Science in the House of Wax

Wax Museums are frequent haunts in horror cinema, but where do they really tie into our sense of revulsion and anatomical unease? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe kick off a month of Halloween-themed episodes with a science-filled night in the house of wax.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome just About to Blow your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to stuff to Blow
your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
And hey, 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

(00:26):
monster science, spooky stuff. And we have got 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

(00:49):
human bodies out of wax? How do we 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 you're
going to find where it empties out into the river
of popular culture and genre film, because we're going to

(01:09):
talk about wax, horror movies, house of wax movies, wax
museum movies, the treatment 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

(01:31):
wonderful trailer for it that contains no footage 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 The House of Wax

(01:53):
nineteen fifty three is a vincent price feature exploring the
dark mania of wax crime. And it is made truly
exquisite by just see 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

(02:14):
the camera lens, you know, like in 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, like he says

(02:38):
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 dead bodies

(02:59):
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 wax horror movies, the idea that
the wax figure is actually wax cast around a human victim,

(03:22):
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 murder 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 or not. Uh. And

(03:45):
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. It's it's largely responsible apparently for really uh
bringing Vincent Price back into these leading horror roles. Apparently

(04:10):
prior to this, he was doing a lot of you
know second and their billing relatable characters. And because of
this film we see some of like the real horror
films to come with Vincent Price. So I have to say,
Vincent Price, all the likability always shines through, no matter
how deplorable the character. Totally, He's always that same lovable

(04:30):
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 maid for
TV adaptation of a Christmas Carol. Yeah, they're equivalent thereof Yeah,
but then also, uh, there's a funny thing about this
movie is that it's notable for featuring a very young
Charles Bronson as a character named Igor, who is Price's

(04:53):
assistant in Wax Crime, which seems a little bit on
the nose. Yeah, But then also, you know, there was
a you make 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 five, I guess, final remake
of House of Wax. It was marketed almost exclusively on

(05:17):
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 was just
sold entirely on this idea of celebrity death worship. Yeah.

(05:41):
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 pill form.
So you've got Paris Hilton, you've got Chad Michael Murray

(06:01):
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 in everybody's face. Remember when every
horror movie had that for some reason. It would randomly
inter cut too grainy digital video for for no apparent reason.
And the soundtrack it was just constantly coming in with

(06:22):
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 made
of wax as well, which, um, it sounds stupid, but

(06:43):
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
the characters a little bit waxy anyway, and I would say, well,
that's an intentional effect, you know, for this film in particular,

(07:06):
But really I think that was just the visual style
of Mint two thousand's horror movies. Now, um, let's see,
we're not gonna be able to touch on all the
wax horror films in this episode really say much about him.
I will say that wax Work, which came out in
it was a lot 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 Gallagan, Yeah yeah,

(07:28):
he played he's in both films, and David Warner plays
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 at the time where it's like you're
skipping channels and you're being thrown into different realities. Yes, yes,

(07:51):
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 I remember them being kind of fun late
night viewing experience. So it's kind of like the montage
at the end of West Craven's Shocker. Yeah, I guess, yeah, Okay, um,

(08:11):
now I should. I should also point out that the
nineteen thirty five film Mad Love starring 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
as a plot point. So you see it, you see
him popping up again and again, at least as an

(08:34):
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 basically just are across the entire landscape of cinematic tradition.
The earliest example that I was able to find was
Figures This Siri with with the or the Man with

(08:57):
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 uh
gignal Um tradition, you know, the sort of hard decapitation
plays of the time, Grand gain Yall. We we talked to, yes, yeah,

(09:18):
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 gain Yall tradition, which was like just extremely
gory stage plays, which interesting, interestingly enough, also part of
the plot to Mad Love. Also another kind of cool

(09:39):
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 nine While Paris Sleeps ninety wax Works
Seven Faces, and another film in nineteen twenty nine title

(10:01):
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
movie history. So the idea that wax figures are inherently
creepy is not one of these like new creepiness inventions

(10:24):
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 think that, Well, it's definitely gonna be

(10:44):
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 that that prior to the
nineteen twenties there was also just a history of wax
chambers of horror um that you would find in wax museums.

