May 14, 2019 • 42 mins
It’s time for another movie-themed episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind -- and this time Robert and Joe are discussing the 1982 sword and sorcery picture “Conan the Barbarian.” Join them as they gush over the film’s charismatic villain Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones) and explore the real world of giant snakes, Set, snake arrows and more.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff to
Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick. And today we thought we would get back
into the science of a movie from the nineteen eighties
that seems to be something we've been into lately. We
(00:25):
did Science of Highlander two. It was a great success.
We did we we talked about almost the Labyrinth, not
Labyrinth the Dark Crystal Um. Of course. Months earlier we
also did two thousand one of Space Odyssey. Oh that's right.
Well that's kind of a different story there. But Robert,
you've been badgering me to pick a movie, and so
I was thinking. I was thinking. I was thinking, and
(00:45):
then I realized, you know, snake science is always great
to talk about, and we could we could also discuss
some great myths if we were to revisit a movie
I loved when I was younger, Conan the Barbarian the
nineteen eight two John Millie Is directed Arnold Schwarzenegger starring
take on the Conan lore by Robert E. Howard. I
(01:06):
think it's a very different take from what I can
tell I'm not really into the old literature, but I
was thinking, Yeah, I wonder how this movie holds up.
It's time to view Conan again, right, So yeah, if
you're just joining stuff to blow your mind, like if
you just clicked on us that, I don't want to
check out this science podcast they're all about. Um, yeah,
this is something we've been doing, trying to do like
one a month. So what we're gonna do is we're
(01:27):
gonna talk a little bit about this movie. And uh,
you know, it's it's it's it's it's actors, it's plot,
it's some of its more serpentine features. But we're gonna
use that as a springboard to discuss a little bit
of science, a little bit of myth, a little bit
of biology, all of that and uh, you know, all
under the you know, the loose heading of of the
(01:48):
science of Falsa Doom, Falsa Doom being the the principal
antagonist in this film. Now that I've rewatched it, I
agree with my much earlier assessment, which is clearly the
best part of the movie. The villain Thulsa Doom, played
by James Earl Jones. Now this is like, this is
like Pete James Earl Jones because this in nineteen eighty two,
he had been the voice of Darth Vader. So James
(02:11):
Earl Jones has like has like the greatest voice of
the greatest villain in genre cinema of the day, and
so they're like, why not bring him in to play
this this awesome charismatic cult leader. And he is still
just supernaturally intense in the movie in a beautiful and
hilarious way. Uh. Now, I remember I love this movie
when I was younger, for it's like epic silliness and
(02:34):
like the incomprehensible meat mouth Arnold performance in it. Uh.
You know, he's got some hilarious facial expressions, some hilarious
line delivery, but there's also a kind of beautiful operatic atmosphere.
Oh absolutely. I mean, I believe director and writer John
Eilius has has cited you know, Wagner as being one
(02:54):
of the influences on the on the on the film.
That's kind of not surprising having gone back and seen it,
seeing it more recently and now being aware that there
are people who sort of criticized it as being fascist
when it came out, I can't say I think those
critics are wrong, and this is, I think, not a
movie that one should let shape their values. No. Yeah,
(03:14):
I mean this is a film that I've I've loved
for a long time and uh and I didn't watch
it in its entirety for this episode, so it's still
been a few years since I've seen it. But I
went back and watched most of the Fulsa Doom segments.
Um so, so I'm not speaking to do a recent
rewatch of it. But yeah, this is this is a
film that I if you asked me, do you love
Conan the barband, say yes? If if if you had
(03:36):
asked me, is this is it a part of your
your core philosophical outlook and you should be worried if
it is. Somebody's right because we don't live in a
sword and sorcery world for starters, and nor should we
want to. I mean, this is a kind of world
where there is just a ton there's like all this
blockhead macho violence and cruelty. I think about one thing
(03:57):
that was shocking on rewatching it is how many scene
of there are of Conan just like punching animals. There's
like a scene where he punches a camel in the head.
I'm not sure why that's in there. Of course, the
the I mean, it goes without saying it's like the
textbook example of objectification of women in film. So the
treatment of women and it is just kind of vile.
(04:17):
And there's this like it's the movie is just greased
up and down with fetishization of some weird version of
masculinity and obsession with weapons, technology and murder. So I
don't know all the critics who saw the authoritarian stuff
in there, the weirdness of it. It begins with like
a Nietzscheck quote. So it seems that John Milius obviously
the director. You were telling me, he's the he's the
(04:40):
person that the character of Walter and The Big Lebowski
is based on. That's what I've always heard. I don't
know to to what extent, but clearly they look a
lot of like they're there. They're there. The look of
the characters very much patterned Don Milius. That made everything
click for me. I was like, this is a movie
that was made by Walter from The Big Lebowski. Before
we go any further, let's actually just hear a sample
from the trailer, just to get it to remind everybody, uh,
(05:04):
you know about what we're talking about here, Warrior feel alright,
(05:27):
So we got a taste of the drama there, a
taste of the music. The score is is beautiful in
this film. This is one of the few, um you know,
you know, orchestra scores that I can really get behind.
I love the music in it. Yeah, And I do
think in the same way that it was sort of
a breakout performance for Arnold Schwarzenegger. I have read about
it being an important stepping stone stone for the composer
(05:47):
of the film as well. Oh yes, so yeah, obviously
we have Arnold Schwartzenegger as Roberty Howard's pulled pair of
Barbarian alongside other newcomers. Because that's one of the things
to keep in mind here is like arnoldly have been
in virtually nothing at this point, um, and you've been
in some movies where you literally couldn't understand a single thing.
He said, right, so this was this is a big deal.
(06:08):
This this is a film that kind of made Arnold.
And then I'll you also have these other kind of
newcomers sandel bergman, isn't it uh? Jerry Lopez, who mostly
made his name and still has a name as a surfer.
And then alongside him he had veteran actors Mako, Max
Von Sido and then of course James Earl Jones as
(06:29):
Tulsa Doom. But I'm not to discount the hinchman in
this film as well. He has a couple of henchmen
and their rex Or and thor Gram and they're played
by s then Olie Thorson, who's in a classic in
every Arnold film, is this bodybuilder with this just just uh,
he's just got a face like somebody ate his lunch
(06:49):
and it stayed that way forever. And he he's he's
the villain in a really funny B movie called Abraxas
Guardian of the Universe and stars s Ventura. They should
have gotten Jesse Ventura to play a role in uh,
I don't think he was ready for it. But but
then the other henchman is played by Ben Davidson, who
(07:11):
is this enormous, uh like really haggard looking, mustachioed football
player and uh, and you know he basically another case. Really,
all these actors outside of Mako and Maximum Sido and
some of the supporting players, you know, there were a
lot of people that were brought on because they uh
you know, they had some sort of natural and or
physical charisma and uh and they somehow made them work
(07:34):
in the film like they they For instance, Ben Davidson
not really it was not really known for his acting ability,
just like looked like a tough guy. Um and he's
just grimaces a lot in this film. But he has
this one part where he always says, is you And
it's perfectly executed in this film, like like a few
there are a few times where a character in a
(07:55):
film just says a single word and it's played perfectly.
So that's kind of how aren't Schwarzenegger is right? I mean,
he's not much of an actor. I don't know if
he ever really became much of an actor, but he's
definitely not an actor in this movie. He's just he's
just sort of playing himself. But uh, well he's he does.
I think he does a good job in this film.
(08:17):
But at times it does feel kind of like if
I'm watching us an Italian horror movie where a child
is being menaced by a monster or something. The child
is screaming, and I start worrying if the child would
like they just said, we'll just go scare the child.
We don't have to worry about the child. Acting will
just terrify them, like to are they just really beating
(08:37):
the hell out of Arnold? And then that's how they
filmed the scene, you know. Um, But that's what makes
it hilarious to see bloopers from the production of Conan
the Barbarian where like they're supposed to be wild dogs
chasing him and they catch him and then they don't
actually hurt him, but he's like, so the basic plot
of the film is that it's it's set during a
(08:57):
time before the oceans drank Atlantis, in an age of
high adventure, and you have this young boy, Uh, the
young Conan Uh, and his village is decimated by this
vicious war band. His parents are murdered, his father's sword
is taken by the villains Uh, and the boy enters
a grueling life of servitude, labor, and finally gladiatorial combat.
(09:18):
Then he's freed. He finds a new sword and a
giant's crypt, and then he eventually crosses past with the
very villains who decimated his family, only now the leader
of that band, that war band, Thulsa Doom. He's reinvented
himself now as this charismatic cult leader, and so um
Conan and some of his friends they enter into the
service of an aging king, uh to free the king's
(09:40):
daughter from the snake colts clutches, and in doing so,
Conan discovers the source of his strength. Uh. He solves
the rule of steel, he achieves his vengeance. I mean
really it's basically a simple revenge story. But it's it's
one that is it's well made, it's well told. You
know what the basic beats are gonna be, but they're
they're well delivered. You could pretty much find the same
plot in any number of westerns. Are certainly in biker films. Oh,
(10:04):
I absolutely see what you mean with uh. With the
biker film, like the bizarre kind of like the the
idolization of the on the road, grungy lifestyle, this like
sense of fetishization of some feeling about masculine individuality and
like you know, freedom and will. Yeah, the outlaw were Ethos,
(10:25):
dangerous hippie religions, that sort of thing. Yeah, absolutely so.
