WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.760 --> 00:00:03.680 You're listening to an air wave media podcast. 2 00:00:08.480 --> 00:00:11.160 It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before. 3 00:00:13.279 --> 00:00:18.640 A giant, very creature Part eight park Maps in Luckness, 4 00:00:18.800 --> 00:00:21.079 a twenty four a mile long bottomless lake in the 5 00:00:21.160 --> 00:00:24.239 Highlands of Scotland. It's a creature known as the Luckness 6 00:00:24.280 --> 00:00:47.399 monster monster. 7 00:00:49.320 --> 00:00:51.560 A few weeks ago we had on Chet van Duzer 8 00:00:51.640 --> 00:00:55.119 talking about sea monsters on medieval maps. I really enjoyed 9 00:00:55.119 --> 00:00:57.439 the conversation and I joked that we'd like to have 10 00:00:57.520 --> 00:00:59.759 them on again to talk about monsters on land maps. 11 00:01:00.119 --> 00:01:02.000 And then a few days after that episode went live, 12 00:01:02.079 --> 00:01:04.760 I got an interesting email from today's guest. He's an 13 00:01:04.879 --> 00:01:07.879 art historian who specializes in monsters, and he's written a 14 00:01:07.879 --> 00:01:11.879 book about monsters on medieval maps, The Terrestrial Kind. I 15 00:01:11.879 --> 00:01:13.760 felt like we could have talked a lot longer. He's 16 00:01:13.799 --> 00:01:16.200 done a lot of scholarly work on both monsters from 17 00:01:16.200 --> 00:01:20.599 a historical perspective and from a sociological perspective. Hopefully you'll 18 00:01:20.680 --> 00:01:22.799 enjoy the conversation what he has to say as much 19 00:01:22.840 --> 00:01:25.959 as I did. I'm Blake Smith. This is Monster Talk, 20 00:01:26.040 --> 00:01:29.280 the science show about monsters, and to paraphrase pulp fiction, 21 00:01:29.719 --> 00:01:31.359 we're about to get medieval. 22 00:01:30.959 --> 00:01:32.560 On your monstertle. 23 00:01:34.159 --> 00:01:37.680 All right, So tonight we're talking with Asabmittman, an associate 24 00:01:37.719 --> 00:01:41.879 professor of art history at the California State University in Chico. 25 00:01:42.439 --> 00:01:45.400 He's the co author of Maps and Monsters in Medieval 26 00:01:45.439 --> 00:01:49.719 England and Inconceivable Beasts, The Wonders of the East, and 27 00:01:49.760 --> 00:01:53.519 the Beowulf Manuscript. He co edited a research companion to 28 00:01:53.599 --> 00:01:56.000 Monsters in the monstros and as if that weren't enough. 29 00:01:56.319 --> 00:01:59.920 He's also the president of mirk STAPPA, which stands for 30 00:02:00.159 --> 00:02:03.959 Monsters the Experimental Association for the Research of Cryptozoology through 31 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:08.919 Scholarly Theory and Practical Application. Hey, so welcome to Monster Talk. 32 00:02:08.960 --> 00:02:10.599 And I have to say, after reading your TV it 33 00:02:10.599 --> 00:02:13.680 seems like you're being on the show was pretty much inevitable. 34 00:02:14.439 --> 00:02:16.120 Well, thanks very much for having me. I'm happy to 35 00:02:16.120 --> 00:02:16.439 be here. 36 00:02:16.919 --> 00:02:19.560 So how did you get involved in the serious academic 37 00:02:19.599 --> 00:02:21.360 research of monsters. 38 00:02:21.960 --> 00:02:24.520 Well, I fell into it more or less by accident. 39 00:02:24.759 --> 00:02:26.960 I was doing one of those I had one of 40 00:02:26.960 --> 00:02:30.759 those experiences that we tell our students we don't actually 41 00:02:30.840 --> 00:02:35.240 have that good research doesn't result from brilliant aha moments 42 00:02:35.280 --> 00:02:37.439 where things all suddenly fit together like they would in 43 00:02:37.479 --> 00:02:41.120 a movie, but that is actually what happened. I was 44 00:02:41.159 --> 00:02:44.319 working on medieval maps, which is the other main thing 45 00:02:44.360 --> 00:02:46.840 I work on, and maps and monsters go together fairly 46 00:02:46.879 --> 00:02:50.560 well and kind of stentated by and I didn't really 47 00:02:50.639 --> 00:02:53.360 know what to do with it. And I was simultaneously 48 00:02:53.400 --> 00:02:59.719 taking a course on Japanese is aight oh period woodblock printing. 49 00:03:00.719 --> 00:03:03.240 And I had gone to the library at Stanford to 50 00:03:03.319 --> 00:03:08.159 find some sources for this Japanese art paper, and the 51 00:03:08.199 --> 00:03:11.520 library where they have the Asian collections there are shelved 52 00:03:11.680 --> 00:03:15.159 in Chinese and Japanese. There's no English language reference points 53 00:03:15.159 --> 00:03:17.560 to be had, and so I was wildly in the 54 00:03:17.560 --> 00:03:19.560 wrong section and I wound up taking out a book 55 00:03:19.599 --> 00:03:24.319 on eighth century China instead of eighteenth century Japan. And 56 00:03:24.360 --> 00:03:25.919 I was looking back and forth. It had a map 57 00:03:25.919 --> 00:03:30.520 in it, and the map looked very different formally from 58 00:03:30.560 --> 00:03:32.879 the English one. But the longer I looked at it, 59 00:03:32.919 --> 00:03:37.319 the more I realized they basically functioned the same way, 60 00:03:37.400 --> 00:03:41.199 and that people had been I thought misunderstanding the English 61 00:03:41.240 --> 00:03:45.560 maps all this time by thinking about them as linear 62 00:03:45.680 --> 00:03:52.280 instead of as radial. In this Chinese map was just 63 00:03:52.319 --> 00:03:56.560 a series of four rectangles concentrically placed, and the central 64 00:03:56.599 --> 00:04:01.360 one was something like the princely Domains. Normal culture puts 65 00:04:01.400 --> 00:04:03.319 itself right at the heart of the map, and then 66 00:04:03.439 --> 00:04:05.719 next one was the zone of the Allies, and then 67 00:04:05.919 --> 00:04:09.960 the zone of the Allied Barbarians, and then the last 68 00:04:10.400 --> 00:04:13.039 ring of the map, the outermost edge of the world, 69 00:04:13.159 --> 00:04:18.319 was labeled the zone of cultureless Savagery. And that's got 70 00:04:18.319 --> 00:04:20.600 to be as evocative a label as has ever been 71 00:04:20.600 --> 00:04:24.600 on any map. But that's actually how the medieval English 72 00:04:24.639 --> 00:04:27.800 maps work as well, except for a key difference, which 73 00:04:27.839 --> 00:04:31.000 is that instead of having England at the center, they've 74 00:04:31.079 --> 00:04:33.000 Jerusalem at the center in England. 75 00:04:33.759 --> 00:04:37.800 Just gonna say, that's also how Atlanta's laid out, which 76 00:04:37.800 --> 00:04:38.800 is very common. 77 00:04:39.720 --> 00:04:41.920 But what makes the English one so odd is that 78 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:45.120 England is out in that zone of cultureless savagery. It's 79 00:04:45.160 --> 00:04:48.000 out in the margins, surrounded if you look around the 80 00:04:48.120 --> 00:04:50.680 edges of that map, and a lot of others, completely 81 00:04:50.720 --> 00:04:54.439 surrounded by various kinds of monsters. And so then I 82 00:04:54.439 --> 00:04:56.759 started investigating the monsters on the maps, and then I 83 00:04:56.759 --> 00:05:00.680 started investigating the monsters off of the maps, and found 84 00:05:00.759 --> 00:05:05.240 that anywhere you look in any kind of medieval culture 85 00:05:05.319 --> 00:05:09.759 you will find monsters. They are not a sideline, not 86 00:05:09.920 --> 00:05:14.720 a weird and peripheral phenomenon. They are everywhere, in every 87 00:05:14.800 --> 00:05:17.319 kind of book you can imagine, and any kind of 88 00:05:17.399 --> 00:05:21.680 architecture you can think of, in any kind of decorative art, everything, 89 00:05:21.800 --> 00:05:25.079 they are there. They're in every kind of literature you 90 00:05:25.079 --> 00:05:29.759 could look for. They were really central to how medieval 91 00:05:29.759 --> 00:05:33.439 people understood themselves in the world, and so the more 92 00:05:33.480 --> 00:05:35.000 I got interested in that, the more I got interested 93 00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:37.959 in monsters on their own. That's neat. 94 00:05:38.160 --> 00:05:40.319 So have you run into a lot of academic pushback 95 00:05:40.399 --> 00:05:41.759 for focusing on this topic. 