Mad scientist humorist!

After having a look at Hugo Araújo’s artwork,  a wise old friend provided an amazing quote from the great American humorist S.J. Perelman:

Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation’s laws.

And I thought, “Damn, this is just too good to be true.  My friend must have just made it up.”

I mean, ve‘s good enough to pull something like that off, if he has a will to.

But what you know?  The citation is genuine.

Amazing!  One of the greatest of all American comic writers (did I mention that he also co-wrote the book for One Touch of Venus, thus providing a link to another Faustus-favored creator?) had his own thaumatophile leanings (albeit, possibly only in jest).

Reality often disappoints, but sometimes it really satisfies.

Housekeeping item: CSS weirdness

Some of you might have noticed recently the appearance on the blog of either font weirdesses (everything in Courier) and odd messages at the top of the blog at times of the form //Custom CSS  in … //.  Sorry about this.  It seems that when I have multiple posts running at the same time with different sets of Custom CSS (which I use, for example to create “screenplay effects” and recently, “comix effects”), WordPress gets a little confused.  I am not sure why this is.  Perhaps the blogging gods are punishing me for attempting to push into formatting regions Where No Blog Was Meant To Go.  (But isn’t that just like a mad scientist?)  Please bear with me…I’m trying to get a suitable workaround for the problem.

Now back to your regularly-scheduled mad science.

Willy Wonka Mad Scientist VII

One last post on Willy Wonka before moving on to other topics.

In the 2005 adaptation, Mike Teavee presents an interesting sort of character in that it is suggested that even if a horrid child, he is something of a mad genius.  He finds the golden ticket that gets him into Wonka’s factory not through dumb luck (like Augustus Gloop and Violet Beauregard) or a brute force approach (like Veruca Salt) or the operations of karma (Charlie Bucket, of course) but through a calculation — something involving shipping dates, controlling for the weather, and “the derivative of the Nikkei.”

And confronted with Willy Wonka’s transportation technology, he takes a perfect mad scientist attitude.

int. willy wonka’s television room – day

mike

Don’t you realize what you’ve invented? It’s a teleporter! It’s the most important invention in the history of the world. And all you think about is chocolate.

mr. teavee

Calm down, Mike. I think Mr. Wonka knows what he’s talking about.

mike

No he doesn’t. He has no idea! He think’s he’s a genius but he’s an idiot. But I’m not…

Mike makes a dash across the room toward the teleporter device, knocking down two Oompa-Loompas as he does so.

wonka

Hey little boy…don’t push my button.

But push the button Mike does, with himself as experimental guinea pig.  An ideal “I’ll show them” attitude that wouldn’t be out of place in more movies than I could probably name.

Now Mike does sort of get out of his predicament, albeit rather changed.  Wonka’s remedy for Mike shinkage is to stretch him out like taffy.  This leaves Mike rather tall and thin, as the shot of the departing horrid children clearly shows.

Mike, unlike Violet, gives no indication of being at all pleased by his transformation.

I don’t think I’m giving away a spoiler in indicating that in the end Charlie ends up as Wonka’s heir as a mad science confectioner.  But what of Mike?  Might he not be vowing revenge?

I think that there could be a great sequel here, where a grown-up (but still physically warped) Mike Teavee becomes a supervillain mad scientist, seeking to wreck revenge on the grown-up Charlie Bucket.

Willie Wonka Mad Scientist VI

Mike Teavee’s fate at the other end of his teletransporter adventure is to be re-assembled — but not quite at the right scale.  In the 1971 adaptation this means a not-too-convincing front projection effect to show Mike to scale with his profoundly dismayed mother.

Special effects technology had improved a lot by the time of the 2005 adaptation, but Mike still ends up tiny.

The concept of someone shrunk to really tiny through either magic or mad science is at least as old as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (and probably much older). but the 1971 adaptation is the first cinematic version of the idea I can recall seeing, and probably the first that many other people can recall seeing as well.

