A celebrity variant from the Aberdeen Maritime Museum
This week's Ships Sea and The Stars sees the return of baffling seaside atrocity Mr. Punch, previously squeamed on this blog back in March. I don't really begin to share or even fully understand curator Sue Prichard's diagnosis of cartoon violence as a malign influence on real-world power structures, but I've also just been literally blowing chef's kisses at Release The Hounds on ITV2+1 so what do I know? Dickens agrees with me however, and you can hear me reading him do so at 30:37. I'm back at 40:28 to read from Tales of a Tar a list of extraordinarily-named games carved into tops of masts, including "Jack and Bet footing in a pas de deux" and "the Saucy Temeraire at Trafflygar", both of whose rules I think I'd rather invent than learn. There's also spoken word and a really beautiful biscuit.
I'm guessing this picture was a commission though.
I don't really get Punch and Judy shows - we don't call them that way in my country, but they're essentially the same - puppets beating each others with sticks, which I don't find funny at all. (But then again, there's plenty of stuff I didn't/wouldn't have enjoyed as a kid that most kids apparently find quite funny, so I suspect it might just be me.)
ReplyDeleteWhat are they called in Italy? It might just be me being blinkeredly metropolitan but I honestly don't think we have them in this country at all these days.
ReplyDeleteJust puppet shows, really - and I only just learned that apparently the Italian word for puppet is also the name of a specific character from commedia dell'arte. Wikipedia also says that Punch comes from our Pulcinella, though I can't seem to find if that's also true of Judy.
ReplyDelete(To be perfectly honest, I grew up knowing absolutely nothing about commedia dell'arte, and genuinely believing its characters were merely traditional carnival masks/costumes; though now that I think about it, you probably don't do carnival - as in, the pre-Lent festive season, not the travelling funfair - in the UK?)
We do occasionally have puppets shows at village fetes and such, though I can't say how common they are, nor whether or not they're but a recent revival.
(And now I've also learned the expression "pleased as Punch". Cool.)