I am not sure how I created this - I feel a bit like Dr. Frankenstein - but it's a "blank" doll, a form for any sort of character you want to make (in this case, a Scottish piper in full regalia). But here he is not in full anything, just a little mutant floating around, a thing with no face.
There is something about the flat, faceless disk that strikes terror in the human heart. Nowhere Doll. The unliving. Little girls have a tendency to rip off all their Barbies' clothes which end up in a grimy heap in the corner of the closet. Almost all Barbies end up naked, their hair filthy and snarled. Is this a kind of primitive reversion to the Ur-doll, the hank of hair and piece of bone that started it all?
When you come upon a trove of photos as gorgeous as these, you just have to try to find a way to make them move. Thus moved our Dead Monk, Thelonius, who lives in a glass case in the Smithsonian Institution but who has been wheeling around for 450 years or so. I don't know whether they ever take him out for a spin or not, but a video was made which I finally got to see in its original form, not a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. This guy's got rhythm, especially in that last image where he resembles nothing more than a boxer warming up before the big match.
This automaton of a friar can imitate a walking man thanks to a wind-up mechanism. The friar's eyes move from side to side, while one arm raises a rosary's cross for an automated kiss and the other arm strikes the chest in the "mea culpa" gesture from the Catholic Latin Mass. This friar was probably made in Spain or southern Germany and is about 450 years old. It has been in the museum's collections since the late 1970s. This video depicts the original figure. The clothing it wears are from the 1970s. The automaton and other mechanical figures, precursors to today's robots, are in the collections of the Division of Work and Industry, National Museum of American History.
Hey, this might not mean much to YOU, but it's a real bonus to my week. It seems if you wait around long enough, that missing video will eventually show up on YouTube. In this case, it's been missing since about 1567.
I've been fascinated with this guy (affectionately called Dead Monk, though I doubt if that was his real name - probably Saint Whatever) for years now, but couldn't find much about him. There are older, much more distorted and pixilated versions of this video, which I think plays along with the exhibit in the Smithsonian. I doubt if the old (old, OLD-old) man is still in operation - I think he spends most of his time in this glass case - but you never know. His 450-year-old joints may just be able to still perform.
This boxing stance implies that he's been sparring with Sister Ignatius in his spare time, perhaps explaining how he has managed to stay fit for 4 1/2 centuries. If I ever got to see this marvel in person, I think I'd turn cartwheels of joy. I've written about automata before - and a creepier mechanical genre you never saw, the unliving dolls of all time. Now that there are so many more decent videos around, it's probably time to look at them again. And Dead Monk animations! Watch this space for more.
Sometimes I create something that scares me, and I feel a bit like a mad scientist. It was only an innocent doll! I swear it. But it came out looking so - disturbing. It reminded me a bit of my juju doll experiment, in which the object of my wrath actually died. Had nothing to do with me, of course, and I am sure he died with a smile on his face. But he died, nonetheless. There is more to this story, but I am afraid to tell it. Suffice it to say, I came out the other side of it realizing that a doll can be a way to concentrate loves, hates, and wishes, and not all of them are benevolent. This doll will not bring about the death of any known human being. Unknown ones are another matter.
I had a reborn doll phase that lasted a couple of months, if that. It mostly consisted of watching videos of women pretending that elaborately-shaped blobs of silicone were real babies. It was so bizarre that I became transfixed, watching little Tamsyn get "sick" (some of these dolls actually heat up and probably vomit), and Kendrick going on a shopping trip to buy a tiny pair of Skechers. Reborn addicts love to dress up their "babies" and put them in full public view, waiting for that "Oh my God I thought it was - " reaction. Some even leave them locked in hot cars. I can't help but see this as very disturbed behaviour.
But it was fascinating. I wanted the experience without spending the money, so I bought these two, Alyssa and Alex, for about $20 each on eBay. I knitted clothing for them and everything, then very soon I chucked them into a plastic box. Once in a while I would see them on the closet shelf and a wave of shivering dread would go through me. These are uncanny valley dolls, for sure, as are all the reborns.
My dolls aren't life-size and don't have the soft, squishy bodies of the true "unliving" doll. But they are definitely influenced by them, as they are deliberately more creepily real in their detail: fuzzy newborn-like hair, big glassy eyes, eyelashes and a rosebud mouth.
I'm unlikely to play with these much, and I certainly won't treat them like babies. The women in the videos really do seem to believe they're real, and I wonder sometimes how their actual relationships might suffer from their obsession. There's lots and lots of justification going on, assuring everyone that it's a harmless hobby that only brings joy to your life. No mention of the tens of thousands of dollars the high-end version of these things cost.
But is it joyful to dash to the baby's room in the middle of the night to take her temperature, when the "baby" is a chunk of vinyl with a gizmo inside it that makes the sound of a heartbeat? Are these women open with other women, normies I mean, about their "hobby"? My guess is that they're secretive, which is why the "reborn community" on YouTube means so much to them.
