{"id":83869,"date":"2015-03-20T15:22:10","date_gmt":"2015-03-20T19:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=83869"},"modified":"2015-03-20T15:27:54","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T19:27:54","slug":"germaine-or-the-master-puppeteer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/20\/germaine-or-the-master-puppeteer\/","title":{"rendered":"Germaine, or the Master Puppeteer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jN2RVvvQwL4?rel=0\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cAnd what is the advantage your puppets would have over living dancers?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe advantage? First of all a negative one, my friend: it would never be guilty of affectation. For affectation is seen, as you know, when the soul, or moving force, appears at some point other than the center of gravity of the movement. Because the operator controls with his wire or thread only this center, the attached limbs are just what they should be \u2026 lifeless, pure pendulums, governed only by the law of gravity. This is an excellent quality. You\u2019ll look for it in vain in most of our dancers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2014Heinrich von Kleist, \u201cOn the Marionette Theatre\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Besides being World Poetry Day, the\u00a0International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, World Down Syndrome Day, Truant\u2019s Day (in Poland), Harmony Day (Australia), and the Anglican Commemoration of Thomas Cranmer, tomorrow (March 21) is World Puppetry Day. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The occasion was proposed by the Iranian puppeteer\u00a0Dzhivada Zolfagariho at 2000\u2019s\u00a0XVIII Congress of the Union Internationale de la Marionnette; it was instituted in 2002. Needless to say, there are any number of ways to celebrate. If you care to ponder the eternal human desire to play god and its meaning, I direct your attention to the terrific collection <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nottinghilleditions.com\/books\/on-dolls\/182\"><em>On Dolls<\/em><\/a><\/em>, edited by Kenneth Gross, which contains not only Kleist\u2019s essay in its entirety but also Baudelaire on the philosophy of toys, Freud on the uncanny, and Rilke on wax dolls, among many others.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Or you can simply appreciate the form on an artistic (or at least sociological) level: whether your taste runs to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=uP2eWHdZLDE\">New Wave<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=WeJ8-vCh4LA\">terrifying<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=CS60rXdKqdE\">operatic<\/a>, or the old-fashioned abuse of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=syJC7S3_4yg\">Punch and Judy<\/a>, we are (thanks to the magic of the Internet) living in a golden age of puppet theater. (And there\u2019s always <em>Being John Malkovich<\/em>.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The following, I think, can be appreciated on several levels. Steven Connor, in his <em>Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny\u00a0Life<\/em>, puts it like this: \u201cIt is as though, as the fossilized form of human longing, the puppet longs in turn, vividly and vivaciously, for the life that can never be its own.\u201d And watching this video with that in mind, it\u2019s hard not to think about questions of human agency\u2014to say nothing of the meaning of the human body, fashion, and models in society. But it\u2019s also entertaining, ingenious, and quite frankly bizarre\u2014and any sinister overtones are quite soundly repressed by the aggressively jocular narration. (On the most superficial level, I think we\u2019d all enjoy a fashion week that went a little heavier on puppet-life.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>Sadie Stein is contributing editor of\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review<em>, and the\u00a0<\/em>Daily<em>\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cAnd what is the advantage your puppets would have over living dancers?\u201d \u201cThe advantage? First of all a negative one, my friend: it would never be guilty of affectation. For affectation is seen, as you know, when the soul, or moving force, appears at some point other than the center of gravity of the movement. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[9686,17500,17499,17505,17501,17504,15183,17502,17503,17498],"class_list":["post-83869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-heinrich-von-kleist","tag-kenneth-gross","tag-march-21","tag-marionettes","tag-on-dolls","tag-puppet-fashion-show","tag-puppets","tag-steven-connor","tag-vidoes","tag-world-puppetry-day"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>March 21 Is World Puppetry Day<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Celebrate with footage of this bizarre puppet fashion-show from the sixties.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/20\/germaine-or-the-master-puppeteer\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Germaine, or the Master Puppeteer by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"March 20, 2015 \u2013 \u201cAnd what is the advantage your puppets would have over living dancers?\u201d \u201cThe advantage? First of all a negative one, my friend: it would never be guilty\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/20\/germaine-or-the-master-puppeteer\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-03-20T19:22:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-03-20T19:27:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-1.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sadie Stein\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/20\/germaine-or-the-master-puppeteer\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/20\/germaine-or-the-master-puppeteer\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Sadie Stein\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/a1aef49f81bfc540a37e03590f3bb4d9\"},\"headline\":\"Germaine, or the Master Puppeteer\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-03-20T19:22:10+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-03-20T19:27:54+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/20\/germaine-or-the-master-puppeteer\/\"},\"wordCount\":452,\"commentCount\":4,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"Heinrich von Kleist\",\"Kenneth Gross\",\"March 21\",\"marionettes\",\"On Dolls\",\"puppet fashion show\",\"puppets\",\"Steven Connor\",\"vidoes\",\"World Puppetry Day\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Our Daily Correspondent\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/20\/germaine-or-the-master-puppeteer\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/20\/germaine-or-the-master-puppeteer\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/20\/germaine-or-the-master-puppeteer\/\",\"name\":\"March 21 Is World Puppetry Day\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2015-03-20T19:22:10+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-03-20T19:27:54+00:00\",\"description\":\"Celebrate with footage of this bizarre puppet fashion-show from the sixties.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/20\/germaine-or-the-master-puppeteer\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/20\/germaine-or-the-master-puppeteer\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/20\/germaine-or-the-master-puppeteer\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Germaine, or the Master Puppeteer\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. 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