Falsa Dooms snake cult has all these people showing up
looking like they're ready for you know, woodstock in the
late sixties. Uh, that's another way that I mean, if
you start to count them up, that you really do
start to notice all the ways that the film seems um,
I don't know. I mean, it's clearly like an eighties
(10:46):
reactionary kind of thing. Yeah. Now, I do want to
stress that I fully support anybody being able to just
set and enjoy Conan the Barbarian as Conan the Barbarian,
and I try and I try to do that when
I when I watch a film like this. But at
the same time, it is an interesting exercise just to
place a film within the context of its times, take
(11:06):
apart what it means, what it's saying. You know, what
is the one is the like the what's the basic
philosophy of the of the feature? That sort of thing. Well,
if one we're trying to be generous, you could say
maybe that like like when you read an ancient myth.
Ancient myths can be enticing and beautiful because they show
you something about a mindset from ages past, and they
(11:26):
show you know, they're imaginative, they give you a different
way of thinking. But almost no ancient myth that none
that I can think of, has like values that I
think are still good and applicable across the board, so
you could think about Conan in that way. But it's
also I don't know, I mean, it was made recently,
but it's supposedly said at a time of like a
(11:46):
lost past, before any historically recorded civilization. Now, one more
thing about the legacy of of this film is that
that obviously it had a huge impact on the fantasy genre,
the sword and sorcery genre, in the same way that
Roberty Howard's original stories were highly influential. But this film
in particularly also was just endlessly copied by various bad
(12:10):
barbarian films to rise up in its wake, including some
just truly wonderful Italian barbarian films. Oh Man, the a
Tor movies. I I just recently, you know what actually
made me want to go back and watch Conan the
Barbarian to see if if we could do an episode
about it, was that I recently watched a movie called
Your Hunter from the Future, which is a hilarious nineteen
(12:33):
eighties Conan rip off. Just like Leather Diaper Barbarian movie.
It's got reb Brown, the guy from Space Mutiny, and
all the Conan kind of stuff is there, but done
in a cheaper, less operatic, more hilarious, and more Italian way.
Oh yeah, I mean there there's so so many examples
of this the sort of film that I love, the
(12:53):
Death Stalker films, um, oh, the Lucio Fulsey film Conquest.
That's that's one of my favorites. I've seen that one
far more recently, and that is also a beautiful, uh
violent film. But because it's fulchy, it's gross. Well it's gross,
uh but beautiful. Before this episode, I want to focus
(13:15):
mainly on the idea of Fulsa Doom, not just because
he's the best character in the movie. And I will
say I think he's the best character in the movie,
not really in any way that's on the page. It's
mostly just that James Earl Jones is awesome in the role.
He he brings that uh that that Darth Vader gravitas
I hate, I just used a word. I hate when
people say I'm sorry, I said gravity tass. He brings
(13:37):
this power and intensity and subtle dignity to to the
way he delivers lines about the riddle of steel and
the power of flesh that normally would get a laugh
and I think even delivered by another character in the
same movie would get a laugh. But but Jones just
nails it. Yeah, And I think it's also a treat
for a lot of viewers may not be that familiar
(13:58):
with with Ownes his earlier work and his stage work certainly, Um,
you know, when you think of James or don't you
might think of Darth Vader where he's just doing the voice,
or you're thinking of films in which you had a
an older James Earl Jones, like more visibly aged James
Earl Jones. And this he's able to like really be
physically present and appear you know, physically strong and intimidating, uh,
(14:22):
in a way that you know you certainly don't see.
And some of his later films and there are multiple
scenes where he just stares into the camera and his
eyes look through you and through a thousand people behind you.
He's got like the million light year gaze. Yeah. So
it's a wonderful villain performance for sure. And he is,
you know, it's it's a I think he's a well formulated, uh,
(14:45):
you know villain. You know, there's not a lot of
depth to him. I guess you know you're not you're
not really connecting with him as a as a as
a human, in part because sometimes he's a giant snake.
But but well, it's also just not a subtle movie.
I mean, what's a worried about it is like, you know,
the open vistas and the music and the operatic quality.
I mean, the characters are quite flat and envisioned in
(15:09):
what I would say, is it kind of an emotionally
and morally immature way. Um like the you know, it
takes place in a world where I don't get any
sense that there's any good or evil. There's just like
strength and valor and revenge. It's a very like you
might find this familiar from some thirteen year old boys
you knew once. Well, you know, I have a couple
(15:31):
of thoughts on that. I mean, first of all, crom
laughs at your need for emotional depth in your characters, Joe.
But but also we have to remember, just going back
to the original source material, Roberty Howard Um died at
the age of thirty, so so all of the stories
of Conan emerge from you know, from his twenties. I mean,
(15:52):
and and uh, you know, I don't want to get
into the full biography of Roberty Howard, but you know,
I think, you know, there's a case to be that. Yeah,
these are these are films that did emerge from an
extended adolescence and uh, you know, and people people love them,
and maybe that's part of of of why. You know,
they speak to a sort of you know, adolescent longing,
(16:13):
this kind of classic teenage desire to be free and
control your own destiny. Well, this reminds me of another
air where you see the influence of of Conan and
Conan the Barbarian, that being death metal and uh and
certain you know heavy metal acts where this, you know,
the sword and sorcery elements and this kind of like
stark nihilism. Uh, do seem to be wrapped up in
(16:36):
this adolescent longing. Yeah, I absolutely see that. I mean,
there are a lot of bands that are basically just
Conan the Barbarian the band. Yeah, there's also falso Doomed
the Band. Apparently I'm not that familiar with them, but
I I had to listen to just a little of them,
get a sample of it before I went in here.
It's any good. Sounded pretty good. It's not death metal,
I want to be clear on that, but it's a yeah,
(16:56):
it sounded all right, maybe we can we can hear
from fans of Sodom the band, and you guys can
can educate us more on them. Well, they knew the
best character from the movie to name to name their
band after. Because one last thing I'll say about it
before we move on to the mythology and the science.
I will say I was shocked to read that in
(17:16):
reviews at the time the movie came out, which were
you know, they were mixed. It was like polarizing to critics.
Um Apparently a lot of critics criticized James Earl Jones
performance and they were like, this is you know, this
is unsettled. It's not tasteful. It's camp. And I was like, well,
I mean it might be camp, but it's awesome. Yeah,
(17:37):
that's why. I mean, it's like criticizing Rocky Harror Picture
Show for all. It's camp, but of course it's got camp.
That's what I came for. The camp. Tim Curry's really
over the top. You could have been a lot more stuff,
you know, I don't know how you can. Well, I mean,
every criticism of Conan the Barbarian makes sense to me,
except the one that criticizes James Earl Jones. Well, you know,
(17:57):
it's like another recent example that really has a lot
in common with kind of the Barbarian because it's also
a revenge picture, and certainly it's nostalgic for films of
this age. Uh Penis Cosmatos is Mandy, which it's also
a film that probably polarized audiences a bit. Some people
it seems like a film we either love it or
you don't really get it. I think one difference there
(18:18):
is that there's a much clearer ironic distance. It's true
with the with the creation of Mandy right. Well, you know,
whereas John Millius is looking to Wagner and other influences,
uh Panos is looking to the films of yesterday here,
so there's like a degree of removal. But but that's
a film where you have you have a charismatic cult
(18:39):
leader played by a terrific actor, and then you also
have the you have a hero that's most certainly more
an established actor and Nicholas Cage. But I don't know
you can make some comparison between like the raw visceral
nature of these performances. I guess, yeah, Well, Cage is
not super subtle in Mandy right, But it's a film
like both of those performances in Mandy the villain, uh,
(19:02):
the the antagonist and the protagonist. Yeah, they're both. They
both have a lot of frenzied energy to them, and
ultimately I wouldn't want it any other way. Absolutely, So
maybe let me sum up my thoughts. My thoughts are
Conan in some ways kind of great, still kind of beautiful,
still kind of excellent camp but also all the criticisms
make sense. Don't let your sons grow up to be Conan's.
(19:25):
All right, Well, we're gonna take a break and when
we come back, we're gonna jump into the meat of
this episode or episodes. Who knows how long it'll go.
Maybe we'll have to split it in half. You know,
we'll see how it goes here. But when when we
come back, we're going to discuss snake magic. Than all right,
we're back. So Sulsa Doom played by James Earl Jones
(19:47):
in the film uh as distinguished. I want to be
clear from Fulsa Doom in the Roberty Howard short stories
that Conan is based on, which I believe is actually
a totally different character. I think we basically got sort
of one type of villain from the Howard stories, but
with the name of another one. Basically, they pulled a
Velociraptor denonicus here. Okay, we have one thing and you
(20:09):
gave them the name of the other. My understanding, and
I've only read like one or two Roberty Howard stories
in my life, but my understanding is that the actual
Falsa doomed character is more like what Skeletor is in
Masters of the Universe. Okay, but so we're talking about
the one in the movie played by James Earl Jones.