(11:08):
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, that's reflected in in the fifty three

(11:30):
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, I was just kind
of shocked by how much of it was just absolutely

(11:53):
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 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

(12:15):
also know that there's a literary 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 wax films that I have not seen,
but I felt like I needed to watch something new.

(12:35):
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 about I was thinking about this earlier,
that that Cameron Mitchell is, like he's very similar um

(12:59):
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 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

(13:21):
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 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

(13:42):
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 is it is just it is grubby. It's
I had to put on the subtitles understand what people
were saying part of the time, and it is, you know,

(14:03):
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, 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. There are a
lot of scenes of a of a gel lit Cameron

(14:23):
Mitchell in this kind of dark satanic robe with 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 a victim. It's it's a
weird one. I went ahead and fast forward to the

(14:45):
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 things you're always going to find. Um.
Facial scarring or deformity seems to always be there, seemingly

(15:09):
linking the the human likeness in wax. Uh. Two, in
the in the idea that it could melt, and that
it is um, you know, an imperfect medium in which
to work, is not like stone, comparing that to the
actual fragility of human flesh. Um. 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

(15:31):
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 a variation in
the fifty three movie, which is that he makes himself
a wax face of his old face. So for a

(15:51):
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 matter ask on yes. Yeah, And
you see that at that exact same situation pop up
in other wax master films. Uh the not always, but
certainly the Cameron Mitchell character here is a is an
example of that. But but so some of the other

(16:13):
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. Another important aspect of wax movies is

(16:34):
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 to appear in all these movies, which is
that the palace of wax must burn. You know, there's

(16:57):
a fire, and you get to watch the whack 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 you know, something about it looks organic, you know
it does. It doesn't look like just a normal type

(17:18):
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 add another thing, which is that I don't know
for sure, but I think it's possible that this common

(17:40):
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 Madame Tusseau's in London from that year, so

(18:00):
it looks like there so there was a fire at
this wax museum is 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 Guardian reporting that possibly ten thousand people assembled

(18:22):
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 brigade was under the command of a Mr. A. R. Dyer,
who was brought to the scene from a theater where

(18:45):
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
firefighters start to get the blaze under under control, it
says that the men of the Salvage Corps started running

(19:07):
in and grabbing wax figures out of the exhibits to
bring them out to safety. The Salvage Corps where a thing.
There were like a force that worked in concert with
firefighters at the time, where the firefighters be trying to
put out the blaze and the Salvage Corps which would
be running in trying to grab stuff to prevent property
damage and loss. I don't know if they were somehow
funded by insurance companies or something, but it seems possible.

(19:31):
But rita quote from this article, two of the Salvage
Corp 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
a return to perkiness. This was apparently a famous green
parrot of Madame Tusso's, and there was another report in

(19:52):
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's sort of perked back up. And this, uh, this
report in the Evening Post says, then it startled everyone
by remarking, this is a rotten business. I can't do
a parrot voice, but rotten business. And then one more

(20:14):
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?
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

(20:37):
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
to think of the number of imminent and highly respectable
people being burned in effigy in London. Madame Tousseau's famous
wax works spread its net far and wide, with at

(20:58):
least forty people of the present Arliament and scores of
notabilities outside were represented in wax in these burning galleries.
Criminals represented in the Chamber of Horrors, however, will have
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

(21:20):
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
are alleging to be of the aftermath of the fire
at Madame Tusso's. They appear to be of like various
like charred and and partial remains of wax figures. I'm
not I couldn't confirm that they were definitely from uh

(21:43):
this actual fire, but wherever they're from, they really do
look absolutely horrific. It's it's one of one of the
most nightmarish things 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 temporarily.
But it it is bizarre to look at. Is that

(22:04):
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, which is uh so 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

(22:27):
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 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

(22:48):
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 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.