And unsurprisingly, it’s fetish fuel for some.   For one thing, if you shrink only the person but not the clothes, it’s a way to get someone naked in a hurry.  (It’s the flip side, of course, of making someone expand dramatically without the clothes adapting.)  I’ll admit, I’ve gone there before, and I’ll go there again with a slight re-write, if only because I want to try out a bit of new blogging technology.   I’ve been trying to figure out a means for comic book scripting in HTML that shows possible underlying panel and page geometry better than a simple linear script.  Of course that’s not something that a person of ordinary prudence and common sense would attempt, but since I’m clearly not one of those, here goes:

STACEY, a voluptuous coed, is wearing a short skirt and a v-neck shirt with the words GNOSIS COLLEGE written on it She is stepping onto the transporter pad, a circular raised dais with large cables running into it.

CAPTION: A demonstration for the skeptic!

STACEY: Professor Oddbol, are you sure this is safe?

A full-on view of PROFESSOR ODDBOL, who is wearing a full-length labcoat and a pair of heavy goggles, and standing behind some sort of elaborate control panel.

ODDBOL: Perfectly safe, my dear. I propose only to send you across the room..

Stacey is being picked up by Oddbol’s hand (the scaling shows that Stacey has shrunk down to the size of Oddbol’s index finger.

CAPTION: Looks like Oddbol will being doing some interesting experiments soon.

STACEY (balloon with tiny words): Put me down!

There is a Stacey-shaped FLASH where Stacey was standing on the platform. Stacey’s now-hollow clothes are caught in mid-action beginning to fall to the pad.

CAPTION: Transported!

SFX: SZZZT!

STACEY (partially jagged balloon): Well, okay but…EEEK!

A tiny Stacey is standing, nude, covering her private pats with her hands. Behind her, the giant face of Oddbol can be seen looming. He is scratching his head.

STACEY (balloon with tiny words): Help me!

ODDBOL: Oh dear. There seems be a problem with the matter scaler.

It’s worth noting, I suppose, that Tim Burton, whom the Gods blessed with abundant weird and who did both the 2005 Willy Wonka adaptation as well as a recent version of Alice in Wonderland does toy with the idea that shrinking and growing will get the pretty girl out of her clothes.  But of course, since it’s a PG-rated movie made within the Empire of Mouse, he only toys with the idea.

Out on the wide Internet, we might be poor in resources but we are rich in creative freedom, and people go much deeper into the kink of shrinking.  One of the finest might be the Minimizer, who really has a thing for shrinking women, and unsurprisingly often for the mad science that might lead to their creation.  Ve comes up with the most becoming of sketches.

Should you wish to extract some extra kink from the image, the (probably) mad scientist who wields the pencil which helpfully provides a sense of scale here is a woman.

The Minimizer does commissions.  And the links page shows that there are some people who are clearly way into all this.  I wonder how much of it might have started with Mike Teavee… [Faustus May 11, 2018: This information is probably no longer current as the Minimizer’s site appears to be no longer maintained. The one link in the post above is to a preserved version in the Internet Archive.]

New art for Erotic Mad Science

You might have noticed a few minor design changes here at EroticMadScience lately, as I’ve decided to go a level or so deeper in indulging my inner weirdness and commission art with an appropriate mad science theme.  (It’s always a good day, really, when you can spare something that’s merely money and get art in exchange.)  Most readily recognizable (since she now appears in the header bar as a sort of presiding spirit for the site) is this:

(Image above Creative Commons licensed.) Creative Commons License

Yes, it’s the Maschinenmensch from Fritz Lang‘s Metropolis, at a critical moment in her transformation into a virtual Maria.  Albeit done a little more explicitly than might have been possible for the big screen in 1927.

The artist who created this image is Hugo Araújo, working for Glass House Graphics.  [Faustus May 11, 2018: The original link for Hugo is dead, but there is a modest gallery of his work to be found here, and he has a blog here and a DeviantArt site here.] And I must say, if you ever want to do bespoke fantasy art of your own, I can recommend these folks highly.  They’re creative and they’re fun and a joy to work with.