He in the movie is a sorcerer and a high
(20:31):
priest or, a cult leader in the cult of Set,
which is a snake based religion. So in the movie mythology,
Set is a giant snake god. Now, snakes play a
role in many myths and religions that we've discussed, the
various primordial world servants on the show before, as well
as the regenerative themes sometimes associated with the shedding of
(20:54):
a snake skin because the snake like sheds its old body,
almost know, it seems to take on new life. And uh,
you know, since Time Out of Mind, people have found
magic and intrigue in that. I think that's a classic
example of bio mythology, you know, where biological facts inspire
mythological archetypes and uh. And this sort of thing has
been associated with everything from fertility gods to the depictions
(21:19):
of snakes in the Old Testament. We've seen them as
creatures of the underworld and the river of lightning and thunder.
And it shouldn't be surprising that an animal were so
hardwired to notice should play, you know, would play such
an important role in our sacred traditions. And we've discussed
this on the show before, but there are while it
is still an open question, I think there is still
some debate. There appears to me to be pretty good
(21:41):
evidence that we we recognize certain animal forms such as snakes,
especially including snakes in a kind of hardwired way, like
their forms attract attention from babies who have not yet
had time to be conditioned to respond to snakes, and
so snake really agen's the use of snakes and snakes
(22:02):
symbolism in various religious practices. It really just it's all
over the place. I mean, you can even go to
even more recent adaptations of the symbolisms, or take a
twentieth century America there's the rise of the appellation, practice
of snake handling as a test of faith. Well yeah,
and the long ending of the Gospel of Mark in
(22:23):
the Bible. This is a part of the Gospel of
Mark that I think is generally considered by Bible scholars
to not have been a part of the book originally,
but something that was added on later. But it says
that people who have faith in Christ will take up
deadly serpents in their hands and they will not harm them,
and they drink poison. Yeah, but that's a great indication
that you know what's thought. Let's like, what, where's the
(22:45):
first place our brain goes in the idea of defying death,
you know, the mirror miraculous survival. It's like, well, it's
being able to hold snakes, which is funny because I
think most snakes are not actually that dangerous to humans,
even if you are bitten and venimated. Well yeah, I
mean it depends in a large part on where you
are in the world. And then also like how you
(23:06):
know how close you're getting to these snakes? Right, Yeah,
I think that's right. So I want to talk about
the god set. So we got the cult of set right, Um,
there is an actual god in Egyptian religion and mythology
named Set or Seth. But this god is very different
from the fictional snake god Set in the Conan movies.
And I wanted to talk about the real god Set.
(23:28):
Let's do it. Spread the word of Set. Okay. So
my main source here is Geraldine Pinch's book on Egyptian
Mythology from Oxford University Press. Uh. And so one thing
about this is, of course ancient Egypt covers a vast
time scale, So when you look into the roles of
different gods or symbols in Egyptian mythology, you're going to
see a lot of different stories over time. And there's
(23:50):
not just one story of Set that's the only one. Yeah.
We we always have to stress this when we're talking
about mythology, because even in with something like Greek mythology,
this is the case. It is not there's not like
one set pantheon. It's not like here the here's the
first edition Greek pantheon God and Godess cards. Collect them
all and know exactly where they rank. No, things are emerging, evolving, geography,
(24:14):
different regions, different peoples are coming into play, changing traditions
as well, and that's certainly the case in Egyptian traditions,
absolutely the case, and and Set or Seth is no example,
But I just want to talk about some common features
and things that appear in the texts here and there.
So set was often understood as a creature of chaos,
and he was the sometimes enemy of his brother Osiris,
(24:37):
who is a very important figure in Egyptian religion. Set
and Osiris are two of the five children of the
sky goddess newt in Ut and the earth god Gebb,
and in many texts, Set eventually murders Osiris, either with
direct violence or through some kind of complicated assassination plot.
Pinch writes that quote Seth acts as a catalyst in
(25:00):
Egyptian myth His thoughtless actions are bad in themselves, but
can lead to good outcomes, such as that of Osiris
becoming the ruler of the underworld. And she also gives
the example that I'll talk about more in a minute,
that that sets brute strength is sometimes needed to defend
the gods against even worse beings. Uh and in other
(25:21):
later mythologies. To to compare this to it, it it sort
of reminds me somewhat of the role of Loki in
Norse mythology, who is a troublemaker and ultimately a great enemy,
but also in many stories an indispensable ally or a
catalyst for important developments. Also, like with a lot of
cultures in history, you see an ancient Egyptian mythology a
sort of suite of associations between on one hand, you've
(25:43):
got order and civilization in the homeland, and then on
the other side you've got chaos, the wilderness or untamed
nature and foreign lands. And at times there seems to
be an opposition where Osirius represents a sense of order,
of civilisation and of Egyptian nous, while Set represents chaos
(26:04):
and the untamed aspects of nature or the you know,
the wild desert, and foreigners or foreign nous. And this
also sort of comes through with the god's consorts. So
the main consort of Osiris was his sister isis Um,
but sets consorts include his sister Nephthys, but also goddesses
from foreign cultures. So sometimes his consorts are goddesses like
(26:25):
a not or Astarte, who are submitted goddesses from the
area's northeast of Egypt, like around the Lavant So Set
Set gets into a lot of trouble. He does bad
stuff all the time in various texts. He's known for
breaking taboos, committing crimes. Sometimes he'll chop down a sacred tree,
or he'll kill a sacred animal you're not supposed to
mess with. He's also accused of kind of strange sexual taboos,
(26:48):
like in one story, he attempts to enact some kind
of sex act on the god Horace, which results in
the birth of Thought, who is a god of the moon,
who's associated with like wisdom and scholarship and magic, who
would seem to sort of represent emerging of order in chaos. Now,
in that Osiris myth, where where where Set kills his
(27:10):
brother Osirius, the ancient Egyptian religion placed a lot of
significance on the power of the dead body of Osiris,
like that even after death, his body controlled things like
the crops or the you know, the cycles of flooding
in the Nile. And so after Set killed him, it
seems that Set couldn't leave well enough alone, And in
some tellings, he just continues to try to like tamper
(27:32):
with and mutilate the body of Osiris, even after he's
already dead. And so one type of ritual in ancient
Egyptian religion is that you'd have priesthoods that had ritual
retaliations against Set in which the chaos god would be
killed and castrated and mutilated in effigy. So, as you
can see so far, Set is a complex figure. Yeah, yeah,
(27:53):
I mean, well, he's getting some kind of devil characteristics already. Uh.
And and that goes on to to extend to this
this chaos component. Right, He's associated with the wilderness, and
this means he's he's all the bad vibes of the desert, right,
He's barren wastes where nothing could grow. He's floods and
sandstorms and dangerous and unclean wild animals. And he could
(28:14):
take the form of many known animals like wild cats
or crocodiles or wild asses. But he also represented uh,
he's also represented sometimes as a specific, perhaps fictional animal,
not a snake, but a strange four legged creature with
a long snout. And we'll come back to that in
a bit, because that's a really interesting question about the
(28:35):
mythology of Set. But when placed in opposition to oh
Syrus or the the other good god Horace, Seth is
sometimes presented, in um Pinch's words as quote massively strong
and monumentally stupid. And this is funny because I feel
like this is kind of how Conan himself reads to
me in the movie. I know, this is somewhat different
(28:56):
than the more clever character who's in the original stories
in the movie. I don't know if you read it differently, Robert,
but to me, in the movie Thalsa Doom, the villain
is presented as cunning and subtle and intelligent and complex,
whereas Conan's supposed virtues seem to be his strength and
his courage and his lack of cunning or complexity. He's
(29:18):
the mythical straight shooter, right, you know, he's just kind
of he is what he is. He's a simple kind
of man, and he you know, he goes out and
he's strong and he does what you know, he's like
will incarnate. Yeah, I mean he has. He has kind
of an agent of chaos, right, as opposed to Thalsa
Doom's the order that Thulsa Doom has created in the world. Uh,
(29:40):
there's almost kind of a butterfly effect, right. There's this this,
this this one event, this one massacre, this one child
that that he allows to let live like this child,
uh like spins off and becomes this thing that will
bring about his downfall. This this this this unpredictable chaotic
element that that just steadily brings everything down in the
(30:03):
end and is not very not necessarily represented as very
mentally subtle or complex. And Conan's kind of a meathead. Yeah, yeah,
I mean absolutely, that's that's you know, that's definitely part
of the text, right, He's um, you know, he just
he knows what he wants and he goes after it,
be it you know, jewels or women or ultimately vengeance.
(30:23):
So I think maybe Conan should have been the one
aligned with Set in the movie. I think maybe the
movie got it backwards. Yeah, perhaps, But it also gets
more complex because there are some stories from Asian Egypt
to wards. Set is not just a villain or enemy
of the gods of order. Quote. One of the secrets
revealed in the Royal Underworld books was the joining of
(30:46):
the two lords. Uh and that would be Set and
Horace into one double headed being to combat the forces
of chaos in the hour of greatest danger. Uh And
so that's also going to come back in an interesting
way to some symbology in the movie that we'll talk about.
