Late Night with Wax Figures in the Men’s Room

There was a particularly uncanny moment last night on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.  Wait for it:

The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien – Wax Figures, Redux: Creepy Wax Tom Cruise Stalks Wax Fonzie In The Bathroom (removed from Vimeo)

The wax/flesh boundaries are blurred in unexpected ways in that video that leave even Conan himself speechless about the “horrifying” result.  Wax figures may be inherently uncanny on their own, but the status of these figures as pop celebrities — on a pop celebrity show — placed in a men’s room, shifts the ground of the moment enough to render things even more unstable than they otherwise might be.

While searching for this skit online, I came across a classic Conan video featuring “The VentriloChoir in Budapest” that also was quite funny, with hilarious mockery of the human/puppet divide.  The band is great, but something about the “mass” of ventriloquists, singing in harmony, generates an unusual response — felt as uncanny, but perhaps touchingly beautiful, in its own way.  Another instance of popular folk art turning the uncanny toward alternative ends: