good enough likeness of yourself to put
in the church, it's almost as if you can accomplish
being there praying all the time while being in your
actual physical body somewhere else and doing other things. Yes,

(45:30):
it is like it. It's it's really hard to even
kind of fit this in your head because on one hand,
this seems like the kind of thing Homer Simpson would
do in an episode, right, like try to put a
wax version of himself in church so that he doesn't
have to go um. But then it also again we
have to think about the magical ideas about wax, the
idea like what happens when you create a life like

(45:51):
version of yourself, especially when there's already this history of
creating sacred objects out of wax. Um. Yeah, it's it's
ultimately really trippy stuff. Now, the tradition here seems to
have in part involved out of that death mass creation
practice as well, because this would have been the treatment
befitting a regal face in death, but hey, why not

(46:13):
in life as well? If a funeral wax body could
stand in for a corpse in a coffin, then why
not stand in for the living body as well? Why not?
In in a way like stand in is a like
an additional antenna for the human soul. Oh yeah, and
and unless we skip over that too quickly, I mean
another thing Balustri Arrow talks about in her paper is

(46:34):
the idea that say, if you go to a I
think it would be like a seventeenth century or sixteenth
century funeral in France, you might expect to find a
wax sculpture of the dead person. Yeah, how strange. Yeah,
I mean in a way it gets right back to
what we were talking about. Do I want everyone to
see my old body? Uh there in the casket? How

(46:56):
about a wax version of me that can be uh,
you know, a little more beautified. Let's put that on top.
That's exactly what you would see. But we should get
back to these figures in the churches, because this is
this is just too good. So you would have a
rich person would commission a wax sculpture of their body
that could be put in the basilica in the church
to just live there. Basically, yes, and there would be

(47:19):
multiple figures that would populate the inside of the church,
alongside wax models of organs and the like, and also
some non wax models. But apparently wax was quite popular
and in this practice continued, especially in Florence in a
few other areas, at least until Leopold the Second banned
the practice in seventeen eighties six. The author writes, quote,

(47:41):
These boaty, as they were known in the Florentine vernacular,
were present in nearly all churches in Florence, but in
the Church of the Santissima Annunziata they became a major feature,
turning the sanctuary into an enormous museum of wax figures
of all types, including body parts as well as whole figures.
This gets even weirder in a minute, but I'm going

(48:01):
to hold off for a second. That's right, because into
the Medici family, the House of Medici. I was looking
at a book titled Medici Women by Gabrielle Langdon. That is,
I think the deals you know predominantly with with women
in the powerful House of Medici family, the Italian banking
family and political dynasty of the time. But there's a

(48:25):
section and they're talking about how the Medici family used
boti um that they were first of all, to drive
home these figures were not meant to be burnt in
the church. They were there to hang out. They were
there too as a magical presence in these particular churches. Uh.
And there they could last for decades and were, as
Langdon describes them, ex voto centers in these churches. And

(48:48):
by ex voto we mean a religious offering given in
order to fulfill a vow. But more importantly the author
rights here. They made quite an impact on anyone who
saw them, and they served to reaffirm just Medici domination
over politics, uh, and also to to drive home their
divine favor over that of their enemies. Well yeah, I

(49:11):
mean you're putting like a like a secular powerful person
in effigy inside the house of worship. Yeah, I mean,
I mean, just imagine how grotesque that would be today.
I mean I would not surprise me if it were
to type plus today also, just given human nature has
not changed that much. Uh, sadly, but but but yeah,

(49:32):
just you go into church and here is a member
of the Medici family in wax Uh. This is almost
like a religious icon in the church. Adding to that,
what if it could kill you, because there's a great
passage and so Also another thing we were reading was
this book chapter in a book called Disguised Deception and

(49:53):
Trump Lloyd Uh Interdisciplinary Perspectives, and it was a chapter
by an artist and scholar named Catherine Heard called uneasy
Associations wax bodies outside the Cannon. And so Heard is
also talking about this same church, the Basilica of Santissima
Nunziata in Florence, and she writes, quote today none of

(50:15):
the six hundred vote of Santissima and Nunziata are known
to survive. The church was partially cleared in sixteen sixty five,
when the number of accumulated vote had become so great
that they had to be suspended from the ceiling of
the church to accommodate their volume, and poorly secured vote
plummeting into the midst of parishioners at prayer had become

