Since my last few posts have been about creatures taking their pants off, a look at this shaker set seems appropriate: As a set, they have an interesting binary-oppositional relationship. I’m tempted to suggest that they replicate the insistence of the shaker miniverse on dividing things into opposite pairs: salt and pepper, black and white,Continue reading “Gendered Elimination?”
Category Archives: Miniaturization
Duck, Ducking
Here is a mysterious object: Some kind of abstract sculpture, perhaps? Or is it a ghost or an alien or a member of the Ku Klux Klan carrying scrolls? Or are those sausages, perhaps, or maybe cat-tails? Cat-tails they are. For if I place this shaker beside its partner, all is revealed: Those are inContinue reading “Duck, Ducking”
Asa’s Ship Comes In
This is the salt and pepper shaker set my son Asa recently made and gave me as a Christmas present: It actually does work as a set of shakers: as the picture reveals, the mast is held in place by a cork that stops the hole where you can put salt (or pepper), and theContinue reading “Asa’s Ship Comes In”
Shaker. Sculpture. Shaker Sculpture.
In my last post, after discussing the unsettling disproportion of a shaker set that contains a human figure accompanied by some relatively giant shakers (or perhaps, some normal-sized shakers accompanied by a decidedly tiny human figure, I promised to talk about another set I have that consists of the usual shaker-sized miniature human figure and aContinue reading “Shaker. Sculpture. Shaker Sculpture.”
Chubby Chef Goes Solo, and Apparently Sings Solo, Too
This not-so-svelte cook is all on his own: With a moustache similar to the gentleman in the set I discussed a couple of posts ago, he seems to be aspring to the Italian-chef stereotype: not just large-tummied and round-cheeked (and cherubically round-nosed), but with a moustache, another perky handlebar moustache. And from the lookContinue reading “Chubby Chef Goes Solo, and Apparently Sings Solo, Too”
Non-Specific Exotica
Since I’ve been looking at orientalist stereotypes, evocations of the mysterious East, this seems like a good time to take a look at this set: Not Asiatic, but still evocative of orientalism and the mysterious other. I think these are maybe supposed to represent some kind of Africans–or Polynesians, or Indonesians or native South Americans,Continue reading “Non-Specific Exotica”
Food, Fictional and Non-Fictional
Thinking as I wrote my last post about how disturbing it was to look at versions of the exact same characters in different poses in two different salt and pepper shaker sets, about how the impression that they could move and take different positions seemed to suggest a life they were leading outside and beyondContinue reading “Food, Fictional and Non-Fictional”
Once More for Old Times’ Sake, Once More
When I wrote about shaking in my last post, I realize, I was taking something important for granted: you are allowed to give the shakers a symbolic shaking that implies violence to the person or thing a shaker represents because the shaker is, in fact, merely a representation–not actually the thing it represents, but aContinue reading “Once More for Old Times’ Sake, Once More”
Shaking
In my explorations of the scriptive actions of salt and pepper shakers over the past while, I’ve considered everything but the most obvious action they imply–the one implied by their name: shaking. Salt and pepper shakers are made to be shaken. Furthermore, as I think about it, I see that the act of shaking isContinue reading “Shaking”
Shit, Kitsch, and Other Things that Stink
In my last post, I suggested that one of the actions scripted by novelty salt and pepper shakers is conversing about them as artistic objects: the invitation to “observe them more closely–perhaps in something like the way we look at paintings or other art objects, with an eye to understanding both what they represent andContinue reading “Shit, Kitsch, and Other Things that Stink”
Perry Nodelman 