Horrible Little Histories (2013)

   

 

   London's Natural History Museum seems to be predominantly set up for the entertainment of children and, accordingly, it is chock-full of dinosaur skeletons. For the intrigued adult visitor, however, there are also interesting pockets. Everywhere, one is confronted by the unheimlich other-worldliness of taxidermied animals, which are at once part of the world, yet also now forever apart from it.   

  On entering the main entrance hall one is struck by the wonderfully demented, Neo-Gothic Victorian architecture, which is somehow reminiscent of the interior of a great cathedral, with its stained glass windows and great vaulted arches.

     When originally built, this architecture was obviously intended to elevate Science to religious status. Which is ironic, because so much of the collection deals with Evolution.

     Walking up the wide stairs to one of the upstairs galleries devoted to the evidence of Darwinian evolutionary continuum, an American woman complains to her husband.
     "No, honey! You know I'm not innerested in all that Satanic stuff! Seriously, honey!"  And, in the same exhibit, another American woman remarks to her husband, "You know, some of these scientists are gonna be mighty embarrassed, come Judgement Day!"

     A group of young men cluster around an exhibit showing the size-range of birds' eggs, from tiny wren egg to emu, ostrich, moa, and above. One of the young men puzzled over the last item - a massive egg from the extinct Madagascan Elephant Bird. I watched his blank face crinkle in consternation as he tried to work out how those big, grey, wrinkled, huge-eared, tusky animals could make it up into their nests in the trees at night.

     A man and his wife stand in front of the many complete fossils of prehistoric ichthyosaurs, which covered an entire wall.
     "They are really pretty awesomely amazing!" he said, "They are more awesomely amazing than the T. Rex - and that was really, really, awesomely amazing!"

 

 
     A burly bloke from Birmingham traipses gloomily along beside his lugubrious wife. She reads out aloud for him the information on the cards next to each exhibit. He shakes his head at each description and delivers his mantra for each one.
     "No ...Sorry, Brenda, I find that hard to believe!"

     A woman from Liverpool yelled to her two friends to "Come and look at this big fuckin' chicken thing!" It was a stuffed Dodo.

 

     An eastern European woman in her early-thirties stalks through the hall where the stuffed animals are. Her husband has his iPhone at the ready. At every moth-eaten creature she immediately strikes a pose that could only be at home in a fashion catalogue: hair thrown back, lips pushed into a pout, sometimes a peek-a-boo look over the shoulder. The surreal combination of stuffed, threadbare animal and vacuous bimbo is quite disturbing.

     A young father tries to impress his eight-year-old in front of a life-size model of an elephant. "Look at those vicious tusks that it uses to kill its prey!"

     A middle-aged Indian man positions his elderly, frail, sari-clad mother in front of an amateurishly-painted blue whale, on a corridor wall, for an iPhone shot. Later he places her in front of a model of an African elephant for another snap.

     A young Korean woman becomes disappointed with the sound effects of insect noises issuing through the plastic telephone in front of one exhibit; so she begins furiously smashing it down on its base: Bash! Bash! Bash! Bash! Bash! Bash! Bash! Bash! Bash! Bash!

I beat a hasty retreat, in search of a pint of beer and some shepherd's pie. As I stepped outside, I thought I heard Darwin turning over in his grave.