Modernism suited to the (traditional and contemporary) doll and the child as its alter ego

Abstract

This paper looks at the doll through the uneasy relationship between "tradition" and "contemporaneity". The traditional doll, both as a concept and as an artefact, belongs to the real world. It is defined as an object, an immobile figure controlled by a child. The traditional doll has no pretensions to be alive, and thus bears little resemblance to a human being. It is simple, unobtrusive, direct, mysterious, dependent on the child that gives it life during play. It has two fundamental virtues: silence, which is at the same time its most important means of communication, and submissiveness, which is based on fellowship and which implies the leaving of space to the "other", more precisely, to the child who is in fact "the first" and whom the doll "follows". Contemporary dolls can be material and non-material. Material dolls are most commonly made of inorganic materials, while non-material dolls are made of shadows, reflections, projections of symbolic form. Both have convincing human characteristics that they achieve thanks to various programs and "mechanisms". Contemporary dolls are seductive, talkative and ready to build "parasocial" and "postbiological" relationships in the digital world. Their supreme values are entertainment, noise, surprise, saturation of the senses, few demands on the mind. They aspire to be "first", and "demand" that the child should be in "second" position. A comparative study of these two dolls through a circle of ontological questions situated within the animate-inanimate opposition contributes to a better understanding of the status of the traditional/contemporary doll, the boundaries between man/the child and the doll, and relationships between people. The triumph of contemporary dolls threatens the status and the continued existence of the traditional doll. Due to the "humanization" of dolls and the "dollization" of people, the boundaries between people and dolls have been blurred. Increased intimacy with contemporary dolls leads to changes in social patterns based on greater distance between people.

Keywords

• traditional doll
• contemporary doll
• child
• play