From the Vault: Melt With Me

melting people and what they mean. Why do we keep coming back to this idea of melting and is it good? Is it bad? Is it both? We'll let you decide. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Mine name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and Halloween Hangover Week continues. Rob today, I think you wanted

to talk a little bit about melting. Yeah. So basically the reason for this episode is that we are publishing this the first week of November, but we were recording at the last week of October, so we didn't want to work on any non Halloween material the week of Halloween. Uh So Halloween on the show is lasting an extra week.

Uh So we're going to get into some topics here that are a little bit horror themed in places, but also I think go beyond horror and maybe just get into a study of a very particular symbol or metaphor in the human experience and a discussion of what it means. You know, one of the first movies we talked about in October this year, I think it was the first one was was the House of Wax movie starring Vincent Price.

So we did a whole episode about wax horror. And one of the things that you see time and again in these wax murder movies is there's the scene where the Palace of Wax burns down and you watch all of the wax figures melting. Uh It's got to happen in every one of these stories, and there's clearly some kind of psychological thing going on where the imagery they're is supposed to resemble human beings actually melting, and that's

what the fascination is in. But another thing about it that just recently struck me as a reason to have those wax figure melting scenes is it's almost like a way of sneaking in gore extra gore around the sensors. Like if you couldn't get a melting human past you know, the m P A A or whatever, you probably can get some melting humanoid wax figures. Yeah. I wonder, like how much violence and gore involving a clear um mannequin or wax figure, you know, just a pure effigy could

you get away with? Uh? I mean to a certain extent. You see that with other things, right, Like you hear about movies where they're like, oh, yeah, we decided that the monster or the villain should have green blood because then we can use as much as we want. But if it were red, we couldn't show it. That sort

of thing. So but yeah, I think, you know, it kind of it ties back to a lot of the themes that we talked about in the wax episode, you know, like what happens when we watch violence involving an effigy or some sort of sacrament involving an effigy. Uh, you know, we we can't help but associate then those movements violent or otherwise with the person that it is resembling or

like just a human in general. Uh. And it's it's fitting that we kicked off our Halloween season this year with Wax and we're going to close it out with the Melt. Now, there are a couple of ways you could look at this. One I think is just there is a good melting scene in a movie, such as in Raiders of the Lost Arc has a famous classic

Nazi melting scene. But then on the other end of the spectrum, you can you can go, you can really embrace it to the the nth degree and go full melt movie, which is a sort of sub genre of its own, of like horror, gore, gross out films that

are all just about people melting. Well. It's it's kind of the difference between a like a blockbuster like Raiders, and a smaller picture or a B picture, right like Raiders is a film that does a lot of things exceedingly well, and one of them is the use of a practical special effect to make it look like someone's melting.

But a lot of times with these b with a B film, you know you're lucky if you get one thing that's done really well, and sometimes like that is the that is the push with the film, like that is the energy of the film, Like, look, we can do a really good melting scene. Let's build a movie around our ability to do this, or at least our

desire to do this. You know. Well, it's kind of like how a B movie can maybe have a budget for one star, so you can just get Vincent Price or something, and then you try to build it around that star. Or maybe if you just have a budget for a really good makeup perfects artists, then you build the whole film around that. Yeah, exactly, and and in

many cases that that can be enough. Um. I also think it's certainly a case, especially with some of these earlier pictures we're talking about, where they they strike a chord and they they for Like, there's something about the melting human that resonates strongly with us and makes us want to go back and re examine it. Maybe not so deeply certainly with some of these films, but we have to come back for more. There's just something intriguing

about about the melting human. And I think a lot of it does go back to wax effigies and some of the things we discussed in that past episode. But in terms of just the cinnamon that we grow up on for my own part, and I feel like other people probably share this cinematic legacy as well. I think of Raiders of course from eighty one, which we just

just discussed. But the other big one, of course is The Wizard of Oz, which is not the goryous scene ever, but a very memorable scene often seen at a young age for the first time, in which the wicked Witch of the West is splashed with water and melts away into like smoking nothingness. The feeling of that scene is very much defined by the fact that it's water that

does it. If it had been sulfuric acid or something that supposedly melts her, that scene would be more horrific, But the fact that she's melted by water gives it a fairy tale kind of quality that actually makes it less body horrific, less gruesome, and more magical and and

like something that would happen in a grim's fairy tale. Yeah, yeah, exactly, something that the purity of water is the only thing you could destroy such a like a foul creature, right though, that would be a hilarious ending to the movie where they find out the secret is you've got to throw

sulfuric acid on the witch. Alright, well, we're gonna we're gonna get more into the contemplative part of this podcast in a bit, but we need to go ahead and talk about a few other melt movies before we move forward, just to establish the firm ground upon which we're going to build everything else. And I think one of the one of the big ones is all I don't know, maybe for some of you have never heard of it, but a big one for me is seven The Incredible

Melting Man. Then the plot here is, uh, it was not original to this picture. There have been some There's been at least one other film, probably more before it that explored a similar contemplation, and that is, Uh, you have an astronaut goes into space, is exposed to cosmic radiation, and he brings this home. In this case, the radiation has caused him to melt, and he can slow down this melting by eating human flesh, and he also has

radioactive powers. If I'm remembering correctly, Uh, seems kind of similar to the plot of Monster A Go Go, if I recall correct Yeah, And I think there's um, there's a there's a move with Frankenstein in the title that has a similar element, like like clearly meets the space monster. Is that I think it had a similar plot. Yeah, and I think there are more films because obviously you you're dealing with the this this one is perhaps the kind of an homage to the radioactive cinema of the

previous decades. And like this was on everybody's mind in the post war period in the in the shadow of the Mushroom Cloud, you know, this was these were the kinds of of of myths we kept stirring up. Now, many of you probably know this film because it was featured on Mystery Science Theater three thousand back in the day. And the other thing that's really key about it is that the legendary Rick Baker did effects on it, and the effects are quite terrifying. Of these this like melting Man.