(23:11):
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
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

(23:32):
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
all waxes, I think, perhaps all at least almost all
our hydrocarbons. They're made up of hydrogen and carbon atoms.
The most common type that you will find for various

(23:52):
consumer items and uses today is probably paraffin wax, which
is a modern industrial product that's derived from troleum, first
created in the early eighteen hundreds, but people have been
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

(24:13):
lords of bees, wax. And then there's lanolin, 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 word for
your tool belt. But there's also spermaceti, which is a
historically very important wax that came out of the heads

(24:34):
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 waxy material. But so you probably know from
experience that candle wax, whatever it's made of, generally is
not flammable in the sense that you know oily rags

(24:57):
or something are. 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 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

(25:18):
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 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

(25:40):
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, 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

(26:01):
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 ingenious invention, but
there's also something kind of uncanny to them, even in
their mundane form, which is that unlike wood or coal

(26:21):
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 is certainly a quality
of candles and wax that that influences our magical thinking
regarding wax. Oh yeah, this will definitely come up again,

(26:44):
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 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

(27:05):
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 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

(27:26):
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 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

(27:48):
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 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.

(28:08):
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, you know, the fact
that vaporized wax is so flammable, is one of those

(28:29):
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 accidentally heating the
wax to the point where it becomes extremely flammable and

(28:51):
dangerous um and if you know, if it does get
to that point, if you have wax reaching its flash point,
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 for any would
be wax masters out there looking to set up their

(29:11):
secret dungeon studio. Don't play around with wax. And now,
again we're not able to reference every wax horror film
that's that's come out. You know, we're trying to sort
of stick to the the generalities here, but I should
I do want to point out that there is a
really cool wax based entity that shows up In TV's
Doom Patrol, which is a current television series based on

(29:32):
the comic book and in this case, particularly Grant Morrison's
run with the title, there's this character named Candlemaker 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 it's described as
being an edgargor. This is a thing that's created by

(29:53):
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 characters around it,
there's also a lot of melted wax shenanigans in the

(30:16):
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've never actually never read Grant Morrison's run on Doom patrol.
But yeah, it's it's a wonderful creation and it's it's
brought to uh to life rather nicely in the show.

(30:38):
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. But let's talk
a little bit about the idea of of wax and
magic wax and an ancient magic with with a focus

(31:01):
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 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 Jane Kritzky about

(31:25):
it because he had written his Stabulus 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 what
we discussed concerning wax in that episode. So Egyptian physicians
would use bees wax to treat wounds. They would also
give you a wax amulet to burn. As we discussed already,

(31:49):
it burns brightly, it burns up completely symbolically and by
extension magically. You know, the ideas it consumes the illness
or the thing that is created in its like 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

(32:09):
of different religions. I think in in pre Christian Rome
there were also like cases of people burning wax effigies
of say, an organ of the body 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

(32:31):
more magical, right, yes, you know, well we'll get into
to that in more detail. But but certainly you see
that in the pre Christian tradition and then as an
element of Christianity with the use of votive candles. Um.
But but yeah, the Egyptians were super into it. They
used bax these wax for for a number of different purposes.
I mean, they used it isn't isn't adhesive. They also

(32:52):
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 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 and part

(33:16):
of that I think comes down to the and and certainly,
uh Jean Chritsky made this argument that a lot 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

(33:37):
color can change, which Kritsky believes might have been highly
desirable as well, given the importance of the god Ray
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

(33:59):
no ash behind, that it burns cleanly and almost magically. Apparently,
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 the murderer of Osiris. So you'd
simply make a bees wax likeness of your enemies, and

(34:21):
you would burn them to kill the name of Seth. Now,
the very nature of these likenesses or figurines would seem
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

(34:43):
other wax sculptures that apparently had other uses wax ambulance
and whatnot, that show up um in the remains of
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 webin Air,
which always sounds a bit like I always read it,

(35:05):
and I picture webinar in my in my head, but
it an't that a terrible word. I want to purge
webinar from my mind. I wish I didn't know it.
Well now it's it's kind of life, right. But at
any rate, 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,

(35:26):
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. 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 Gene Kritzki's

