Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Episode 61: Dead Ringer Transcript

Click on “Read More” for the full transcript.





We used Temi to auto transcribe this, then Dan went through and checked it based on the show notes. He tried really hard on it, but this kind of stuff isn't his specialty. So if you notice anything confusing, please comment on this post so Dan can look at it and clarify anything.





Shauna:                               00:00                    Welcome to bunny trails, a whimsical adventure of idioms and other turns of phrase. I'm Shauna Harrison
Dan:                                     00:05                    and I'm Dan Pugh. Each week we delve into the origin and history of an idiom or other turns of phrase and discuss how it's been used over time. A few weeks ago we had a listener ask us about this week's idiom on Twitter. And so I tweased (twitter teased) a quick overview about the idiom that we're going to talk about today, uh, since I was already doing research on it anyway, but the, is a very interesting story and I'd planned to do it, uh, earlier than this, but it took a lot more research to figure it out. So without further ado, we are here to talk about dead ringer. Have you heard some of the stories about dead ringer and what it's supposed to mean and where it comes from?
Shauna:                               00:47                    I have not heard a, any origin stories or myths or anything like that. I've heard plenty of, of horrible jokes that use it, uh, as part of the, uh, the punchline. So.
Dan:                                     01:01                    I see. Yeah. All right. I have heard lots of origin stories, but I don't think I've heard any jokes.
Shauna:                               01:06                    Oh wait, we'll wait. I think I have now, uh, with the graves, uh, I think that, yeah,
Dan:                                     01:14                    Alright, so that's a good point. And we will just go ahead and kick off with that. So first of all, dead ringer is "a person or thing that looks like another or a double". That is how the idiom is used today according to the Oxford English dictionary. There is a very popular fake origin story for this phrase and it is also the fake origin story for several other phrases as well. It is not actually an origin of any idioms to my knowledge. However, um, this origin story is predominant and in fact I found a couple of the... Most online etymological sources may say that this was, this is a myth, but they don't pretend like it's fact. But I did find one that's associated with a college written by what looks to be a college professor that is full of idioms that are, that have fake stories.
Dan:                                     02:08                    Like every one of them was fake. Every single one. I only read like six of them, but all of them that I read, I was like, this is wrong on every account. It's like they literally just went to the very first result from Google and put that in and did no diligence whatsoever. Anyway, this one here is a, is a a very fun one, so I'm going to take a version from the February 24th, 2016 article out of mental floss, which is a website and a magazine and a youtube channel and many other things. As they say, "The Tall Tale England is old and small and they started running out of places to bury people so they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone house and reuse the grave when reopening these coffins. One out of every 25 coffins were found to have had scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive so they thought they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to set out in the graveyard all night, the graveyard shift, right. To listen for the bell. And thus someone could be saved by the bell and the person who then was ringing the bell would be known as the dead ringer."
Dan:                                     03:22                    Yes. This is not true for any of these. That's not where, that's not where graveyard shift came from. That's not where saved by the bell came from. And it is certainly not where a dead ringer came from.
Shauna:                               03:31                    That's so crazy. Okay. But does the bell part of it true?
Dan:                                     03:34                    Okay. So there, there is truth to the fact that some people were prematurely buried. It is not, it is not nearly as high a prevalence as uh, stories today would attest and it is definitely not nearly as high in prevalence as the newspapers and media of the time set in Victorian England, which is the timeframe we're talking about here. But that probably took off because of what's known as taphophobia, which is the fear of being buried alive.
Shauna:                               04:02                    Because that's terrifying y'all. I mean like if you really think about it, I think everybody would have that fear.
Dan:                                     04:06                    Well, I don't,
Shauna:                               04:07                    sorry my y'all came out. Yeah,
Dan:                                     04:11                    I don't, I don't have that fear. So to speak. A a phobia by definition is an irrational fear and I don't have any irrational fears about being buried alive. I of course would very much not like to be buried alive. And if I were in a situation where that seemed like it could be likely to happen, it wouldn't be a phobia. It would be a genuine fear at that time.
Shauna:                               04:32                    Yeah, see that's what I'm saying. That's there's no phobia there. If there's any chance of being buried alive. That's a legitimate fear.
Dan:                                     04:39                    I have a fear of heights and it is an irrational fear because I can sit, we may have talked about this on the pod before, but I can sit and watch a movie where someone or, or like browse reddit or whatever and someone has a picture or in the movie the character is looking out over a tall edge and I get tingling down my back and I have to like hold onto my seat. I do this when I'm pillar jumping in Minecraft or if I'm going really high on scaffolds in Minecraft and I get really high and I start looking around and then I like slink into my chair and I get the shakes and like that's a phobia because I am in no danger in that situation.
Shauna:                               05:18                    So like irrational.
Dan:                                     05:20                    Yeah. Irrational fear.
Shauna:                               05:21                    So like the Felix Baumgarner guy, like terrified you. Did you watch the video okay. Jumping out of it? Yes. So cool.
Dan:                                     05:28                    Yes I did when he jumped off of the, um, hot air balloon or whatever it was and then, yeah, free fell... forever.
Shauna:                               05:34                    Thousands... Yeah. Minutes or whatever. Craziness. So no, I do have to share that. Uh, Dan and I were in Seattle for Podcon and uh, and we went up to the, the space needle. We went up at the top there to the observation deck area and uh, there's the glass flooring and so I'm going, this is so cool. Walk across the glass. There's one section that's just all glass and I'm like laying down on it and like take my picture. This is awesome. I'm in the air floating.
Dan:                                     06:05                    I struggled to take her picture with her phone.
Shauna:                               06:07                    Yeah, Dan's like nervous shaken.
Dan:                                     06:14                    Alright, so phobias though. In this case, the fear of being alive was very prominent at the time and it is still today.
Shauna:                               06:19                    Taphophobia.
Dan:                                     06:19                    Yeah, yeah. What did I say?
Shauna:                               06:21                    I don't know. I just was repeating the word so to get us back on track.
Dan:                                     06:23                    And if I didn't say that right the first time, then yes. The way you said it is. Yay. So there was an 1896 patent filed for a Victorian coffin that would warn anyone that would basically would warn of anyone that was still alive inside the coffin. And uh, this had safety features like Bells and flags and tubes to breathe through. Uh, however we know the origins of this phrase actually predate the, uh, uh, valid or not taphophobia fears of the, uh, late 18 hundreds. Okay. So this is not something, this is definitely, there is no, there's no, no world in which this origin story is accurate.
Shauna:                               07:06                    Okay. Fine. As it is.
Dan:                                     07:07                    Yes. But they did some, I mean they did put like bells and stuff in there. I mean they, they there, there is some truth to like trying to use things to make sure that people don't get buried alive. But most of the, most of the stories of people being buried alive are likely not true because a lot of the like when they dig it back up, a lot of just the natural decomposition progress process of human bodies could mimic what it would look like if they were trying to claw their way out. Yeah. So now there are, there are definitely some animals or something like that, that other chair, but they're there. Definitely. I'm not saying it didn't happen. It obviously did happen. There are, there are definitely some, some times when somebody was buried alive and that would be awful.
Shauna:                               07:52                    Yeah. Welcome to Halloween season.
Dan:                                     07:54                    Right? Yes. All right, so let's get into what really did originate for this phrase. So we're going to start Dead Ringer has two components. Obviously the word dead and the word ringer and the word ringer is where our origin comes from and dead was added to it later. Gotcha. So in this case, and you've, you might, if you think about the word ringer, sometimes we know in sports a ringer is somebody who comes in to take over, you know, like I'm bringing in a ringer, I'm bringing in an expert or something. Right? Yeah. So, and that also comes through this same etymology. So let's start with ringer though, which is a thieves cant from the 17 hundreds.
Shauna:                               08:35                    Whoa. That's a while ago too, right? Right.
