Like a Queen

This is an iHeart podcast.

Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet, with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.

Just ask the Capital One Bank guy.

It's pretty much all he talks about.

In a good way, he'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast, too.

Oh, really?

Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy.

What's in your wallet?

Terms apply.

See capital1.com slash bank.

Capital One NA member FDIC.

Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, All of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

The advent of cinema in the late 19th century changed the world.

Even though motion pictures started as a sideshow oddity, their popularity grew fast as the years went by.

Single-shot films slowly started to evolve in complexity and audiences' tastes evolved along with them.

Within a few decades, people were no no longer diving out of the way of trains coming toward the movie screen and the first proper era of filmmaking took off, the silent era.

Talking about it now, a century later, there are many misconceptions about the silent era.

For instance, most of the films were not presented in black and white, but hand-tinted in vivid monochrome hues.

It was primitive technology, sure, but audiences of the time were just as used to color films as we are today.

Another misconception is how the world at large took to cinema.

Every country had a different entertainment landscape, and for many countries outside of Europe and America, moviegoers wanted different things out of their entertainment.

So follow me to early 20th century Japan to see what I mean.

Japan was in the process of modernizing following the Meiji Restoration.

Industry and commerce was booming, but for entertainment, people largely still looked to the classics.

Kabuki Theater was in the middle of a resurgence in popularity and remained the dominant entertainment for a night out on the town.

So when movies were first arriving from Europe, they seemed like an oddity.

However, this oddity sparked an entirely new class of entertainer, which eventually allowed movies to take over Japanese pop culture.

Early imported movies were simple scenes of daily life without much narrative to speak of.

So in order to increase the value of the night's entertainment, theatrical venues hired a performer to interpret the silent action on screen screen for the audience.

This role became known as the benshi or orator and they weren't just necessary for interpreting western movies to a Japanese audience.

They became an integral part of all movie-going experiences, even films produced in Japan.

A benshi became just as much of a draw for a film as the content of the movie itself.

Many picture houses promoted their live performers on the posters with the movie stars, and this emphasis was an important one.

Their job was not just to blankly recite what's happening on the screen and, you know, read the title cards.

They guided viewers through jarring cuts or scene transitions, provided voices for all the different characters, and would sometimes even recite poetry to describe the emotions of an evocative visual.

A great benshi, projecting his or her voice over the musicians in a thousand-person theater, would become a celebrity in their own right.

In the 1910s, Benshi training schools opened throughout Japan.

Their classes included extensive voice training and education in various performance styles that suits different sorts of films.

The wannabe Benshis were also educated in history, geography, and world cultures to better prepare them for interpreting foreign films.

And as Benshi became more legitimate throughout the country, the government stepped in to make sure that they were properly licensed and abiding by public morals and standards.

Since a benshi could interpret a piece of art for the Japanese public, their performances would be monitored by public officials.

If they didn't abide by censorship laws, their licenses would be revoked immediately.

Now, the narration a benshi provided was known as setsume, and it was ultimately their skill at setsume that would make a benshi's career.

At the peak of the profession, around 1927, there were over 6,800 benshi throughout Japan.

And there were also benshi equivalents in nearby countries, including Korea and Taiwan.

It also lasted a little longer than it did in the West.

When sound films started to overtake silence in the late 1920s, it took many years to catch on across the Pacific.

But inevitably, the popularity of Bensi began to fade.

By the 1930s, the profession was almost gone.

However, they never truly went extinct.

Small groups of dedicated performers kept the practice alive and became famous faces in the world of film preservation and exhibition.

The most famous of these might just be Midori Sawato, a woman whose narration of silent films remains popular to this day.

She's still alive and still performing the art of Satsume, lending her voice to movie stars who would otherwise be mute.

It turns out that the silent era in Japan was never very silent at all.

Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet, with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.

Just ask the Capital One Bank guy.

It's pretty much all he talks about.

In a good way, he'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast, too.

Oh, really?

Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy.

What's in your wallet?

Terms apply.

See capital1.com/slash bank.

Capital One NA member FDIC.

Life's messy.

We're talking spills, stains, pets, and kids.

But with Anibay, you never have to stress about messes again.

At washable sofas.com, discover Anibay Sofas, the only fully machine-washable sofas inside and out, starting at just $699.

Made with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics, that means fewer stains and more peace of mind.

Designed for real life, our sofas feature changeable fabric covers, allowing you to refresh your style anytime.