It's just kind of like perpetually melting despite throughout the film. Um and uh, maybe in part because of the effectiveness of those effects. This this is what started out as an intended horror parody became a straight horror film. Like the producers apparently took comedic scenes out of the picture in order to emphasize the horror. Uh. That's something about the melting man, especially when depicted convincingly through you know, someone's worth like Rick Baker's, that you just can't ignore.

Movies don't usually go that way during direction. It's much more common for them to go the other way, where you embrace comedy and add more comedy in Yeah, it's like this looks this look looks dumb. Let's have it up a little bit. Let's pretend like we meant to do this. Uh. An interesting fact about the melt effects in this film. Um, the Rick big Baker films apparently inspired uh, the effects in RoboCop. You know, there's an infamous scene in RoboCop where one of the hinchmen gets

toxic waste of splattered all over them and they started melting. Yeah, a scene that really shook me when I saw it way too early in my life. Children should not watch RoboCop. No, not at all. So in these two previous examples, we mentioned the melt almost being in parody, uh, or you know, in the case of RoboCop playing into sort of an ultra violent satire of American culture. But there are more

comedic examples to consider as well. One of them I believe you've seen this, and I think we've talked about this and before Joe, but Street Trash, it's been a long time since I saw but my my friend Ben showed it to me many many years ago, and it is that is a absolutely grotesque film of the highest order. Yeah, it is a it's a I guess it's supposed to be a black comedy. Uh, you know, it's filled with gallows, humor,

um and just just atrocities. It's just an atrocious film you should not watch unless you were into atrocious nineteen eight cinema, even less for children than RoboCop. Yeah, it's uh, it is just wall to wall humans melting and disgusting nastiness. Yeah. But the the the key melt and it has a fabulous melt scene in It involves this this plot element where there's this cheap liquor that's going around. I think

it's called like Tina fly Viper. Yeah. They find it in the basement of a liquor store and start selling it and it makes people melt. Yeah. Like there's a scene where a like a homeless individual or a hobo or or something, um it gets a bottle of this starts drinking and then starts melting whilst sitting on a like a a discarded toilet out in a junk field, and he melts into the toilet and then goes down the toilet bowl. But they do it in a way where it's like, it's not like a purely gory melt

like it has. It's kind of a technicolor melt, so it's not actually as bloody or gross as I'm making it sound. It's more surreal and comic. Bookie, Well, it is gross, but as he melts into the toilet, he's turning Lisa Frank colors, so he's like blue and green and pink as he melts. Now, another movie that has, uh, if not absolute melting, something very much like melting troll To from Ah Yes where uh So, I watched troll To probably at least fifty times when I was in college.

But it's weird because now it's been a while since I've seen it. We're we're about to rewatch it for Weird House Cinema. But what I recall is there's like nilbog milk in this town full of goblins, and when people drink it or eat the food they're or whatever, it is they get poisoned and then their bodies are reduced to this kind of green sap as they slowly turned into plants and green jello, and they become food for vegetarian goblins pretty much. Yeah. So if that sounds intriguing, Uh,

pay attention to our feed. We'll come back and discuss it in in full. Into a little bit. Another melt movie, this one from the eighties is the Stuff. This one is by the Master Larry Cohen, starring Saturday Night Live's Garrett Morris. And this is one I haven't actually seen, but I have seen the key melting scene in it, in which Garrett Morris kind of mutate slash slash melts

into a big blob of killer cool whip. If I recall, the real moral of the stuff is that you need a strong f DA with good inspection provisions and regulations on consumer goods, because I think it's like a packaged yogurt product or something like that that ends up turning people into into liquid and that Let's see, what are some other melt films that come to mind? Um, or at least scenes that have films that have good melt scenes in them. Uh, these are all played for straight horror.

But there's the Devil's Rain, that's where the rain melts the Satanist. There's some melting in the Evil Dead. Obviously, the Gremlins movies have some fabulous melting. Warlock has a melt scene. As I recall, The Blob is actually a wonderful melt film, and that not only is the Blob itself very amorphous and melty, but it's it's always just any time it gets a person, it starts melting and

it starts dissolving them, digesting them, uh, in real grotesque time. Yeah, the Blob, I think is a is an underrated type of horror because something you know, if we were like smaller types of animals, there could be real blob type horror to worry about in the real world. I don't think there are any major predators that would, uh, that would prey on a human sized organism by digesting it

externally with enzymes. But that happens all the time to you know, smaller types of creatures in the ocean or in the like insect world. I mean basically, a lot of what a spider does to you if it catches you is it will sort of spit enzymes into you that dissolve your inner body parts, melt them and turn them into a soup that the spider can suck out of you. Do you remember the of I know the answer to this. I know you remember these guys. But

the winged creatures and Beastmaster. Yes, they do a form of external digestion on the creatures they catch. They like wrap them in their big wings and then they just like turned to jelly and then presumably they eat at least some of the jelly. Nice um. Other films, let's see, take more of a weird sci fi approach to melting. A time cop which we've we've mentioned on the show before, features a great melt seat when a character comes into physical contact with their past self. Uh, they melt away

into nothingness together. I'm not sure exactly c g I melt scene. Yeah, it's the c g I melt scene, which doesn't hold up as well today, but at the time was was pretty crazy. As I recall all, c G I seemed like that in the nineties. You remember when we were all saying how good the c G I and Mortal Kombat the motion picture was. What's the other films that come to mind? Toxic Avenger has some

melting in it. Um Society by Brian Jasna is another sort of video nasty that has a certain amount of orgiastic melting between characters, pet characters melting into each other, etcetera. There's a really spectacular melting scene in Fright Night where the vampire is familiar in that movie. So the vampires Chris Sourrandon, but he's got this apparently human helper named Billy.

