I'm fairly convinced that society still gets its kicks like in the old days: when Aristotle came up with the idea of catharsis he invented a tool that can explain the experience of audiences at everything from gladiatorial fights to X-Factor. Always purging the emotions, performance can be an immersive experience that allows the experience of dangerous emotions in a safe context. Most of the thrill offered by a Greek tragedy can be replicated by a few hours watching TV talent contests.
Getting onto my theatre soap-box, it seems obvious that live performance is always going to be a better location for catharsis. Only when the performers are in front of an audience can a meaningful connection be made - the heartlessness of the public attitude towards the losers on X-Factor suggests that the basic emotional recognition of a fellow human being has been by-passed. In the case of puppetry, however, this becomes problematic. Now, the human form is being represented by a marionette, an object devoid of life. Going by the logic of TV's ability to dehumanise the person, a puppet stand-in ought to be worse.
That said, the puppet can be even more emotive than the actor. Often, a puppet can be more vulnerable - in Boris and Sergey's Vaudevillian Adventure, it's the size of the two naughty boys when faced by demons that makes them sympathetic, even after they have spent the entire show trying to dupe the audience. More absurdly, the mask of a gorilla that Jonny Woo uses in his striptease routine adds to the tragedy and the comedy. After tripping on the banana skin, the gorilla's face seems to ask for sympathy, but seems full of joy when it tucks into the next course. Knowing that the face, being made of plastic, has not changed its expression makes the entire routine surreal. Even the cheeky puppet people of Vox Motus' Slick become more sympathetic through their bizarre fusion of human and costume.
Yael Rasooly, who is bringing Paper Cut to Edinburgh in February, has made a musical cabaret that reveals the tale of three sisters trying to escape the Holocaust - using dolls alongside actors. Objects - such as the lamp in Fringe hit The Fantasist - can become cheeky characters just by virtue of being wobbled about a bit. Usually, anything inanimate, whether mask or doll, that is manipulated by the puppeteer's skill can become even more evocative than a real person.
Notwithstanding the equally long tradition of the sinister puppet - wasn't Chucky a national threat at one point? - this ability of an audience to transfer emotions makes puppetry a uniquely powerful medium. As long as they are kept unthreatening, puppets are able to embody possibly difficult personalities and ideas, and make them acceptable. The use of the puppet in children's educational television - Sesame Street is a better example than Orville - has provided the spoonful of sugar to help the factual medicine go down. And even seriously unpleasant characters, like Hitler, can be softened enough not to be immediately shocking. Leaving aside those children entertainers who could make a cuddly bear creepy, the puppet can become both a personality and a symbol - simultaneously engaging the emotions and the mind. It's a short-cut to audience connection. Even the exaggerated features of Japanese anime imitates the style of the puppet.
Marionettes, like computers in the twentieth century, formed the basis for some philosophical reflection on the nature of being human. Yet in the apparent mordant meditations of Henrich von Kleist, there are clues as to this strange quality in the manipulated object. Asking about the problems of consciousness, Kleist settled on the marionette as the perfect counterpoint to human self-awareness. Seeing how both grace and beauty are undermined in humans by self-consciousness, he contrasted this with the graceful state of the marionette under the control of their master. Suddenly, he discovered a model for the human being who has gone beyond vanity and resistance, towards a greater state of grace.
Whether von Kleist's On The Marionette Theatre was a serious attempt to link the Biblical parable of Genesis with the soon-to-emerge science of psychology, or merely a vaguely provocative dialogue aiming to mock vanity, its descriptions of the marionette theatre explain the peculiar nature of puppet movement.
"He asked me if I hadn't in fact found some of the dance movements of the puppets very graceful.... a group of four peasants dancing the rondo in quick time couldn't have been painted more delicately by Teniers," Henrich admits in conversation with a dancer. "Often shaken in a purely haphazard way, the puppet falls into a kind of rhythmic movement which resembles dance," the dancer replies, noting the connection between even incidental control and the apparently meaningful outcome. Realising that the dancer has found a purity in the marionette's movements that he finds lacking in human dancers, Henrich encourages him to continue. Eventually, the dancer proclaims that the puppet, lacking a soul, becomes a greater being than the human encumbering by 'affectation.'
Conclusions like this perhaps depend on the reader's willingness to accept the universe as a product of a divine being. Over on the TV talent shows, however, an inverse process is happening. Most of the contestants are being caricatured into marionettes, their personalities exaggerated to make them either more sympathetic or pathetic. Possibly, the process of catharsis is easier to experience on figures that are not fully human, which would account both for X-Factor and Oedipus Rex being ideal for a spot of purging. Looking back at Greek theatre, it is possible that the high emotions were indeed stimulated by the tradition of wearing masks. Earliest tragedy is, at least, an ancestor of the modern puppet show. Talent shows, for all their echoes of the gladiatorial arena, use the surrounding media to make masks to hide the reality of their contestants.
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