A cultural expedition into the macabre

I have recently been working in London and tried to maximize my time there by walking around as much as I could and visiting a few curious galleries. London always displays a huge cultural offer and, despite the black, dense, unbreathable air and the excessive number of people in the tube and elsewhere, it always makes me feel excited.

I decided to head towards the Wellcome Collection when I saw the poster of the exhibition entitled Exquisite Bodies. I find few things in this world more fascinating than Gothic Victoriana, and the promise of a collection of 19th century anatomical models caught my attention. It was the time of the body snatchers, the era of the venereal diseases and double morale. Think Doctor Jekyll and Jack the Ripper.

The exhibition is divided into four main areas. The Origins of Life contains feminine models used to educate women about childbirth and their own sexual organs. Virtual Dissections displays anatomical waxworks that replaced real bodies when the demand of corpses was so high that body snatchers couldn’t cope with it. The models in Contagious Diseases are often shocking illustrations of the consequences of syphilis, tuberculosis or leprosy. And finally, The Parade of Monsters brings some elements from the Barcelona-based Roca collection, in particular, human oddities.

What I saw in Exquisite Bodies could have been the stuff of some of my worse nightmares, concretely of the ones classified as body horror. I would recommend everybody not to pull the red curtains that cover up a collection of syphilis-infected wax-made sexual organs.

But it seems that I didn’t have enough, that I was in search of extreme experiences, because I also decided to visit the Hunterian Museum, appropriately located in the headquarters of the Royal College of Surgeons. John Hunter was an 18^th century surgeon and teacher considered to be the father of modern surgery. In a recent BBC documentary about the inspiration for Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, Ian Rankin declares that Stevenson’s description of Jekyll’s house was identical to John Hunter’s.

Hunter become reputed for his formaldehyde preparations, and so the museum contains an astonishing and highly disturbing collection of stuff submerged in the slightly yellowish solution. As in the most terrifying mad doctor cabinet, there was a huge collection of foetus, human skulls of diverse characteristics and even the skeleton of Charles Byrne, known as The Irish Giant, whose height was over 7 ft 7 in. It is said that Byrne was afraid that his body could be dissected by surgeons after his death, so he requested to be buried into the sea. Nevertheless, John Hunter purchased his skeleton for five hundred pounds. Even though the skeleton dominates the main room, Byrne’s sad destiny made me feel uneasy, thinking of John Merrick and other ‘wonders of nature’ so abused during that era. When I left the museum I somehow desired not having seen what I saw. The medical importance of the collection is unquestionable, but the palpability of decay made me feel melancholic and reflexive. And that’s why I have decided not to include any images of my expedition in this post.

I put a spell on you

When music and words get together to tell a story, they have an advantage over books and films. Unlike the latter, the atmosphere that some songs capture in just three or four minutes can be reproduced easily, over and over again. It takes time and concentration to submerge back into the darkness and the tortured passions of Wuthering Heights.  It takes an hour and a half, a dark room and a sometimes a big screen to be transported into Rick’s Café Americain. But some songs, if they are good enough, will manage to stirr us up in just three minutes, giving us a completely different state of mind.

Most of my favourite lyrics are certainly baroque. Take Nick Cave’s Tupelo, for instance. But a rich, lustful language is not the only quality needed to take us on that trip. There are lyrics that are remarkably simple, and yet so effective. It is certainly the case of  I put a spell on you (no. 313 on the Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time), which is, as you probably have figured out by now, one of my favourite songs of all time.

I put a spell on you
’cause you’re mine

You better stop the things you do
I ain’t lyin’
No I ain’t lyin’

You know I can’t stand it
You’re runnin’ around
You know better daddy
I can’t stand it cause you put me down

I put a spell on you
Because you’re mine
You’re mine

I love ya
I love you
I love you
I love you anyhow
And I don’t care
If you don’t want me
I’m yours right now

You hear me
I put a spell on you
Because you’re mine

Screamin’ Jay Hawkins wrote the original song,  inspired by an ex-girlfriend he wanted back. Initially, it was going to be a blues ballad. But the recording session changed it all. Hawkins couldn’t remember what happened in that session, as if he had blacked out. The result was a dark, raw, mesmerising, demented track, full of screaming and grunting, matching the intensity of the lyrics. It was 1956, and the song was banned by several radio stations. This didn’t stop it to become an instant hit and a cult classic. When radio DJ Alan Freed offered Hawkins some money to emerge from a coffin onstage, the musician accepted.

Hawkins enriched his performances with voodoo elements and horror imagery. The coffin, the fog, the smoking skull named Henry, the animal skins and bones. Adding up some Vincent Prince undertones to his blues rock, he was the inventor of shock rock.

Even though audiences loved the spectacle,  he had to face many accusations coming from different sectors. Hawkins became addicted to alcohol and drugs, but he beat his addiction in the seventies. He had reached a cult status.  He toured with The Clash, Nick Cave and the Rolling Stones. He covered two tracks by Tom Waits. He inspired The Cramps, Alice Cooper or Marilyn Manson. In the 80s and 90s, he appeared in Jim Jarmuschs Mystery Train and Alex Delaiglesias Perdita Durango. And, of course, everybody wanted to record a cover of I put a spell on you.

Did he use a hoodoo spell on that recording session, back to 1956? The casting of his spell-of-a-song seems to have unravelled a raw energy that still mesmerises us through the decades.

Gallery of spells

Creedence Clearwater Revival, or possibly my favourite cover

Crazy Nick and the Cavemen. You’ve got to love them.

A live version by Nina Simone.

The night that terrified America

It was the 30th of October 1938 when the CBS caused a breakout of mass hysteria. A news bulletin included in the radio programme Mercury Theater on Air was reporting horrifying facts. An alien rocket machine had landed in Grovers Mill, New Jersey. A huge, tentacled creature came out of it and incinerated the crowd surrounding him. Planet Earth was being invaded by aliens.

The  radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds remains today as the most famous example of hoax perpetrated by mass media. It is a topic of study in universities, a strange event in contemporary history. But how did it happen? How could a fake alien invasion paralise an important segment of the American population?

It was 1938, and mass media was still an airy concept. Radio was still relatively new, but it allowed the Americans to bring the news into their home in a more inmediate way than ever before.  The World War II was inminent, the mood was somehow anxious. Wars and crisis always bring an atavic fear of apocalypse.

In this context, young genius Orson Welles directed and narrated The War of the Worlds. The script, written by Howard Koch, was  based on the novel by H.G. Wells. The action was translated  into modern day USA, including real, tangible locations. Instead of re-telling it as a common radioplay, Welles and Koch experimented with formats: the events were told as a series of news bulletins, suddenly interrupting the music of the CBS orchestra, directed by Bernard Hermann (who later would be Hitchcock’s composer of choice).

Orson Welles- War of the Worlds

Before, during the intermission and after the programme, Welles kept reminding the listeners that the news bulletin was just a part of the Halloween special, and just a hoax. But, as the New York Times would report the following day, this didn’t stop the mass panic.

Conspiracy theorists have speculated with the possibility of it being a psychological warfare experiment.  Orson Welles laughed at the suggestion (see his twisted film on hoaxes, F for Fake). We might not discuss the intentionality of the broadcast, but we can discuss its effects. The extent of its mass hysteria is still a matter of debate, but War of the Worlds gave a glimpse of how the world would react in a similar event. Governments may nonetheless have taken the panic seriously when considering how transparent to be in their recording of UFO sightings.

But would the world necessarily react like that in the event of an alien contact? I like to think that this mass hysteria was caused by the special circumstances of the story (that is, aliens killing humans with their heat rays). But would a friendly, curious, scientific contact cause panic? How would public opinion react if suddenly we were told we are being visited? Is the hysteria of War of the Worlds one of the reasons why governments have been so cautious about releasing UFO related information, or should we talk about exopolitic interests? In other words, are they concerned for public safety, or are they more concerned about their exopolitical advantages?

That urban legend

I was cooking some pasta earlier on and  that urban legend was modifying my actions. As soon as I noticed, I grinned to myself,  laughed at my neuroticism and kept stirring the sauce.

You probably will remember it if you are a Coca-Cola fan. I was. One of the rituals that went with it was drinking Coke straight from the can.  A can was always better than glass or plastic, especially when drunk straight from the fridge (it had to do with the cold metal against my lips, and also with the quality of fizziness). One day my friend told me that she wasn’t drinking from the can anymore.  She told me there were cases of people poisoned after drinking Coca-Cola straight from the can.  Cans could be stored in filthy basements full of rats, and rat droppings had been found on the top of the cans. Exactly where you place your lips and suck.