(50:36):
a regular hazard. The remaining sculptures fell victim to the
spirit of the Enlightenment during the eighteenth century, when they
were unceremoniously relegated to an outdoor courtyard of the church,
left exposed to the elements to decay until they were
finally melted down and made into candles. Oh can you
imagine how weird and grotesque that courtyard became there? But

(50:58):
over a while like that, that would be a great
scene for a horror movie, given the number of of
of Italian horror films um and indeed it at least
one example of a of a wax horror film. There's
a wax mask that Dario Argento and Lucio Fulcy were
both involved in the creation of. That is on my

(51:18):
to watch list. I'm super excited to watch this film,
so it's possible they get into some of this. But
if not, like this is prime territory, somebody make a like,
like a like a seventeen century horror film about these things. Yeah, yeah, wow, Argento,
Fulci and wax figures. That sounds like the most disgusting

(51:39):
thing I could possibly imagine. Just I'm just picturing the textures. Yes, yeah,
the trailer. I've only seen the trailer so far, but
it looks it looks amazing, But I don't want to
pass over either. The idea of the wax figure suspended
from the ceiling in the church, which could fall and
crush you during worship. Right like that, the place has
become like a cracker barrel of of of wax figures

(52:01):
instead of antiquated farm equipment. Well, I guess I want
to be fair. I don't know if the wax figure
would be heavy enough to crush you, but it could
at least injure you. It would disrupt your religious experience,
I would think, I would think so. So this whole
situation apparently took on a kind of cult flavor um,
you know, which is one of the reasons that it's
eventually eventually banned. Um. But not only could these boatie

(52:25):
be revered and the individual be revered through their wax likeness,
they could, you know, they could certainly stand in positively
for powerful uh members of the Medici family, but they
could also be the target of violence UM, violence that
often reverberated with a very real sort of danger. Langdon

(52:45):
writes about this, pointing out that writers of the time
described this as someone having been quote slaughtered in wax,
or even as a murder uh. You know. They would
describe the act of destroying the wax likeness of the
individual a murder. Well in the fifty three House of Wax,
I reiterate Vincent Price thinks his wax figures are as

(53:07):
human as as he is, and he says he would
rather die than see his artworks destroyed. Yeah, so so again.
Here in these examples we see wax standing in for
flesh and taking on magical properties. The likeness becomes the
thing or the person. They are present in the church.
They are devotees to God in wax. And if the
effigy is then dragged out into the street and then

(53:29):
stomped into the dirt, h then the violence is all
that more direct and physical. Now. One thing Balustri Arrow
points out in her paper is that wax by it's
by it's very like natural texture just lends itself so
well to realism and and an unsettling level of realism
like it it mimics flesh in a way that naturally

(53:52):
becomes very unpleasant to people. Yeah, Like you think of
why people love marble sculpture so much is because you know,
it's like, oh, it's like my flesh, except it is
it is solid, it is resistant, and it is so
perfect and and and flawless, but within wax, especially if
you're dealing with a like a mold situation, you know,
you can capture every detail, every wrinkle and poor can

(54:16):
be created. It is flesh like. It can be colored,
it can be molded. And one thing that this is
something I wasn't even thinking about until I read it here,
is that you know, you have actual organic materials that
can be combined with the wax, actual body hair, actual hair, teeth,
and nails can be kind of melded into the substance,

(54:39):
which even it just just serves to blur that boundary
between wax and flesh. And she also points out that
these are the these very lifelike qualities in wax as
a medium, that this would be part of the reason
that it was abandoned by the artistic community anyway, not
not by crafts people. Uh. During the rise of neo
classic Yeah, Neo Classicism was a It was an aesthetic

(55:03):
movement in the Western arts and literature that began in
roughly like the mid eighteenth century. But it consisted basically
of a revival of interest in classical antiquity, so you
would start to see artwork of the time much more
favoring the style of the Greek and Roman arts, architecture,
theater and that kind of thing. It's often described as

(55:24):
a move away from the highly ornamental Rococo style that
came before it, and it favored, you know, the elegant
symmetries of the Parthenon or ancient ancient Greek sculpture, all
of which have a sort of a simplicity to them
that is not there in the wax sculpture. Like, the
wax sculpture goes against this because of how close to

(55:47):
real it can get, Like the realism actually counted against
it for the aesthetics of the day. Yeah, and and
I think, or I suspect anyway that a lot of
what we just we didn't consider now in terms of
the uncanny Valley effect would have also been present with wax,
like the like wax just allows you to get so

