“I ordered Taylor Swift from Wish”: Only one of many comments left by fans of the singer after a wax museum in Germany unveiled their latest statue in her likeness.
The Panoptikum Hamburg is the country’s oldest wax museum. Founded in 1879 by Friedrich Hermann Faerber, it boasts more than 120 celebrity look-alike figures for fans to admire and take selfies with.
Highlights
- Fans criticized the Taylor Swift wax figure at Panoptikum Hamburg for its vacant expression and inaccuracies.
- This is the second time in 2024 Panoptikum Hamburg faced backlash for a celebrity wax figure, following criticism of their Ed Sheeran statue.
- Experts believe that highly realistic wax figures often evoke feelings of discomfort, a phenomenon known as the 'Uncanny Valley.'
Their latest work, however, hasn’t been well received after being unveiled this Wednesday (August 13), with many feeling creeped out by the statue’s vacant expression and die-hard fans pointing out smaller mistakes like Swift’s iconic heart-shaped hand gesture being off.
“You know, back in the day, people used to create stunning works of art with marble. Is this really the best we can do now? Ashley in wax?” said one swiftie, comparing the figure to Ashley, a TikToker famous for her uncanny resemblance to the singer.
Germany’s oldest wax museum revealed its latest production, a replica of famous singer Taylor Swift, and her fans hate it
Image credits: panoptikumhamburg
"With the wax figure of Taylor Swift, we are welcoming an absolute superstar to the Panoptikum," said Susanne Faerber, managing director of the museum, after the figure’s unveiling.
"August 13 is therefore a truly lucky day for our wax museum—although the number 13 is also of great importance to Taylor Swift herself and to her countless Swifties. We are delighted to be able to offer fans a special experience with their star."
Swifties, however, remained unimpressed and were particularly brutal in their comments, feeling that the museum had completely failed to honor their idol with the tribute.
“Apparently it was designed by someone who has never seen a single picture of Taylor Swift in their entire life and just went off verbal descriptions,” said one fan on Reddit.
“Wow they really did her mouth and jawline dirty, and what is going on with that outfit?” wrote another.
Image credits: panoptikumhamburg
For the Panoptikum, this is the second time in 2024 they’ve excitedly unveiled a celebrity figurine, only for it to be mocked relentlessly on the internet.
“Ed Sheeran is now in our shop window ready to welcome all visitors!” reads their original post on Instagram.
“Many of the newer figures haven’t been executed well,” reads the first comment below the photo.
“Poor Ed. He looks like a bad CGI horror movie Ed Sheeran,” wrote one user on Reddit.
“Panoptikum should be ashamed of those figures. It literally looks nothing like Taylor. Not the eyes, not the mouth. Don't even get me started on Ed,” said another about the newest statues.
The German museum addressed the criticism and defended the figures.
“We are sorry that we could not meet your expectations. We are also of the opinion that in our 140-year history, some figures have been produced that do not meet today's quality standards.”
“However, we believe that our newer wax figures certainly meet the quality standards of other wax museums and can compete with them,” the company explained.
Each figure requires an average of 150 kg of clay and the painstaking work of up to 10 artists over four months
Image credits: panoptikumhamburg
The process behind each wax sculpture is complex and demanding, needing around 150 kg of clay per figure to replicate each celebrity's head and body using traditional techniques.
“Sculpting the head alone takes up to 6 weeks. The sculptors have the anatomical knowledge to recreate every bone, muscle and tendon accurately,” explains Madame Tussaud’s official site.
“A plaster mold in several parts is created of the clay head and body, then the body is cast out in fiberglass. Meanwhile, wax is heated to 74° Celsius and then poured into the mold to cool and harden overnight.”
“The eyes for each figure are hand made out of Acrylic resin and every little detail is incorporated within a 14 hour procedure. The artists paint the iris by hand using gouache colors and add fine silk threads to make every single vein visible.”
“From start to finish, the creation process of a wax figure takes about three to four months and requires a total of at least 10 different artists.”
Wax figures fight an uphill battle, as experts believe the more life-like they become, the easier it is for them to evoke feelings of revulsion in humans
Wax figures have had a long history of upsetting fans of various celebrities with their portrayals.
From Musée Grévin’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson statue in France looking way too pale to Krakow Wax Museum’s Kate Middleton effigy in Poland being compared to a “corpse,” it’s clear that constructing a successful figure is a difficult process.
Experts have theorized for decades that these wax representations of people trigger a natural and inevitable discomfort in humans.
Labeled the “Uncanny Valley” by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970, the theory proposes a graph with “Affinity” on its Y-axis and “Human Likeness” on its X-axis, wherein the more an inanimate object resembles a human, the more affinity we feel toward it.
This is true up until a point where the object becomes a bit “too human” -- as can be the case with flesh-colored prosthetic hands -- where the graph enters the “Uncanny Valley,” a sharp decline in affinity where any positive feelings disappear and are replaced by discomfort.
Image credits: panoptikumhamburg
“Mori hypothesized that a person’s response to a humanlike robot would abruptly shift from empathy to revulsion as it approached, but failed to attain, a lifelike appearance. This descent into eeriness is known as the uncanny valley,” explains a paper on the original essay.
For Mori, the source of the discomfort comes from a human’s natural tendency to associate a still body with death.
Image credits: panoptikumhamburg
“When we die, we are, of course unable to move; the body goes cold, and the face becomes pale. Therefore, our death can be regarded as a transition from movement to the bottom of the uncanny valley, stillness,” the roboticist explains.
“This explains the secret lying deep beneath the uncanny valley. It’s integral to our self-preservation.”
Even if Mori’s theory was proposed with robots in mind, it can be applied to any inanimate object whose appearance comes close to a human. This means that wax museums could be fighting a losing battle and that, no matter how accurate and life-like the end result is, their figures may be destined to always make people feel uneasy.
Following the reveal of Taylor Swift’s wax statue, netizens were divided, with fans of the artist lambasting the museum’s work, while others took the chance to mock them and their idol’s compositions.
Image credits: teddysphotos
“The face is too wide, the jaw is too chiseled, and the eyes are too far apart,” pinpointed one swiftie.
“Instead of ‘we’ve got Taylor Swift at home’ it’s ‘we’ve got Taylor Swift in the basement of a storage shed,’” joked another.
“Seems pretty accurate to me. It’s like a physical manifestation of her music,” wrote one user on Facebook.
“They say it's horrid. So it fits her music,” said another.
“Seems 100% accurate to me. That is Taylor's face and all. I think what is getting people is the fact she isn't smiling, making a mouth expression or wearing makeup,” one reader theorized.
Comments in German were translated to English for this article.
"I mean, wax figures are always creepy no matter what," wrote one user as others appreciated the Panoptikum's attempt at recreating the star