96 00:05:43.240 --> 00:05:46.920 I have less so lately, which I take as a 97 00:05:46.920 --> 00:05:50.399 sign of some great success. But when I first started 98 00:05:50.600 --> 00:05:53.279 doing this in graduate school, people would say, oh, what 99 00:05:53.319 --> 00:05:55.120 are you working on? And you're supposed to say something 100 00:05:55.199 --> 00:05:59.720 like I'm doing a Deridian spin on fucause analysis of 101 00:05:59.759 --> 00:06:01.600 the you know whatever, you know. You were supposed to 102 00:06:01.639 --> 00:06:05.560 be doing something that sent it very serious and within 103 00:06:05.639 --> 00:06:08.639 academic can finds very traditional. And I would say, I'm 104 00:06:08.639 --> 00:06:13.000 writing about monsters, and it took me years to figure 105 00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:15.800 out how to say that without it sounding like a joke. 106 00:06:15.879 --> 00:06:18.360 People would laugh, because no, no, no, no, I'm really 107 00:06:18.399 --> 00:06:21.319 that's really what I do. I'm writing about monsters. That's 108 00:06:21.480 --> 00:06:24.480 that's my dissertation. It's really what I'm trying to do. 109 00:06:26.680 --> 00:06:29.920 And you know, I did come across various forms of 110 00:06:29.959 --> 00:06:33.839 pushback against that. The most interesting one was when I 111 00:06:33.879 --> 00:06:37.360 was out. I was actually on a job interview. This 112 00:06:37.560 --> 00:06:45.079 was several years ago, and I given my lecture, which 113 00:06:45.199 --> 00:06:48.319 was on the monsters that are in the Beowulf manuscript, 114 00:06:49.240 --> 00:06:50.959 which has lots of monsters. Most people don't know we 115 00:06:50.959 --> 00:06:55.199 are in there. And then I was at the luncheon 116 00:06:55.279 --> 00:06:59.319 where they have the appearance of informality, but in fact 117 00:06:59.319 --> 00:07:01.560 it's all still part of the interview, and one of 118 00:07:01.560 --> 00:07:04.399 the committee members said, so, where do you see yourself 119 00:07:04.439 --> 00:07:06.959 in twenty years, And of course I had no idea 120 00:07:07.000 --> 00:07:09.240 where I'd be in twenty years, but my off the 121 00:07:09.279 --> 00:07:12.319 cuff answer was I would like to be the head 122 00:07:12.360 --> 00:07:18.040 of the world's first institute for monster studies. And they 123 00:07:18.040 --> 00:07:20.920 all looked pretty miserable about that. Well, okay, this is 124 00:07:20.959 --> 00:07:24.600 going poorly. And then after that a member of the 125 00:07:24.600 --> 00:07:27.360 department who was not on the committee, asked me to 126 00:07:27.399 --> 00:07:30.680 come to speak with him in his office, and he 127 00:07:31.000 --> 00:07:35.360 leaned across his table and he said to me, listen, Aesa, 128 00:07:36.279 --> 00:07:38.560 you got to drop all this monster stuff and start 129 00:07:38.600 --> 00:07:44.839 doing real scholarship. And in the context of a job interview, 130 00:07:44.879 --> 00:07:47.199 what do you say, you know? I said, well, I 131 00:07:47.240 --> 00:07:49.279 think it is real scholarship and many people working on 132 00:07:49.319 --> 00:07:53.680 it as an important tradition, et cetera. So but I 133 00:07:53.680 --> 00:07:57.240 I was flabbergasted. I was floored by what struck me 134 00:07:57.319 --> 00:08:03.160 as a very narrow minded conception of what scholarship is, 135 00:08:03.639 --> 00:08:06.680 which is to say that scholarship should be defined by 136 00:08:07.360 --> 00:08:12.199 the subject of study, not the approach or the quality 137 00:08:12.199 --> 00:08:17.079 of the results, Whereas I would say every subject matter 138 00:08:17.360 --> 00:08:21.519 is worth study. There aren't subjects that are uninteresting. Whatever 139 00:08:21.560 --> 00:08:24.120 you study, if you know enough about it, you will 140 00:08:24.120 --> 00:08:28.199 conclude it is the hingepin around which all global culture turns. 141 00:08:29.040 --> 00:08:33.159 And monsters do this just as well as anything else. 142 00:08:33.279 --> 00:08:38.080 And all right, they're also really fun and interesting. I agree. 143 00:08:39.200 --> 00:08:41.480 I read that in your introduction, and I thought that 144 00:08:41.559 --> 00:08:44.879 was a really telling and a story, I guess, a 145 00:08:44.919 --> 00:08:46.960 story that I had a lot of sympathy for because 146 00:08:48.559 --> 00:08:54.399 it's funny. Everybody accepts monsters, I think culturally, but as 147 00:08:54.480 --> 00:08:57.200 a as a form of entertainment or as a sort 148 00:08:57.240 --> 00:09:00.559 of what an existential thing to be a afraid of. 149 00:09:00.639 --> 00:09:02.440 I don't know how many people think there are real 150 00:09:02.519 --> 00:09:07.039 monsters anymore. Some do, I mean, especially in you know, 151 00:09:07.240 --> 00:09:10.360 part of what this show does is research cryptozoology. But 152 00:09:10.559 --> 00:09:13.159 for me, I'm an English major who kind of came 153 00:09:13.559 --> 00:09:15.919 to be a science junkie kind of later in life. 154 00:09:16.360 --> 00:09:19.879 And the show has often straddled the line between hard 155 00:09:19.879 --> 00:09:23.720 science and liberal arts. So it seems like your research 156 00:09:23.759 --> 00:09:26.200 probably went the same way. How have you fallen in 157 00:09:26.200 --> 00:09:29.600 that spectrum and how does your work go towards that 158 00:09:29.759 --> 00:09:30.240 in that way? 159 00:09:31.039 --> 00:09:34.279 Well, I am very much on the humanities end of 160 00:09:34.320 --> 00:09:40.039 the spectrum. I I'm married to a scientist, and so 161 00:09:40.159 --> 00:09:45.320 I've had a lot of vicarious scientific instruction. My original 162 00:09:45.440 --> 00:09:48.159 childhood goal was to grow up to be Jacques Cousteau, 163 00:09:48.639 --> 00:09:52.679 but then I took chemistry and gave that up. But 164 00:09:55.320 --> 00:10:00.120 I've come to these really from the perspective of art history, 165 00:10:00.159 --> 00:10:04.759 literary history, cultural studies, and so my main interest really 166 00:10:04.919 --> 00:10:12.120 is in how cultures have used monsters. It was one 167 00:10:12.120 --> 00:10:14.120 thing to wonder whether they're real or not real, and 168 00:10:14.159 --> 00:10:15.799 I've written about that a bunch of times in a 169 00:10:15.799 --> 00:10:17.799 bunch of different ways. Because it's the first thing I 170 00:10:17.840 --> 00:10:21.080 always get asked by people as, oh, well, did medieval 171 00:10:21.120 --> 00:10:24.000 people really think there were monsters? And so I've grappled 172 00:10:24.039 --> 00:10:27.480 a lot with that. Ultimately, it's not the question that 173 00:10:27.600 --> 00:10:32.200 animates my interests, but I think it's important enough that 174 00:10:32.240 --> 00:10:33.480 I've turned to it several times. 175 00:10:33.840 --> 00:10:37.159 So let's define a monster for this conversation. What is 176 00:10:37.200 --> 00:10:37.639 a monster? 177 00:10:39.399 --> 00:10:41.960 It's a fabulous question, and it's one that I really 178 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:45.039 should be able to answer with a nice, pithy response 179 00:10:45.240 --> 00:10:47.320 after working on them for twelve or fifteen years. 180 00:10:47.320 --> 00:10:49.279 We've got forty five minutes, So do your best. 181 00:10:49.919 --> 00:10:54.600 I'll do my best. Well. The thing is that it's 182 00:10:54.639 --> 00:10:58.840 a term that shifts in meaning dramatically from period to period, 183 00:10:59.240 --> 00:11:01.840 and from place to and even from context within a 184 00:11:01.879 --> 00:11:07.600 single period of place, from context to context. What most 185 00:11:07.600 --> 00:11:11.799 people have discussed it in relations to cultural history have 186 00:11:11.879 --> 00:11:14.159 done is they've looked at the use of the term 187 00:11:14.480 --> 00:11:17.519 at particular points in history. So, for example, we can 188 00:11:17.600 --> 00:11:23.840 see how various early medieval theologians wrote about the word monstraw, 189 00:11:24.159 --> 00:11:27.559 which is what we get the word monster from in English. 190 00:11:27.600 --> 00:11:31.559 And so there are sort of two competing etymologies that 191 00:11:31.600 --> 00:11:36.720 they come up with Augustine and Augustine of Hippo says 192 00:11:37.039 --> 00:11:43.039 that monstraw comes from damnstrare, that is, to demonstrate or 193 00:11:43.080 --> 00:11:45.960 to show, and he uses a series of puns to 194 00:11:46.440 --> 00:11:50.240 essentially say God put monsters on the earth to show 195 00:11:50.600 --> 00:11:54.840 his infinite power, his ability to break the laws of nature. 