(56:08):
close to reality, you get into that potential that that
arguable realm of of of close but not quite close
enough or so close but not perfect that it unnerves me.
Is the art real or not? You know? I can
look at a at a at a marble sculpture, I
can walk through a sculpture garden, and yes, these are
beautiful and life like in the craftsmanship. The artistry involved

(56:30):
is just amazing. Uh, but I don't wonder if it's real.
I'm certainly not accusing that the people of having, you know,
taking the corpses of their victims and use them as
models for these stone works of art. Yeah. And one
of the things addressed in in a couple of these
sources we've been talking about definitely in Blister Arrow and
and and Catherine Herd's chapter is the question of whether

(56:53):
wax sculptures are art or not, or you know what,
whether people consider them even potentially to be art. There
there's some kind of a there's a kind of bias
against the media. Absolutely, So we're gonna take a break,
but when we come back, we're going to dive into
this very topic. But we're also going to get really
into the topic of anatomical wax creations. Thank thank Alright,

(57:18):
we're back all right now. While we've been talking about
how there's sort of a mixed history of how wax
sculpture has been received as art, there is one area
in which wax sculpture was was and sort of always
has been a big hit, which is in scientific and
anatomical renderings of the human body. So Balustri Errow writes,

(57:41):
quote with the advent of neo classicism, these very qualities
made the realistic nature of wax models seem repulsive, and
the practice of artistic sero plastics, and that's wax sculpture,
basically sero plastics, meaning wax started a slow decline. From
an artistic point of view. It virtually disappeared in the

(58:01):
nineteenth century, surviving only in a minor way for votive uses,
for example, by the creation of ex voto objects and
statues at times containing relics of saints and martyrs, and
in secular wax works such as those displayed at Madame
Tousseaux's museum in London, as we've already talked about. But
it seems like maybe Madame Tousseaux is is a little

(58:21):
bit ghosh, she goes on. In contrast, the use of
wax modeling techniques for didactic and scientific purposes increased considerably
for the study of normal and pathological anatomy, obstetrics, zoology,
and botany. So here waxes finding its natural home. Maybe

(58:42):
maybe it's not always perfectly received in the art world,
but it definitely has a role to play in science. Yeah,
now and now. Of course, there's there's always been this
connection between art and science, certainly certainly in pre photographic
and cinematic days, because if you were a naturalist exploring
the world, if you were if you saw a new
species of bird, uh, you would need to draw that bird,

(59:05):
you would need to have a record of that bird, uh,
even paint that bird, etcetera. Likewise, in the in the
we see this relationship between the study of human anatomy
and the pursuit of art, where oftentimes the artist is
the anatomist and the anatomist is the artist, and sometimes
it's difficult to say which is the primary occupation, which

(59:26):
is the primary endeavor totally, but this brings us to
the sixteenth century. UH. During this time we saw a
renewed interest in human anatomy and it ends up sweeping
across Europe. Human cadaver has proved the most essential um
source and exploring the mysteries of human anatomy uh and
A and anatomical drawing was still an essential tool as well,
but the two dimensional medium had its limitations. Access to

(59:50):
cadavers was also not universal, and as we've discussed, they
were in short supply at times. So you know, people
were afraid of their bodies being stolen by the grave robbers. Yeah,
if you were buried too close to like the Edinburgh
Medical College, you could very very possibly have your corpse
stolen for a dissection there. I mean, this was the
age of dissections. In order to educate and to study,

(01:00:13):
you know what, you've got to know what the organs
inside the body look like if you're going to do medicine,
do surgery and all that. But sometimes bodies are hard
to come by, especially in the summer. Yes, and you know,
I don't think I'd really thought about this, but the
author points out that, yeah, this practice becomes increasingly taxing
on human revulsion during the warmer months of the year

(01:00:34):
in many regions. You know. So, um, so it makes
sense to have some other kind of three dimensional representation
that is not an actual dead body. Yeah. Now, she
points out one way around some of the cadaver limitations
was doing things to actual bodies to sort of uh,
to make them last longer, to some way copy parts

(01:00:57):
of them. You had some procedures like that that came along. Yeah,
there was an injections that involved colorless or colored preserving
fluids composed of things like alcohol, mercury, different metals, and
also wax as well. Uh. She writes that these methods
produced results that that we're you know, we're good, but
that that the preparations were not long lasting and that