Uh And this is I don't know, there's something in a lot of vampire movies have as like the vampire can't go out in the daytime, so he's got a helper who goes out and does stuff with him or does to forum during the day. For example, in Um in Salem's Lot, this is the characters straight Acre, who's played by uh oh, what's his name, James Mason. There's just wonderful in the role, you know, back Priest, back Shaman.

But but in this movie, the James Mason role is I can't remember the actor's name who plays him, but the character's name is Billy. And later in the film, when the when the characters start fighting Billy, I think they shoot him with a revolver, and they discover he's not quite human at all actually, or if he is human, he's cursed in some kind of way, because after he has killed, he melts into a green puddle of bones

and goo. Real quick, is it? Roddy McDowell, No, No, Roddy McDowell plays the Peter Cushing character in the movie. He plays an actor who regularly plays Van Helsing type roles in films within the film. I just looked him up. The actor's name is Jonathan Stark. Looks like he's also in house to the second story and in an episode of Tales from the Crypt. Maybe we'll have to come

back to that another time. Now. Another film that some of you might be thinking of that involves like nell being external digestion, etcetera, is, of course David Cronenberg's The Fly, which we we recently did or sometime earlier this year we did an episode on particularly we we discussed the themes of the plasma pool uh in that picture, because I I think David Cronenberg's film here is worth focusing on, because certainly there's a lot of meltish body heart that's

going on in that film. Characters basically rotting and falling apart, etcetera. But the Brundle character brings up this idea of the plasma pool is this thing to to dive into and be reborn out off which itself is. I think nicely represents the other side of of the coin with our idea of melting, uh, because it brings with it again the idea of rebirth. And we see a version of this in the natural world as well. It's not all just amba's digesting things. We also see um this jellification

and this this melting and then rebirth in metamorphosis. So we often don't realize this, But but what a caterpillar does inside a chrystalis coccoon is essentially a full body melt. It digests itself, It releases enzymes that dissolve almost all of its tissues, reducing itself to an oozing goop. Only the imaginal discs survived this process, and these develop into the adult body parts of the mature butterfly or moth that ultimately emerges. So again, the larval form must melt

before it becomes an adult. It must be granted within the protective frame of the crystalis or cocoon it must give up all of its hard exteriors, It must liquefy, undergo a self digestion, become an ouze, and then that ouze becomes the butterfly. It is weird to think about, if you focus on it for a second, that across every generation of humans, the body plan has to return to a mass of undifferentiated cells that you know, you

you basically turn into a little lump of google. And then, of course, can the body can be reconstituted based on on recombined DNA from the parents. But but yeah, for a while, this line of organisms coming down the ages, ever since the beginning of life on Earth, has always been reduced back to a kind of primordial ooze with

each generation, every time it changes over. Yeah, I wonder if, especially as we get more into you know that's certainly the modern age and uh more scientifically literate, um, you know, public, I wonder if that plays into our appreciation of the melt, at least on a subconscious level. This idea that we are all essentially creamy newgat and therefore to see us reduced to creamy newgat, uh, you know, fills this with a certain wonder or horror or just sort of you know,

kind of spiritual um awe. Yeah, our genetic essence at least is contained in the new it, and we could

be rebuilt from the newgat. By the way, on the topic of imaginal self, I once wrote an article about gremlins for How Stuff Works in which I tried to make scientific sense of the gremlins biology and the gremlin magua relationship, which is was a challenge to do, but I felt like the closest we could come to describing some of the things that happened, like the the water triggering um a sexual butting or the or specifically the idea of sunlight melting that might be linked to some

sort of biological impulse to self digest within the cocoon that has then triggered outside of the cocoon. Uh. In the case of light exposed magua and gremlins, you should have been present at that scene depicted in the Key and Peel skit where they're a lot of gremlins too. Yes, yes, yeah, that's all right. We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back. Thank alright, we're back. Well, So, with regard to organisms actually melting, you know sort of

like turning into a liquid or a goo. Uh. There was something I briefly wanted to touch on, and it's kind of parallel to some things we've talked about on the show in the past. For example, when we did an episode I think it was last year about pressure about where we talked about and say, you know organisms

that thrive under high pressure deep in the ocean. One of the things we talked about is that sometimes when fish from deep waters are brought up to the surface, they can undergo a kind of traumatic body response to the lower pressures that they're exposed to on the surface. So there are for example, types of rock fish or other fish that can uh that can suffer eversions of their digestive systems as their swim bladders expand with lower

pressure when they're brought up to the surface. So it can actually actually like push their stumb out through their mouth, which is really disgusting, don't knock it. Some organisms do that as part of their they're just natural behavior. There are certain sharks that do that too, if if memory serves their sharks that that do that as a way of emptying their their stomach if need be. It's called stomach aversion. Well, for these fish. It is not part

of the plan. It's not voluntary. No, it happens because like as they get as they rise up, the lower pressure makes their swim the gas in their swim bladder naturally expand. It pushes everything else out of the way, and their guts get like pushed out through their mouth, which is yeah, not good to happen to them. Uh. And there are similar things that can happen, though not not quite as stomach aversion, a little bit more melty

that happened to other organisms. The example I was looking at was a type of fish that is known as the snail fish, and there are a number of different types of snail fish. This is a it's it's a genus known as the liparidy and liparity often dwell in very deep, very cold waters, especially in ocean trenches. And so I was reading a New York Times article about a discovery of several new types of snail fish in uh.

