I collectively call puppets and masked figures "material characters," building on Dassia Posner's theories on material performance in the introduction to The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance (2014). I define them more specifically in my forthcoming book, and get into detail about what I believe distinguishes material characters from actors working alone: distance, distillation, and duality. In the coming weeks, I'll be logging notes here on The Mandalorian, since season 2 is being released episode-by-episode right now -- and it's full of them!
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Jennifer
11/18/2020 01:39:32 pm
I can't wait to read about puppets in Star Wars and material characters. I have written about how religious devotees have intimacy with animate images ("statues"). And also about the ritual gesture of cradling which I see as animating images. So the Mandalorian's cradling gesture of the child (baby yoda!) animates the material character (as. you would say), evokes emotion... for the holder and the viewers.
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Colette SearlsNotes as I write my book, A Galaxy of Things: the Power of Puppets and Masks in Star Wars and Beyond (forthcoming Routledge Press, 2022). ArchivesCategories |