(35:50):
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 magical ideas about what waxes,
and I think it can help. These ideas can also
highlight some of the 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,

(36:11):
but also worth looking up. You know, you've never seen
them before. Um uh, look up the Phiume mummy portraits.
These are some some of the most 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

(36:34):
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 used something called in
caustic painting, which I think is where 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

(36:56):
and the criticisms it is often made against wax based
art is that it is it is so impermanent. The
idea that is just going to melt away, it's not
going to stand the test of time clearly, you know,
as 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

(37:17):
Mummy portraits, that they are absolutely worth a look. It's
just shocking. So if we fast forward to medieval Europe,
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, all though
the basic material uses for wax you might expect, but

(37:37):
also they became useful in the creation of death masks. Man,
I love a death mask. It's a it's an interesting,
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,

(37:58):
you know. And plus they're there are different is in
neural abilities to summon visual images. To today, we have
photos and we have videos to help us maintain the
likeness of 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 you wanted a realistic depiction of an individual's face, uh,

(38:23):
you only had so many options. One of those options
would come to be, at least for some members of society,
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,

(38:46):
that is a difficult question to answer. I mean, that's
ultimately one that that probably comes up in um considerations
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 still it's
gonna be your body at that final state of life.

(39:09):
Like if you are an older individual, it is going
to be your aged body, not your youthful um. You know,
a vigorous body, etcetera. 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

(39:32):
in their prime. So yeah, I don't know that I
would necessarily want to be remembered exclusively based on how
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

(39:55):
or sculpture, just to you know, to to sort of
keep it all together long enough to to model a
copy of it. But if you're going to create a
straight up death mass 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 makeup

(40:16):
FX documentary at this point and seeing that performed on
your your your favorite actor, uh, you know, 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 Masks Unlimited, which appeared in the British Medical

(40:36):
Journal in nive uh and point out the they would
sometimes pour wax over the features and these would often
the resulting um death mass 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,

(41:02):
and the resulting plaster or metal version of the face
was used as an object of remembrance in and of itself,
not merely as a model for other treatments. That's interesting.
I wonder if that has anything to do with changing
attitudes around the same time towards I don't know, like
objective accuracy in the capturing of images, say, like you know,

(41:22):
also in the eighteen hundreds were getting the first photography
as opposed to portraiture. Yeah, yeah, this is a good point.
It's it's it's the difference between the 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

(41:43):
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? Etcetera? Like, Nope,
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,

(42:05):
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 you know, when a somewhat interpreted 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

(42:28):
it concerns organs and other parts of the body, you know, hands, etcetera. Yeah,
And we were reading a really interesting paper about this
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

(42:50):
paper that I thought this was so interesting. It was
all about the history of of how human anatomy has
been rendered in wax ulptures 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,

(43:11):
no paywall, and it has it also has illustrations of
these works, has photographs of the various wax works 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

(43:33):
reproduce parts of the human body, representing healthy or diseased organs. Now,
one thing that balstri Erro points out in this particular
paper is how between the thirteen 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.

(43:53):
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 act of devotion. Um,
this is this is so 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

(44:15):
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 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

(44:37):
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, 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

(44:57):
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 version of yourself, especially when
there's already this history of creating sacred objects out of wax. Um. Yeah,
it's it's it's ultimately really trippy stuff. Now, the tradition

(45:19):
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 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

(45:40):
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
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,

(46:05):
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
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

(46:27):
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
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 and a

(46:50):
few other areas, at least until Leopold the Second banned
the practice in seventies six. The author writes quote these
boatie as they were known in the Florentine vernacular. There
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

(47:12):
of all types, including body parts as well as whole figures.
This gets even weirder in a minute, but I'm going
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

(47:33):
in the powerful House of Medici family, the Italian banking
family and political dynasty of the time. But there's a
section and they're talking about how the Medici family used
bodi 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

(47:54):
there too as a magical presence in these particular churches. Uh.
And there they could last for decade and were, as
Langdon describes them, ex voto centers in these churches, and
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

