Anatomy of an Ovidian Cinema: Mysteries of the Wax Museum

Abstract

There’s poetry in wax. From Pygmalion’s ivory Galatea turning waxen to the touch, to the anatomical Venuses strewn erotically across the halls of La Specola in Florence, or wax mannequins melting slowly on celluloid, the haptic nature of the medium is intrinsically uncanny. Lifelike statues have been haunting our visual history for centuries, and as Kenneth Gross has aptly remarked, the idea of a statue coming to life could be bound to the opposing thought: that the statue was once something living. It is precisely this tension that lies at the heart of a number of films inspired by the wax museum and its mostly static inhabitants. This cultural phenomenon was made most famous by Madame Tussaud, who by the end of the eighteenth century had risen to fame crafting wax counterparts of notorious individuals. The wax creations’ semblance of life has unnerved visitors ever since, and cinema was quick to pick up on the mysteries of the wax museum, trying its best to transfer the magic of the medium to celluloid.

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