Dan:                                     08:37                    So a cant is a slang as slang language that was used by a group of people. And in this case it was used by, uh, thieves or people who would, uh, uh, shysters as they might call them, or the conmen as we might call them. Now, uh, snake oil salesman is another phrase that we like to use. Now, of course, the ringer ringer would have started long before we had snake oil salesman. But, uh, and so it started with the phrase "ring the changes". So there's a couple of different definitions in here, but they all kind of show the same connotation. Uh, and so the Oxford English dictionary now says ring the changes meant, "To substitute one thing for another fraudulently and take the more valuable item."
Dan:                                     09:18                    Which I think is a good over arching view of what ring the changes means. If you were to ring the changes that that's a good overarching view of what that means. Okay. So to look in a definition from 1786 in the Particulars Trials, John Shepherd, they said, " To initiate him into the art of what that gentleman stiled ringing the changes; that is, ingeniously substituting a worse for a better article, and decamping without a discovery."
Dan:                                     09:46                    So a maybe a less direct way of saying the same thing, but in flowery, you know, 1786 way. Yeah. And so that's the first time we actually see ring the changes attested and ring the changes in 1811 in the Dictionary of Vulgar Tongues by Francis Grose was defined as "When a person receives silver in change to shift some good shillings and put bad ones in their place. The person who gave the change is then requested to give good shillings for these bad ones."
Shauna:                               10:12                    Money launderings yeah, right there at the beginning.
Dan:                                     10:22                    Yeah. Short changing and you know, like that kind of stuff.
Shauna:                               10:24                    You know, uh, people, I've heard stories of people doing this, uh, same thing today. So they'll like, um, I heard one, there was a woman who had gotten the attention of a rich guy, you know, and then so he'd gift her jewelry and things and so then she'd go and get the diamonds or whatever replaced with cubic Zirconia.
Dan:                                     10:42                    No. And then, yeah, the diamond. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing. Um, so ring the changes also in the Oxford English dictionary, an alternative, uh, definition is "a person who fraudulently substitutes one thing for another, especially a person who fraudulently substitutes a horse athlete, et Cetera. For another in a competition or sporting event."
Dan:                                     11:05                    So we started seeing that is a definition that came about later, uh, in the, in, in the mid 18 hundreds when that, so the original one, uh, about just substituting one thing for another fraudulently predates. And so I, and I know we here dead ringer talked about as horse racing and that's where it comes from. That's where it was popularized. Absolutely. But the, we, we've seen the phrase dead ringer actually used before it was used in horse racing, so it didn't originate with horse racing, but it did get popularized that way. As we're going to see in a minute as we move into dead ringer here, let's say this about 1870s is the first time I could find it, attested. I saw lots of stuff that said, you know, 1890s and things, but we did see it in the central city. Colorado's newspaper Weekly Register Call. And this is the, uh, September 6th, 1878 edition where they said "The knight of La Mancha storming a windmill is a dead ringer, so to speak, for windy bill." Yeah.
Shauna:                               12:01                    The night of La mancha is that like, you know, Don Quixote or you know,
Dan:                                     12:06                    I don't know. That is possible.
Shauna:                               12:07                    It's my guess here storming a windmill. I don't know. Yes. Interesting. That's a whole lot going on...
Dan:                                     12:12                    I remember when I first started researching this and I saw that and I looked to see if don Quixote, uh, had already been written and, and yeah, absolutely had at that point. So definitely had, so I just wanted to make sure I was like, okay. But yes. Um, yeah, so dead ringer we see it listed, specifically dead ringer at that time in 1878, which is I mean, honestly we, we only started seeing the horse racing and stuff come out in during that same timeframe, so they're kind of contemporary at that point. Okay.
Shauna:                               12:40                    Also that whole, they're dead ringer, so to speak, you know, definitely indicates that it's, you know, commonly run used in that way. Yeah.
Dan:                                     12:48                    Another, the Oxford English dictionary. Then as we move from the mid 18 hundreds to the late 18 hundreds redefines a ringer coming from ringing the changes as "a horse athlete or fraudulently substituted for another in a competition, especially a more skilled competitor brought in to provide an unfair advantage or more advantageous odds."
Dan:                                     13:09                    So this is where we see the definition also encompassing the way it's been used to talk about somebody who's maybe not fraudulently, but you just didn't know that they were really good at it. You know, bring in a ringer on your company's softball team or you know, something of that nature.