The article is by verynic Greenwood, and it was about discoveries of three new types of snail fish of the Atacama Trench, which is off the coast of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. And this trench gets very deep. It's almost five miles deep and down in the dark. There some researchers, I think some of them more associated with Newcastle University, they discovered these three new varieties of

snail fish. But they were describing the difficulty in bringing these fish up to the surface because the fish are adapted to these extremely deep waters. And so they were speaking with a researcher named Thomas Linley who's with Newcastle University, who says that their tissue is almost entirely gel quote. They are really supported by the water around them, so

they do have some hard body parts. They have teeth, I've read most species of snail fish have these kind of blunt, little, uh cuppy kind of teeth, and then they've got tiny bones, according to this article, especially in the inner ear, and these are really the main hard

parts of their bodies. So if you grab some of these snail fish and then you try to bring them up to the surface to examine them, uh, it all just goes to hell because when they're no longer confined by the hydrostatic pressure of the deep water and the extremely low temperatures of this deep ocean trench, they essentially just melt when they get to the surface, quoting Thomas Linley, they fall apart at like the molecular level. It's like a ghost thing that's disappearing in front of your eyes.

And you might think, well, why why would a fish be that fragile, you know, wouldn't need to have a little bit more structural integrity to survive. But no, it's because it's adapted to these extreme conditions that are present only in this deep ocean trench where it lives. Uh, Greenwood writes, quote this may be because shallow water snailfish gain adaptations that let them thrive in the deepest ocean where they have plenty of prey, so there's less competition

down there because less stuff can survive there quote. But then because of these physiological changes, they find themselves unable to rise to higher levels to leave and thus are never seen by humans. So at the deepest parts of the ocean and these trenches, you get these islands of adapted organisms, including these types of snail fish, that have to make major changes to their bodies through evolution in

order to survive down there. But then once they make those changes, they're kind of stuck right there, not going to migrate out of these deep water trenches once they're there, because now they have bodies that can't survive at the lower pressures and higher temperatures of more shallow water. It's like becoming a professional podcaster, you realize sound goodness. Yeah, I don't know if I can handle um, different depths. Um,

I'm may be stuck down here. Yeah, you're in the like the challenger deep of career paths where you're I specialize in talking about science and horror movies. Yeah. People,

it's a really useful skill, you know. It's this is actually ties in with a lot of stuff we're talking about, because even in this we're joking about the fear of change and and perhaps clinging to stability um and and in the case of this, this creature, this is a creature that thrives in this this this narrow environment that is pretty stable, but it cannot handle change at all. Uh and melting in our fear of melting, our desire to melt, etcetera. A lot of this does does seem

to center around how we deal with change. And I think one thing to keep in mind is that melting. We've certainly touched on a lot of horrifying examples. But melting doesn't have to be bad. Just look to our language, um, you know, because we have we have some really positive ideas and metaphors that relate to melting at time, like the idea of melting with joy or seeing something or

experiencing something that quote just makes you melt. Um, there's uh, I'm sure, especially if you if you were someone you know uh enjoys like metal or dub step music or some other kind of genre that has kind of a I don't know, an atmosphere of intensity to it. Sometimes you'll say loudness, love of loudness. You'll hear about how it is it is face melting right, Uh, And and that and that is largely depicted as being a positive thing. Yeah.

One of my favorite musicians is Neil Young, and I remember an interview many years ago where Conan O'Brien was interviewing him and he he told him, I watched you at some concert play a rendition of rocking in the free world that made my eyes melt. It's clearly a compliment. Did he mean crying? Was he crying? No? No, I think he just meant like it was so powerful it like destroyed my body, but he meant it as a compliment. Okay, because yeah, because I think sometimes crying plays into how

we're loosely thinking about melting. But it doesn't seem to be a case where we're using it as like a euphemism for for crying, you know, or trying to sort of cover up the fact that we're crying, like trying to be like hyper masculine about crying. That doesn't seem

to be the way that people use melt. No, But I think there's a very interesting thing that if you look at movie scenes where characters are very first beginning to melt, so the melt scene is happening very often, a place for it to start is with some kind of piece, like a drop of liquid rolling down the face, almost like a tear drop does. Is interesting. I guess it does kind of look like, like, you know, just

water going down the face. You could sort of interpret it as like flesh or the surface of flesh melting. But that's a good point. So I was looking around to see if anybody, you know, done any you know, serious contemplation on this idea of of of melting, of you know, there being a fear of melting or desire to melt um because, as we've discussed on the show before, you do see psychological delusions such as that of feeling that your body as is as brittle as glass and

may shatter, So why not melting as well? Yeah, there are all kinds of uh, psychological conditions that can disrupt various features of the body schema, or can disrupt types of appropriate reception where you since, where your body is, what it feels like, what's happening to it. Yeah, So

I did not find anything. If anyone out there has run across it, I am happy to be corrected, but I'm also I'm not I'm not gonna say I'm disappointed that people are not dealing with a psychological delusion that their bodies are melting, like I'm I'm happy that people are spared that at least. Uh. But I did come

across studies in Nondeterministic Psychology by James L. Fausage. Uh. This is the National Institute of Psychotherapies in ninety and in it, the author discusses psychotherapy approaches that make use of transformative melting metaphors during the waking state of consciousness,

which I found quite interesting. So this is not. You know, this is very much about like using various mental images as a way of connecting with the patient and psychotherapy, but it touches on some of the things we're talking about here. So in this paper, Fassage Minsent mentions the melting of a shield with one's warmth. So that's like there's a shield between you and another person or another thing, and your warmth can be the thing that melts the shield,

so you're like a an instrument of melting. And then there's quote the fear of melting, of letting go and becoming vulnerable without adequate defenses, which I think is is very key. And then there's the fear of melting completely and there being nothing left of oneself, this kind of I guess, going back to the candle metaphor, but also reminding me a bit of the wicked Witch of the West as well, you know, because she basically melts awaited nothing.

