Day #14 of 31 Days of Halloween
Viva Las Vegas
If you have ever been to the Las Vegas Strip, one of the many tourist attractions is Madam Tussauds Wax Museum. Opened in 1999 it was the first of its kind on US soil and it has made an impact on over an estimated 100+k new visitors each year. Where else can you rub elbows with James Brown, Bono, and Muhammad Ali all in one place? With new Celebrities and Icons being added each year, it's a fascinating place.
I’ve gone myself a few times, and wouldn't say it was without a surreal yet odd feeling, looking into the eyes of a long passed Icon, in eerie likeness, the faces and details are done with unmatched precision.
This isn't really a creepy deal…
Or is it?
Do you know the start of Madame Tussauds actually has a dark and macabre history that goes all the way back to 18th century France.
Madame Marie Tussaud was one of the world's first female entrepreneurs. She was an artist, a businesswoman, and a marketing genius.However, her original fame had more to do with death, torture devices, sexual perversion and crime scene dioramas than with the fine craftsmanship of her wax likenesses.
The daughter of a public executioner, tho she never met her father, his profession is what started her path ideally to what is known today. Citing Tussaud's memoirs, she would often dig through the piles of severed heads that were deliberately left to rot in public squares to begin her career of making realistic figures. She was comfortable gathering her subjects.
Said it was naturally in her lineage.
If Tussaud's experience during the French Revolution taught her anything, it was this: the dark side of human nature is a powerful force, and also it can be exploited for cash. She was a disturbingly cunning woman and knew what the public wanted.
Her mother was employed as a house cleaner for a colleague of her late father, Dr. Phillip Curtius who had a hobby of creating erotic life-size anatomically correct wax figures.
This is where her works of art began. Marie referred to these as “Medical Research tools” as she learned to hone her craft rooted in what was known as deviant acts of wax.
Her start in the business solo was actually in crafting Voltaires’ Death Mask, along with her macabre collection of wax murderers, severed heads, bloody body parts and other artifacts like iron maidens, foreign torture devices and guillotines, like the one used for Marie Antoinette that she ideally became notoriously famous for recreating.
In 1835 Madame Tussaud opened her first permanent wax museum where inside for an extra charge, was the Caverne Des Grands Voleurs (Chamber of Horrors as its known today)
A horrifying room filled with devices of detailed malicious torture,gratuitous blood, and lifelike figures of Vlad the Impaler complete with his rats, Gilles Garnier-The werewolf of Dole and The Blood Countess herself Elizabeth Báthory..... plus many more.
As the years went by the serial killers and deformed body parts outgrew the nobles, and the display was shut down rumored due to poor taste. In fact, I can’t even post some of the images of the orginal as are they are too gruesome for Facebook.
(Hid what i could after my own images from Vacation)
However reported, in 2023 will make its gruesome return with a modern day twist of interactive displays and reenactment characters. Imagine having a man dressed up in a realistic Dahmer wax mask walking among the crowd?
Add comment
Comments