This is not what stopped me drinking Coca-Cola, in case you were wondering. However, I did develop some mistrust. I started to thoroughly clean the can prior to drinking. I even poured the drink into a glass. That urban legend totally spoiled my small joyful rituals.

Fifteen years later, and after having learned that all this was, aparently, an urban myth,  I remain suspicious of rat-infested basements. Even if they come from what is arguably the poshest supermarket in the UK, I don’t want my tinned tomatoes to make contact with the outside part of the tin. As I discovered this morning, I am always very careful when I pour them into the pan. Isn’t this the beauty of urban legends?

cokeandratspoo

Blood-stained lips

I might be a hypochondriac and I could have never been a doctor. Yet one of my favourite subjects is the History of Medicine.  In past times, the difficulties of understanding the mechanism of diseases such as black death, leprosy or tuberculosis gave way to superstitious explanations. This circle of  body horror as a manifestation of  supernatural horror is what I find the most fascinating. The human body, strange and unknown, can react in such wondrous ways.

As the Bible says, the blood is the life. Contemplating one’s blood normally has an effect. Some people faint at its mere sight; other people stare at it in awe. We only observe the outsides of our body. The insides coexist with us. Or they make us alive, rather. Blood only appears when there is something wrong.

But what if the blood emanates from somewhere inside of our body, and we are unable to detect its origin? Hemoptysis (allow me to use the beautiful, etimologically Greek, medical term for coughing up blood, one of the symptoms of tuberculosis) would have been a horrifying experience. Left without any medical explanation, it would have been easy to turn to superstition to help make sense.

Victims of tuberculosis would become weak and pale, with red eyes, sensitive to sunlight, and blood-stained lips. If a member of a family died from it, it wasn’t infrequent that the others developed the illness, starting to feel drained and tired until they died. It was the time, previous to the Industrial Revolution, in which the belief in vampires reached the category of mass hysteria. The first victim of tuberculosis would be considered to be a vampire or revenant, drinking the blood of their other family members, who would also turn into vampires.

The suspicion of a family member turned into a vampire could lead to the profanation of their graves. Sometimes the corpse would be slightly swollen as a consequence of the gas released in decomposition, looking almost well-fed. When a stake was used to destroy the vampire, the gas trapped inside of the corpse would be forced to come out, making the vocal chords vibrate with a groaning sound, and releasing the blood.

In 1746, Benedictine Dom Agustin Calmet wrote his seminal Treatise on Vampires and Revenants, which gives us an idea of the extent of this vampire craze through Europe. After going through this impressive collection of cases, it is hard to decide whether Calment, a well-respected Theologist, was a sceptic or a believer. I am tempted to say that he probably believed what he was reporting. After all, as a Theologist, chances are that he believed in demons.

Everything is postmodern: Victims of tuberculosis. Or were they real vampires?

Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

Anne, Emily and Charlotte (unconfirmed) Brönte

Frederic Chopin

Miguel Hernández

Immanuel Kant

Franz Kafka

John Keats

Vivien Leigh

Niccolo Paganini

Richelieu

Friedrich Schiller

Walter Scott

Robert Louis Stevenson

The horror of lobotomy

This story has been haunting me ever since I learnt about it. The horrors of the human mind seem nothing compared to a terrifying neurosurgical procedure in vogue during the 1940’s. Lobotomy is now a part of popular culture (as seen in The Ramones, the Velvet Underground and Tennessee William’s plays among others).

It all started in in 1935, when Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz pioneered his prefrontal leucotomy and was awarded a Nobel Prize for it in 1949. By severing the nerves that connected the prefrontal lobe with the rest of the brain, lobotomy was supposed to treat a wide range of mental illnessess, including anxiety, depression, or even undesired behaviour.

It was Pennsylvania-born psychiatrist and neurologist Walter Freeman who democratised lobotomies. While initially he worked with neurosurgeon James W. Watts, Freeman,  who never had a surgical training, developed his new technique: the ice pick lobotomy. He was looking for a quicker procedure and it seems he found it. Experimenting with corpses, he tried to find an alternative to drilling the skull, as it was commonly done. So he introduced an icepick through the eye sockets, reaching for the frontal lobe. To replace the icepick, he designed two new instruments,  the leucotome and the orbitoclast. He had to use a hammer to allow the leucotome to penetrate through the thin layer of bone into the brain and sever the nerve fibers to isolate the frontal lobe. The procedure would last just a few minutes.