Shauna:                               13:24                    There's an episode of Mash that I always think of when I think about free.
Dan:                                     13:28                    I did not work this into the script anywhere about, about mash, but that is exactly, yes. That's exactly what I think of. Awesome. Oh man, that was, was and still is my favorite TV show. Okay. Um, and in specifically Oxford English dictionary has a definition much later for ringer that says, I highly proficient person brought in to augment the powers of a group. Yeah, there you go. So that's how you can see the transition from ring the changes to ringer and then to ringer the way we use it today. If we were just to say you're bringing in a ringer, we're not necessarily meaning it to be fraudulent, we're just saying this is somebody who's brought, been brought in specifically to augment the powers of that group. Right. Usually within respect to a sporting event, but not always. We see it also use like we're bringing in a ringer on this project cause we really need to get it really well done for the client or whatever.
Dan:                                     14:20                    Yeah. Run a ringer, which is another phrase that we see in this time frame using the same kinds of words. Runner, no, run a run a ringer or run in a ringer. Okay. Is the same is used exactly the same as as the dead ringer would be. It's just the act of using a dead ringer in, in this, and this is a horse racing thing. So in 1885 in the Atchinson daily globe out of Atchison, Kansas, uh, this October 2nd edition, 1885 "a few weeks since corum young and Ernst young put up $100 each on a horse race and Corum young claims that Ernst young run in a ringer on him and won his money."
Dan:                                     14:56                    So we see this and at that time we really start seeing it used, uh, in horse racing. That's where we really start seeing the dead ringer come in a and, and, or a ringer and somebody bringing in a horse from somewhere else to run the race.
Dan:                                     15:10                    What was common is that you could find a horse that looked like the other horse, right? So you have a horse that lost poorly at, uh, out of race. And then in the next race, everyone, they saw how poorly that horse did last time. So now you bring in a different horse that looks like it, but it's way better and you bet heavily on this underdog horse and other people bet against it and boom, you, you win heavily. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So another definition of ringers that we see used in the 19 hundreds and, and, and onward is "an outsider or an intruder or a phony person or thing, an impostor specifically." And this is, uh, not used today, but it was used during that timeframe there, uh, at 19, early 19 hundreds, late 18 years, early 19 hundreds, "specifically a person who attaches himself or herself to a political or other group to which she or he does not belong or who votes in a district where he or she does not reside."
Dan:                                     16:05                    So it was used still in a fraudulent way there, but by, in a way to bring somebody into, to just pretend to, you know, belong in that area. Gotcha. As an example, in 1896, uh, about a dozen ringers followed us in and stood around. Rubberin' "
Dan:                                     16:20                    I think it's very interesting that our phrase dead ringer is used as the dead ring in Australia and New Zealand according to the Oxford English dictionary. And, uh, it's very rare now, but, uh, during the late 18 hundreds and even into the mid 19 hundreds, uh, we saw phrases like, "you are the dead ring for the veiled prophet himself."
Dan:                                     16:40                    Uh, and that's from a Bradshaw book, the Quindiri Bank Robbery. We also see it in CJ, Dennis's Songs Sentimental Bloke, "the dead ring: a remarkable likeness".
Dan:                                     16:51                    So we see it. It's just interesting, like we say, ringer in, in the u s and in, in, in, uh, British English. But in Australia, in New Zealand, they would have said the dead ring at the same time. That's kind of cool. I guess one of my big questions was where to dead come in, how to dead get attached to this.
Shauna:                               17:05                    Yeah, that's what I've been kind of wondering. I'm like, okay, well how do we get dead in there,
Dan:                                     17:09                    Sure. So dead. I think most people understand the word dead to mean not living, right? So, and dead has, I don't know, 7,000 pages of entries on like, it runs forever on the Oxford English dictionary. But one of the definitions, and this is the one where I think that this makes the most sense coming from is "Quite certain. Sure. Or unerring."
Shauna:                               17:34                    Okay, Gotcha. Going, I was thinking final or something like that, but I'm getting that. Yeah, that's certainty.