It's just left. All this left is just the clothing that she was wearing. I'd say, in psychological terms, the one that I here emerged most naturally from people is the middle one about the melting of defenses. The idea that people bring up metaphors of melting when they're talking about people becoming more open and vulnerable with each other. Yeah, which, on one hand, you might say, well, that's clearly not what the Incredible Melting Man is about, that's clearly not

what RoboCop is about, etcetera. But I'm not quite convinced. I think I think these may, on a subconscious level, be be about the the fear of of what happens if we open ourselves up to the world too much, you know, like because it's let me look at RoboCop,

you know it's or straight trash. These are films in which the world around us is depicted as being a horrible place, and you know you want to I guess from your exterior to remain is is hard and impregnant, impregnatble is possible right in those cases, like you don't

want to melt into that world. That world would melt you, though, I would say one of the main themes of RoboCop is the attempt to hang on to pieces of humanity in an in in an inhuman or inhumane world, and a world that is ruled by by cruelty and corporations and machines and and transactional relationships trying to hang onto something that's pure and good and human. And you see that emphasized in several of the scenes between Alex Murphy or RoboCop and Lewis played by Nancy Allen, his partner.

They've got these these little moments where you can remember that you're human even when he's mostly machine. That's a that's a very good point. Yeah, and again just more reasonable, like, no, don't just dismiss RoboCop. Is this ultra violent, you know, piece of trash or something like, There's there's a lot going on there. It's so I don't think it's for for all tastes, but it's it's definitely a film that

intends to say something. Yeah, it's a movie. It's a movie that's relatable to anyone who's trying to remain a human at the same time that a corporation is extracting maximum value from what's left of your body. Yeah. So yeah, again, this is a world where that you do not want to melt into. You don't want to let go and become vulnerable, because you want to hang on to that part of you that's still human that hasn't been crushed

by the machine yet. So I think it's also interesting in all of this, you know what we're talking about, this idea of like the metaphorical body uh melting away and uh and all, and then how this is reflected in these horrific images of the body melting. But while a wax effigy of a human definitely melts, our bodies don't really melt even in the even when extreme things

happen to them. Um, generally, what's going on with us is not quite the phase change that we see occurring when say ice melts, or even when when when wax is melt thing away. Um, it's not quite what it is. It's similar to in our episode about freezing, about how our bodies don't exactly freeze solid and shatter in the

way that pure water can correct. But I think we concluded in that episode that if you get a body cold enough, like you know, down to liquid nitrogen temperatures, and use enough force, you can achieve some shattering like the kinds of things. And I think something similar is true with melting, that the human body doesn't melt the way Nazis do in the movies, but elements of the

human body will kind of melt. I mean the body is made of different types of tissues and materials, and some of them will sort of melt, yeah, some some some parts of our flesh liquefy a little more easily, and in rare cases, human fat in the body has been observed to behave something like the wick of a candle. This is called the wick effect. And uh, if you've if you've ever read anything about the various theories involving um uh spontaneous combust they are the wik effect often

plays into this. So so coming back to some of the the faustages explorations about melting um, I want to come back to the idea of of losing oneself through melting, and in this I think melting serves as a strong metaphor for gradual decay, for aging, for the you know, the gradual work of a debilitating disease. Uh. These effects coupled with the totality of death, you know, because death robs us of everything that we are, and in the in its wake, there can be an almost candle like experience.

Right again, think back to what we talked about in the Wax episodes about how the candle often had magical um uh connotations in various cultures because it was this thing, this physical thing that burned away completely are almost completely, you know. And at the end you might ask, was the candle even real? Did it exist? Where did it go? And he's certainly in the face of actual human death, not movie human death, but but actual personal loss. You

can feel that as well totally. Now the idea of melting as phase transfer by which we become more vulnerable without adequate defenses, you know, of letting go. Um. You know, I think that's extremely apt as well. It certainly ties

into our uses of melting, as in melting with joy um. Again, perhaps tears add an additional context to a certain degree, Um, But for the most part, it's it's about becoming more malleable to the world around you, both in positive and in negative ways, connecting with other people, connecting with the environment, but also perhaps opening yourself to the dangers of other

people and of society, etcetera. It reminds me a lot of what we discussed in our psychedelic episodes, you know, about the breaking down of boundaries between ourselves and others, between ourselves and the natural world. Not only melting, but merging into some larger totality. Uh. In fact, I look back.