Of course, where would robot Maria be without her mad scientist creator, also rendered for me by Hugo:

(Image above Creative Commons licensed.) Creative Commons License

Rotwang, that very image of the mad scientist.  I really like what Hugo’s done with all those glowing tubes.

I hope you enjoy these images.  I might commission more in the future.

Willy Wonka Mad Scientist V

The last horrid child to fall into a near-death trap is Mike Teavee, who’s a little too much into television.

The setup is this.  Wonka has created a mad science technology that allows him to break down a physical object into tiny components and transmitted to a remote location — in effect, something like Star Trek‘s transporter device, save that it’s not really meant for people.  Wonka wants it simply to transmit chocolate bars to people’s TV sets — a form of advertising, you see.

In the 1971 adaptation, Mike is a little overly fascinated by the prospect of being on television.

And this has a rather dangerous outcome.

In the end, Mike does end up reassembled.  Sort of.  The outcome of the process will be the subject of tomorrow’s post.

I’m pretty sure that I saw this scene as a child well before I ever saw an episode of Star Trek or any other use of a matter transporter in fiction.  Was I impressed?  Well, look around what I write:  what is the Apsinthion Protocol is a process of being broken down and re-assembled, here imagined as a sort of very elaborate sex machine.  More obliquely, the strange process Iris goes through is a kind of disassembly and reassembly.  The unnamed native girl in the ethnographic film footage watched by Maureen is disassembled, not to be reassembled exactly, but perhaps to be apotheosized.    And of course, my own response to the “how do you want to die?” question posed to me by W. in the Thaumatophile Manifesto involves my own participation in a self-inflicted transporter accident.

The 2005 adaptation of the same scene involves the use of a visual meme that should be familiar to readers of this blog.

But perhaps more interesting is the change in Mike’s motivation in this scene, which deserves, and will get, its own post.

Willy Wonka Mad Scientist IV

In the 1971 adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, once each of the horrid children tumbles into their appropriate near-death trap, they drop out of the story and are not seen again.  We get only a verbal assurance from Willie Wonka that they will be okay.  (Should we trust that he’s telling the truth?)

The 2005 adaptation does things a little differently.  We get a brief scene of the horrid children leavening the factory with their mortified guardians.   Some have undergone…changes.  Violet in particular, after having been blown up into a blueberry and then (off camera) “juiced,” isn’t quite the same girl who went in.  She’s changed color, for one, and for another is now really, really flexible.

She actually seems rather pleased with her transformation, a sentiment which would fit rather well with the ethos of the Gnosis College fictional world.

Fetish fuel for a new generation, indeed.

Willy Wonka Mad Scientist III

Another of the horrid children nearly done in by Willy Wonka mad science is named Violet Beauregarde, who has a bad habit of excessive gum chewing.  She seizes a piece of experimental chewing gum –billed by Wonka as “a whole meal in a stick” — and promptly starts chewing it.  That would seem to be a violation of experimental safety protocols.  That is, if Wonka’s factory had such a thing as safety protocols.

Things go swimmingly for Violet until the end, where the blueberry pie part of the meal produces a certain side effect.  In the 1971 version:

Violet blows up like a blueberry.  Fetish fuel for a new generation:

Why fetish fuel?  Well, as it turns out, there is actually a fetish for body inflation.  I’ve written about it some at ErosBlog before and there’s a decent discussion of it also in Agnès Giard‘s Le sexe bizarre (on pp. 116-7, under the subhead “J’ai le cœur qui fait boum”)  And Violet’s experience even inspired a bit of a fetishistic comic book called The Adventures of Berrygirl, in which an unsupecting college coed is slipped a bit of Wonka’s not-quite-perfected gum and…

You can find more of the story at this body-inflation page.