(48:14):
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
mean you're putting like a like a secular powerful person
in effigy inside the house of worship. Yeah, I mean,

(48:35):
I 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, 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. Addink to that, what if

(48:58):
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 trump loy
uh Interdisciplinary Perspectives, And it was a chapter by an
artist and scholar named Catherine Heard called Uneasy Associations wax

(49:18):
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 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

(49:42):
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 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

(50:04):
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 though for a while.
Oh my god, that that would be a great scene
for a horror movie, given the number of of of
Italian horror films um and indeed at least one example

(50:26):
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 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,

(50:50):
Argento fulci and wax figures. That sounds like the most
disgusting 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,

(51:13):
the place has become like a cracker barrel of of
wax figures 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,

(51:33):
you know, which is one of the reasons that it's
eventually eventually banned. Um. But not only could these boatie
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 mediagee family. But they
could also be the target of violence um violence that

(51:57):
often reverberated with a very real sort of danger. Langdon
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,

(52:19):
I reiterate Vincent Price thinks his wax figures are as
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.

(52:40):
They are devotees to God in wax. And if the
effigy is then dragged out into the street and then
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

(53:00):
well to realism and and an unsettling level of realism.
Like it it mimics flesh in a way that naturally
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

(53:22):
perfect 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 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

(53:42):
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,
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

(54:06):
a medium, that this would be part of the reason
that it was abandoned by the artistic community anyway, not
not by crafts people. During the rise of neo Classicism. Yeah,
neo Classicism was a it was an esthetic movement in
the Western arts and literature that began in roughly like
the mid eighteenth century. But it consisted basically of a

(54:27):
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 a move
away from the highly ornamental Rococo style that came before it,
and it favored you know, the elegant symmetries of the

(54:48):
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 real it can get,
Like the realism actually counted against it for the aesthetics
of the day. Yeah, And and and I think, or I

(55:11):
suspect anyway, that a lot of what we just we
consider now in terms of the uncanny valley effect would
have also been present with wax like that, Like wax
just allows you to get so close to reality, you
get into that potential, that that arguable realm of of
of close but not quite close enough, or so close

(55:33):
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, and I can walk
through a sculpture garden, and yes, these are beautiful and
life like in the craftsmanship. The artistry involved 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

(55:55):
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 Balustrial arrow and and and
Catherine Herd's chapter is the question of whether wax sculptures
are art or not, or you know what, whether people
consider them even potentially to be art. There there's some

(56:17):
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 you, thank you, thank you. All right,
we're back, all right now. While we've been talking about

(56:37):
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 Arrow writes, quote,

(56:57):
with the advent of neo classicism, the very qualities made
the realistic nature of wax models seem repulsive, and the
practice of artistic seroplastics, and that's wax sculpture, basically seroplastics,
meaning wax started a slow decline. From an artistic point
of view. It virtually disappeared in the nineteenth century, surviving

(57:19):
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's is a little bit ghosh. Uh.

(57:39):
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 maybe it's
not always perfectly received in the art world, but it

(58:02):
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, You need to
have a record of that bird, uh, even paint that bird, etcetera. Likewise,

(58:27):
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 is the primary endeavor totally, but
this brings us to the sixteenth century. Uh. During this

(58:48):
time we sell 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 and ana and anatomical wrong was still an
essential tool as well, but the two dimensional medium had
its limitations. Access to cadavers was also not universal, and

(59:09):
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, you know what, you've got

(59:31):
to know what the organs inside the body look like
if you're gonna 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 in many regions, you know. So, um,

(59:54):
so it makes sense to have some other kind of
three dimensional representation that is not an actual dead body. 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
of them. You had some procedures like that that came along. Yeah,

(01:00:16):
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
they subsequently deteriorated. Uh so it's still not going to

(01:00:40):
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.
And he tweaking it a bit, you know, And so

(01:01:02):
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,
where I would basically I would just I would go

(01:01:22):
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 accounts
on anatomical models, and I was always thinking and back
in my mind that I should do something about these.
Never got around to it. But this is this is