Just just out of curiosity, I did some quick uh word searches in a in a few texts uh to see who is using melting, and I noticed, for instance that that Huxley did not use melt or melting at all in the Doors of Perception, but for instance far more recent work UM in How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollen, he uses melt or melting multiple times in the book. You know, it seems like a pretty handy contemporary um uh mental image to draw upon to

make sense of what's happening with the psychedelic experience. Well, yeah, I mean, in fact, I would say melting becomes an interesting way of thinking about psychedelic psychedelic compounds effects on our perception because it even comes through and just the sheer mechanics of um how imagery transitions under the effects of many psychedelics, where there are these things that people talk about like using terms like tracers and things like that,

where mental imagery and even visual imagery is perceived normal only doesn't transition as quickly from one state to another, but there seemed to be sort of drag effects in between images, you know what I'm talking about, uh, And that this simulates a kind of liquidity of mental content that I think is quite aptly described by metaphors of melting. Often on psychedelics people describe some version of instead of just thinking about image A and then thinking about image B,

image A melts into image B. Yeah. I don't know if that was entirely clear, but just the psychedelics really encourage these sort of like dragging transition states. No, I absolutely agree, And it's interesting to think that, like, since that kind of thing is so common phenomenologically, it would almost suggest there is something about these compounds that that

consistently encourage that at a chemical level in the brain. Yeah, I mean, and some of them maybe even comes down to like how we're how we're we're taking in sense data, right, is it are we taking in abstract facts about the reality around us? Or is it a more fluid observation of reality in terms of of of making note of changes. Oh,

that's very interesting. So like instead of that, maybe you could more easily, in a normal frame of mind, look at one thing and then look at another thing because you've got cognitive filtering that you're applying to your visual sense data. You know that that's sort of like excluding the transition, the transitional middle period of what your eyes are doing. But on the psychedelic you're processing things in a raw or way that h does not filter out

the transitional period as efficiently. Yeah, like instead of saying, oh, that's my face in the mirror, it's more it's a continual updating of it. Uh. They can create kind of a melting effect without it actually looking like your face

is straight up melting. So I I would never attempt to argue that something like, um, you know that to say, the psychedelic experience and humanities istory, the psychedelic experience is certainly in the like the twenty a century would have been like the the soul uh influence on all this melting um fixation in cinema. But but I can't help but wonder if that's part of it. But clearly you still have other things. You have just the cinematic influence

and tradition that's going on. When you know, people watch a witch melt in one film and then create a melting effect in another film later on. Obviously that's part of it. Um. And I think also material the materials in our surrounding culture are a big part of it. As well. I mean we see that again with wax. Observations of wax, and then what happens when you create

a human of wax? Also, what happens when you have you know, a wax culture that becomes eventually an iron culture, and then you have all of this melting and smelting uh mixed up in um in in your understanding the world. And then what happens when you go from an iron culture eventually to a plastic culture. You know, it brings on new connotations of what melting is, how things melt, and how we might imagine our bodies in reference to that material. Oh yeah, I was just thinking about the

metaphors we live by here. So so the metal metaphor is one in which it takes a tremendous amount of work to change one's shape. The plastic metaphor is pretty much just shaped at the factory. You're not gonna melt it and reshape it. That would kind of destroy it. So it's it's, you know, the plastic age. You're just stuck. All right, We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back. Thank you, thank you, thank and we're back.

And you know this this ultimately leads us to the next topic we're going to discuss here, and this will be I guess that's sort of the final topic of discussion in this episode, and that is another major melting symbol or metaphor that comes up that a lot of you are probably thinking about already, and that is the American melting pot. Now quick note again, we're recording this episode the week of Halloween, though it won't publish till after election day, So just throwing that out there for

timing should it be essential. So this is another area where I think when we're talking about melting, everything we've discussed so far is still very much in play, uh melting, and even you know, the fear of melting, but also the potential joy of melting, the transformative nature of melting. It's all reflected in this strange concept of the American melting pot, something that I've heard my whole life, and and I have to say, I think early on I

always interpreted it's kind of a stewpot. Maybe I was confused by the franchise of Fondue restaurants called the melting pot. I'm not exactly sure, because I mean, clearly it is referring to a you know, a metallurgical comparison. Here, it is an idea of metals melting together in in a pot, you combine different metals to form a stronger alloy that

has the great properties of each. Yeah. On some level, though, I did recognize that it seemed to be about different cultures and backgrounds, so that was only coming together in this pot that is America and becoming something new. Now it's this is a broad and h and at times very uh, you know, non specific symbol to engage with, because it ultimately raises a lot of questions like is this is this an accurate, accurate depiction depiction of what American culture is? Is it more of an ideal of

what it could be? Is it a misunderstanding of culture? Is it actually a misunderstanding of melting. Is it a helpful concept? Is it a hurtful concept? Uh? And certainly, at least to some extent. It depends on how it's being used and who's using it during what period of of of you know, the last century or so of American history. You know, is it something to support the idea of a monoculture and often a particular monoculture, or

is it anti multiculturalism. So I decided to look into this a little bit and say, and just learn from myself, like, what what are the origins of this term? I? I honestly didn't have any idea. Uh. So I read a paper this is from nineteen sixty four by historian Philip Gleason, uh and it's titled the Melting Pot Symbol of Fusion

or Confusion in American Quarterly. That's a great title, um Infusion or Confusion and American Quarterly, by the way, as an academic journal and the official publication of the American Studies Association. So I want to roll through some of the points that Gleason makes. I am not attempting to summarize the entire uh right up here, I recommend seeking this out if you want the full story. It's a it's it's a it's a wonderful read, and it's invable

available in full in full on J Starr. So, first of all, he ties this this idea back to the myth of medals in Plato's The Republic. Uh. This is also known as the Noble lie. And here's how Malcolm's Scofield summarized it in the Cambridge Companion to Plato's republic quote The Noble Lie is to serve as charter myth for Plato's Good City, a myth of national or civic identity, or rather two related myths, one grounding that identity in

the natural brotherhood of the entire indigenous population. They're all auto cathanis literally born from the earth. The other making the city's differentiated class structure a matter of divine dispensation. The god who molds them puts different metals in their souls. If people can be made to believe it, they will be strongly motivated to care for the city and for

each other if they can be made to believe it. So, I mean, at least in Plato's vision, there's got to be a certain amount of just like getting people on board with a certain way of thinking about things. Yeah. Now, Gleason writes that the American myth of the metals here is is ultimately a rejection of the platonic Um and this is the melting pot quote. Unlike Plato's, it was not deliberately contrived to provide a supernatural sanction for the

existing social order. But is it that it is intimately related to the origins and nature of American society. Okay, so it's not a supernatural myth that you would tell people, like a story that you make up to unify them. But in the case of American society, it's supposed to be a fact that is literally just like descriptive and

self evident. Yeah. The interesting thing that Gleason drives someone about the melting pot, and I hadn't really thought about this as well, is that it's it's a curious thing to be so entrenched in the national mindset, because on one hand, it is not an actual thing you can point to, Like you can't go to Boston or Washington, d c. And be like, hey, should we Hey, family, should we go see the melting pot? There it is. We've heard all about the American melting pot. Yeah, behold, No,

it's not a thing. And on the other hand, it's not a proper symbol either. You can't say, oh, let me let me fish some dollar bills out of my wallet. Oh, yes, here's the melting pot right here. You couldn't you if you were asked to draw the melting pot, what would you draw? You know, It's it's not a concrete symbol per se, to the extent that it's a symbol, it's only a linguistic one, like the piece is a symbol,

but it's never depicted. Yeah. So Gleason says that it might be more fair to consider it a concept or theory. But but he also discusses it just in terms, loosely as a symbol throughout the paper. Uh. He points out that it's used in many ways as a similar America is is like a melting pot. Sometimes it's a metaphor America is a melting pot, and sometimes it's a symbol. They traveled across the sea to be part of the

melting pot. So the use of the melting pot is a symbol, he says, you know, for the process of immigration into American society. This was popularized basically as recently as nineteen o eight with Israel zang Wells play that was titled The Melting Pot. Uh. So, it's it's another

interesting thing about it. It's not really that old of an idea, and not that the United States is that old of an idea either, But the idea itself does date back a good bit before u dating back to the eighteenth century contemplations of the New American Man, and particularly it goes back to the French American writer ja Hector St. John de Crevicur, who lived seventeen thirty five through eighteen thirteen. Crevicur wrote pro American writings during the Revolution.

He also opposed slavery, and he touched on the melting pot concept in Letters from an American Farmer in seventeen two, in which he quote developed or implied all of the themes unquote involved in the idea that a new American man would be the product of cross cultural fertilization. Right, So that would be the sort of what was considered a revolutionary idea at the time, that you could build a civic culture, you could build a polity on the

basis of shared ideals rather than shared ethnicity. Yeah, yeah, Like he was very much it's at least for for a time here in a lot of these writings, was very gung ho about what America could be. This idea like it's going to be a new thing where we're building a new country here and uh and and the people that occupied are going to be a new creation in a sense, they're going to be created out of

out of these pre existing elements. And he did use the word melt to describe the process quote individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men unquote, which at least in some ways sounds futuristic and positive. You know, it sounds very plasma pool in his wake, though you see other people occasionally use it in a

different fashion. For instance, DeWitt Clinton, described by Gleason as a nativistic congressman, used it in the eighteen forties as a criticism of immigrants who did not melt into American culture and kept aspects of their own culture. So again, already we see melt the idea of the melting pope be used positively, like like, hey, everybody, let's melt together and become something new. And then here's this other guy using it and saying, why aren't people melting? I want

to see more melting. You're not melting enough. You're not melting enough me. Well, no, I'm not melted. I'm I'm I'm not in I'm melting, but you you need to do some melting. But still it doesn't quite inner general usage just yet. Again, not until that play comes around,

which we'll get to in a second. Um. Ralph Waldo Emerson, however, who lived eighteen o three through eighteen eighty two, he came close and discussing how Americans America would quote construct a new race and new religion, a new state, and new literature, and that it would be as as vigorous, quote as the new Europe which came out of the smelting pot of the Dark Ages. So Gleason points to a few different examples there. But the melting Pot again doesn't really take off in in in in the in

in our language until the early twentieth century. In that period between the dawn of the twentieth century and the start of World War one, UH this, Gleason says, is a time when one million immigrants roughly entered the United States of America, most of them were from southern and Eastern Europe, and the resulting communities in major city these were considered by some to be to constitute an immigration problem,

thus the notion of the melting pot. There was a fear, of an express fear of what non assimilating immigrants meant

for the country. Now. The play itself was a big hit, at least with with audiences, apparently not so much with the with the theater critics of the day, but The plot concerned a Russian Jewish immigrant family and the main characters desire to melt into a new future devoid of ethnic division and hatred, and it also also concerns the plight of the Jewish people in this period of history.

