Narrating Fabrics: Nostalgia in Animated Puppets’ Skin

Abstract

In recent years, many studies in the field of animation aesthetics have recognized that puppets’ materiality in stop-motion animation films is a powerful narrative tool. Starting from these premises, this article explores stop-motion films performed by fabric-skinned puppets and suggests that textile materials convey meta-narratives about loss and nostalgia. The analyses of the anthropological and expressive–sensorial dimensions of fabric indeed allow us to investigate the concepts of melancholy and nostalgia as intellectual and emotional experiences made possible thanks to the material characteristics of an artifact. To validate this hypothesis, three stop-motion short films are considered: the Japanese film Komaneko’s Christmas: The Lost Present (2009) by Tsuneo Goda and produced by the Dwarf studio; Christopher Kezelos’ film The Maker (2011); and Marionette (2012) by Thomas Tanner and Frayah Humphries. In these films, puppets’ materiality enhances either the melancholy aspects or the positive consequences of nostalgia and this interpretation can be formulated by looking at the ‘stories’ narrated by puppets’ fragile fabric skin as a manifestation of wistfulness. After providing an interdisciplinary overview of the main theoretical studies that explore concepts such as craftsmanship, puppets’ materiality and nostalgia from either animation, design or psychanalytical perspectives, the article defines three phenomenological dimensions of nostalgia suggested by fabric-skinned puppets’ material surface. Nostalgia is analysed as an emotion that proactively allows us to face the present by remembering the past, as an unconscious relational feeling that manifests human beings’ need to connect and as a pessimistic reaction to an inconsolable and irretrievable loss.