I’ve started to read this really interesting book called ‘The Melancholy Android’ by Eric G Wilson. It documents the practice of android making: when an inventor builds a robot or creature that emulates human form. Frankenstein’s monster would be the classic example although the practice extends to puppeteering and scary ghouls from horror movies such as Chucky from Tom Holland’s movie Child’s Play.
Wilson’s main assertion is that androids personify the repressed psychology of their creators. He says that “The humanoid embodies characteristics that its creator pretends to loathe. It is a register of what humans most desire and fear, what they hate in life and what they love in death.” As the title may suggest Wilson argues that what is manifest in this release of repressed desires is a deeper sense of melancholy. The role of puppetry in Spike Jonze’s film Being John Malkovich is used as an example of how narratives created by the film’s protagonist Craig Schwartz express his inner most longings: “Marionette forms of Heloise and Abelard from separate chambers, pine for erotic contact.” The puppeteer lives out fantasy via the products of his craftsmanship.
I’ve only read the first few chapters so far but I’m beginning to ponder in what sense this theory might apply to the work of the artist, or how much of an artists output could be understood as an actualisation of subconscious material. I’m thinking of artists like Paul Macarthy and his performance persona Bossy Burger, who managed to make me feel physically sick during his retrospective at Tate Liverpool a few years ago. While film directors such as Michael Haneke (who makes grueling and extraordinary films such as The Piano Teacher) may not create androids as such, I wonder how many of the actions of their lead characters could be interpreted as material out of the subconscious of the auteur. I’m thinking particularly of Hannke because in some ways he trumps my theory off the back of an interview I read with him last year where he boasts about his own psychological stability and his very happy childhood. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/oct/25/intervi… I’m not sure… I need to keep thinking on it.