But in in criticizing the average American of the day, it also, you know, proposed that it put forth this idea that the melting pot is not something that either that has been done or is done, is not part of a process that we see completed in any person around us, but rather it is an ongoing process that we're all going to be reborn out off. If that

makes sense. So it's not it's so if I, if I understand the play correctly, The concept of the melting plot employed here is not one of hey, immigrants, go get into the melting pot and then come out and then you can be with me. It's more like we are all in the melting pot. We are all melting into something better and and new. Right, Not an exhortation of like you're not melting properly, but just saying like

it's descriptive. The melting pot is what happens. Yes, it is an ongoing thing that is had it is the the ongoing transformation of what it means to be an American now. Gleason points out that Theodore Roosevelt loved it, but he didn't like the lines in there about Americans being lax on divorce or public corruption. So the playwright

took it out. He's like, okay, fair enough to happy yeah, um, but you know, it's it also seems like the play carried with it assert you know, divisive interpretations depending on who was thinking about the play and was all so then thinking about immigration, you know, is it preaching too much conformity on the part of the immigrant or too much transformation on the part of the nation. And I I guess in that respect, it sounds like the play

did what what good art should do, right. I mean, it's it's maybe pissing off everybody to a certain extent or making everybody think about, like, what what's going on

in the country. Well, if I'm understanding correctly, I mean it maybe sort of assuming something that sounds kind of ahead of its time, which is that the cultural assimilation of immigrant communities into into a new country is not necessarily what what the you know, the nativist that the angry finger waggers are saying that you're not assimilating good enough, that like that they need to become like the nativist

finger waggers. Instead, it's the nativist finger waggers and the new immigrants are all going to in the future assimilate into this this common thing that is yet to come. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, the idea that it's it's it's something that is happening and will happen. Uh Yeah, as opposed to this this thing that has supposed to have

already occurred. But but it it does get back to a lot of what we discussed already about like how we think about melting, both in its positive and negative connotations. You know, if I'm melting, am I gonna lose myself? Will I be hurt when I become soft and malleable? I am? Am I ready for change? You know? Uh?

And and as Gleason points out, you know there's a lot of variety and how the melting pot is presented, and and there are a lot of questions and all the time about what exactly you're trying to say, like it are we talking about a biological blending? Like is it about you know, different ethnicities becoming one. Uh is it a cultural blending that we're talking about. Is it is it all of the culture or just like aspects

of the culture. I mean again, it depends on who's who's trotting it out really, Uh, you know, is it describing something that used to take place, something that is taking place, something that needs to take place, or is taking place with with a few, with the future in mind, and etcetera. Uh So I found it all very very um, very intriguing to think about. It makes me even less likely to use the term melting pot in my own conversations unless i'm you know, uh talking with somebody about

the concept itself. Like it seems it seems like it's just too um it's too vague and too open to interpretation and also uh too too easy to misuse. Yeah, you could look at it that way. And I gotta say, I don't know if I've ever really been somebody who

used this image myself. But on the other hand, as as somebody who you know, believes in the project of multiculturalism and uh and believes like immigration is good for a nation, um, I I do think it's also useful to have imagery, like having symbols and imagery really does help an idea take root. It's it's possible that this similar imagery is not the best symbol or imagery. I don't know, because it's certainly right that it has like

ton of ambiguous meanings. But when you're talking about a trend as big as uh, you know, trying to form a multicultural polity, I guess there probably is going to be a lot of ambiguity in in whatever imagery you use. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's it's asking a lot I guess of a of a symbol or metaphor to really sum up um some of what this this uh, this symbol

or metaphor has called on to do. But again I found it interesting, especially again just in terms of thinking once more about melting as this thing that has positive and negative connotations that ultimately is about how we think about change in our lives, uh, in in the world, uh, you know, political change, societal change, cultural change, biological change. I gotta say, when you proposed a Melt movie episode, this is not the direction I expected it to go.

But this has been really interesting. Yeah, I I enjoyed it as well. I don't think I ended. I thought that we'd end up talking about the you know, the substance of America uh so much. Um. That was not the intent then active the attempt, if it was any intent, it was to not talk about anything political or or or America centrics. So but here we are, we have melted into it, and I'll proudly melt up next to you and melt hers still today are there songs about

melting um in the Sopranos. There is a metal band, uh that has a song called melt. I know, there's there's a there's a Calm Truise album called Galactic Melt, which I think is nice because his his sound has a very like that that I think it sums up with something about it sound like something galactic, something that

is like spacey and specific. But the melting aspect of it has implies a kind of you know, biological uh you know, a morphous quality that's there as well, sort of like it's it's biology and technology fused together into one sound. Shoegaze type music has some good sonic melting qualities I would I would consider like my Bloody Valentine and a very melty band. Yeah, I guess a vapor wave in it in its own way. Like just the word vapor wave implies phase transition as well, but different,

not a different one, not melting, but sublimation. Yeah, and I don't know that that's something we really explore that much in our our horror movies. So I don't know what happens when the mall turns not from a solid into a liquid, but a solid directly into a gas. Then you get an eternal loop of the chorus from Take These Broken Wings So real quick? Is that? You know? Is that what happens in um the Avengers movies, the whole fingersnap thing a are are people turning into vapor

or they just turning into ash? And that I don't know. I haven't seen those movies. I watched the first one. The listeners will have to that and being exposed for the millionth time is somebody who I don't. I'm not in the marble thing. I don't really. Well, you'll come back for the next Blade film, I hope. Oh, I guess you know what. I still haven't seen Blade three, so uh, well, it has one good line in it, but I can send you a clip of that and

then you're good to go. Okay, alright, Well, We're gonna go ahead and close it out here. This was this was melting. This says the episode is going to close out this year's Halloween festivities. But don't worry. We're you know, we're coming back next week and it's gonna be new topics. Uh, perhaps a little less halloweeny, but just as h as exciting and contemplated in theory. Anyway, Well, we'll see where it goes. We're just gonna see where the rest of

the year Texas. 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 podcast and wherever that happens to be. If you have the ability to do so, just rate, review and subscribe. You can always find us such stuff to Blow your Mind dot com that will shoot you over to the I heart listing for this show, and somewhere on there you get

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