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Sunday, January 08, 2006
We are such stuffies as dreams are made on
Tonight I read - out loud, with good results - Tuff Fluff: the Case of Duckie's Missing Brain
I'll just quote a bit from near the end, after the brain recovered from between the pages of The High-Seas Adventures of Blue Jay the Pirate is accidentally swallowed by Big Stuff and a substitute must be procured:
Butterbean and I attempted a rare and risky operation - a brain transplant in a stuffed duck.
"I need hot water, clean towels, a tray and a spoon!" Butterbean said to the beanbags assisting us.
I carefully set down the ball of fluff. Butterbean surprised me by placing his bean next to it.
"What's with this?" I says.
Butterbean solemnly explained, "Duckie is part beanbag to us. Our brains are beans. This might help."
So we filled Duckie's head with stuffing and a bean.
It wasn't pretty, but it worked like a charm. As soon as we were done, Duckie started talking nineteen to the dozen.
This is the second story about stuffed animals performing emergency surgery on each other I've read in the last month. The other is Stepan Chapman, "Revenge of the Calico Cat", in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror
Again Snake whispered the sacred name: "Ragged Anddy".
Anndy raised a foot like a swollen black planet at the end of a blue demin pants leg. The foot levitated across the mud flat and planted itself in the air. A second leg in a red-and-white striped stocking loomed forward. The first two legs were joined by a third, which came to rest between them. The third leg of the tripod was a doubled leg, two legs sewn together. For Ragged Anndy was Siamese twins.
The titanic stuffed goddess strode toward the riverbank. Her feet touched the mud now: arabesques of frost formed in her footprints. Her heads were halfway to the sky.
Anndy's hair was giant loops of red yarn. Her eyes were four balck buttons that glowed with compassion from the centers of radiating lash lines. Each face bore a triangular red nose and mouth of crimson embroidery thread. On the side where her right arm attached, Ann wore a frilly pink pinafore and a starched white apron with deep pockets. On the side where his left arm attached, Andy wore a light blue work shirt, bell-bottom trousers and a navy blue pea jacket.
Anndy stood directly behind the dog. The dog went on raping the corpse. The water of Silk River squirmed like a flea-infested mattress. The moon balloon deflated herself slightly and crept down the ceiling of the world. Anndy's moon shadow fell across the dog's bent back. The little orange dog raped and raped and raped the little dead cat. "Ugh ugh ugh!" said the dog.
"Ik ik ik," said the corpse.
"Ugh ugh ugh," said the dog.
"Jesus you're heavy," said the corpse.
Anndy shook her heads and rested her hands on her hips. Her arms bent like sausages, lacking bones. She waited to be noticed. She was fed up to here with these nightly visits to the Table Land, but what choice did she have? The curse lay on her heads just as much as it lay on theirs.
It's a good story, not suitable for children. An Eternal Return of the Same theme.
There's something satisfactory, in a play-within-a-play way, about representing a set of representations of animals meant (since they are anthropomorphized) to represent humans, etc.
Well, anyway, Amardeep wrote about it, then Ray followed up. I thought I should mention it.
Comments
Although it pushes the bounds of a literary site, for sheer creepy extended exclusive imaginative engagement with stuffed toys, I feel compelled to mention Tony Millionaire.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/06/more_from_evil_elmo.html
a set of representations of animals meant (since they are anthropomorphized) to represent humans, etc.
I’ve just watched Isao Takahata’s anime film, Pom Poko, which is marvelous. It’s set in what is now a suburb of Tokyo and is about a bunch of tanuki (racoon-like canids native to Asia) living in the forest. When construction starts, they realize they’ve got to do something to save their homes. And so they do, though ultimately they fail.
They are presented on the screen in three different ways. There is a realistic mode (think Disney), which is how they appear to humans. Then there is a more cartoony mode, where they walk on two legs, wear clothes, and talk to one another. This is how they appear among themselves. And then there is a very cartoony mode—which is an homage to a classic Japanese cartoonist—which is how they appear when they are depressed, drunk, or sleeping. Finally, since many of them have the power to transform themselves, many of them also assume full human form for periods of time. Keeping track of what’s goiing on is no mean feat.
This really isn’t a children’s film either, though older children can certainly have some fun with it. It’s a comedy in the largest sense of the word.
I’ve seen that film, Bill. It’s pretty darn good, yes. It’s similar to what I’m talking about in that it’s - highly expressivist, I suppose could can say, the different modes in which the tanuki appear.
Following up Ray’s comment: wow, that’s pretty much what Duckie looks like after his brain surgery.
There’s also this restaging of the final scene of “Seven”.
And thirty second bunnies theater.
But leaving aside all such lurid boingboing fodder, I think there is an interesting subgenre of stories about toys meditating on the fact that they are toys - i.e. there is a certain sort of framebreaking which is particularly interesting. It has a certain sort of uncanny/sentimental appeal. I suppose the classics in this regard are “The Velveteen Rabbit” and “The Mouse and His Child”, both of which I like very much.
And, in a way, there’s Pinocchio, and his Japanese transformation into Astro Boy.