Need flexibility?

Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa effortlessly.

Perfect for cozy apartments or spacious homes.

Plus, they're earth-friendly and built to last.

That's why over 200,000 happy customers have made the switch.

Upgrade your space today.

Visit washable sofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life.

That's washable sofas.com.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Is it possible to elect a queen?

Usually the answer to that question is no.

Elective monarchies have existed throughout human history, but the kings and queens we remember are often parts of dynasties, chosen by bloodline or a conquest.

Which is perhaps why, among ordinary people, there are often little competitions to choose queens of our own.

A queen, after all, is a great title for a figurehead, even if she has no real power.

Perhaps you're familiar with the concept of a May Queen, a woman who was appointed in a midsummer festival to be dressed in flowers and celebrate nature.

It's an old and extremely popular tradition, but at some point this practice spread from folklore to that of the industrial society of Great Britain.

It began as a publicity stunt in 1925.

To celebrate their 100-year anniversary, the Stockton and Darlington Railroad held a beauty pageant where they crowned Helena Watton as their first railway queen.

For a a year, this symbolic figure would represent the great progress and the shining future of the industrial age.

Even though it was commemorating an anniversary, the railway queen was not a one-time appointment.

Every year afterward, the railway would appoint a new queen with all the fanfare and publicity of the first.

Although the early queens were all daughters of railroad company employees, Soon the candidates expanded to their greater British public, and other industries caught on as well, leading to an explosion of industrial queens in the 1930s.

There was a cotton queen, a wool queen, a coal queen, queens of silk, salt, fish, and radio.

It became the go-to method for celebrating each given corner of British industry.

The United States also got in on the action, crowning their own queens of industry.

But what did a queen of industry actually do?

Well, their role was ceremonial to be sure.

The early critics who labeled it as a publicity stunt couldn't have been more correct.

But there was more to being a queen of industry than being a pretty face.

They were expected to give speeches, make public appearances advocating for their industry.

Essentially, they were the face of their field for the entire year.

As a result, this appointment catapulted a number of young women and girls into something resembling celebrity.

In the most dramatic cases, this even led to opportunities to go abroad and observe how other countries handle their industries.

For example, in 1935, the 15-year-old Audrey Mossum was crowned Britain's railway queen.

The following year saw her experience a whirlwind of public appearances and ceremonies, culminating in a controversial trip to the East.

The railway queen, you see, had been invited to go to the Soviet Union.

She would undertake this trip in the summer of 1936, traveling by rail from Mins to Moscow.

where she met Joseph Stalin himself.

The head of Soviet Russia greeted her before a crowd of railway workers, and the widow of Vladimir Lenin presented her with a special Russian nesting doll to commemorate her visit.

Since the 1930s, competition to be crowned a queen of industry became more and more stiff.

Rather than simply be chosen by a small group of companies, these became full competitions, with finalists and a panel of carefully selected judges.

After the Second World War, the role of the queens of industry even expanded to one of recruitment.

You see, women were not just the faces of industry, they were increasingly part of it.

Companies produced recruitment films starring the queens of industry in order to encourage women to join the workforce.

Like actual royalty, though, these queens of industry would have a tense relationship with the workers themselves.

From the beginning, the title was roundly criticized as a distraction from the growing power of trade unions.

Union members would eventually allow their families to participate in these sorts of pageants, but they would abstain from participating if a strike was called.

The final queens of industry were appointed in the 1980s, showing how the practice had faded as times and tastes changed.

Beauty competitions in general have become less in vogue, and labor disputes between workers and government-backed management have made the whole thing seem much less quaint.

Communities, though, have always been good at finding fresh ways to overcome the problems they face.

The queens of industry might be a thing of the past, but they definitely seemed to serve a purpose at the time.

And looking back, they've left us with something incredibly valuable.

A curious chapter in history.

I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about the show by visiting CuriositiesPodcast.com.

The show was created by me, Aaron Mankey, in partnership with How Stuff Works.

I make another award-winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show.

And you can learn all about it over at theworldoflore.com.

And until next time, stay curious.

Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet, with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.

Just ask the Capital One Bank Guy.

It's pretty much all he talks about.

In a good way.

He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast, too.

Oh,

really?

Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy.

What's in your wallet?

Terms apply.

See capital one.com/slash bank, capital One NA member FDIC.

This is an iHeart podcast.