(01:01:20):
they subsequently deteriorated. Uh. So it's still not going to
be as good as say a model made out of wax.
So why not make a grotesque, perfectly rendered dead body
with all the tissues in place that never rots exactly.
I mean, as we've discussed, it's the perfect medium for
creating human flesh and creating in a way that is lifelike,

(01:01:43):
and even tweaking it a bit, you know. And so
you had numerous anatomous and artists, uh, from the sixteenth
century onward. That we're working in wax, creating informative models
of human anatomy, often in miniature. And I have to
say I've been eyeing examples of this for years. I
used to do a blog series for Stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com back when we had a blog,

(01:02:04):
where I would basically I would just I would go
to Getty Images and I would find cool images of things,
works of art, things from museums, and I would find
a reason to post about them. And I ran across
a bunch of wonderful images of various wax and anatomical models,
and I was always thinking and back in my mind
that I should do something about these. Never got around

(01:02:25):
to it. But this is this is like such a
fascinating area off where where medicine and art combine, where
they where they intermingle. I would also say, this is
a place where you see some shocking examples of like
real talent and bad taste coming together. You know, the
kind of thing that a lot of people like today

(01:02:47):
where you would be interested in grotesque, like intentionally kind
of like gross and morbid artwork, as I know you
and I in some various ways actually are. Uh. You
don't see as much of that back in the day,
but you do see it in anatomical renderings of the
human body in wax. Yes. Now, one of the early

(01:03:09):
figures that the other points out here was a character
that is known as Cigoli. Their full name was Lodovico Cardi,
who lived fifteen fifty nine through sixteen thirteen. And um
they created this small statue of of an in Courche.
I believe it is, which is the first known wax

(01:03:30):
anatomical anatomical model. It was Slash is a miniature anatomical
human like like d fleshed clearly not made from a
cast because it's the size of a doll, but it's
detailed in three D. It shows like the details of
human muscles um. Interestingly enough, I wasn't able to find it.
I believe it is in the in the possession of

(01:03:51):
a museum today, but I couldn't find a photograph of it.
But I found UH an artistic depiction of it, and
it again is depicted. Is just this miniature humanoid without
skin that you can hold in your hand, that you
can point out the various muscles on UH, that you know,
designed to be used as an as an educational tool.

(01:04:12):
I love it. I do wish we had a photo.
I wish you could get like a barbie of it
and you know, give it to kids for Christmas. Now,
later in the seventeenth century, we saw, really I think
an individual that could probably be considered the grandfather of
a lot of the thanatomical wax art and as a
Sicilian wax artist by the name of Zoombo Gaetano Guglio

(01:04:36):
Zoombo who was apparently quite an interesting character. He was
an abbot who initially took on religious themes and his
artistic work. But then uh, his Blestriarro describes his interest
turned darker. He began to just consider death and decay
and to sort of brood on death and decay, and

(01:04:56):
he created a series of compositions known as the Theaters
of Death, which were apparently quite realistic. There is the plague,
the triumph of time, the vanity of human glory, and
of course the syphilis fun I mean, yeah, Zombo was
clearly highly talented and extremely morbid in his fascinations. And

(01:05:20):
you can look up examples of his work. There's a
one in particular, if you if you even just go
to the Wikipedia page for Zoombo. Uh, there's a picture
of of the plague, which is just these wax corpses
heaped u. But also there's this there's this artistic energy
to them, like there's movement to it, there is emotion

(01:05:41):
to it. Um. It's it's quite a site to behold,
but it's certainly not for all tastes. But Zoombo was
not only working with religious artwork. He eventually did turn
his hand to actual scientific anatomical sculpture when he teamed
up with a French surgeon named Guillaume de new Yes
met Danu and together they created anatomical models that they

(01:06:03):
apparently sold, though by seventeen hundred they stopped working together
due to some sort of famous argument. Yeah, so Zoombo
moves to Paris and with the support of the royal court,
he collaborates with many other dissectors and physicians and an
animus and creates anatomical waxes until he died the following year. Um.

(01:06:25):
But all told, he was um. He was only active
in the anatomy game for something like six years total.
It really kind of came towards the end of his life,
but his works were highly influential, enabling wax anatomical modeling
to then evolve and ultimately expand outside of Italy and
France throughout Western Europe. This opened the door for other

(01:06:46):
wax anatomical artists to make a major splash, such as
Giovanni Manzolini, who lives seventeen hundreds through seventeen fifty five,
who worked with his wife Anna Morandi who lived seventeen
sixteen through seventeen seventy four. UH. She outlived him by
many years, and she actually continued this work after her
husband's death and was quite successful in her own right,

(01:07:07):
traveling to various institutes and foreign courts. Her anatomical models
were very sought after, and she also she but but
her work was was again um artistic and anatomical. For instance,
she created a self portrait of herself that is still
around today. You can find images of this online. Uh,

(01:07:27):
and it is it's it's beautiful, but it is also
definitely a work of wax artistry, and as well discuss
later that does come with certain baggage, like we're sort
of there's a predisposition I think for us to find
it unsettling. Well, I mean, yeah, I guess this may
be some form of subjective bias speaking, but I feel

(01:07:48):
like it's almost universal to regard these things that as
even when they're beautiful, they're also grotesque. So this art
continues to spread and then ballestri Ro provides an excellent
and concise history of it all um getting into more
detail than we we can get into here, but that
eventually arrives in England as well. You have um, you

(01:08:09):
have an actual um English wax anatomyst by the name
of Joseph Town who lived eighteen o eight eighteen seventy nine.
And apparently part of the reason that it was so
lately established in England was first of all, due to
the greater availability of cadavers um prior to laws that

(01:08:30):
restrained the practice of obtaining them. Yeah, we got dead bodies.
We don't need wax sculptures here, you know. Yeah. But eventually, yeah,
you have Joseph town showing up, and he would go
on to create something like a thousand different wax anatomical
models during his career that ultimately went to medical centers
around the world. Now there's an example of Towns work

(01:08:50):
that is shown in a photograph in uh, Billustri Arrow's paper,
and it looks straight out of Hell Raiser. I mean,
I guess actually what it is is that the art
style of the hell Razor movies is clearly copied from this. Yes, there,
So this this is where we're getting into a lot
of artistic consideration. Uh And Ballestri Arrow gets into this

(01:09:14):
a good bit um because on one hand, you have
the Italians who were sort of the the originators of
this sort of art, along with you know, the French
and then you have the English coming along and doing
their own spin on it. And uh, there are some
some definite differences. There's some side by side images in
this paper that really pointed out. But this is where

(01:09:35):
the author really sums it up. Um, she writes, quote.
Italian waxes are imbued with a real sense of beauty.
The splendid Italian models of Les Pacola Florence are graceful
statues that do not seem to belong in the dissecting room.
Specimens from northern countries such as the UK, the Netherlands
or Germany are usually more realistic, almost brutal, preferring anatomical

(01:09:59):
accuracy rather than artistic flair. One of the major differences
between the Italian and English wax models is the fact
that the former are alive, whilst the later are lifeless. Yeah.
She highlights this in a number of different ways that,
like the the Italian artists were much more concerned with
making the wax anatomical models not disgusting and even sometimes

(01:10:22):
kind of lively and happy looking and seductive somehow, whereas
the stuff you'd get with Robert Town or some of
the other artists in England or Germany would be more
just kind of a like it wasn't it wasn't really
worried about being grotesque, and wasn't trying it wasn't trying
to comfort you and say like look at this, look

(01:10:43):
at these happy eyes. Yeah. She describes Towns some of
Towns Waxes as being quote practical, crude, true to death.
But you know, from my own part, looking at various examples,
I do think it's fair to add that Towns work
is beautiful in its own right. Uh. You know, there
there's certainly more of a brutal realism to his works,

(01:11:03):
But one I think could argue that some of the
Italian works are actually more unnerving because there's this weird
spark of life to them. You know, like they there's
something in their eyes you feel. You look at them
and you're like this, this human being has no skin,
and yet they are, you know, glancing across the room.
It's something whereas towns work looks like a dead body,

(01:11:25):
but as partially flayed body, but as seen through you know,
the eyes of someone with an appreciation for the beauty
of death. Yeah, maybe maybe it is a little bit
more troubling if, like, you know, you're taking apart the
torso of a wax sculpture to see its internal organs.
But it's like reclining in a chair in a in
a way that almost resembles classical painting, and it's got

(01:11:48):
this brightness in its eyes, like let's go for a picnic. Um,
there's there's another whole area that she gets into, the
meta chief venus um, basically touching on the popularity of
anatomical venuses during the nineteenth century. These would be artfully
sculpted out of wax, reclining female nudes that also had