Willy Wonka Mad Scientist IIA

A footnote to l’affaire Gloop, if you will.  Like many kids, I didn’t just watch the 1971 movie adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  I went to the source text by Roald Dahl, where I found glosses on the the whole Augustus Gloop incident like this:

“Mr. Wonka doesn’t seem to think so!” cried Mrs. Gloop. ” just look at him.  he’s laughing his head off!  How dare you laugh like that why my boy’s just gone up the pipe!  You monster!”  she shrieked, pointing her umbrella at Mr. Wonka as though she were going to run him through.  “You think it’s a joke, do you?  You think that sucking my boy up into you Fudge Room like that is just one great big colossal joke?”

“He’ll be perfectly safe,” said Mr. Wonka, giggling slightly.

He’ll be chocolate fudge!” shrieked Mrs. Gloop.

“Never!” cried Mr. Wonka.

“Of course he will!” shried Mrs. Gloop.

“Because the taste would be terrible,” said Mr. Wonka.  “Just imagine it!  Augustus-flavored chocolate coated Gloop!  No one would buy it.”

That’s on pp. 75-6 of the 2007 Puffin edition, if you care.

All these years — decades, really — later I reflect and wonder if this naughty cannibalistic image didn’t create in my head scenes like this from Gnosis Dreamscapes.

 

int. an industrial set inside “hygeine and you” – day

Professor Wagstaff stands with LITTLE BOBBY, a boy of perhaps eleven, watching cans coming down a conveyer belt through a hole in the wall.

little bobby

Gee, Professor, this isn’t quite what I expected.

Little Bobby picks a can off the assembly line and looks at it.

close-up: a can

The lable has a picture of a smiling, well-scrubbed and properly coiffed Marcia on it, with the legends CANNED MARCIA and AS SEEN ON T.V. on it.

back to scene

PROFESSOR WAGSTAFF

Well, little Bobby, let that be a lesson to you. Always check the settings on the machine before you start.

LITTLE BOBBY

I will, Professor. I promise.

What a tangled thing our psyches are.

Willy Wonka Mad Scientist II

If there are any among you who don’t know the core plot behind Roald Dahl‘s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or its various film adaptations, it is this.  Eccentric industrial chocolatier (and, as I would argue, first rate mad scientist) Willy Wonka sets up a world-wide lottery that picks five children (with one guardian each) to go on an exclusive tour of his rather strange and dangerous factory.  Four of the lucky winners are beastly children whose misbehavior leads them to get into near-fatal trouble.  The fifth is the penurious but angelic Charlie Bucket, whom Willy Wonka adopts as his heir at the end.

The first beastly child to get in trouble is Augustus Gloop, a gluttonous boy unable to resist the temptations of Willy Wonka’s chocolate river.  Unsurprisingly he falls in and is promptly sucked up into one of the river’s effluent pipes wherein, due to excessive girth, he gets stuck for a while.  In the 1971 film version, he looks like this:

What’s beneath him is high-pressure liquid chocolate (he’s lucky to have been sucked up head-first!) which will eventually push him up through the tube to a destination elsewhere in Wonka’s factory.

One obvious fetish that will be fueled by this scene is something called wet and messy fetishism, arousal brought about by being coated in messy fluids or semi-fluids, chocolate being a popular choice.  It’s not something I know much about, but if you wish to suggest interesting resources in the comments, then by all means dive right in.

Fetish fuel for a new generation came in the 2005 version:

The prop designers deserve extra credit on this one, because the tube empties into a transport vessel that looks a lot like a flying saucer, thus giving the scene an additional alien abduction overtone.  Some people are into that.

Of course there’s another bit of fetish fuel linked to girls in tubes, something for which these scenes provide a visual reference.  Now I’ve certainly covered girls in tubes here at Erotic Mad Science quite a bit, so surely I’m not going to do it any more, am I?

Oh, please, just one more image?  This one has robots in it as a bonus.

Found at Janitor of Lunacy, where else.