Freeman at work

Freeman believed that his procedure would sort out the problems with overcrowded mental institutions. So, in a strange similitude with stories of vigilantes, mad preachers or snake-oil sellers, Freeman wandered around the country, in a van named the Lobotomobile, practising endless lobotomies.  Reports calculate that during the 1940’s and 1950’s, over 40000 lobotomies were performed on Americans.

Freeman’s famous patients

One of Freeman’s patients, Howard Dully, lobotomised at 12,  spent decades recovering from the surgery. After being institutionalised, incarcerated and having lived on the streets as an alcoholic, he got a college degree and researched his case,  co-writing the book My Lobotomy.

But of course, the most famous case is Rosemary Kennedy, younger sister of president JFK. Lobotomy was supposed to be the cure for Rosemary Kennedy’s mental problems, allegedly a slight mental retardation and violent mood swings. There is huge controversy regarding these claims: the Kennedy family had a higher than the average IQ. Rosemary’s diaries, published in the 1980’s, don’t exhibit any obvious trace of mental problems, either. But she wasn’t like the other Kennedys. Her father, Joseph Kennedy, probably feared that her behaviour could perturbate the charismatic aura of the family.

She was lobotomised by Watts and Freeman at the age of 23. During the operation she was conscious, as she had to be able to reply to Freeman’s questions (reciting prayers, counting backwards). It was a way of deciding that the operation was being succesful. When she no longer made sense, they were done. After the lobotomy, Rosemary’s mood swings stopped, but also her ability to live independently, speak coherently and control her bowels.  She died in a mental institution in 2005.

Rosemary was kept as the family’s darkest secret until her brother became president in 1960. A statement from the National Association for Retarded Children revealed that JFK’s ‘mentally retarded sister’ was kept in an institution in Wisconsin. After she passed away in 2005, the statement of the Kennedy said she was  “a lifelong jewel to every member of our family (…). Her mental retardation was a continuing inspiration to each of us, and a powerful source of our family’s commitment to do all we can to help all persons with disabilities live full and productive lives”. Observing photographs of her and reading her diaries makes the horror closer, more real. There was a time in which a moderately difficult behaviour was enough to allow a surgeon to poke into your brain, with no guarantee about the results.

Rosemary Kennedy, before and after the lobotomy

Everything is postmodern: Lobotomy and popular culture references

Suddenly, last summer (Tennessee Williams)

One flew over cuckoo’s nest (1975, Milos Forman)

The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror V

The X- Files: Unruhe

The Velvet Underground – Lady Godiva’s Operation

The Ramones- Teenage Lobotomy

Snake Oil Liniment cure-all

I think it’s pretty clear that we can’t live our lives without the influence of a shaman figure. Be it a priest, a rockstar, a tarot reader, an alternative medicine guru, a charismatic new president or all of them at a time, it doesn’t really matter. A shaman is a figure that communicates with the spirit world. He is a visionary, a guide, a mediator, a psychopomp.

Humans are needy enough to believe any shaman wannabe. This has constantly happened through History and it’s probably still happening around you or me. But how are we able to distinguish the real shaman from the fake one? I have no idea. I don’t even know if it matters, to be honest. Sometimes it probably doesn’t make any difference. Other times it’s been proved fatal.

One of the many aspects of a shaman figure is their healing nature. We have doctors these days, but science is clearly not enough. From the placebo effect to the never-ending revision of traditional or alternative medicines, there is a segment in which belief still plays an important part, a search for something more transcendental. Almost as if we were looking for a shamanic quality in these.

Snake Oil Liniment is now a generic name for a medicine hoax. It appears in Westerns and the stories of Mark Twain: a charlatan claims that the liniment will cure all ailments, and makes money out of the people from every village, touring to make his fortune. We would probably dismiss it if this was to happen now, and yet recent researches show that it might have contained some truth, as it was based in a Chinese medicinal remedy. Snake Oil contains an impressive quantity of Omega-3 fatty acids, fabulous against arthritis.

The story of the Snake Oil Liniment illustrates my concerns about the difficulties of distinguishing a real shaman from a fake one. If we believe all these charlatans, we’ll end up with no money and no personal criteria. If we cynically dismiss any dubious approach, we’ll be trapped in a spiderweb of scepticism, and yet still longing for a shaman-like figure. You can take this metaphore to many aspects of modern life. To begin with, tomorrow’s European elections. But I’ve never liked talking about politics too much.

Give us a smile, Mr. Stanley