But yeah, so Set sometimes joins forces with the supposed
(31:06):
good guys like Horace or the solar deity Ray to
defeat the chaos monster that is the serpent a pep
or a popis. So you may have heard this mytho
dynamic before, but here's how it basically works. Okay, So
every day you've got a solar boat. You know, it
goes across the sky with the Sun. That's how it's
(31:26):
getting across. Yeah, so it's going across the sky, is
bearing the god Ray, makes this journey across the sky,
and then it's sunset, it dips over the horizon. What
happens when you dip over the horizon where you go
into the underworld. So every night, the boat bearing Ray
and the gods and the Sun, it goes over the
horizon and it has to journey through the underworld and
this is what night time is. So every night, during
(31:49):
this treacherous voyage through the underworld, a snake dragon called
a pep or a popis attacks the boat of the Sun,
trying to kill Ray and stop the Sun from rising.
And a pep is like the true snake god. Uh,
entity from Egyptian mythology. Yeah, exactly, And one of the
(32:09):
main defenders of the boat, ironically, was Set, the strong
wild god. He would crush or club or spear or
bind the snake every night, and then it would revive
or escape and attack again the next night. So every
night the earthly priests would perform rituals to help the gods,
including Set, win over the great snake. And some of
(32:31):
these rituals involved making models or effigies of the monster,
and then they would curse the model and destroy it
or stab it or crush it or burn it with fire.
So the priests would kind of act out the role
of the mighty and dangerous chaos god Set in order
to defeat an even greater and more evil enemy, this
(32:51):
this monster of chaos apep or Apophis. Now, snakes are
not always bad or evil in ancient literature. Earlier, Robert
you mentioned that snakes are often a symbol of something
like rebirth, and that that appears also in Egyptian literature.
Sometimes they represent rebirth, sometimes they represent creation or other
positive attributes. But I would say not here. It seems
(33:12):
to me that a pepper a popis, is nasty to
the core. Yeah, and I like the way that the
character of Set becomes more complex like this over time,
that you know he he might be a bad guy
in some ways, but he's he's even if he's monumentally stupid.
He's big and strong and you need his help to
defeat the even worse monster. It's kind of like that
scene in the movie where you have to team up
(33:33):
with the villain from the previous movie. It's like when
the X Men have to recruit Magneto to help them,
which this is a common trope and any kind of
like multi entry series, right, if you still have a
villain from an earlier film, like you're running out of
things to do with them to a certain extent, so
you have to find new uses for him. But then
this also ties into the mythic tradition. Yeah, but I
(33:54):
want to come back to the interesting question. Uh we
alluded to a minute ago from Egyptian mythology, not not
in the movie, the the Egyptian mythology of Set. What
was this Set animal? So we know that Set was
not a snake. In fact, Set was very much involved
in slaying the Great Evil Snake. What what was this
animal he was associated with? We're gonna take a quick
(34:15):
break and then we'll find out than alright, we're back.
So when you think of the Egyptian gods and goddesses,
I think one tends to think of those humanoid figures
with animal heads, and it's and it's easy to just
work along those lines, right and just think, Okay, this
animal plus this body equals this god. And for the
(34:38):
most part, that seems to be how it goes. Um
you know you you you see the like the jackal
headed anibus, etcetera. But when we look at Set, the
weird thing is that this doesn't seem to necessarily be
an easily identifiable animal. He has this head that I mean,
(34:58):
you kind of glance at it, you might think it's
some sort of dog, or maybe it's a bird, but
but it's not. It's clearly something else. And in fact, uh,
the crazy thing about Set is that we're still not
exactly sure what animal Set is supposed to be based upon.
We can't look at him and say, oh, it's a jackal.
That's clearly that's the head of a jackal, and then
(35:19):
we can extrapolate what that symbology might mean. No, with
the said animal, Oh it's been. There's been so many
different theories, so so some have said, well, maybe it's
an art vark or a donkey or a jackal, or
an ore x, a hair or a taper, even though
they're non existent in Africa, no matter what you saw
in two thousand and one of Space Odyssey. Or it's
(35:41):
a finnick fox. I've also seen some early twentieth century
writings that speculated that it was a domestic pig, or
that it's the head of a mythical compound animal, you know,
some manner of griffin or sphinx, because that's another possibility, right, Like,
we we don't want to fall into the trap of
thinking that ancient people had had no imagine nation or
that they could only work along the lines of like
(36:02):
real animal head verse plus real person body. Like they
could also say, well, the head of the mythological animal
would work here as well. Yeah, and in fact we know,
I mean, there are multiple different kinds of non existent
animals that were invoked in the beliefs of ancient people's.
There are some things that they believed to be sort
of like spiritual or other worldly animals, things they wouldn't
(36:24):
expect to see out in nature. There were also animals
that they just believed were part of nature that we
don't have any evidence ever existed, right, And we'll get
back to that because that raises some interesting questions. Percy E.
Newberry wrote in Night Then It that it had also
been suggested that the said animal might be a greyhound
um because one of the things that like, it has ears,
(36:46):
and it has this kind of snout, but it's kind
of a downturned snout. Um. So, so certainly like the
the art vark comes to mind when you look at
it looks kind of like a cartoon art vark. But anyway,
Newberry also brought up the possibility that it was an
animal that the ancient Egyptians were not that familiar with.
So I'm reminded of geographically removed depictions of rhinos and
(37:08):
lions and other animals and ancient traditions where you know,
some like a Western artist doesn't really know what a
rhino looks like, they're basing an illustration on descriptions of
the rhino, or say, lions and Chinese depictions where the
depiction kind of takes on a life of its own,
be kind of kind of becomes this thing between reality
(37:29):
and fantasy, and then another idea that's come up. It's
just it's the idea that this is an animal that
had gone extinct, to quote Max Mueller, an Egyptologists from
nineteen eighteen writing on this quote, an animal which had
perhaps become extinct in prehistoric times, or that the figure
of it had been drawn from an archaic statue of
(37:50):
so crude a type that it defied all zoological knowledge
of subsequent artists. So you know, that's an interesting idea.
Both of those are interesting ideas to think of too,
Like it's either like the telephone game of depictions of things,
where they're basing it on some other depiction, or yeah,
what if this is based on some sort of animal
(38:12):
that went extinct during uh the Egyptian era. Um, I mean,
it's entirely possible. I've also read that the curved nose
might have simply been introduced at some point to distinguish
um a dog or jackal based set from the jackal
headed anabus. So it could have been a situation where like, oh, look, guys,
(38:32):
we can't have two jackal headed gods. This is gonna
get kind of confusing. Let's give set a downturn nose. Oh,
this could be yet another case like we talked about
in a certain possibilities about depictions of the unicorn, where
sometimes a belief in a mythical animal could be just
based on some type of artistic convention, like the idea
that a unicorn idea could have been inspired by somebody
(38:54):
drawing an ore x. Oh yeah, yeah with a side profile. Yes,
now I want I can tell this is still something
of an open question in Egyptology as well, like there's
there's no clear answer on what the set animal actually was, um.
But but yeah, this is I have to admit I
really wasn't familiar with these questions about the set animal
until he started researching this. I always just kind of
(39:16):
glanced at set. I focus more on sets roles in
these various uh myths, and I didn't really stop to
question what he was supposed to be. UM. But but
now I can look at him and I'm like, yeah,
there's there's kind of a slight Gonzo element there, right,
Donzo from the Muppets. And I've never read that there
was any intentional set iconography in Gonzo, because of course
(39:40):
the Muppet Gonzo is of course considered a a whatever
I believe is the is is what it is? The
joke that they often made. Where did they say that?
I don't remember. Um. I think just at various times
it comes up, like Gonzos or whatever. I think Gonzo
identifies as being a whatever? Um though they did. I
think in Nines Muppets from Space they introduced the idea
(40:02):
that Gonzo as an alien species. So that's a bad move.
Why not just leave the mystery open? And and I'm
not saying that set was an alien. That's not where
I'm going. We're not going there at all. But imagine
future beings examining like an incomplete visual history of the
centuries on Earth. What would they make of Gonzo? What
(40:24):
would they make of Goofy and Pluto from the Disney pantheon?
What would they make of Snoopy or Totoro or you
know other cartoon animals and animal like creatures. Yeah, I
think this is Uh, this is a great point to make.
I mean, and this is part of what you were
talking about a minute ago. You know, you never want
to forget that creative imagination exists. You know, we end
up saying this a lot just because you see something
(40:45):
represented in art made by a human doesn't mean that
they saw something like that. And sometimes I think people
have that impulse. It's like, Wow, what inspired them to
draw this? Maybe they were just being weird, you know,
we're we're weird. We come up with weird stuff. All right, Well,
as expected, we're gonna have to break this episode into two,
so we're gonna go ahead and call it for now,
(41:06):
but we're gonna be back in the next episode where
we're gonna talk about the symbol of set in the movie,
how that relates to both the UH symbolic and mythological
two headed snakes and real life two headed snakes. We're
gonna look at at snake arrows, and of course we'll
turn to the world of natural world giant serpents, We'll
(41:28):
go all the way down the snake hole. That's right.
In the meantime, if you want to check out more
stuff to Blow your mind, heading over to Stuff to
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(41:49):
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(42:09):
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Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff to
Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick. And today we thought we would get back
into the science of a movie from the nineteen eighties
that seems to be something we've been into lately. We
(00:25):
did Science of Highlander two. It was a great success.
We did we we talked about almost the Labyrinth, not
Labyrinth the Dark Crystal Um. Of course. Months earlier we
also did two thousand one of Space Odyssey. Oh that's right.
Well that's kind of a different story there. But Robert,
you've been badgering me to pick a movie, and so
I was thinking. I was thinking. I was thinking, and
(00:45):
then I realized, you know, snake science is always great
to talk about, and we could we could also discuss
some great myths if we were to revisit a movie
I loved when I was younger, Conan the Barbarian the
nineteen eight two John Millie Is directed Arnold Schwarzenegger starring
take on the Conan lore by Robert E. Howard. I
(01:06):
think it's a very different take from what I can
tell I'm not really into the old literature, but I
was thinking, Yeah, I wonder how this movie holds up.
It's time to view Conan again, right, So yeah, if
you're just joining stuff to blow your mind, like if
you just clicked on us that, I don't want to
check out this science podcast they're all about. Um, yeah,
this is something we've been doing, trying to do like
one a month. So what we're gonna do is we're
(01:27):
gonna talk a little bit about this movie. And uh,
you know, it's it's it's it's it's actors, it's plot,
it's some of its more serpentine features. But we're gonna
use that as a springboard to discuss a little bit
of science, a little bit of myth, a little bit
of biology, all of that and uh, you know, all
under the you know, the loose heading of of the
(01:48):
science of Falsa Doom, Falsa Doom being the the principal
antagonist in this film. Now that I've rewatched it, I
agree with my much earlier assessment, which is clearly the
best part of the movie. The villain Thulsa Doom, played
by James Earl Jones. Now this is like, this is
like Pete James Earl Jones because this in nineteen eighty two,
he had been the voice of Darth Vader. So James
(02:11):
Earl Jones has like has like the greatest voice of
the greatest villain in genre cinema of the day, and
so they're like, why not bring him in to play
this this awesome charismatic cult leader. And he is still
just supernaturally intense in the movie in a beautiful and
hilarious way. Uh. Now, I remember I love this movie
when I was younger, for it's like epic silliness and
(02:34):
like the incomprehensible meat mouth Arnold performance in it. Uh.
You know, he's got some hilarious facial expressions, some hilarious
line delivery, but there's also a kind of beautiful operatic atmosphere.
Oh absolutely. I mean, I believe director and writer John
Eilius has has cited you know, Wagner as being one
(02:54):
of the influences on the on the on the film.
That's kind of not surprising having gone back and seen it,
seeing it more recently and now being aware that there
are people who sort of criticized it as being fascist
when it came out, I can't say I think those
critics are wrong, and this is, I think, not a
movie that one should let shape their values. No. Yeah,
(03:14):
I mean this is a film that I've I've loved
for a long time and uh and I didn't watch
it in its entirety for this episode, so it's still
been a few years since I've seen it. But I
went back and watched most of the Fulsa Doom segments.
Um so, so I'm not speaking to do a recent
rewatch of it. But yeah, this is this is a
film that I if you asked me, do you love
Conan the barband, say yes? If if if you had
(03:36):
asked me, is this is it a part of your
your core philosophical outlook and you should be worried if
it is. Somebody's right because we don't live in a
sword and sorcery world for starters, and nor should we
want to. I mean, this is a kind of world
where there is just a ton there's like all this
blockhead macho violence and cruelty. I think about one thing
(03:57):
that was shocking on rewatching it is how many scene
of there are of Conan just like punching animals. There's
like a scene where he punches a camel in the head.
I'm not sure why that's in there. Of course, the
the I mean, it goes without saying it's like the
textbook example of objectification of women in film. So the
treatment of women and it is just kind of vile.
(04:17):
And there's this like it's the movie is just greased
up and down with fetishization of some weird version of
masculinity and obsession with weapons, technology and murder. So I
don't know all the critics who saw the authoritarian stuff
in there, the weirdness of it. It begins with like
a Nietzscheck quote. So it seems that John Milius obviously
the director. You were telling me, he's the he's the
(04:40):
person that the character of Walter and The Big Lebowski
is based on. That's what I've always heard. I don't
know to to what extent, but clearly they look a
lot of like they're there. They're there. The look of
the characters very much patterned Don Milius. That made everything
click for me. I was like, this is a movie
that was made by Walter from The Big Lebowski. Before
we go any further, let's actually just hear a sample
from the trailer, just to get it to remind everybody, uh,
(05:04):
you know about what we're talking about here, Warrior feel alright,
(05:27):
So we got a taste of the drama there, a
taste of the music. The score is is beautiful in
this film. This is one of the few, um you know,
you know, orchestra scores that I can really get behind.
I love the music in it. Yeah, And I do
think in the same way that it was sort of
a breakout performance for Arnold Schwarzenegger. I have read about
it being an important stepping stone stone for the composer
(05:47):
of the film as well. Oh yes, so yeah, obviously
we have Arnold Schwartzenegger as Roberty Howard's pulled pair of
Barbarian alongside other newcomers. Because that's one of the things
to keep in mind here is like arnoldly have been
in virtually nothing at this point, um, and you've been
in some movies where you literally couldn't understand a single thing.
He said, right, so this was this is a big deal.
(06:08):
This this is a film that kind of made Arnold.
And then I'll you also have these other kind of
newcomers sandel bergman, isn't it uh? Jerry Lopez, who mostly
made his name and still has a name as a surfer.
And then alongside him he had veteran actors Mako, Max
Von Sido and then of course James Earl Jones as
(06:29):
Tulsa Doom. But I'm not to discount the hinchman in
this film as well. He has a couple of henchmen
and their rex Or and thor Gram and they're played
by s then Olie Thorson, who's in a classic in
every Arnold film, is this bodybuilder with this just just uh,
he's just got a face like somebody ate his lunch
(06:49):
and it stayed that way forever. And he he's he's
the villain in a really funny B movie called Abraxas
Guardian of the Universe and stars s Ventura. They should
have gotten Jesse Ventura to play a role in uh,
I don't think he was ready for it. But but
then the other henchman is played by Ben Davidson, who
(07:11):
is this enormous, uh like really haggard looking, mustachioed football
player and uh, and you know he basically another case. Really,
all these actors outside of Mako and Maximum Sido and
some of the supporting players, you know, there were a
lot of people that were brought on because they uh
you know, they had some sort of natural and or
physical charisma and uh and they somehow made them work
(07:34):
in the film like they they For instance, Ben Davidson
not really it was not really known for his acting ability,
just like looked like a tough guy. Um and he's
just grimaces a lot in this film. But he has
this one part where he always says, is you And
it's perfectly executed in this film, like like a few
there are a few times where a character in a
(07:55):
film just says a single word and it's played perfectly.
So that's kind of how aren't Schwarzenegger is right? I mean,
he's not much of an actor. I don't know if
he ever really became much of an actor, but he's
definitely not an actor in this movie. He's just he's
just sort of playing himself. But uh, well he's he does.
I think he does a good job in this film.
(08:17):
But at times it does feel kind of like if
I'm watching us an Italian horror movie where a child
is being menaced by a monster or something. The child
is screaming, and I start worrying if the child would
like they just said, we'll just go scare the child.
We don't have to worry about the child. Acting will
just terrify them, like to are they just really beating
(08:37):
the hell out of Arnold? And then that's how they
filmed the scene, you know. Um, But that's what makes
it hilarious to see bloopers from the production of Conan
the Barbarian where like they're supposed to be wild dogs
chasing him and they catch him and then they don't
actually hurt him, but he's like, so the basic plot
of the film is that it's it's set during a
(08:57):
time before the oceans drank Atlantis, in an age of
high adventure, and you have this young boy, Uh, the
young Conan Uh, and his village is decimated by this
vicious war band. His parents are murdered, his father's sword
is taken by the villains Uh, and the boy enters
a grueling life of servitude, labor, and finally gladiatorial combat.
(09:18):
Then he's freed. He finds a new sword and a
giant's crypt, and then he eventually crosses past with the
very villains who decimated his family, only now the leader
of that band, that war band, Thulsa Doom. He's reinvented
himself now as this charismatic cult leader, and so um
Conan and some of his friends they enter into the
service of an aging king, uh to free the king's
(09:40):
daughter from the snake colts clutches, and in doing so,
Conan discovers the source of his strength. Uh. He solves
the rule of steel, he achieves his vengeance. I mean
really it's basically a simple revenge story. But it's it's
one that is it's well made, it's well told. You
know what the basic beats are gonna be, but they're
they're well delivered. You could pretty much find the same
plot in any number of westerns. Are certainly in biker films. Oh,
(10:04):
I absolutely see what you mean with uh. With the
biker film, like the bizarre kind of like the the
idolization of the on the road, grungy lifestyle, this like
sense of fetishization of some feeling about masculine individuality and
like you know, freedom and will. Yeah, the outlaw were Ethos,
(10:25):
dangerous hippie religions, that sort of thing. Yeah, absolutely so.