Dan:                                     17:40                    And so we see this in phrases like dead on and dead shots, uh, dead certain. So we see it all use like that where you're, you're, it's, it's unerring, which is really what we see that as a, I've seen some people use it as precise, but, and so that, that version of that definition of the word dead has been around since the late 15 hundreds maybe earlier, but we see it attested by Robert Greene · The Scottish historie of Iames the fourth, slaine at Flodden · 1st edition. Robert Greene writes, "I am dead at a pocket sir..I can..picke a purse assoone as any theefe in my countrie.:
Dan:                                     18:16                    So in this case, it's again being used as attributed to kind of a slang culture and a riff raff culture, so to speak, picking pockets in this case. But he's, he's certainly, he's unerring. Uh, so he's dead at a pocket. He in this case solid and he's got a, he's got it covered on right. And we see it in during our timeframe here, defined dead specifically defined, um, in The Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, and Cant 1889 and this is from Albert Barrere and Charles Godfrey Leland, "Dead-on (riflemen), straight on. A rifle-shot talks of the aiming being dead-on when the day is so calm that he can aim straight at the bull's eye instead of having to allow to the right or left for wind. He is said to be dead-on himself when he is shooting very well.
Dan:                                     19:10                    So in this case, we see dead being used, uh, in that same, in that same way as unerring. And that would have been a contemporary, the 1889 would have been a contemporary. So it's, it is very easy to see how we might have added this as a modifier to ringer during the late 18 hundreds. Although there is a, another definition in the Oxford English dictionary that I thought was interesting that I did just want to bring up. I don't, I don't think that this is where that was added from, but it certainly was probably influenced or influenced one way or the one way or the other. So dead is "a slang specifically of a racehorse that is not intended to win, that is fraudulently run in such a way that it cannot win or they don't believe it is going to win"
Dan:                                     19:57                    So dead in this case would mean either you knew the horse couldn't win because it was fraudulent. So you know you're not, you're not worried about it. And that was known as a dead one or a dead un. Okay. So we see this like in June, 1864 issue of Bailey's monthly magazine, "A horse which has been regarded occasionally as a dead one has proved lively enough to beat the winner of the Two Thousand."
Shauna:                               20:22                    Nice.
Dan:                                     20:24                    Sort of, yeah. Yeah. It's one that you just, there's no, that's a dead one. We don't, there's a dead and we don't expect that one to win. Or sometimes it was also used to mean it can't win because it's fraudulent. We also will see it just a few years later in the London review of politics, society, literature, art and science. This is the July, 1868 version or edition, the July, 1868 edition, "The stable and owners might safely lay against what was technically a ‘dead 'un’ from the first."
Dan:                                     20:55                    and this they were betting against because it was fraudulent. So it was technically a dead un from, from the start.
Shauna:                               20:59                    Gotcha. Not Eligible.
Dan:                                     21:01                    Right. So I think it's very interesting. Dead Ringer comes to us from a thieves cant, was popularized by horse racing and is now frequently missattributed to a genuine fear that swept through Victorian England, which I think sounds like the most 2019 idiom we could have picked.
Shauna:                               21:18                    Absolutely.
Shauna:                               21:20                    Today's show is sponsored by our patrons. According to the Oxford English dictionary since the 13 hundreds the word patron has meant a person standing in a role of oversight, protection or sponsorship to another patron comes from the Latin word for Father, Pater, then becoming patronus, meaning champion or protector, then to patron, meaning one who sponsors something like a patron of the arts. Leonardo Davinci had patrons like Medici and Caser Borgia. Bunny trails has similarly awesome patrons including Pat Rowe and Mary Lopez. If you want to become a patron of bunny trails and get cool perks like early access to episodes, behind the scenes content, monthly mini episodes and more, you can visit us at www.patreon.com/bunnytrailspod or you can find links to it at www.bunnytrailspod.com
Dan:                                     22:11                    Well, let's talk about a couple of examples in art and literature. Dead Ringer is a movie that was released in 1964 it is a crime drama movie starring Bette Davis. Oh, it has a hundred on rotten tomatoes. 100% wow. Yeah. Um, there are identical, this is the synopsis, "Identical twin sisters Margaret (Bette Davis) and Edith Philips (also Davis) haven't spoken in nearly 20 years, ever since Margaret hoodwinked the man Edith loved into marrying her instead. When Margaret's husband dies, Edith reunites with her twin -- but only to seek revenge. Killing her sister and stealing her identity, Edith has everyone convinced she's really Margaret. But when she encounters Margaret's lover, Tony (Peter Lawford), Edith uncovers a shocking secret that threatens her plans."