(01:01:44):
like such a fascinating area of where where medicine and
artuh 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 where you would be interested in grotesque, like intentionally

(01:02:08):
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
figures that the other points out here was a character

(01:02:30):
that is known as Cigoli. Their full name was Lodovico Cardi,
who lived fifteen fifty nine through sixteen and they created
this small statue of of in Courche. I believe it
is which is the first known wax anatomical anatomical model.
It was Slash is a miniature anatomical human like like

(01:02:54):
d fleshed clearly not made from a cast because it's
the size of a doll. But it's detailed in three
D chose in 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 a museum today,
but I couldn't find a photograph of it. But I
found UH an artistic depiction of it, and it again

(01:03:15):
is depicted as 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. 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

(01:03:37):
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 Zoombo,
who was apparently quite an interesting character. He was an

(01:03:58):
abbot who initially took on religious themes and his artistic work,
but then uh his blestri Arrow describes his interest turned darker.
He began to just consider death and decay and to
sort of brood on death and decay, and he created
a series of compositions known as the Theaters of Death,
which were apparently quite realistic. There is the plague, the

(01:04:22):
triumph of time, the vanity of human glory, and of
course the syphilis fun I mean, yeah, Zoombo was clearly
highly talented and extremely morbid in his fascinations, and 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 Zombo. Uh. There's a picture of

(01:04:46):
of the plague, which is just these wax corpses heaped. Uh.
But also there's this there's this artistic energy to them,
like there is movement to it, there is emotion to it. Um.
It's it's quite a site to hold, but it's certainly
not for all tastes. But Zoomo was not only working
with religious artwork. He eventually did turn his hand to

(01:05:07):
actual scientific anatomical sculpture when he teamed up with a
French surgeon named Guillaume de new Yes, he met de Neu,
and together they created anatomical models that they apparently sold,
though by sevent hundred they stopped working together due to
some sort of famous argument. Yeah yeah. So Zoombo moves

(01:05:29):
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.
But all told, he was um. He 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,

(01:05:50):
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
wax anatomical artists to make a major splash, such as
Giovanni Manzolini, who lives seventeen hundred through seventeen fifty five,
who worked with his wife Anna Morandi, who lived seventeen

(01:06:13):
sixteen through seventeen seventy four. 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, 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

(01:06:37):
created a self portrait of herself that is still around today.
You can find images of this online. Uh, and it
is it's it's beautiful, but it is also definitely a
work of wax artistry, and as we'll discuss later, that
does come with certain baggage. Like we're sort of were,
there's a predisposition I think for us to find it unsettling. Well,

(01:06:59):
I mean, yeah, I guess this maybe some form of
subjective bias speaking, but I feel 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 Blestriero provides an excellent and concise history of it
all um getting into more detail than we we can

(01:07:20):
get into here, but that eventually arrives in England as well.
You have, um, you have an actual um English wax
anatomist by the name of Joseph Town who lived eighteen
o eight th eighteen seventy nine. And apparently part of
the reason that it was so lately established in England

(01:07:40):
was first of all due to the greater availability of
cadavers um prior to laws that 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
in his career that ultimately went to medical centers around

(01:08:02):
the world. Now, there's an example of of Towns work
that is shown in a photograph in uh balustri Arrows
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 raisor movies is clearly copied from this. Yes, there,

(01:08:22):
so this this is where we're getting into a lot
of artistic consideration. Uh. And Balustri Arrow gets into this
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

(01:08:46):
some definite differences. There's some side by side images in
this paper that really pointed out. But this is where
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.
They do not seem to belong in the dissecting room.

