Throwback Thursday: Marionette

Here's a thing you may not know about me: I love puppets. I grew up on Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, and my fascination for how a skilled puppeteer can bring an inanimate object to life has never waned. One of my favourite toys as a child was a raccoon hand puppet that my dad brought back from a trip (I had a huge collection of stuffed animals, too). It was realistic enough that even my young self could make it look like I was holding a live animal in my arms.

Also, my paternal grandfather had puppets. I believe he made some of them himself. We grandchildren weren't allowed to play with the marionettes, but I remember when we visited I'd always try to sneak into the basement and just look at them. One in particular fascinated me: a papier mâché skeleton. Now that my grandfather is gone, I sometimes wish I had that puppet, so I could look at it, the way I did as a child.

Then, a few years ago (okay, more like ten or fifteen years ago), I decided I should try to make a marionette. So I did what I always do when I want to try something new: I went to the library and got out a stack of books, and I read them.

I was already making dolls. Not many, just the odd one as an idea came into my head. So I figured why not try a stuffed doll marionette first, to see if I could. So I did. Meet Iris.

Iris was inspired by the Greek goddess, messenger to the gods of Olympus, and spirit of rainbows. As I child, I also loved rainbows (unicorns, too). I used black cloth with white paint because I love the look of Greek white-on-black pottery, and I used ancient Greek art as a starting point to design the look of her face.

Her hair, hand-dyed yarn that I picked up on a whim, is much more rainbow than it looks in the photos -- the greens and blues and purples are at the back -- and it has little crystal beads tied into it, like the water drops that make a rainbow.

I don't think the Iris of Greek myth was depicted with wings on her feet (Edit: according to my notes, she did indeed sometimes have winged boots), but Mercury -- also a messenger to the other gods -- was, so I extrapolated. Except I gave her butterfly wings. If I were to do this same puppet again, I might go with dragonfly wings instead.

So why a sudden post about marionettes? I always meant to make more, after Iris, but I never did. Soon after I made her, I went to art school (she was in my application portfolio) and didn't have time for such whims. But a couple of weekends ago, my neighbour at the Halifax Crafters spring fair was Pam of Puppet Dudes. She makes Muppet-like hand puppets, but my puppet-love was roused again. And I've been watching Jim Henson's Creature Shop Challenge on TV (don't tell anyone, but I might have a slight celebrity crush on Brian Henson).

Now I want to make another marionette. I had an Idea. I bought some fabric: black cotton again. And then I haven't had time to work on it. Right now I'm in a slight pause between the two halves of a big bookbinding job while I wait for the artist to finish the rest of the pages. I should be catching up on my April book reviews. And I will. But since I haven't had time to play with my marionette Idea, I thought I'd write a quick something about it.

Edit: I remembered I have my NSCAD application sketchbook still. Here are a couple of the pages where I was working out Iris's design (one added above, one here):

When I get some free time, I'll make another cloth doll marionette. If it goes well, maybe I'll try a papier mâché skeleton.

[BFG] What is it about Doctor Who?

I was thinking, the other day, that Doctor Who really shouldn't work. I mean, one of the most important rules of science fiction is that explanations must be plausible. That's not to say they have to be possible, but they do have to make sense at the time they crop up and they have to be believable in their context.

Explanations of things in Doctor Who are very, very frequently totally implausible. But maybe DW isn't science fiction, despite the space (and time) travel, the aliens, the ray guns, etc. Maybe what it really is is fantasy with the trappings of science fiction. And yeah, I agree with that. I do think DW is more science fantasy than science fiction. But one of the most important rules of fantasy is that fantasy settings have their own rules, and everything that happens has to adhere to those rules. In other words, fantasy has to be internally consistent. If it isn't, then the viewer/reader gets jarred out of the fiction and becomes aware of it as fiction, and that's to be avoided in an immersive story.

And Doctor Who isn't internally consistent. It contradicts its own rules all the time. And yet it still works. OK, maybe it doesn't work for everyone, but it still works for an awful lot of us. So why the heck am I not bothered by sciencey-sounding explanations that don't make sense and world-building that contradicts itself? Why is it that the DW creators can get away with things that almost no other fiction--written or filmed--can?

I don't really have an answer, but I think it might have something to do with the fact the show is just having too much fun, and we the viewers are having fun right along with it, to the point that logic and consistency and plausibility somehow don't matter anymore and don't pull us out of the glorious fiction. Or maybe it's because we already know there will be no logical consistency, so when inconsistencies show up they're expected and don't pull us out of the experience.