Shauna:                               23:04                    DUDE this sounds really good actually.
Dan:                                     23:08                    So on the Patreon we will link to the trailer that for this I'm on Youtube and uh, it's, it's not done like movie trailers are now. It's Peter Lawford, uh, the male actor in the show talking about it and uh, you know, talking about there's a big surprise and blah, blah blah. And so, you know, it is amazing. Just the things it took to have one person play two people and the acting chops that I think that that probably took to be, you know, standing here and having an argument with yourself. The one sided monologue that, and Bette Davis does it phenomenally. So it is rated r.
Shauna:                               23:48                    and she's gorgeous.
Dan:                                     23:50                    She is a phenomenal actress though. Uh, and and definitely a very, a very lovely person. All right. Dead Ringer for love is a song by Meatloaf in 1981.
Shauna:                               24:00                    I can't help myself a Meatloaf fan.
Dan:                                     24:02                    That is, I watched the, I watched the music video for this and decided I don't need to see any meatloaf's music videos, but since I sat through it, I will make it available for you as well. We will put a link on the Patreon so everyone, everyone can see it though. Whenever we linked to something that we talked about in the show, it's, it's on the free side, so you don't have to be a patron there. You can just go to the page and check it out. These are some of the words: Rock 'n roll and brew, rock 'n roll and brew They don't mean a thing when I compare 'em next to you Rock 'n roll and brew, rock 'n roll and brew I know that you and I we got better things to do I don't know who you are or what you do, or where you go when you're not around I don't know anything about you baby, but you're everything I'm dreaming of I don't know who you are, but you're a real dead ringer for love
Shauna:                               24:56                    Oh, meatloaf. I mean, when you're espousing poetry like that...
Dan:                                     25:05                    Rock and roll and a brew. In this case Brew B r e w I'm assuming is an alcohol beverage because this is the music video takes place in bar.
Shauna:                               25:16                    I mean like, I'm gonna guess that's just a brew is like, you know a beer, right? Yeah, yeah, yes. But the first two lines, if you just take those without the rest of it, they don't mean a thing. When I compare them next to you, I mean that right there, like, aw man,
Dan:                                     25:31                    You are a cheesy person.
Shauna:                               25:32                    Yeah. But then the whole, I don't know, are why are you, why what you're doing?
Dan:                                     25:37                    I think it's like he's, he's falling for someone that he's met at the bar.
Shauna:                               25:40                    Yeah.
Dan:                                     25:41                    And I don't know if it's like because they're both regulars or because it's just, he's like, head over hills love at first sight type of thing. I don't know.
Shauna:                               25:49                    Who knows. Did you watch the music video?
Dan:                                     25:52                    I did. Yeah. But like it was meatloaf and I'm all like, Eh, all I can hear is like he would do anything except that one thing. Whatever that is. I don't know. I still don't know what that is. What is that thing? Anyway, so team fortress two is a team based multiplayer, first person shooter video game. I had never heard of it before, but there is a weapon in there. Uh, from the team fortress two Wiki page, it kept popping up and so I figured, I know we've got gamers here. Uh, I like several different kinds of board games and video games. I've just, I don't know anything about this one. But anyway, this says, "The Dead Ringer is an unlockable PDA weapon for the Spy. It is a gold-plated pocket watch with an engraving of a hummingbird on its lid, and a circular Cloak display within. This weapon's main attribute is to Cloak the user for 7 seconds upon being injured if it is held out, leaving behind a fake Spy ragdoll corpse to distract and deceive enemies."
Shauna:                               26:51                    Fascinating.