(01:12:11):
dismountable torsos, so you could go up to them, um,
and you could like open them up like the hood
of a of a vehicle, you know, and then look
at the wax organs within see how human anatomy works
under the skin. And there would often be a fetus
in the womb as well, um, which apparently you know
this this wouldn't have really meant the inside wouldn't have

(01:12:32):
matched the outside that had reflected what was what little
was known about, uh, you know, actual um fetal development
at the time. Uh. And by the way, over at
Atlas Obscura, a website that I've loved for for years,
but basically is devoted to helping you find weird wax
museums in your area, wherever you are. There's a great

(01:12:53):
two thousand thirteen article from Morbid Anatomies Jolanna Epstein about
anatomical venuses and where you can find them today, and
and apparently she was setting out to chronicle all the
ones that she could she could travel to. It's titled
an Ode to an Anatomical Venus. Waxing poetic on the
uncanny a lure of eighteenth century uh, dissectible women. Now

(01:13:15):
at this point, let's get back to the question then
is it art um? Because clearly, as we've discussed like this,
especially with the anatomical art, there is this intermingling of
the artistic and the you know, the purely scientific, uh
you know. And certainly we even see a divide within
the tradition with the idea that like the French and
Italian version is more in line with artistic values, whereas

(01:13:39):
the English and German models are are less. So this
is a question that that blestri Erro gets into in
the article as well. The apparently there's this there's long
an attitude against wax art. It was considered more of
a craft, more devoted either to morbidity or two anatomical study.

(01:14:01):
And apparently this survived well into the twentieth centuries, where
you had critics like E. H. Gombridge, who was not
familiar with who expressed that wax works were a quote,
situated outside the limits of symbolization. So I guess the
idea is that they're just too realistic to do the
things that art is supposed to do. Like it's just

(01:14:22):
too close, like there's not enough there's not enough distance.
I don't know, I mean it seems arbitrary to me. Yeah,
I mean, it doesn't seem to line up with with
what we know about art photography, But I don't know.
Then again, I'm not an expert on the history of
of of art theory and so forth. But it seems
like the argument that that Gombridge was making here would

(01:14:44):
not be the same sort of argument you would make
about photography. Uh. There there's plenty of very artistic photography
that is about capturing the stark reality of a situation,
right that. But I'm not sure that you know the
limits of symboliz symbolization really show up in that. Yeah,
I mean, I don't want to be unfair to this critic,
But part of me suspects that there's just a sort

(01:15:04):
of instinctual revulsion that many people feels. The same reason
there's so many house of wax horror movies and that,
and that is it finds difficulty being articulated as an
aesthetic uh, as like a formal esthetic criteria. So instead
it just gets criticized as like well it's too realistic
or something. Yeah, uh yeah. But as we mentioned the

(01:15:26):
rise of neo classism earlier, apparently, especially with the rise
of neo classism and art, wax was often considered a
lower medium, a fragile medium, and so the art was
rather it was either you know, expelled from the art
world or left the to the domain of the anatomus.
And of course you know crude wax museums, which apparently
emerged out of the wax effigy tradition. To come back

(01:15:49):
to that, Westminster Abbey, for instance, has quite a collection
of royal wax effigies dating back to Edward the Third
who died in thirteen seventy seven. Um. So this is
where we get the Madame Tussau's um um tradition. You know,
the idea ultimately that we should put we should have
representations of royal people or failing that, uh, famous people

(01:16:12):
or infamous people, like the modern Royalty of the day,
the Paris Hilton's of the day, or at least the
mid too early two thousands. Well, I mean, yeah, so
Madame Tousseau's is going to be full of celebrities, right,
it'll have it, It'll have a I remember, I think
I remember them having like a really good Pierce Brosnan
as James Bond wax sculpture. Um. And I think sometimes

(01:16:36):
the celebrity sculptures get like attacked or vandalized. I don't
know if that has something. You know, somebody you don't
like Pierce Brosnon so you knock his head off or whatever. Um. Yeah,
I mean it's getting into the magic of wax. Then
wax effigies. What do you do with the wax effigy.
It's either there to revere the individual or to lash
out against them. Yes, But the other thing I was

(01:16:56):
getting to is that it does seem somehow like there
is a very clear natural draw to let's do some
serial killers, and let's do like a dungeon with you know,
tortures and stuff. Like that. Yeah, I mean, well that
was that was a long standing part of Madame Tussau's
in London. Madame Tussau, by the way, lived seventy eighteen

