yellow orange sunburst friendleader

Since it's a season of...something...mostly lights...do me a favour would you? You know this image of Tutankhamun?

The documentary it comes from was terrible. It grossly exaggerated some deformities present on Tutankhamun's mummy, and is not even remotely how he looked in real life. The people who did this study never had access to his mummy, and really fudged their conclusions for a 'showstopper documentary' so much so that the Egyptian government was angry about it.

Lets list the things that are wrong!

The 'wide hips' only exist on this model because they wanted him to look more 'Amarna like'. The loin cloths found in his tomb are all standard size.

He doesn't have an overbite. This is a result of poor mummification and Carter's poor treatment of the mummy when removing it from the death mask.

He does have a cleft palate, but it's in the soft palate and he wouldn't have noticed it.

He doesn't have a severe club foot. Medical professionals have examined him repeatedly over the years. None have ever pointed it out bar the noting of a 'slight rotation' which wouldn't have been noticeable when he walked if this is indeed a club foot and not another mummification mess up. He would not have needed a staff to walk with this slight rotation. Some staffs in his tomb show wear, but it is normal in Egyptian society to walk with a staff as a sign of power. He has 120 and only 3 show slight wear.

The articles about him 'always being seated and thus very disabled' fail to note that it is common for Pharaoh's of this period to be depicted seated, and there are numerous depictions of him standing doing actions too.

This documentary made him look as bad as possible, based on terrible science, and now every time someone doesn't depict him 'gross and disabled' people complain that he's not 'ugly enough', which is ableist as hell alongside the already ableist exaggerated CGI depiction.

One of my favourite images of Tutankhamun is this one from the top of an ivory box found within his tomb:

Hips that wide would be noticeable even looking at the CT. His pelvis looks exactly how I’d expect a young man’s pelvis to look.

Club foot like that would be really obvious on the bones and would also be visible on the CT image.

His feet in the CT image look pretty normal so any abnormality that is present is so minor that it would need very close examination and measurement of precise angles to notice and/or diagnose. 

It’s certainly possible that he had pain and/or had it impact his mobility without a severe case but that’s not even a good depiction of a severe case of clubfoot. If it was really that severe all his toes would be curled under, not just half of them, and it would also be really fucking obvious in the CT and in the mummy, which is it not.

They’ve done something weird to his head/torso proportions, probably by failing to take into account that if someone is wrapped then it squeezes all the bones in so his shoulders look narrower in mummified form than they would have in life.

Morning Sun - Bernadett Tinko , 2020

Hungarian , b. 1992 -

(Yoinked this from LinkedIn, genuinely interested in seeing how responses align with demographics) (so far it’s those of us over 35 being indignant but I wanna see how those fully plays out) (it’s cultural and technological history/memory, bruh)

Spring picnic.

Monster Theory - Really great anthology to start with, especially the first reading, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's famous "Monster Culture (Seven Theses)" which is a personal favorite

The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts - A general SF/F journal, but there are definitely a lot of great monster theory and gothic horror readings sprinkled throughout. Consider taking a look at Veronica Hollinger's "The Vampire and/as Alien," the special issue on Dracula, and Faye J. Ringel's "Genetic Experimentation: Mad Scientists and the Beast," among others

Werewolf Histories edited by Willem Blécourt - Phenomenal anthology on werewolf scholarship, especially if you're interested in the connections between werewolves and witchcraft and/or witch trials in Early Modern Europe

Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters by Jack Halberstam - Of interest to those who are interested in the connection between the gothic and gender (among other topics). Halberstam has written extensively on both

The Journal of Dracula Studies - Exactly what it sounds like.

Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural - Another journal, which focuses on the connections between witchcraft and occultism, monsters, demonology, and the like.

Susan Stryker's "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix" - An absolutely landmark piece of writing on Frankenstein and the transgender (and in particular the transfeminine) experience; one of my favorite pieces of academic writing of all time.

Speaking of Monsters: A Teratological Anthology - Another solid monster theory anthology

Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene - A really, really good anthology about the ecological gothic that I cannot recommend enough. As a known werewolf guy I especially like the piece "Wolf, or Homo homini lupus" by Carla Freccero

The Vampire Lectures by Lawrence Rickels - So many vampires

Monster Culture in the 21st Century: A Reader - Another anthology, I in particular recommend Rosalind Sibielski's "Gendering the Monster Within: Biological Essentialism, Sexual Difference, and Changing Symbolic Functions of the Monster in Popular Werewolf Texts" in this one.

"The Trans Legacy of Frankenstein" by Jolene Zigarovich - Definitely a good read if you enjoyed the Stryker piece earlier; it's a more general survey of the idea but might give you some ideas for further reading

TransGothic in Literature and Culture - A whole anthology of works on transgender identity and the gothic!

Twenty-First Century Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion - Not to be confused with the other similarly named anthology earlier, this one is on various modern perspectives on the gothic.

"Christians and Jews in the Twelfth Century Werewolf Renaissance" by David A. Shyovitz - Stand-alone article but really really interesting

Wonders and the Order of Nature: 1150-1750 by Lorraine Daston & Katherine Park - Incredible volume that gets into several different subjects surrounding the fantastical in the medieval and early modern eras, monsters among them. The same authors have written some other fantastic work, such as "Unnatural Conceptions: The Study of Monsters in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France and England" and I honestly would recommend any of their work.

Monster Anthropology: Ethnographic Explorations of Transforming Social Worlds Through Monsters - A more anthropology focused volume, I particularly like Rozanna Lilley's "Drawing in the Margins: My Son's Arsenal of Monsters—(Autistic) Imagination and the Cultural Capital of Childhood"

Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations - Another anthology, this time with a historical perspective