196 00:11:54.840 --> 00:11:56.600 It's not that they didn't think there were laws of nature, 197 00:11:57.120 --> 00:11:59.320 but they thought, you know, a person with a dog's 198 00:11:59.360 --> 00:12:02.679 head was outside of the laws of nature and yet 199 00:12:02.799 --> 00:12:07.519 possible because of the infinite power of God. Etymologies of 200 00:12:07.679 --> 00:12:11.279 Latin words to understand God's plan for the universe. Says 201 00:12:11.279 --> 00:12:14.039 that no, no, it doesn't come from day MONSTRAI. It 202 00:12:14.080 --> 00:12:18.759 comes from monare, which means to warn, and he says 203 00:12:18.879 --> 00:12:23.240 they're warnings from God against sin. So this is how 204 00:12:23.279 --> 00:12:26.120 the question has been tackled by a lot of people 205 00:12:26.279 --> 00:12:28.639 who've written about this. They say, all right, in this 206 00:12:28.720 --> 00:12:31.559 period people thought that. In that period people thought something else. 207 00:12:31.600 --> 00:12:33.919 So you get into the early modern period and the 208 00:12:33.960 --> 00:12:39.759 monster becomes more of a focused on scientific Early scientific 209 00:12:39.799 --> 00:12:45.399 analyzes prodigal births, you know whether two headed calf or 210 00:12:45.559 --> 00:12:50.080 a two headed person born, and how to grapple with these? 211 00:12:50.120 --> 00:12:55.159 Are they portents of divine vengeance or are they the 212 00:12:55.279 --> 00:12:59.399 result of imperfect conditions in the womb? And these sorts 213 00:12:59.399 --> 00:13:02.039 of things come to be debated. But one thing I 214 00:13:02.039 --> 00:13:05.559 found that nobody seemed to have really done in the 215 00:13:05.679 --> 00:13:08.600 scholarship that I was looking at is say, when we 216 00:13:08.720 --> 00:13:11.519 use the term, what do we mean? And I think 217 00:13:11.559 --> 00:13:15.120 it's really important because I've come to think what most 218 00:13:15.120 --> 00:13:20.399 of us mean by monster. Not the cryptozoological community, and 219 00:13:20.519 --> 00:13:24.240 not Augustine and isidor, but the average modern lay person 220 00:13:24.440 --> 00:13:29.399 when they say monster, they think something big and scary 221 00:13:29.960 --> 00:13:34.960 and dangerous that does not exist. How do we know 222 00:13:35.240 --> 00:13:39.320 what the difference is between something horrifying, terrifying, and real 223 00:13:39.320 --> 00:13:42.960 and something horrifying, terrifying and not real. What I came 224 00:13:43.039 --> 00:13:46.200 to conclude is that for something to be a monster 225 00:13:46.360 --> 00:13:49.799 to me anyway, it has to not only be big 226 00:13:49.840 --> 00:13:55.799 and scary like a rabbit dog, and not only big 227 00:13:55.840 --> 00:13:59.840 and dangerous like a great white shark or a Tyrannosaurus 228 00:14:00.200 --> 00:14:06.480 X or something, but it also has to somehow fundamentally 229 00:14:06.600 --> 00:14:11.200 destabilize our understanding of the world. And a rabbit dog 230 00:14:11.279 --> 00:14:13.960 doesn't do that unless its behavior is such that it's 231 00:14:14.000 --> 00:14:18.120 well outside of anything that a rabbit dog ought to 232 00:14:18.240 --> 00:14:21.159 do if we you know, I spent a long long 233 00:14:21.200 --> 00:14:23.120 time since I think I've seen the movie and not 234 00:14:23.159 --> 00:14:26.159 read that novel. But you know, if the dog was 235 00:14:27.840 --> 00:14:30.639 punching in the code to the security system to kill 236 00:14:30.639 --> 00:14:33.320 the people, then it would rise to the level of 237 00:14:33.360 --> 00:14:36.919 being a monster, because that would be a moment of instability, 238 00:14:36.919 --> 00:14:39.840 when we would feel like our understanding of how the 239 00:14:39.879 --> 00:14:43.240 world works is now inoperative. 240 00:14:44.879 --> 00:14:46.120 You know that that's interesting. 241 00:14:46.360 --> 00:14:48.039 I think a lot about the. 242 00:14:49.879 --> 00:14:53.320 Metaphorical impact of what a monster is, and it seems 243 00:14:53.360 --> 00:14:56.799 like to me, again this is coming from being an 244 00:14:56.840 --> 00:15:01.279 English major, but the metaphor of a monster almost always 245 00:15:01.320 --> 00:15:07.039 represents this sort of perfect outgroup metaphor, right, And we 246 00:15:07.120 --> 00:15:10.600 spend so much time, whether we're cognitive it or not, 247 00:15:11.799 --> 00:15:16.879 breaking everybody up into in group outgroup segmentation. 248 00:15:18.120 --> 00:15:19.080 More monstrutal. 249 00:15:20.240 --> 00:15:23.720 A brief editorial interruption here. While this episode's focused on 250 00:15:23.840 --> 00:15:27.320 monsters and medieval maps, it seemed to be plagued by 251 00:15:27.360 --> 00:15:32.799 another monster, the nefarious Grimlin. After interviewing ASA, I discovered 252 00:15:32.840 --> 00:15:35.440 that nearly all of the original interview had turned into 253 00:15:35.559 --> 00:15:39.840 digital garbage. ASA generously came back to re record the 254 00:15:39.879 --> 00:15:42.679 missing portions, but even then we had difficulties and part 255 00:15:42.720 --> 00:15:46.000 of the interview broke up into hundreds of useless files. 