Falsa Dooms snake cult has all these people showing up
looking like they're ready for you know, woodstock in the
late sixties. Uh, that's another way that I mean, if
you start to count them up, that you really do
start to notice all the ways that the film seems um,
I don't know. I mean, it's clearly like an eighties
(10:46):
reactionary kind of thing. Yeah. Now, I do want to
stress that I fully support anybody being able to just
set and enjoy Conan the Barbarian as Conan the Barbarian,
and I try and I try to do that when
I when I watch a film like this. But at
the same time, it is an interesting exercise just to
place a film within the context of its times, take
(11:06):
apart what it means, what it's saying. You know, what
is the one is the like the what's the basic
philosophy of the of the feature? That sort of thing. Well,
if one we're trying to be generous, you could say
maybe that like like when you read an ancient myth.
Ancient myths can be enticing and beautiful because they show
you something about a mindset from ages past, and they
(11:26):
show you know, they're imaginative, they give you a different
way of thinking. But almost no ancient myth that none
that I can think of, has like values that I
think are still good and applicable across the board, so
you could think about Conan in that way. But it's
also I don't know, I mean, it was made recently,
but it's supposedly said at a time of like a
(11:46):
lost past, before any historically recorded civilization. Now, one more
thing about the legacy of of this film is that
that obviously it had a huge impact on the fantasy genre,
the sword and sorcery genre, in the same way that
Roberty Howard's original stories were highly influential. But this film
in particularly also was just endlessly copied by various bad
(12:10):
barbarian films to rise up in its wake, including some
just truly wonderful Italian barbarian films. Oh Man, the a
Tor movies. I I just recently, you know what actually
made me want to go back and watch Conan the
Barbarian to see if if we could do an episode
about it, was that I recently watched a movie called
Your Hunter from the Future, which is a hilarious nineteen
(12:33):
eighties Conan rip off. Just like Leather Diaper Barbarian movie.
It's got reb Brown, the guy from Space Mutiny, and
all the Conan kind of stuff is there, but done
in a cheaper, less operatic, more hilarious, and more Italian way.
Oh yeah, I mean there there's so so many examples
of this the sort of film that I love, the
(12:53):
Death Stalker films, um, oh, the Lucio Fulsey film Conquest.
That's that's one of my favorites. I've seen that one
far more recently, and that is also a beautiful, uh
violent film. But because it's fulchy, it's gross. Well it's gross,
uh but beautiful. Before this episode, I want to focus
(13:15):
mainly on the idea of Fulsa Doom, not just because
he's the best character in the movie. And I will
say I think he's the best character in the movie,
not really in any way that's on the page. It's
mostly just that James Earl Jones is awesome in the role.
He he brings that uh that that Darth Vader gravitas
I hate, I just used a word. I hate when
people say I'm sorry, I said gravity tass. He brings
(13:37):
this power and intensity and subtle dignity to to the
way he delivers lines about the riddle of steel and
the power of flesh that normally would get a laugh
and I think even delivered by another character in the
same movie would get a laugh. But but Jones just
nails it. Yeah, And I think it's also a treat
for a lot of viewers may not be that familiar
(13:58):
with with Ownes his earlier work and his stage work certainly, Um,
you know, when you think of James or don't you
might think of Darth Vader where he's just doing the voice,
or you're thinking of films in which you had a
an older James Earl Jones, like more visibly aged James
Earl Jones. And this he's able to like really be
physically present and appear you know, physically strong and intimidating, uh,
(14:22):
in a way that you know you certainly don't see.
And some of his later films and there are multiple
scenes where he just stares into the camera and his
eyes look through you and through a thousand people behind you.
He's got like the million light year gaze. Yeah. So
it's a wonderful villain performance for sure. And he is,
you know, it's it's a I think he's a well formulated, uh,
(14:45):
you know villain. You know, there's not a lot of
depth to him. I guess you know you're not you're
not really connecting with him as a as a as
a human, in part because sometimes he's a giant snake.
But but well, it's also just not a subtle movie.
I mean, what's a worried about it is like, you know,
the open vistas and the music and the operatic quality.
I mean, the characters are quite flat and envisioned in
(15:09):
what I would say, is it kind of an emotionally
and morally immature way. Um like the you know, it
takes place in a world where I don't get any
sense that there's any good or evil. There's just like
strength and valor and revenge. It's a very like you
might find this familiar from some thirteen year old boys
you knew once. Well, you know, I have a couple
(15:31):
of thoughts on that. I mean, first of all, crom
laughs at your need for emotional depth in your characters, Joe.
But but also we have to remember, just going back
to the original source material, Roberty Howard Um died at
the age of thirty, so so all of the stories
of Conan emerge from you know, from his twenties. I mean,
(15:52):
and and uh, you know, I don't want to get
into the full biography of Roberty Howard, but you know,
I think, you know, there's a case to be that. Yeah,
these are these are films that did emerge from an
extended adolescence and uh, you know, and people people love them,
and maybe that's part of of of why. You know,
they speak to a sort of you know, adolescent longing,
(16:13):
this kind of classic teenage desire to be free and
control your own destiny. Well, this reminds me of another
air where you see the influence of of Conan and
Conan the Barbarian, that being death metal and uh and
certain you know heavy metal acts where this, you know,
the sword and sorcery elements and this kind of like
stark nihilism. Uh, do seem to be wrapped up in
(16:36):
this adolescent longing. Yeah, I absolutely see that. I mean,
there are a lot of bands that are basically just
Conan the Barbarian the band. Yeah, there's also falso Doomed
the Band. Apparently I'm not that familiar with them, but
I I had to listen to just a little of them,
get a sample of it before I went in here.
It's any good. Sounded pretty good. It's not death metal,
I want to be clear on that, but it's a yeah,
(16:56):
it sounded all right, maybe we can we can hear
from fans of Sodom the band, and you guys can
can educate us more on them. Well, they knew the
best character from the movie to name to name their
band after. Because one last thing I'll say about it
before we move on to the mythology and the science.
I will say I was shocked to read that in
(17:16):
reviews at the time the movie came out, which were
you know, they were mixed. It was like polarizing to critics.
Um Apparently a lot of critics criticized James Earl Jones
performance and they were like, this is you know, this
is unsettled. It's not tasteful. It's camp. And I was like, well,
I mean it might be camp, but it's awesome. Yeah,
(17:37):
that's why. I mean, it's like criticizing Rocky Harror Picture
Show for all. It's camp, but of course it's got camp.
That's what I came for. The camp. Tim Curry's really
over the top. You could have been a lot more stuff,
you know, I don't know how you can. Well, I mean,
every criticism of Conan the Barbarian makes sense to me,
except the one that criticizes James Earl Jones. Well, you know,
(17:57):
it's like another recent example that really has a lot
in common with kind of the Barbarian because it's also
a revenge picture, and certainly it's nostalgic for films of
this age. Uh Penis Cosmatos is Mandy, which it's also
a film that probably polarized audiences a bit. Some people
it seems like a film we either love it or
you don't really get it. I think one difference there
(18:18):
is that there's a much clearer ironic distance. It's true
with the with the creation of Mandy right. Well, you know,
whereas John Millius is looking to Wagner and other influences,
uh Panos is looking to the films of yesterday here,
so there's like a degree of removal. But but that's
a film where you have you have a charismatic cult
(18:39):
leader played by a terrific actor, and then you also
have the you have a hero that's most certainly more
an established actor and Nicholas Cage. But I don't know
you can make some comparison between like the raw visceral
nature of these performances. I guess, yeah, Well, Cage is
not super subtle in Mandy right, But it's a film
like both of those performances in Mandy the villain, uh,
(19:02):
the the antagonist and the protagonist. Yeah, they're both. They
both have a lot of frenzied energy to them, and
ultimately I wouldn't want it any other way. Absolutely, So
maybe let me sum up my thoughts. My thoughts are
Conan in some ways kind of great, still kind of beautiful,
still kind of excellent camp but also all the criticisms
make sense. Don't let your sons grow up to be Conan's.
(19:25):
All right, Well, we're gonna take a break and when
we come back, we're gonna jump into the meat of
this episode or episodes. Who knows how long it'll go.
Maybe we'll have to split it in half. You know,
we'll see how it goes here. But when when we
come back, we're going to discuss snake magic. Than all right,
we're back. So Sulsa Doom played by James Earl Jones
(19:47):
in the film uh as distinguished. I want to be
clear from Fulsa Doom in the Roberty Howard short stories
that Conan is based on, which I believe is actually
a totally different character. I think we basically got sort
of one type of villain from the Howard stories, but
with the name of another one. Basically, they pulled a
Velociraptor denonicus here. Okay, we have one thing and you
(20:09):
gave them the name of the other. My understanding, and
I've only read like one or two Roberty Howard stories
in my life, but my understanding is that the actual
Falsa doomed character is more like what Skeletor is in
Masters of the Universe. Okay, but so we're talking about
the one in the movie played by James Earl Jones.
