Apotropaic Symbols for the Modern Age

Or, My God. The Giant Puppet Thing All Makes Sense Now.
By Moe Lane

No, really, it did. I was as shocked as anybody else would have been to have figured it out.

It started like this: I was perusing Who Knew? yesterday (and I can’t believe that I forgot both them and Norman Geras for the blogroll – fixing that now). Specifically, this post, where I was struck by this sentence:

People who really thought that Bush was the most dangerous man on the planet I suspect would not be freely shouting it out in the open if they thought for a moment they’d get shot.

I’ve wondered about this, myself: it seems so counterintuitive, after all. If the United States was actually being run by a bunch of fascists, they’re the slowest ones in human history: any self-respecting dictatorship would have long since burned down a couple of state legislatures and blamed it on the Greens, thrown about twenty thousand people into internal exile in Alaska, resettled the entire cities of Berkeley, CA and Cambridge, MA to Guam and set up at least a dozen Arizonan concentration camps. Instead, we’ve got… well, the same Republic we’ve always had, complete with the same bunch of people acting like dead men on furlough and (and I do hope that Lenin can somehow perceive the way I just ripped his line off) while never seeming to notice that they don’t have to.

Now, traditionally, we here at the VRWC have answered this paradox in two ways:

1). The people loudly, publicly and freely making the claim that Bush is equivalent to Hitler (and these days, Saddam Hussein) and that the United States is a police state are idiots.
2). The people loudly, publicly and freely making the claim that Bush is equivalent to Hitler (and these days, Saddam Hussein) and that the United States is a police state are idiots.

To paraphrase Crighton from Red Dwarf, yes, I know that I repeated myself, but it’s such a good reason that I thought that I’d use it twice. Please also note that I am directing my scorn towards people that my esteemed coblogger Katherine (who is no Righty) calls the ’embarassing theater contingent’. Indeed, it’s thanks to her request that I’m actually going to give some honest advice on how to handle these maroons, so no spluttering of outrage if you’re just a person who disagreed with the war. I’m trying to help you.

Anyway, we at the VRWC have worked with the They’re Loonies Hypothesis for some time, but, really, possibly it needs to be refined a bit. After all, we are talking about American citizens, here: they’ve gotten enough protein from an early age, so major brain damage is unlikely, and despite what I think about modern education it does manage to teach people to read, so utter, total ignorance can be technically ruled out as well. And, of course, they can’t be actually right, as they haven’t been arrested, tortured, raped, electrocuted, burned, strangled, eviscerated, sliced, shot, sterilized, smothered, gassed, vivisected and buried in unmarked mass graves along with their families, loved ones, friends and anybody that was around at the time that the goons came for them. All in all, it’s a puzzler.

But then I thought of the puppets.

Ah, yes, the giant puppets: those wonderful, magical (more on that later) symbols of the barking mad contingent of the anti-war movement. Along with men on stilts, giant puppets have become expected features of the modern activist circuit (what, you didn’t know these guys were migratory?); no protest is complete without at least half a dozen. Oddly enough, nobody ever seems to ask themselves why.

Seriously, think about it. Construction of your standard giant puppet is going to require at least one a day of coming up with the design, shaping the chicken wire, making up the paper mache, slathering it on, letting it dry, painting it, disassembling it, transporting it, assembling it into its final form on site, transporting the damn thing around, making emergency repairs, disassembling it again and taking it to either long term storage and/or a handy dumpster. It’s going to be heavy, awkward to carry, you’re publicly stuck with it (no quick anonymous stops into a bar for a beer for you, my fine young revolutionary) for the duration and let’s just completely forget about protest hookup sex afterwards, unless you can find somebody willing to wait patiently while you frantically look for the aforementioned God-damned dumpster. In short, this is not a trivial undertaking – but what’s the payoff? There must be a payoff.

And this leads, slowly, surely and ramblingly to the point of this entire exercise:

Ghost shirts.

To those wondering what in hell I’m talking about and too lazy to click links, “ghost shirts” were garments worn by the devotees of the Native American Ghost Dance movement of the 1890s. Their avowed purpose was to provide protection against attacks by soldiers – specifically, bullets – when used in conjunction with ritualized dance and mental disciplines. The concept was hardly unique to Native Americans: not ten years later the Boxers of China would be acting on a similar belief in their mystically-acquired invulnerability, with roughly the same amount of success (although I find myself sympathetic towards the former group and not much towards the latter). For that matter, Western history mentions the berserker with his bear shirt and the Celtic spearman with his nakedness.

Should we add to this list the hardcore protester and his giant puppet?

Hear me out on this one. It has to be admitted that this clears up some mysteries, not least of which is why they create the blessed things in the first place (all part of the ritual preparation, you see) and insist on lugging them around (no sense in having a charm handy if it isn’t handy, you know?). It would explain why so many of the puppets are made to represent the people and institutions being protested: I need hardly point out that the practice of creating fetishes in the form of the metaphysical entity that one wishes to either control or repel is profoundly cross-cultural. I should also note that the protesters do not need to be consciously aware of the ritual nature of their activities in order for the theory to work: indeed, an unconscious adherence to ritualized behavior would fit the observed facts better. But the most interesting thing is that the central paradox mentioned earlier is resolved: even if Bush is the most dangerous person in the world and the United States of America is a fascist dictatorship, the protesters would still remain safe, because they have their puppets to protect them. Their participation in parades and rallies make it impossible for the fascists to march in and arrest them all, because the rituals keep them at bay – and if enough people join them, then the fascists will disappear forever and life will become utopia.

(pause)

All of this is bad sociology? That would imply that good sociology exists, bucko.

But look at it from a positive point of view. Let’s say that you’re someone who simply opposes Bush and doesn’t want the United States to get into any more wars unless they’re for reasons which you approve of. Hithero, you’ve been stuck with these guys, and it’s making you grind your teeth because every camera zooms right in on them and ignores the real meat of your demonstration (this assumes, of course, that you were able to wrest away the agenda from International ANSWER, but that’s a snark for another day). Well, now you can marginalize them with a clear conscience; they won’t leave, no matter how much they might threaten to, because deep down inside they know that they and their puppets are the only keeping the brownshirts from the collective throat of America. Stick ’em in the back, make ’em do their thing along the far wall, slap ’em down when they get unruly – it won’t matter, because they’ll fold in the clinch. They need to do their ritual and you don’t need them to do it… so throw them an bone and their own subconscious fears will do the rest.

So, that’s my theory… which, might I add, was written mostly after midnight, so take it or not as you like. Probably not, as I’ve just been very tediously and longwindedly mean to a bunch of people who spend hours and hours working hard on their puppets, and any of them that might eventually read this (knowing the blogosphere, if I get one I’ll be surprised) will no doubt feel deeply insulted that somebody who doesn’t even know them would dare presume to proclaim their psychology, not to mention their true motivations for their actions. To those people I can only say:

Irony’s a bitch, ain’t it?

Moe