256 00:15:46.440 --> 00:15:48.519 I did manage to get most of it back. What's 257 00:15:48.600 --> 00:15:51.720 missing here is a brief exchange about the ideas of 258 00:15:51.840 --> 00:15:56.080 race and science. We discussed the origins of racial ideas, 259 00:15:56.279 --> 00:15:59.159 the horror of eugenics, and how science got that wrong, 260 00:15:59.519 --> 00:16:01.480 and finally we came back to the question of could 261 00:16:01.480 --> 00:16:04.039 science and education usher humanity out of the kind of 262 00:16:04.120 --> 00:16:07.360 in group outgroup thinking it causes so much strife and 263 00:16:07.399 --> 00:16:10.919 horror and modern times. I return you now to that 264 00:16:10.960 --> 00:16:13.960 discussion where the technology was able to restore the recording. 265 00:16:14.799 --> 00:16:18.320 The term race itself actually doesn't come into use. It's 266 00:16:18.360 --> 00:16:21.240 a sort of neologism of I think the fourteenth century 267 00:16:21.440 --> 00:16:25.320 that's invented to talk about hunting dogs and only then 268 00:16:25.399 --> 00:16:28.559 makes its way to talking about nobility, so we hear 269 00:16:28.600 --> 00:16:32.879 about a noble race. So, for example, French nobility are 270 00:16:32.919 --> 00:16:36.879 one race and French peasantry are a separate race. And 271 00:16:36.919 --> 00:16:38.879 so it's only later that race comes to be even 272 00:16:38.919 --> 00:16:42.600 applied to say the distinctions that people might see between 273 00:16:43.039 --> 00:16:45.279 Africans and Europeans, saying. 274 00:16:45.679 --> 00:16:49.000 I think science is pretty clearly demonstrated that people are 275 00:16:49.039 --> 00:16:53.519 all the same species that there's really no difference between us. 276 00:16:53.919 --> 00:16:57.840 You know, these sort of cultural differences are way more significant, 277 00:16:57.840 --> 00:17:01.559 I think than any concept of race, or that seems 278 00:17:01.600 --> 00:17:02.399 to be the case anyway. 279 00:17:02.480 --> 00:17:06.640 Yeah, the American Anthropological Society has a wonderful statement on race, 280 00:17:06.680 --> 00:17:10.240 and it's very clear on the completely culturally constructive nature thereof. 281 00:17:11.000 --> 00:17:14.119 Are these ideas out moded in modern culture? 282 00:17:15.599 --> 00:17:19.279 Would that they were? Right? I mean, you know, the 283 00:17:19.279 --> 00:17:22.200 Middle Ages had its wild men, which were these hairy, 284 00:17:23.440 --> 00:17:26.039 semi human guys who lived out in the forest and 285 00:17:26.079 --> 00:17:28.599 were both sort of loved and feared and hated all 286 00:17:28.640 --> 00:17:31.480 at once. Sound familiar to someone who works on Bigfoot, right. 287 00:17:34.119 --> 00:17:37.440 The Middle Ages had its sea serpents. We've still Gottenssi 288 00:17:37.559 --> 00:17:41.799 and Champy and so on, right, exactly. Well, the Middle 289 00:17:41.839 --> 00:17:47.079 Ages had lots of ideas about Jews, and modernity has 290 00:17:47.119 --> 00:17:54.200 not shifted a ton from that. Lots of the very 291 00:17:54.240 --> 00:17:58.880 negative tropes are still active. I think the most common 292 00:18:00.079 --> 00:18:04.119 of pejorative used to describe Jews in the Middle Age, 293 00:18:04.119 --> 00:18:07.279 it is probably the most common, is perfidious, which means 294 00:18:07.279 --> 00:18:12.200 sort of like willfully refusing belief. They thought that Jews 295 00:18:12.279 --> 00:18:18.079 understood that Jesus actually was the Mesiah, but stubbornly stoneheartedly 296 00:18:18.119 --> 00:18:21.759 refused to change their traditional ways, which doesn't make a 297 00:18:21.759 --> 00:18:23.960 whole lot of logical sense. But you know, we shouldn't 298 00:18:23.960 --> 00:18:25.880 really try and find the logic and racism, I guess. 299 00:18:27.400 --> 00:18:30.799 But all it takes is a quick Internet search to 300 00:18:30.880 --> 00:18:34.200 find that all of the tropes about Jews are still 301 00:18:34.240 --> 00:18:38.039 quite operative. And I've actually got two sort of two 302 00:18:38.079 --> 00:18:44.160 stories I could tell about that. One is a classroom 303 00:18:44.200 --> 00:18:46.200 episode that I had. This was a couple of years 304 00:18:46.200 --> 00:18:49.960 ago now, but I was teaching my Medieval Art survey 305 00:18:50.039 --> 00:18:53.000 and we had spent about a month discussing monsters, and 306 00:18:53.039 --> 00:18:55.440 we'd looked at the Wonders of the East, and we'd 307 00:18:55.480 --> 00:18:57.640 looked at Santa Gustin, and we'd looked at Jerome, all 308 00:18:57.640 --> 00:19:00.200 of these interesting texts, and we've read lots of sort 309 00:19:00.200 --> 00:19:04.119 of theoretical approaches to monsters and the monstrous, trying to 310 00:19:04.160 --> 00:19:08.440 get sort of conceptualization of how the Middle Ages constructed 311 00:19:08.480 --> 00:19:13.119 monstrosity and viewed monsters, which is one way that they 312 00:19:13.599 --> 00:19:18.319 conceived of what theorists often referred to as the other. Right, 313 00:19:18.359 --> 00:19:21.599 these are something who is not the norm, someone who 314 00:19:21.640 --> 00:19:25.680 is outside of whatever the sort of dominant cultural paradigm 315 00:19:25.880 --> 00:19:31.000 is right. So we've been talking about monsters and sort 316 00:19:31.000 --> 00:19:35.440 of this whole setup on otherness, and this was all, 317 00:19:35.440 --> 00:19:37.480 in a way a setup so that we could go 318 00:19:37.519 --> 00:19:39.480 on to talking about other kinds of otherness in the 319 00:19:39.480 --> 00:19:42.799 Middle Ages. And the next three units were Saracens, that's 320 00:19:43.079 --> 00:19:49.359 medieval Christian concepts about Muslims, Jews, and then women who 321 00:19:49.359 --> 00:19:55.440 were also turned into monsters in medieval rhetoric in many ways. 322 00:19:55.799 --> 00:19:58.680 And so we were spending i don't know, a week 323 00:19:58.759 --> 00:20:01.839 or two on images of Jews. And we'd read a 324 00:20:01.880 --> 00:20:06.839 wonderful book by Deborah Strickland called Demons, Saracens, and Jews 325 00:20:07.119 --> 00:20:12.440 Making Monsters in the Middle Ages, and it makes this 326 00:20:12.480 --> 00:20:15.799 wonderful argument about how in the Middle Ages they felt 327 00:20:15.799 --> 00:20:18.480 that the Bible was fixed, you couldn't muck around with 328 00:20:18.519 --> 00:20:23.240 the text. But medieval Christians had switched how they viewed 329 00:20:23.359 --> 00:20:27.319 the contents of the New Testament, because when it was written, 330 00:20:27.319 --> 00:20:32.240 the Romans are the bad guys, right, clearly, Yeah, But 331 00:20:32.359 --> 00:20:36.480 later on, let's say, around the rule of Charlemagne, the 332 00:20:36.559 --> 00:20:41.680 Carolingian period, so you know, eighth century into the ninth century, 333 00:20:40.359 --> 00:20:44.400 the Romans come to be rehabilitated. We get the first 334 00:20:44.680 --> 00:20:47.759 dawnings of the idea of the Holy Roman Empire. Charlemagne 335 00:20:47.799 --> 00:20:50.680 is crowned Emperor of Rome. They decide they like the Romans, 336 00:20:50.680 --> 00:20:52.759 so the Romans can't be the bad guys anymore. So 337 00:20:52.799 --> 00:20:54.559 they look in the book and they find a different 338 00:20:54.640 --> 00:20:57.440 bad guy. Those bad guys turn out to be, of course, 339 00:20:57.480 --> 00:21:01.799 the Jews, who are often just described as the Jews, 340 00:21:01.839 --> 00:21:03.319 this kind of monolith. 341 00:21:04.759 --> 00:21:11.559 And so, so what they did in the images in 342 00:21:11.599 --> 00:21:14.680 the manuscrips, because they couldn't change the text, they turned 343 00:21:14.839 --> 00:21:17.559 the Romans in the images into Jews. 344 00:21:17.960 --> 00:21:21.160 So conscious Pilate, for example, comes in the images to 345 00:21:21.200 --> 00:21:24.400 be a caricature Jew. And you can probably envision what 346 00:21:24.440 --> 00:21:26.960 the caricatures look like. They tend to be, you know, 347 00:21:27.160 --> 00:21:31.039 the most dominant feature is giant hooked noses, but they're 348 00:21:31.039 --> 00:21:34.440 also represented in certain other codified ways, for example, always 349 00:21:34.440 --> 00:21:38.359 in full profile, almost always, which exaggerates the view of 350 00:21:38.359 --> 00:21:40.960 the nose. And so, because they couldn't change the text, 351 00:21:41.000 --> 00:21:43.160 they changed the images. And it's a very subtle way 352 00:21:43.200 --> 00:21:46.480 of doing that. But thereby they make the Jews again 353 00:21:46.519 --> 00:21:49.519 and again into quote unquote the killers of Christ. And 354 00:21:49.559 --> 00:21:53.279 this is a trope that remained very, very common throughout 355 00:21:53.319 --> 00:21:55.559 the Middle Ages. So we were going over all this 356 00:21:55.599 --> 00:22:01.039 in class and I had on screen it absolutely horrifying image. 357 00:22:01.079 --> 00:22:05.480 It's the most extreme anti Semitic, maybe the most extreme 358 00:22:05.519 --> 00:22:09.319 image I know from medieval manuscripts. It's from Assalter, which 359 00:22:09.359 --> 00:22:12.000 is the book of the Psalms, and it has a 360 00:22:12.079 --> 00:22:15.559 section in it of the passion of Jesus, which is 361 00:22:15.559 --> 00:22:22.000 the period of his arrest and torture and eventual execution 362 00:22:22.079 --> 00:22:27.160 by crucifixion. And I had this image up which had 363 00:22:27.400 --> 00:22:29.519 the arrest of Christ. So this is the moment when 364 00:22:29.559 --> 00:22:32.240 Judas kisses him as an active betrayal to identify him 365 00:22:32.279 --> 00:22:34.559 to the Roman soldiers. But all the Roman soldiers are 366 00:22:34.559 --> 00:22:38.960 represented as Jews, and they are represented as horrifying the caricatured, yes, 367 00:22:39.000 --> 00:22:42.640 with the giant noses, but also huge bulbous heads and 368 00:22:42.759 --> 00:22:46.119 giant sort of goggle eyes that are rolling back in 369 00:22:46.160 --> 00:22:51.079 their skulls, and enormous razor fangs, and they're holding weapons 370 00:22:51.079 --> 00:22:56.240 that are made of giant bones with nails sticking out 371 00:22:56.279 --> 00:23:01.519 of them. They are absolutely monstrous and horror And I'm 372 00:23:01.519 --> 00:23:04.119 explaining that, and this is one woman in my class 373 00:23:04.119 --> 00:23:07.599 who was looking angrier and angrier. Now She's looked kind 374 00:23:07.599 --> 00:23:12.000 of displeased with everything I've said all semester. But finally 375 00:23:12.039 --> 00:23:14.640 she couldn't take it anymore, and she just burst out 376 00:23:14.680 --> 00:23:17.000 interrupted me in the middle of the class and said, 377 00:23:17.799 --> 00:23:20.640 I don't see what you're trying to get at. I 378 00:23:20.680 --> 00:23:22.720 wanted to say, lady, I'm not trying to get at anything, 379 00:23:22.759 --> 00:23:25.720 you know, but she said, I don't suit what you're trying 380 00:23:25.720 --> 00:23:29.559 to get at, because first off, that is what Jews 381 00:23:29.599 --> 00:23:35.400 look like more or less. Wow. And anyway, she continued, 382 00:23:35.880 --> 00:23:37.200 they did kill Jesus. 383 00:23:39.240 --> 00:23:39.799 Wow. 384 00:23:40.400 --> 00:23:44.319 And then she went on to shriek out the biblical 385 00:23:44.400 --> 00:23:48.519 passage that in every translation I've ever seen from the 386 00:23:48.640 --> 00:23:50.920 Latin reads, and they said take him, take him away 387 00:23:50.920 --> 00:23:54.000 with him. And what she shouted out was and they 388 00:23:54.039 --> 00:23:58.039 said kill him, kill him, crucify him. I later looked 389 00:23:58.119 --> 00:24:00.079 up and it comes from a sort of discray d 390 00:24:00.759 --> 00:24:05.279 translation which the head of the American Bible Society has 391 00:24:05.440 --> 00:24:12.039 argued may convince ignorant readers that the acts of the 392 00:24:12.079 --> 00:24:15.640 Pharisees in the first century are equatable with the acts 393 00:24:15.680 --> 00:24:18.240 of all the Jews throughout all the time. And there 394 00:24:18.279 --> 00:24:21.119 she was my student as a as an exemplem of 395 00:24:21.160 --> 00:24:26.599 that notion. And yeah, I mean this was this was 396 00:24:26.839 --> 00:24:32.240 shocking and and and horrifying and really quite disturbing. And 397 00:24:32.279 --> 00:24:36.559 actually so she disappears for about a month, no word, 398 00:24:36.640 --> 00:24:38.240 don't know what's going on, and then she shows up 399 00:24:38.279 --> 00:24:42.119 in my office with some absolutely banal question like was 400 00:24:42.160 --> 00:24:44.519 that paper supposed to have end notes of footnotes? I forget, 401 00:24:44.640 --> 00:24:47.160