He in the movie is a sorcerer and a high
(20:31):
priest or, a cult leader in the cult of Set,
which is a snake based religion. So in the movie mythology,
Set is a giant snake god. Now, snakes play a
role in many myths and religions that we've discussed, the
various primordial world servants on the show before, as well
as the regenerative themes sometimes associated with the shedding of
(20:54):
a snake skin because the snake like sheds its old body,
almost know, it seems to take on new life. And uh,
you know, since Time Out of Mind, people have found
magic and intrigue in that. I think that's a classic
example of bio mythology, you know, where biological facts inspire
mythological archetypes and uh. And this sort of thing has
been associated with everything from fertility gods to the depictions
(21:19):
of snakes in the Old Testament. We've seen them as
creatures of the underworld and the river of lightning and thunder.
And it shouldn't be surprising that an animal were so
hardwired to notice should play, you know, would play such
an important role in our sacred traditions. And we've discussed
this on the show before, but there are while it
is still an open question, I think there is still
some debate. There appears to me to be pretty good
(21:41):
evidence that we we recognize certain animal forms such as snakes,
especially including snakes in a kind of hardwired way, like
their forms attract attention from babies who have not yet
had time to be conditioned to respond to snakes, and
so snake really agen's the use of snakes and snakes
(22:02):
symbolism in various religious practices. It really just it's all
over the place. I mean, you can even go to
even more recent adaptations of the symbolisms, or take a
twentieth century America there's the rise of the appellation, practice
of snake handling as a test of faith. Well yeah,
and the long ending of the Gospel of Mark in
(22:23):
the Bible. This is a part of the Gospel of
Mark that I think is generally considered by Bible scholars
to not have been a part of the book originally,
but something that was added on later. But it says
that people who have faith in Christ will take up
deadly serpents in their hands and they will not harm them,
and they drink poison. Yeah, but that's a great indication
that you know what's thought. Let's like, what, where's the
(22:45):
first place our brain goes in the idea of defying death,
you know, the mirror miraculous survival. It's like, well, it's
being able to hold snakes, which is funny because I
think most snakes are not actually that dangerous to humans,
even if you are bitten and venimated. Well yeah, I
mean it depends in a large part on where you
are in the world. And then also like how you
(23:06):
know how close you're getting to these snakes? Right, Yeah,
I think that's right. So I want to talk about
the god set. So we got the cult of set right, Um,
there is an actual god in Egyptian religion and mythology
named Set or Seth. But this god is very different
from the fictional snake god Set in the Conan movies.
And I wanted to talk about the real god Set.
(23:28):
Let's do it. Spread the word of Set. Okay. So
my main source here is Geraldine Pinch's book on Egyptian
Mythology from Oxford University Press. Uh. And so one thing
about this is, of course ancient Egypt covers a vast
time scale, So when you look into the roles of
different gods or symbols in Egyptian mythology, you're going to
see a lot of different stories over time. And there's
(23:50):
not just one story of Set that's the only one. Yeah.
We we always have to stress this when we're talking
about mythology, because even in with something like Greek mythology,
this is the case. It is not there's not like
one set pantheon. It's not like here the here's the
first edition Greek pantheon God and Godess cards. Collect them
all and know exactly where they rank. No, things are emerging, evolving, geography,
(24:14):
different regions, different peoples are coming into play, changing traditions
as well, and that's certainly the case in Egyptian traditions,
absolutely the case, and and Set or Seth is no example,
But I just want to talk about some common features
and things that appear in the texts here and there.
So set was often understood as a creature of chaos,
and he was the sometimes enemy of his brother Osiris,
(24:37):
who is a very important figure in Egyptian religion. Set
and Osiris are two of the five children of the
sky goddess newt in Ut and the earth god Gebb,
and in many texts, Set eventually murders Osiris, either with
direct violence or through some kind of complicated assassination plot.
Pinch writes that quote Seth acts as a catalyst in
(25:00):
Egyptian myth His thoughtless actions are bad in themselves, but
can lead to good outcomes, such as that of Osiris
becoming the ruler of the underworld. And she also gives
the example that I'll talk about more in a minute,
that that sets brute strength is sometimes needed to defend
the gods against even worse beings. Uh and in other
(25:21):
later mythologies. To to compare this to it, it it sort
of reminds me somewhat of the role of Loki in
Norse mythology, who is a troublemaker and ultimately a great enemy,
but also in many stories an indispensable ally or a
catalyst for important developments. Also, like with a lot of
cultures in history, you see an ancient Egyptian mythology a
sort of suite of associations between on one hand, you've
(25:43):
got order and civilization in the homeland, and then on
the other side you've got chaos, the wilderness or untamed
nature and foreign lands. And at times there seems to
be an opposition where Osirius represents a sense of order,
of civilisation and of Egyptian nous, while Set represents chaos
(26:04):
and the untamed aspects of nature or the you know,
the wild desert, and foreigners or foreign nous. And this
also sort of comes through with the god's consorts. So
the main consort of Osiris was his sister isis Um,
but sets consorts include his sister Nephthys, but also goddesses
from foreign cultures. So sometimes his consorts are goddesses like
(26:25):
a not or Astarte, who are submitted goddesses from the
area's northeast of Egypt, like around the Lavant So Set
Set gets into a lot of trouble. He does bad
stuff all the time in various texts. He's known for
breaking taboos, committing crimes. Sometimes he'll chop down a sacred tree,
or he'll kill a sacred animal you're not supposed to
mess with. He's also accused of kind of strange sexual taboos,
(26:48):
like in one story, he attempts to enact some kind
of sex act on the god Horace, which results in
the birth of Thought, who is a god of the moon,
who's associated with like wisdom and scholarship and magic, who
would seem to sort of represent emerging of order in chaos. Now,
in that Osiris myth, where where where Set kills his
(27:10):
brother Osirius, the ancient Egyptian religion placed a lot of
significance on the power of the dead body of Osiris,
like that even after death, his body controlled things like
the crops or the you know, the cycles of flooding
in the Nile. And so after Set killed him, it
seems that Set couldn't leave well enough alone, And in
some tellings, he just continues to try to like tamper
(27:32):
with and mutilate the body of Osiris, even after he's
already dead. And so one type of ritual in ancient
Egyptian religion is that you'd have priesthoods that had ritual
retaliations against Set in which the chaos god would be
killed and castrated and mutilated in effigy. So, as you
can see so far, Set is a complex figure. Yeah, yeah,
(27:53):
I mean, well, he's getting some kind of devil characteristics already. Uh.
And and that goes on to to extend to this
this chaos component. Right, He's associated with the wilderness, and
this means he's he's all the bad vibes of the desert, right,
He's barren wastes where nothing could grow. He's floods and
sandstorms and dangerous and unclean wild animals. And he could
(28:14):
take the form of many known animals like wild cats
or crocodiles or wild asses. But he also represented uh,
he's also represented sometimes as a specific, perhaps fictional animal,
not a snake, but a strange four legged creature with
a long snout. And we'll come back to that in
a bit, because that's a really interesting question about the
(28:35):
mythology of Set. But when placed in opposition to oh
Syrus or the the other good god Horace, Seth is
sometimes presented, in um Pinch's words as quote massively strong
and monumentally stupid. And this is funny because I feel
like this is kind of how Conan himself reads to
me in the movie. I know, this is somewhat different
(28:56):
than the more clever character who's in the original stories
in the movie. I don't know if you read it differently, Robert,
but to me, in the movie Thalsa Doom, the villain
is presented as cunning and subtle and intelligent and complex,
whereas Conan's supposed virtues seem to be his strength and
his courage and his lack of cunning or complexity. He's
(29:18):
the mythical straight shooter, right, you know, he's just kind
of he is what he is. He's a simple kind
of man, and he you know, he goes out and
he's strong and he does what you know, he's like
will incarnate. Yeah, I mean he has. He has kind
of an agent of chaos, right, as opposed to Thalsa
Doom's the order that Thulsa Doom has created in the world. Uh,
(29:40):
there's almost kind of a butterfly effect, right. There's this this,
this this one event, this one massacre, this one child
that that he allows to let live like this child,
uh like spins off and becomes this thing that will
bring about his downfall. This this this this unpredictable chaotic
element that that just steadily brings everything down in the
(30:03):
end and is not very not necessarily represented as very
mentally subtle or complex. And Conan's kind of a meathead. Yeah, yeah,
I mean absolutely, that's that's you know, that's definitely part
of the text, right, He's um, you know, he just
he knows what he wants and he goes after it,
be it you know, jewels or women or ultimately vengeance.
(30:23):
So I think maybe Conan should have been the one
aligned with Set in the movie. I think maybe the
movie got it backwards. Yeah, perhaps, But it also gets
more complex because there are some stories from Asian Egypt
to wards. Set is not just a villain or enemy
of the gods of order. Quote. One of the secrets
revealed in the Royal Underworld books was the joining of
(30:46):
the two lords. Uh and that would be Set and
Horace into one double headed being to combat the forces
of chaos in the hour of greatest danger. Uh And
so that's also going to come back in an interesting
way to some symbology in the movie that we'll talk about.
But yeah, so Set sometimes joins forces with the supposed
(31:06):
good guys like Horace or the solar deity Ray to
defeat the chaos monster that is the serpent a pep
or a popis. So you may have heard this mytho
dynamic before, but here's how it basically works. Okay, So
every day you've got a solar boat. You know, it
goes across the sky with the Sun. That's how it's
(31:26):
getting across. Yeah, so it's going across the sky, is
bearing the god Ray, makes this journey across the sky,
and then it's sunset, it dips over the horizon. What
happens when you dip over the horizon where you go
into the underworld. So every night, the boat bearing Ray
and the gods and the Sun, it goes over the
horizon and it has to journey through the underworld and
this is what night time is. So every night, during
(31:49):
this treacherous voyage through the underworld, a snake dragon called
a pep or a popis attacks the boat of the Sun,
trying to kill Ray and stop the Sun from rising.
And a pep is like the true snake god. Uh,
entity from Egyptian mythology. Yeah, exactly, And one of the
(32:09):
main defenders of the boat, ironically, was Set, the strong
wild god. He would crush or club or spear or
bind the snake every night, and then it would revive
or escape and attack again the next night. So every
night the earthly priests would perform rituals to help the gods,
including Set, win over the great snake. And some of
(32:31):
these rituals involved making models or effigies of the monster,
and then they would curse the model and destroy it
or stab it or crush it or burn it with fire.
So the priests would kind of act out the role
of the mighty and dangerous chaos god Set in order
to defeat an even greater and more evil enemy, this
(32:51):
this monster of chaos apep or Apophis. Now, snakes are
not always bad or evil in ancient literature. Earlier, Robert
you mentioned that snakes are often a symbol of something
like rebirth, and that that appears also in Egyptian literature.
Sometimes they represent rebirth, sometimes they represent creation or other
positive attributes. But I would say not here. It seems
(33:12):
to me that a pepper a popis, is nasty to
the core. Yeah, and I like the way that the
character of Set becomes more complex like this over time,
that you know he he might be a bad guy
in some ways, but he's he's even if he's monumentally stupid.
He's big and strong and you need his help to
defeat the even worse monster. It's kind of like that
scene in the movie where you have to team up
(33:33):
with the villain from the previous movie. It's like when
the X Men have to recruit Magneto to help them,
which this is a common trope and any kind of
like multi entry series, right, if you still have a
villain from an earlier film, like you're running out of
things to do with them to a certain extent, so
you have to find new uses for him. But then
this also ties into the mythic tradition. Yeah, but I
(33:54):
want to come back to the interesting question. Uh we
alluded to a minute ago from Egyptian mythology, not not
in the movie, the the Egyptian mythology of Set. What
was this Set animal? So we know that Set was
not a snake. In fact, Set was very much involved
in slaying the Great Evil Snake. What what was this
animal he was associated with? We're gonna take a quick
(34:15):
break and then we'll find out than alright, we're back.
So when you think of the Egyptian gods and goddesses,
I think one tends to think of those humanoid figures
with animal heads, and it's and it's easy to just
work along those lines, right and just think, Okay, this
animal plus this body equals this god. And for the
(34:38):
most part, that seems to be how it goes. Um
you know you you you see the like the jackal
headed anibus, etcetera. But when we look at Set, the
weird thing is that this doesn't seem to necessarily be
an easily identifiable animal. He has this head that I mean,
(34:58):
you kind of glance at it, you might think it's
some sort of dog, or maybe it's a bird, but
but it's not. It's clearly something else. And in fact, uh,
the crazy thing about Set is that we're still not
exactly sure what animal Set is supposed to be based upon.
We can't look at him and say, oh, it's a jackal.
That's clearly that's the head of a jackal, and then
(35:19):
we can extrapolate what that symbology might mean. No, with
the said animal, Oh it's been. There's been so many
different theories, so so some have said, well, maybe it's
an art vark or a donkey or a jackal, or
an ore x, a hair or a taper, even though
they're non existent in Africa, no matter what you saw
in two thousand and one of Space Odyssey. Or it's
(35:41):
a finnick fox. I've also seen some early twentieth century
writings that speculated that it was a domestic pig, or
that it's the head of a mythical compound animal, you know,
some manner of griffin or sphinx, because that's another possibility, right, Like,
we we don't want to fall into the trap of
thinking that ancient people had had no imagine nation or
that they could only work along the lines of like
(36:02):
real animal head verse plus real person body. Like they
could also say, well, the head of the mythological animal
would work here as well. Yeah, and in fact we know,
I mean, there are multiple different kinds of non existent
animals that were invoked in the beliefs of ancient people's.
There are some things that they believed to be sort
of like spiritual or other worldly animals, things they wouldn't
(36:24):
expect to see out in nature. There were also animals
that they just believed were part of nature that we
don't have any evidence ever existed, right, And we'll get
back to that because that raises some interesting questions. Percy E.
Newberry wrote in Night Then It that it had also
been suggested that the said animal might be a greyhound
um because one of the things that like, it has ears,
(36:46):
and it has this kind of snout, but it's kind
of a downturned snout. Um. So, so certainly like the
the art vark comes to mind when you look at
it looks kind of like a cartoon art vark. But anyway,
Newberry also brought up the possibility that it was an
animal that the ancient Egyptians were not that familiar with.
So I'm reminded of geographically removed depictions of rhinos and
(37:08):
lions and other animals and ancient traditions where you know,
some like a Western artist doesn't really know what a
rhino looks like, they're basing an illustration on descriptions of
the rhino, or say, lions and Chinese depictions where the
depiction kind of takes on a life of its own,
be kind of kind of becomes this thing between reality
(37:29):
and fantasy, and then another idea that's come up. It's
just it's the idea that this is an animal that
had gone extinct, to quote Max Mueller, an Egyptologists from
nineteen eighteen writing on this quote, an animal which had
perhaps become extinct in prehistoric times, or that the figure
of it had been drawn from an archaic statue of
(37:50):
so crude a type that it defied all zoological knowledge
of subsequent artists. So you know, that's an interesting idea.
Both of those are interesting ideas to think of too,
Like it's either like the telephone game of depictions of things,
where they're basing it on some other depiction, or yeah,
what if this is based on some sort of animal
(38:12):
that went extinct during uh the Egyptian era. Um, I mean,
it's entirely possible. I've also read that the curved nose
might have simply been introduced at some point to distinguish
um a dog or jackal based set from the jackal
headed anabus. So it could have been a situation where like, oh, look, guys,
(38:32):
we can't have two jackal headed gods. This is gonna
get kind of confusing. Let's give set a downturn nose. Oh,
this could be yet another case like we talked about
in a certain possibilities about depictions of the unicorn, where
sometimes a belief in a mythical animal could be just
based on some type of artistic convention, like the idea
that a unicorn idea could have been inspired by somebody
(38:54):
drawing an ore x. Oh yeah, yeah with a side profile. Yes,
now I want I can tell this is still something
of an open question in Egyptology as well, like there's
there's no clear answer on what the set animal actually was, um.
But but yeah, this is I have to admit I
really wasn't familiar with these questions about the set animal
until he started researching this. I always just kind of
(39:16):
glanced at set. I focus more on sets roles in
these various uh myths, and I didn't really stop to
question what he was supposed to be. UM. But but
now I can look at him and I'm like, yeah,
there's there's kind of a slight Gonzo element there, right,
Donzo from the Muppets. And I've never read that there
was any intentional set iconography in Gonzo, because of course
(39:40):
the Muppet Gonzo is of course considered a a whatever
I believe is the is is what it is? The
joke that they often made. Where did they say that?
I don't remember. Um. I think just at various times
it comes up, like Gonzos or whatever. I think Gonzo
identifies as being a whatever? Um though they did. I
think in Nines Muppets from Space they introduced the idea
(40:02):
that Gonzo as an alien species. So that's a bad move.
Why not just leave the mystery open? And and I'm
not saying that set was an alien. That's not where
I'm going. We're not going there at all. But imagine
future beings examining like an incomplete visual history of the
centuries on Earth. What would they make of Gonzo? What
(40:24):
would they make of Goofy and Pluto from the Disney pantheon?
What would they make of Snoopy or Totoro or you
know other cartoon animals and animal like creatures. Yeah, I
think this is Uh, this is a great point to make.
I mean, and this is part of what you were
talking about a minute ago. You know, you never want
to forget that creative imagination exists. You know, we end
up saying this a lot just because you see something
(40:45):
represented in art made by a human doesn't mean that
they saw something like that. And sometimes I think people
have that impulse. It's like, Wow, what inspired them to
draw this? Maybe they were just being weird, you know,
we're we're weird. We come up with weird stuff. All right, Well,
as expected, we're gonna have to break this episode into two,
so we're gonna go ahead and call it for now,
(41:06):
but we're gonna be back in the next episode where
we're gonna talk about the symbol of set in the movie,
how that relates to both the UH symbolic and mythological
two headed snakes and real life two headed snakes. We're
gonna look at at snake arrows, and of course we'll
turn to the world of natural world giant serpents, We'll
(41:28):
go all the way down the snake hole. That's right.
In the meantime, if you want to check out more
stuff to Blow your mind, heading over to Stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mother ship. That's
where you'll find it all. And if you want to
support the show, always remember that the best thing you
can do is rate and review us wherever you have
the power to do so. Make sure you have subscribed
and UH if you haven't yet check out Invention. That's
the other show that we do. Make sure you subscribe
(41:49):
to that as well. It is an invention by invention,
look at human techno history. Huge thanks as always to
our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison. If
you would like to get in touch with us directly
with feedback about this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
(42:09):
Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Joe McCormick
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