The Death of Waxworks and the War on Reality

But this seeing came at a cost. Reality wasn’t required, as long as the substitute was convicing enough.

Can you guess who it is yet?

I don’t often look at the news these days. I used to consume it all; read the broadsheets and the tabloids, watch reports and commentary on reports from across the spectrum of outlets, back when there was a specturm and not just a homogeneous Blairite blob. But at 3am this morning, awoken by foxes doing unspeakable things to one another near my food bin, I glanced at the news in a desperate bid to return to the more comfortable land of nod. Between news reports of the impending apocalypse I saw a story which grabbed my attention: Madame Tussauds is going out of business after 190 years - this despite unveiling a new wax figure of Amanda Holden only last week.

Will the real Amanda Holden please step forward….if there is one…

I have only been to Madame Tussaauds once, in 1982, when my aunt took us there as part of a fun day out in London. Other treats included being swamped by pigeons in Trafalgar square and getting on a bus. My only memory of that day is hanging on to my mum’s legs and hiding behind her skirt, terrified of a wax Dalek. Waxworks were weird and unsettling long before the appearance of Holden in a gold lamé jumpsuit. They were not born out of harmless curiosity or entertainment. They emerged from violence.

During the French Revolution, the human face became an object of public consumption. Heads were severed, held aloft and paraded through the streets. Into this revolutioanry world stepped Marie Tussaud who was tasked with creating death masks of the executed. The wax face became a substitute for the person: a way of preserving, displaying, and even owning their image. The once sacred human countenance became a spectacle.

The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim

- Gustave Le Bon