(01:09:07):
Specimens from northern countries such as the UK, the Netherlands
or Germany are usually more realistic, almost brutal, preferring anatomical
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,

(01:09:29):
like the the Italian artists were much more concerned with
making the wax anatomical models not disgusting and even sometimes
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

(01:09:50):
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
at these happy the 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

(01:10:13):
is beautiful in its own right. Uh. You know, there's
certainly more of a brutal realism to his works, 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

(01:10:34):
yet they are, you know, glancing across the room. It's
something whereas towns work looks like a dead body, 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

(01:10:55):
torso of a wax sculpture to see its internal organs.
But it's like reclined ing in a chair in a
in a way that almost resembles classical painting, and it's
got 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

(01:11:17):
the popularity of anatomical venuses during the nineteenth century. These
would be artfully sculpted out of wax, reclining female nudes
that also had 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

(01:11:39):
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 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

(01:12:01):
for years but basically is devoted to helping you find
weird wax museums in your area wherever you are. Much
there's a great two thousand thirteen article from Morbid Anatomies
Joanna Epstein about anatomical venus is 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

(01:12:25):
waxing poetic on the uncanny a lure of eighteenth century uh,
dissectible women. Now, 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

(01:12:47):
see a divide within the tradition, with the idea that
like the French and Italian version is more in line
with artistic values, whereas the English and German models are
are less. So this is question that that blestri erro
gets into in the article as well. Apparently there's this
there's long an attitude against wax art. It was considered

(01:13:11):
more of a craft, more devoted either to morbidity or
to anatomical study. 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

(01:13:31):
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 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

(01:13:53):
on the history of of of art theory and so forth.
But it seems like the argument that that Gombridge was
making here would 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 symbol symbolization really show up

(01:14:15):
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 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.

(01:14:36):
So instead it just gets criticized as like, well it's
too realistic or something. Yeah. Uh yeah. But as we
mentioned the 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

(01:14:58):
the anatomys and of course you know crude wax museums,
which apparently emerged out of the wax effigy tradition. To
come back 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.

(01:15:20):
You know, the idea ultimately that we should put we
should have representations of royal people or failing that, uh,
famous people or infamous people like the modern Royalty of
the day, the Paris Hilton's of the day, or at
least the mid two early two thousands. Well, I mean, yeah,
so Madam Tusso's is going to be full of celebrities, right,

(01:15:40):
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
the celebrity sculptures get like attacked or vandalized. I don't
know if that has something. You know, somebody you don't
like Pierce Brosnan, so you knock his head off or whatever. Um. Yeah,

(01:16:02):
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
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,

(01:16:22):
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 a seventy
th eighteen fifty was a French artist who studied under
a Swiss physician, Philippe Curtius Um. But one of the
main attractions at Madame Tusseau's was always the Chamber of Horrors,

(01:16:45):
which was again full of grave robbers, serial killers and burglars. Uh. Incidentally,
Jack the Ripper was was never part of it because
Tusso had a policy against representing individuals whose identity and
appearance was unknown. Uh, 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,

(01:17:07):
which is that seems to be confirmed by those reports
from nineteen five that when Madame Tussau's is burning down,
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,

(01:17:30):
I mean, sadly the Chamber of hors apparently closed in
is no longer a part of Madame Tussa'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 twenties onward. This idea

(01:17:53):
of the wax museum as a place where unsavory characters
are 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.

(01:18:16):
And then the other is that, well, it's a museum
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 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

(01:18:36):
is what is this in product saying about all the
human 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

(01:18:59):
of wax, this flesh magical and transformative wax as a
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. Uh, they gotta burn if you
it's like bringing a roll in a cannon on stage,

(01:19:19):
you bring out some wax in a film, You've got
to melt some wax as well. Yeah, I mean, I
think it is not a standard trope that a person
who is an obsessively 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.

(01:19:41):
That's just more people assume. It's such a weird stereotype,
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 surgeon without
the need for grave robbing or put honest grave robbers

(01:20:03):
out of business. Oh I've never thought about that, that
that 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 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, with all

(01:20:28):
the possible shenanigans that could pop up, because you know
they're gonna be wax automatons. There are going to be Uh,
the sky's 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

(01:20:48):
out there is listening to this, 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 his oracle h 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,

(01:21:11):
but certainly stick with us as we continue to explore
Halloween related topics 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 ask that you rate, review, and subscribe. Huge

(01:21:31):
thanks as always, to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a 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

(01:21:54):
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