These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. Perhaps as a consequence, I’ve always found puppets, waxworks, or any kind of doll or model to be profoundly eerie and intimidating (the correct term for all of this is pupaphobia), an ontological uncertainty located both in the size of the object (like a person, but too small) and in terms of its potential animation: will it move or won’t it? Keywords I remember taking a perverse kind of pleasure in daring myself to pick him up and carry his little body about the room, the puppet ineffably sinister, unsettling (Freud would say, uncanny), completely separate from the balletic figure cavorting about in the black-and-white picture on our television screen. And then somehow, somewhere along the way, I got it into my head that Charlie had died (he actually died in 1977) and that this was his body: lifeless, inert, a moribund, miniature cadaver, unless one was brave enough to pull his strings, in which case he would twitch and jerk spasmodically. Looking back, I think I must have got the toy mixed up in my mind with Hitler: that little smudge of a moustache, the too-large feet, his tendency to do a kind of sinister salute if you pulled his strings just right. Not, I hasten to add, Charlie Chaplin the movie star (indeed, I loved his comedies from the start), but rather Charlie Chaplin the puppet: an 8 inch wooden doll mysteriously (where had he come from? whose was he?) sequestered at the back of a cupboard in our living room. First, a confession: as a child, I was terrified of Charlie Chaplin.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |