It’s a little sad, how the advent of CGI rendered much of the animatronics industry obsolete just when cinematic robotics were starting to get so intricate, so lifelike. But the technology retains its place, and under certain circumstances, there’s still a definite advantage to using animatronics instead of CGI or stop motion. Some truly badass robotic FX artists have continued to find plenty of work. Take British wunderkind John Nolan, for instance:
Squeee! Although a relative newcomer, Nolan’s already worked on everything from Hellboy to Where the Wild Things to Doctor Who to Harry Potter. You have to check out his entire show reel. Incredible stuff.
My original thoughts for a post today involved something about the lurking new year. This, plainly, is not that post. No, this is a clip of Ricky Gervais torturing Elmo with sleep deprivation on Sesame Street. If it wasn’t so well done it might be mistaken for a C.I.A. training video, something like “Human Intelligence for Kids!” I’m not sure what Mr. Gervais is trying to get from Elmo, but whatever it is, it is of vital importance. That, or he’s a bit miffed that Elmo didn’t know who he was.
Every time an issue of the magazine goes to print, things somehow turn Highly Inappropriate here at Coilhouse. This is apparent to anyone who was there on Twitter during the hours of our finalrevisiondeadline last night. And it’s only going to get worse before Issue 04’s out. So to celebrate, a video of Miss Piggy singing “Fuck the Pain Away” by Peaches. It’s that kind of day.
With Sesame Street celebrating its 40th birthday this week, many blogs are reflecting on the show’s greatest moments. While most of these lists celebrate the show’s charm and humor, Sesame Street should also be honored for its commitment to social issues. Last week, SocImages uncovered this touching clip from the 1970s:
Gwen puts the above segment with Jesse Jackson, titled “I Am Somebody,” in the following context:
In the early 1980s the Reagan Administration engaged in an active campaign to demonize welfare and welfare recipients. Those who received public assistance were depicted as lazy free-loaders who burdened good, hard-working taxpayers. Race and gender played major parts in this framing of public assistance: the image of the “welfare queen” depicted those on welfare as lazy, promiscuous women who used their reproductive ability to have more children and thus get more welfare. This woman was implicitly African American, such as the woman in an anecdote Reagan told during his 1976 campaign (and repeated frequently) of a “welfare queen” on the South Side of Chicago who supposedly drove to the welfare office to get her check in an expensive Cadillac (whether he had actually encountered any such woman, as he claimed, was of course irrelevant).
The campaign was incredibly successful: once welfare recipients were depicted as lazy, promiscuous Black women sponging off of (White) taxpayers, public support for welfare programs declined. Abby K. recently found an old Sesame Street segment called “I Am Somebody.” Jesse Jackson leads a group of children in an affirmation that they are “somebody,” and specifically includes the lines “I may be poor” and “I may be on welfare” … I realized just how effective the demonization of welfare has been when I was actually shocked to hear kids, in a show targeted at other kids, being led in a chant that said being poor or on welfare shouldn’t be shameful and did not reduce their worth as human beings. Can you imagine a TV show, even on PBS, putting something like this on the air today?
In response to Gwen’s post, SocImages reader Ben Spigel agues that Sesame Street would not shy away from doing something like this even today. He writes, “the Children’s Workshop, which produces all the Sesame Streets, has been very proactive in dealing with contemporary social issues. For example, they produce an Israeli-Palestinian version of Sesame Street, and their HIV-positive muppet for the South African version. In the American version, there was the very public change in Cookie Monster’s eating habits.”
The Palestinian version of Sesame Street, titled Shara’a Simsim, dates back to 1996 – an archived NYT article from that time chronicles the show’s tense beginnings. Since the show’s initial concepting phase, there existed a debate among the producers as to what kind of approach to take. Would it be unrealistic to show a world in which Israeli and Palestinian children played together? Yes, they decided – for the time being. In 2002, the show producers’ complex quandaries were revisited by the New York Times in the wake of 9/11. Now in its fourth season, Shara’a Simsim is a popular show for children that places an emphasis on giving children positive role models. On the Sesame Street Workshop site devoted to Shara’a Simsim, executive producer Daoud Kuttab (who you’ll remember from both the 1996 and 2002 NYT articles!) says, “giving children hope would be a major accomplishment.” And here’s a clip:
Okay, first things first, I think we can all agree that cuffed blue jeans are probably not the way to go when you’re wearing the most incredible baby T-Rex costume puppet ever friggin’ made in the history of EVAR. But still. Holy shit, right? Someone over at Geekologie sums up my own feelings about this clip quite well:
Let me tell you: when that [baby T-Rex] first came running out I thought it was CG. But it wasn’t. And neither were my 30 boners! My God, I’ve never wanted to be part of a live studio audience so bad in my life.
Seriously! Well, it turns out that if you live in the UK, US, Canada or any number of cities in Europe, you can have your Brachiosaurus and meet it, too. The dinos in that clip are only three of over 10 species featured in a spectacular live arena show spin-off of the cherished BBC series Walking With Dinosaurs. Creature designer Sonny Tilders and his crew used their extensive knowledge of puppetry arts and animatronics to bring these long-extinct giants back to life.
The Compagnie Philippe Genty is widely regarded to be one of the most accomplished and gutsy performing arts troupes currently working on the world stage. Their elaborate productions defy easy categorization, using a mixture of puppetry, mime and dance in conjunction with elaborate costuming and props. The narratives and meanings behind their productions are even more difficult to nail down; usually there’s no coherent, linear plot. Surreal, sometimes nightmarish vignettes play out like Freudian wet dreams:
Translating roughly from the French on their website, Philippe Gentry calls their story-building process one of free association.”The company is intent on exploring a visual language that reveals and plays upon conflicting aspects of human nature. When a scene takes place in the subconscious, following neither linear narrative nor the psychology of traditional characters, there are no hard and fast laws of causality. Instead, the performances resonate with our inner landscapes, provoking the emergence of these unspoken and insane hopes, these fears, these shames and desires… these shared, unlimited spaces.”
All that deep and somber explication aside, sometimes the troupe’s output is just downright hilarious:
Whether it’s jet-lag delirium, an abiding love for handcranked slapstick comedy, an abiding love for my homeland’s Rayban-wearing forefathers, or an abiding love for Tony Millionaire that has sent me over the edge, this is making me die:
By the way, The Art of Tony Millionaireis coming out on Sept 2nd. A most beautiful and long overdue collection of gorgeous, fanciful and hilarious art. Geddit.
The “Golden Mean” snail car, a featured installation at the Fire Arts Festival this year. (Photo by Kim Sallaway.)
Heads up, Californians! The Crucible’s 9th annual Fire Arts Festival, “a spectacular open-air exhibition of astounding performances, fire sculpture and interactive art, lights up the sky at the Crucible’s new Fire Arts Arena in the freeway canyon lands of West Oakland.” Commencing this evening and running through Saturday the 18th, the festival is a full ten acres of installations, vendors, roving theatrics, circus arts, fire performers and aerialists.
For months now, Coilhouse co-editor Meredith Yayanos has been in meetings and rehearsals, preparing for this epic event. She’s a key player in The Rootabaga Opera, the featured musical performance at the festival this year. Composed by Mer’s good friend Dan Cantrell, the massive scale, multi-disciplinary work features dancers, acrobats, 20-foot high shadow puppet projections, pyrotechnics, a chamber orchestra and an Eastern European-influenced women’s choir. The whimsical narrative is based on noted American poet Carl Sandburg’s cherished early 20th century folk tales, The Rootabaga Stories.
A few of the Rootabaga Opera shadow puppets by Mark Bulwinkle. They’ll be projected onto a towering scrim and lit by arc welders.
Other featured music performances will include Poor Man’s Whiskey, BlacKMahal, Lucero, and last but certainly not least, Mer’s longtime chum and collaborator, Amanda Fucking Palmer. Mer actually postponed her move to Middle Earth, NZ specifically to participate in this event. She says “I haven’t been so proud or so glad about a music project in a very long time. I’m hoping to see a lot of our readers there!” Rumor has it she’ll be bringing her penny farthing and her Stroh along, too.
After the jump, some more related videos and images, and a long, illustrious list of artists contributing their large scale installations to the massive fundraising event.
Gather round, loves. One of our favorite longtime readers, Renaissance man and gentleman pervert Jerem Morrow, is finally dipping his toes into our fetid staff jacuzzi with this fond review of one of the most depraved Australasian cult films east of Bad Boy Bubby. Lets give him a warm round of nervous laughter and stifled coughing, shall we? The subject matter calls for nothing less!
‘Decade or more ago, I frequented an antiquated video store. Kinda place that still had VHS tapes. Crappy paintings of giant monsters, gangsters and vixens adorned the walls. It was called Video Adventures. The proprietor, Brian, was a true film aficionado, someone you never got tired of listening to ramble. That wonderful place saved me from whatever blockbuster atrocities the theaters were pumping out at the time.
Still, I wanted more. Something beyond the Evil Deads, Rocky Horrors and Blade Runners. Love them though I did (and do), I needed more boundary-pushing. My friends and I began an experiment: Proprietor Brian compiled a list of his 100 Least Rented Movies, and we endeavored to watch each and every one. Now, in my twilight years, my brainmeats aren’t what they used to be, but something tells me we didn’t make it quite so far. Still, a few gems passed before our cinephile eyes.
Pre-LoTR Peter Jackson at his most outrageous. It’d be theBraindead/Bad Taste creator channeling Weird TV, had WTV happened first. It’s manic. It’s horrid. It’s brilliant trash cinema. Sweet transvestites find a kindred spirit in this fox puppet crooning a song entitled “Sodomy”. (Five words. Giant. Golden. Glitter. Splooging. Penises.)
Before I saw Bakshi‘s film version of Crumb‘s Fritz the Cat, I was traumatized by walrus-on-literal-sex-kitten soft-core. How about a journalist fly on the wall, mouth full of shit and wee insect heart full o’ spite? Check. Bunnies doing what bunnies do best, but with terrible, terrible consequences? Check. Strung out frog/lizard thingies languishing in a P.O.W. camp? Check. Lovesick singing hedgehogs? Check. Cow-on-cockroach fetish video? Hoo boy, check. And that ain’t the half of it.
Yes, Jackson and crew made me spew “WTFOMGODZILLA” before most anyone else. Maybe Richard O’Brien popped my cherry, but Rocky felt like home, whereas Meet The Feebles was outright alien territory. I was utterly unprepared for the brainpan dervish that played out before me, wracking me with I’MNOTREADY joy.
I can say, with absolute certainty, that renting it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Despite being mortally afraid of arachnids, I wish more than anything that I could be there right now to see “La Princesse” coming to life. I’m sure many of you do as well. Is any of our UK readership getting a chance to witness this? Please, drop us a line!
Photo by Exacta2a via their wonderful Flickrstream.