Dan:                                     26:52                    Yes. I did also have to look up what PDA was in this case.
Shauna:                               26:55                    I was wondering the same thing, which was I was like, am I going to be embarrassed if I ask?
Dan:                                     26:59                    I will tell you this, first of all, nowhere on their Wiki do they define what PDA is? So I'm having to just from a context clues component I, and this is nowhere on the Wiki side at all, not just like on that page, but nowhere where it talks about PDA weapons. But judging from what I can see, it looks like they mean personal digital assistant.
Shauna:                               27:21                    Okay, so they do actually mean...
Dan:                                     27:22                    well, I've always heard PDA as public display of affection. I had not really thought about it being PDA since the late nineties, meaning Digital assistants.
Shauna:                               27:32                    I thought, is that, or is it some sort of like something downloadable, you know, like content type thing.
Dan:                                     27:39                    Like DLCs or whatever it, yeah. Nope, it's a personal digital assistant I think.
Shauna:                               27:43                    All right. Well, I mean, yeah.
Dan:                                     27:45                    All right. So the perhaps my favorite thing that I learned about, or at least the most interesting I should say that, uh, that I found while research this phrase is an art exhibit that was curated by Elizabeth Duffy and was on display at the Bristol Art Museum in Bristol, Rhode Island. This was June and July of 2019 so it just closed. The exhibit was titled Dead Ringer and drew quite a bit of controversy. It was even featured not just on their local news, but also on NPRs artscape. Elizabeth spoke to the local Bristol, NBC affiliate, NBC 10 news and described the exhibit as, and I'm taking it from their website here as works that, and I quote, "reflect our social political moment bombarded by images of violence confounded by the surge of fake news and overwhelmed by relentless media.:
Dan:                                     28:34                    And she goes on to say, "in every artwork in the room, there is a deeper level of understanding what's going on, about something that's not visible right at the surface." So some of these things, the article continues to say, some of the pieces include framed bikinis. Uh, the print is made of tiny images of assault weapons that were used in school shootings. The there sculpture sculptures that look like glass, but they're made of recycled plastics. Uh, there are, uh, a blast of color that's been added to the gallery in the form of several paintings and they resemble flowers, but are actually the artist portrayal of explosions that took place during military operations. So a quote from Alison decline, who was the vice president of the board of Bristol Art Museum, "we invite you to engage us in a conversation in these very polarizing topics and look forward to hearing what everybody has to say about it."
Dan:                                     29:24                    So it was very interesting. Some of the controversy was that eight of the board of directors of the art museum threatened to, uh, resign if they went ahead with this. I don't know if they did or not. Um, mostly because it looks like, well n n e s I don't how big Bristol is, but it's Rhode Island, so it can't be that big. We literally, the county next to us is bigger than Rhode Island. So, uh, I, I don't know how many, I know they pack a lot of people in there, but I don't know how big Bristol is. So I don't know how much attention the art museum board of directors paid, but I know that the, the news reported that they had a, uh, like they had from November onward until like May two review the pieces that were going to be in the, in the exhibit and make any claims and no one through a fit about it until it got close. Yeah. Well, yeah. Anyway, you can find more about Elizabeth Duffy at her website, which is www.elizabethduffy.net and um, it has the, her comings and goings in, in different things that you can find more about her. And I will put a link to it on the Patreon.
Dan:                                     30:27                    Well, that about wraps us up for today. Thank you so much for joining us this week. We'd like to hear your feedback about the show. Reach out to us on Twitter @bunnytrailspod, or send an email to us at bunnytrailspod@gmail.com Let us know what you think about the show, what you want to see more of, and what really grinds your gears that we do. And in case you don't know, grinds your hears is a phrase that means something frustrates you.
Shauna:                               30:51                    Word of mouth is still the best way to grow a podcast and your help is greatly appreciated. If you want to join the community and chat more about the show or phrases and their stories in general, you can join the community on Patreon. You'll find the link to that and everything else we do www.bunnytrailspod.com. Thank you again for joining us. We'll talk to you again next week. And until then, remember,
Together:                           31:14                    words belong to their users.


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