CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM (24)
By:
March 26, 2026
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… anti-fascist art! Series edited by Josh Glenn.
PUPPETS
After casting about as to what might constitute “anti-fascist art,” I came across the story of Otello Sarzi, an Italian puppeteer from a long line of puppeteers who happened to have the (mis)fortune to be alive when Mussolini came to power.
By the 1930s, Sarzi had got into trouble because of the anti-fascist themes of his puppet shows, and with the advent of the world war, the puppeteer retired his troupe, thinking that there was no point in such small diversions. What can one man do? Worse, what could puppets do? The small figures were stashed in a barn, and there they waited, mute, while conflagrations consumed the world. Mute that is, until the late 1940s, when a group of terrified children arrived in town, displaced this time by not by armies but by raging floods. What to do indeed… Sarzi immediately retrieved the puppets and improvised a show for the kids and by so doing, turned the day around.
And what was the turn of that day? Not the plots this time — the medium was the message, and the message was the puppets themselves.
These historical puppets put me in mind of some very contemporary puppets. First, Guillermo del Toro’s recent retake on Pinocchio, a stop-motion feature which he set in Mussolini’s Italy — about a puppet who gains self-awareness and agency and, through his mischief, both reflects on and acts upon the larger, non-puppet world; even at one point staging an anti-fascist puppet show-within-the-show to mock Mussolini (in attendance, of course, as a puppet).
And second, the inflatable animals of the anti-ICE protests in Portland, OR and other cities, which deployed their whimsical appearance and silly, floppy, dancing to mock and deflate (pun intended) the authoritarian stance of armed agents. These puppets were a narrative sans arc; the cavorting and costumes were message enough.
Anything can be a puppet: small dolls or course, but also large balloons, random sticks, green midcentury cloth coats… and anyone can be a puppeteer. Do you cast a shadow? Can you raise a finger? Can you improvise a story as two ant colonies swirl around each other? Presto, puppet show!
There’s something about the very silliness of these crude doubles that invites us not only to not take ourselves too seriously, but to take the air out of any insistence from on high. What is really anti-fascist is the humor inherent in absurdity, and the variety and open-endedness that that absurdity turns upon. “This is the only way to be!” proclaims a monarch, and the citizenry bows its collective head. “This is the only way to be!” claims King Friday the puppet, and we don’t even need Fred Rogers to remind us to laugh.
CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mark Kingwell on ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON | Lynn Peril on ZAZOUS | Judith Zissman on DIE GEDANKEN SIND FREI | Annie Nocenti on MEDIUM COOL | Mike Watt on FASCIST | William Nericcio on LALO ALCARAZ | Josh Glenn on THE LADY VANISHES | Carlo Rotella on INQUIETUD | Heather Quinlan on CASABLANCA | Adam McGovern on HEART OF GLASS (MAD JENNY) | Matthew Battles on WOODY’S GUITAR | Carl Wilson on PALACES OF GOLD | Ramona Lyons on UPRIGHT WOMEN WANTED | Lucy Sante on CAMOUFLAGE | Adelina Vaca on THE LIVES OF OTHERS | Tom Nealon on THE BARON IN THE TREES | Nikhil Singh on PARIS PEASANT | Mandy Keifetz on THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED | Gordon Dahlquist on THE CONFORMIST | Michael Grasso on PYNCHONIAN RESISTANCE | Gabriela Pedranti on THE ETERNAUT | Heather Kapplow on ANTI-FASCIST PASTA | Marc Weidenbaum on (WHAT’S SO FUNNY ’BOUT) PEACE, LOVE, AND UNDERSTANDING | Peggy Nelson on PUPPETS | Sonia Marques on CARNATIONS AGITPROP.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!