(01:17:17):
fifty was a French artist who studied under a Swiss physician,
Philippe Curtius Um. But one of the main attractions at
Madame Tousseau's was always the Chamber of Horrors, which was
again full of grave robbers, serial killers and burglars. Uh Incidentally,
Jack the Ripper was was never part of it because

(01:17:37):
Tusseau had a policy against representing individuals whose identity and
appearance was unknown. That's an interesting principle, but yeah, so
this is how we get Obviously, the thing that the
that it's most famous for is the Chamber of Horrors,
which is that seems to be confirmed by those reports
from nineteen five that when Madame Tousseau's is burning down,

(01:17:58):
the people in the streets are not saying, oh, I
hope that the sculpture of King George is okay. They're
asking how's crippen? Yeah, what about the what about the
Norfolk Strangler? We've saved Burke? How about hair? Make sure
both we must reunite Burke and hair don't let them burn. Yeah,
I mean sadly the Chamber of Hours, apparently closed in

(01:18:18):
is no longer a part of Mendam Tusso's at least
that that that according to the materials I was looking at.
But but certainly the Chamber of Horrors in Wax museums
is one of the major influences on uh, you know,
on on horror cinema in the onward. This idea of
the wax museum as a place where unsavory characters are

(01:18:41):
recreated in wax uh and where haunted or unnatural things
may be going on. It's an interesting mixing of two
very different streams that that feel odd when they get
into each other. One is the standard fascination with violence
and pain and death and morbid topics and all that,
and then the other is that, well, it's a museum

(01:19:03):
and it's nonfiction, so it's almost like it's educational. Yeah,
it's it's it's weird, it's it's also just really um
it's a really interesting, I think thought experiment to take
these wax movies and then take everything we've discussed here
thus far and then try and figure out what is
what is this in product saying about all the human

(01:19:24):
history with wax that came before it, especially what is
it saying about the anatomical history of wax models, and
then the the use of wax models as stand ins
for human beings to be either revered or punished. Um,
because I think we see shadows of all of this
in these works, and all we also see treatments of
of wax as flesh, magical and transformative, wax as a

(01:19:46):
meditation on both the preservation of human flesh. Because what
are these uh, these these wax creepos often doing these movies.
They're preserving their victims and wax, but then also things
made out of wax they gotta burn. If you it's
like bringing a roll in a cannon on stage, you
bring out some wax in a film, You've got to
melt some wax as well. Yeah, I mean, I think

(01:20:07):
it is not a standard trope that a person who
is an obsessively a devoted artist will eventually turn to
crime and violence. But it is that if you're obsessively
devoted to wax artistry, you have wax crime in your future.
That's just more people assume it's such a weird stereotype,

(01:20:29):
especially again considering just how important this was, you know,
for for a long time, and just human anatomy and
the understanding of the human body, like these were informative
educational models that ultimately helped save lives trained surgeons without
the need for grave robbing or put honest grave robbers
out of business. I've never thought about that, that that

(01:20:50):
would be a great premise for like a for like
a movie or something. You know, you've got a pretty
good grave robbing business going, but then somebody shows up
at the local medical college with a what a bunch
of wax sculptures. Oh my god. Now you're like, what
am I gonna do? You've got to destroy them somehow
or something. Oh man, So grave robbers versus wax master

(01:21:11):
with all the possible shenanigans that could pop up, because
you know they're gonna be wax automatons. There are going
to be uh, the disguise, the limit. There's so much
a room for exploration here. Copyright Stamp Stamp hours. Yeah,
you can't have it. I don't know. I'm just hoping
that there maybe someone out there is listening to this.

(01:21:33):
The filmmaker or future filmmaker who will make the next
great Wax film. Uh, In which case, I think we've
presented a number of of wonderful historical and scientific anecdotes
here that could be that could prove useful. All right,
on that note, we are going to close the Wax
Museum for the day, but certainly stick with us as

(01:21:56):
we continue to explore Halloween related topic the entire month
of October, maybe even longer. I don't know, who knows
what the future will bring. In the meantime, if you
want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow
Your Mind, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts,
wherever that happens to be. We just asked that you rate, review,
and subscribe. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio

(01:22:17):
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, or just
to say hi, you can email us at contact that's
Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow
Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more

(01:22:39):
podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
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(01:23:00):
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}From the Vault: Science in the House of Wax