Low Budget

It's just a puppet, isn't it?

I saw Team America: World Police yesterday, at a preview. Now, I can’t say if this is a good movie or not. It is very much a creature of its makers, so if you like South Park, you’ll probably love this. What’s interesting, though, is that this movie is about puppets. You’d think this is the opposite of authenticity, but in fact the filmmakers achieve exactly that.
There is a theory of drama which holds that the actor should always remind the audience that he is acting. He is presenting the material, but also standing aside and pointing at it. This theory, developed by old-fashioned communists who were concerned with dissembling the ideological superstructure that kept the ruling class on top, has been picked up in various forms of comedy. The political baggage was dropped, and laughs are the only goal.
You wouldn’t think you could do that with puppets. After all, puppets exist only to perform the narrative. If they do not fully act, what do you have? A pile of wood? Parker and Stone’s puppets seem constantly to reflect on the fact that they are puppets. One may be about to exit dramatically, then will realize he must do that bouncy marionette walk. Or the martial artist prepares to do battle, but is limited to exaggerated puppet moves. A character reaches out to put her hand on another’s chest, but finds that the strings won’t let her. Several times a puppet will go to some human-sized place, where his puppet size is obvious.
The outcome of all this is that we feel we can see the soul of the puppet, trapped in the woodenly acting body. It’s sort of like watching Eric Roberts of William Shatner really trying to act. You know it isn’t quite working, but you can see them trying so hard, you want it to.
In this way, we are tricked into giving authenticity to bad-acting wooden puppets. Not for the acting itself, but for the man or woman behind the actor. Even though there isn’t one. In contrast, we still have no sympathy for the woodenly acted characters of Sky Captain. Whatever happened to them, or didn’t, we can’t find time to care. Nothing happened anywhere except in a computer. At least in Team America, they burned up some real puppets.

posted by dan @ 10/10/2004 01:07:00 PM