Gayants get Banned.Twice.

These days, the parade of giant puppets at Douai in northern France is pretty much treated as an excuse to sell fancy food to tourists - it is said that any child who manages to plant a smacker on the cheek of the puppet will be less likely to suffer from eye problems, but there is not much of the uncanny about this annual tramp around the town. Yet the parade in rooted in a particular political celebration - a victory over the French, when Douai was part of Belgium in 1530 - when the basket makers guild designed a float (the gayant) to rove about the town.

By 1815, when Napoleon was finally removed from power, the adventures of the puppets, more or less came to end: the parade was reinstated after a period of suppression and it was able to settle into the tradition that has led to today's pageant. Yet in the previous three hundred years, when Douai played the political football in the various squabbles for land and revolutions, the gayant, and his wife, would be variously banned and reintroduced.

Histories of radical puppetry - usually written by activists who have a clear agenda to enlist the puppet as an ally of their revolution - point to the banning of puppet shows, whether by the Lord Mayor of London during Cromwell's era, or the government of Saxony in 1793, as evidence that puppetry is a subversive force. While this sometimes leads to the amusing sight of leftists justifying Mr Punch, wife-beater and murderer, for his representation of the everyman, it also simplifies the aesthetic complexity of the puppet into a bland tool for protest. 

A quick sketch of the gayant's status tells a different story. First of all, these giant puppets were not introduced as a sardonic comment on the socio-economic strictures of the sixteenth century: they were supported by the town's government, and fixed the recent victory against the French into the annual calendar. The guild, an early version of a closed shop, and very much an articulation of a professional class, made the puppets, doubtless to show off their skills in the weaving. It's a gung-ho symbol that doubles as a moving advertising hoarding.

The first ban of the gayants was not until 1667, when France conquered Douai. Obvious really: the town didn't need to be reminded of its heroic past fighting the nation it was now part of. The puppets would have been subversive, but only representing one military organisation against another. 

Over a hundred years later, the parade was revived, in 1780. Perhaps by this time, the original meaning of the parade had been forgotten, or the French weren't too upset about ancient history. Admittedly, only nine years later, the French monarchy was toppled, which makes conspiracy theory sense enough to link the return of the puppets to revolutionary action. 

That would work, in a completely irrational manner, if the revolutionary government hadn't banned the parade again. 

Now, the first ban, in 1667, was allegedly because it was "too profane." There were all these devils and dragons stomping about. Sure, that might have been a cover for the political agenda, but it's telling that a religious justification was used.

Then, the revolutionary ban was enforced because the parade was too religious, and had heroic aristocrats. Maybe religious sensibilities had shifted, so that something seen as heretical in 1667 could be seen as pious in 1789, or the actual form of the parade had changed (arguing against the continuity of the parade's content). Either way, a parade of heroic aristocrats isn't the greatest egalitarian protest march.