Some Parallels between Puppetry and the Nature of Mapping and Map Studies

Some thoughts stemming from viewing the Musée des arts de la marionette in Lyon.

Blog image: Michaël Meschke, Don Quixote (1988)

I’d like to offer some reflections after a tour of a wonderful exhibition in the Musée des arts de la marionette (“MAM”) (Museum of puppetry), in Lyon’s old town on the west bank of the River Saône. As I went around the permanent exhibition, and read the labels, I kept finding forceful parallels with attitudes towards maps and mapping. Not in the puppets themselves, but in the way that puppets were presented and discussed.

Note: all quotations are from the exhibition labels (which were provided in French, British English, and Spanish, so these are not my own translations.

It Takes People to Bring Puppets—and Maps—to Life

I was first struck by the manner in which the puppets are explained as being brought to life by the puppeteer:

The art of puppetry lies in animating what is lifeless. Creating the effect of a presence requires knowing and understanding this theatrical object, much like an instrument. First, you need to warm up. Discovery often occurs in the silence between the puppeteer and the puppet. Next comes the moment: mano a mano. The puppeteer touches the material, hefts the puppet and looks for its center of gravity in order to understand how it moves. Only then is the puppeteer ready to interpret.

Change “puppet,” “puppetry,” and “puppeteer” to “map,” “mapping,” and “map reader”:

The art of mapping lies in animating what is lifeless. Creating the effect of a presence requires knowing and understanding this theatrical object, much like an instrument. First, you need to warm up. Discovery often occurs in the silence between the map reader and the map. Next comes the moment: mano a mano. The map reader touches the material, hefts the map and looks for its center of gravity in order to understand how it moves. Only then is the map reader ready to interpret.

Wow! It’s not a perfect match. In particular, the artistry of puppetry entails “creating the effect of a presence” in the inanimate, theatrical object. But with some semantic flexibility, is that not what happens to make a map effective?

Finding the map’s “center of gravity” really is a keen metaphor for judging and assessing a map. It’s a step that seems to be lacking in scholarly accounts of map reading, which are generally instrumental. But faced with a map, an individual must first come to terms with it—come to grips with it!—in a phenomenological moment. Wood and Fels (2008) notably went through the steps by which an individual sees and physically unfolds a map, thinking about what each spread might mean as it is revealed before the entire map is opened up, but very few other scholars have thought in such terms. It is undoubtedly hard to figure out such acts in the historical record, which remains quite silent about such matters, but we can imagine and speculate within the framework provided by the evidence; for example, how new or established was a particular spatial discourse, which would imply a degree of novelty, or not, in specific mapping practices.

Materiality is crucial. The map reader comes to grips with the map, mano a mano. This was the phrase that knocked me flat, intellectually. Hands on the map, the atlas; or even hands off. The map has a physical relationship to readers. They grasp the edges of maps (the map’s metaphorical hands) to hold them up, turn them this way and that in whatever light is available, to examine them closely; they lift them up to their eyes to read the small print; they carefully fold old maps out of their parent books; they actively fold up guide maps to bring the relevant portions to bear in a manner both legible and stuffable into bags or pockets for further easy reference. They “heft” atlases. They turn globes (and we could, were we allowed to do so!).

Only once readers have physically gauged the maps before them, only once they have assessed their center of gravity, both literal and figural, can they read them. Can they bring them to life. The map is an inanimate thing, and it is made meaningful only through the physical connection of map reader to map.

The emphasis in map studies is always on seeing maps, on visual examination and on the graphic nature of maps. But the physical relationship of the map to the map reader is an integral part of the process of map reading and must never be ignored or forgotten.

A further insightful metaphor is that “discovery often occurs in the silence between the map reader and the map.” The silence between the map reader and the map. Or in the self-mumbling commentary of the map reader about the map. (I’m sure there are some puppeteers who talk to their puppets!) The physical relationship is personal. It is unique. It is a cognitive act, as the map reader interprets the map and construes its meaning and significance. There is no guarantee that any two map readers will have read the same map in the same way and to the same ends. This is the key to post-representational arguments that maps do not possess a state of being, but always a state of becoming, of being read in new ways, of being given new interpretations: discovery often occurs in the silence between the map reader and the map.

Puppets—and Maps—Bring the World to their Audiences

The museum’s comments about some of the artistic power and effect of puppetry plainly extend to mapping:

Enchanting, suprising, disturbing

Puppet theatre awakens the spectator’s imagination, generating emotions that swing from enchantment and surprise to fear and unease. It has not always been comedic: there are also many melodramas and bloody tragedies in its repertoire.

Puppets defy the laws of space and time, turning them upside-down. Light as a feather, they free the body from the weight of gravity. The most extraordinary creatures can come to life before the audience’s very eyes. Familiar objects take on a personality, a poetic depth which plunges the audience into another world. Devils, monsters and supernatural beings do not seem out of place here. On stage, everything is possible: being killed, crossing the oceans…

In the same way, maps can open the minds of their readers to new possibilities. Can we say that “maps defy the laws of space and time”? Certainly, devils and monsters and supernatural beings are in place on some maps, such as the large mappaemundi of the later Middle Ages in the Latin West, and the pictorial strategies of landscape mapping permit readers to imagine they occupy a viewpoint free from gravity. And we can imagine what it’s like in places we’ve never been to.

I find myself pausing at this point. In principle, yes, maps do all these wondrous things. But each wondrous aspect pertains only to certain mapping processes and not to all mapping. As, indeed, they pertain only to certain aspects of puppetry. I love poetic sentiments, but I cannot accept them as universal qualities. Rather, we need to understand the specific spatial discourses within which certain maps are produced, circulated, and consumed to be able to be sure about which, if any, poetics might be relevant.

Puppets—and Maps—Are Not Universal

There is a clear commitment throughout the museum to “the puppet” and to “puppetry” as a universal phenomenon. I know little about puppetry, but I can identify many kinds of puppets: shadow puppets; finger puppets; hand puppets; full-body puppets carried or worn by one or more puppeteers; marionettes per se (i.e., on strings); puppets moved by rods (like in modern stage productions, as for example the animals in Life of Pi and Warhorse, in which the puppet/puppeteer combinations take the stage as actors [n1]); stop-motion models; and even automatons. They are made from multiple materials, in a wide variety of sizes. They are used in an equally wide array of contexts: religious ritual; sea-side entertainments; children’s television (Sesame Street); adult television and political satire (Spitting Image); high theatre and low comedy; street theatre; and street parades of all sorts. Moreover, puppets are a global phenomenon.

The puppet appears as the thing that is brought to life by the puppeteer, by the artist/performer. Puppetry is the act of the puppeteer in bringing a puppet to life for an audience:

The diversity of puppet shapes, materials and techniques and their presence at the four corners of the earth bear witness to the vitality of this art. … They are inhabited by a dramatic force that is only waiting for a look, a hand and an encounter to spring to life. …

The art of puppetry lies in animating what is lifeless. …

On a summer evening in the moonlight, in the early morning at a temple, during a school day afternoon, inside a theatre or in the street, in the noisy bustle of daily life, in Africa, Asia or anywhere else in the world, there is a puppet who waits, a puppeteer who wants to create and a spectator who is ready to believe the illusion.

The art of puppetry is universal …

This is an incredibly powerful and persuasive concept. The first room in the museum’s permanent exhibition featured an array of old and recent puppets of various forms: they are all puppets. The second room had a series of videos of puppeteers picking up and slowly manipulating simple or simply structured objects to produce evocative performances, all the while encouraging visitors to do the same with the same objects on the counter in front of them. It is hard not to agree with the argument, that puppets and puppetry are all the same because of some essential quality of puppetness.

Yet that essential quality appears innately mystical. A puppet is an object imbued by some latent “dramatic force that is only waiting for a look, a hand and an encounter to spring to life.” Such a force exists outside of nature. The “puppet waits” to be brought forth by the puppeteer.

What constitutes this dramatic force? In the later parts of the museum’s permanent exhibition, it is intimated that this force stems from the work of the puppet maker:

From workshop to stage: Animation and imagination

This is the moment when the hand of the creator makes way for the hand of the performer.

The creativity of the maker—and their hand—imbues the object with its dramatic force, so it might be accessed and caught by the puppeteer, just as it is commonly presumed that the map maker solely creates the map to be read by another and given meaning. This is the standard presumption of map studies: the map maker makes the map which is then read by the map reader. (Yes, the relationship has been upset by Web 2.0 etcetera which has given map users the ability to make their own specific maps, but only within the framework permitted by the creators of the mapping interface.)

But wait, there is more to this label, revealing a sense of circulation:

From workshop to stage: Animation and imagination

This is the moment when the hand of the creator makes way for the hand of the performer. The puppet’s personality gradually evolves as it travels back and forth between workshop and stage. (added emphasis)

The relationship of puppet maker to puppeteer is not a one-way flow, but iterative as the puppeteer uses and seeks refinements to the puppet. And, for that matter, audiences are not necessarily one-off assemblages, but see puppets repeatedly. The annual lunar new year celebrations among people of Chinese descent entail many puppets, especially of dragons, viewed year after year, commented on and discussed, in larger feed-back loops that perhaps lead the puppet makers to modify the puppets. (Are the people on the floats in Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in NYC effectively human puppets? Those on Mardi Gras floats in New Orleans, with elaborate costumes on wire-frames? Where, then, is the boundary between the puppet and the puppeteer, between the map and the map reader?)

Pushing outwards conceptually, we have to understand that the maker is part of a complex of people:

The thought that goes into the fabrication process also applies to the sets, accessories, and costumes, which play an important role in the drama. These staging elements create atmosphere and serve as extensions of the characters; they have to be immediately recognisable to the audience.

But performance is also a complicated relationship between puppeteer and audience

Creating, controlling, performing.

Puppetry is where fine art, performance, and the art of watching and listening meet: without the interplay of all these elements, there can be no performance.

The performance—by interpretation, mapping—is the sum of all these relationships in producing, circulating, and consuming puppets, or maps. Map studies before about 1980 emphasized the production of maps; since 1980, many map scholars have turned to map consumption and meaning. But it is circulation that brings those processes together, that brings the puppet makers together with the puppeteers and their audiences. In the same way, circulation is the key process that brings together production and consumption of maps.

So, if puppetry is the interplay of “fine art [and] performance, … of watching and listening,” how can we say that puppetry is always the same, that the idea of the puppet is universal? The museum had some carefully matched and integrated films of puppets in the wild, being shown simultaneously. (It was really quite an amazing experience watching the films diverge and then converge.) Can we really say that the suite of performative practices that constitute a dancing elephant in a dynamic South Asian street parade are the same as those of an ethereal, ghost-like puppet in a carefully staged modern horror play? The principle of “the puppet” screams universality but depends for its potency and profundity on mysticism. The universal breaks down when one considers the full panoply of puppetry. That is, difference is as significant as any presumed essential quality.

Similarly, “the map” is not a universal. There is no universal mapness. Like puppets, maps are epiphenomena of the processes—the performances—that engender their creation and use, their production and consumption, and their myriad circulations. Puppets might all entail a sense that it is human interaction that makes them animated, as maps are all animated by humans reading them for spatial comprehension in some way, but such presumed essentialness does not overcome the wealth of significant complexity in puppetry and mapping processes.

A Universal History of Puppets—and Maps?

The museum used a significant amount of history to explain and justify the universality of puppets. There are several parallels to the narrative structures used by map scholars to justify the universality of maps.

The history of puppets begins with prehistory. To continue a quote from above:

The art of puppetry is universal, and seems to go back to the dawn of time. Playing the role of intermediary with humour or gravity, reflecting the human condition, puppets are closely connected to the world of childhood and toys. They can be found in the first traces of art as it begins to emerge in human history, and appear in traditional shows which tell of sacred myths.

A color image shows the oldest known puppet, found at Brno, and dated to 25,000 BCE. As with maps, there is a problem with identifying the precise function of such relicts:

At the dawn of humanity

All the way back to Prehistory and Antiquity, humans have made and animated effigies of human and animal figures. Archaeologists are still puzzling over exactly what these figurines, statuettes, and jointed dolls were used for. Were they children’s toys, or part of magical or shamanic rituals? Were they used to pay homage to the dead or their ancestors? In fertility, initiation, or healing rituals? These objects are not exactly puppets, but they do bear witness to the artistic skills of the first societies.

That is, we have something close to, akin to, puppets (and maps) that is the precursor of actual puppets (i.e., the objects imbued with latent dramatic force). The idea of the puppet is expressed in early cultural forms, in a manner picked up in the modern engagement with folk tales:

The idea of an object coming to life and claiming its freedom can be found throughout myths, literature and art. Since the 19th century, this theme has expanded to include toys: already present in Hoffmann's tales, it becomes widely known with the story of Pinocchio, in the cinema and in animated films.

There is a drift to the historical narrative. Puppetry is established not only by childish play but also by rituals and public spectacles, in which the puppetry “intercedes between the divine and the human”:

[The a]rt of puppetry run[s] deep into the great tales humanity is founded upon: myths about the creation of the world, stories of gods and of heroes. The puppeteers who put on these shows and brought these objects to life were the intercessors between the divine and the human between the visible and the invisible. ln various traditions, pieces were performed at certain moments in the calendar of rituals and festivals: carnivals, rain festivals, Ramadan, Christmas.

In lndia, Asia, or Africa, it sometimes takes a secular, humorous turn, whilst still maintaining a sacred or ritual function.

Medieval Europe, however, largely discarded that sanctity of puppets, although puppetry remained common during local festivals on saints’ days. It was in Europe that puppetry began to mock the establishment. Standardized characters such as Pulcinella (Punch, in English) or Guignol represented the common person—the servant, valet, or laborer—who somehow come out alright at the end of the play. In the twentieth century, this tradition has been extended into television and now the Internet:

Entertaining, mocking, challenging…

“It’s not me talking, it’s the puppet…”—the puppet has a certain freedom of expression that makes it the weapon of choice in taking a stand against those in power. Today’s puppeteers are fighting on all fronts, tackling the most serious issues of the day without losing their sense of humour.

Modern puppetry is a tool of education (beginning in eighteenth-century Germany) and a tool of propaganda. Since the 1960s, the rules of puppetry have developed to stress the collaboration of the political and the artistic:

There are rules governing the art of puppetry: the position of the puppeteer in relation to their puppet, the various techniques, and even the performance space. As with all art forms, these norms have been called into question, allowing for a fresh approach to practices, sometimes with radical changes. This is what happened in the 1960s, when certain puppeteers decided to leave their traditional performance space: the frame of the puppet theatre.

This evolution from controlling the puppets in the shadows of the little house to being on stage in full view transformed the performing relationship between puppeteer and puppet, in particular by allowing the puppeteer to become an actor in their own right.

From this perspective, of the satirist poking at the establishment and seeking to actively change the (perceived) basic rules, I have come to see Arno Peters as a modern-day performer of Pulchinella, on stage and visibly manipulating the puppet.

The museum presents something of a linear view of puppet history that is very much in line with the broad sentiments of map historians today. After uncertain prehistoric origins, the fundamentally religious mappaemundi give way to more geometrical maps in accordance with the emergent states and their elites, until late in the twentieth century when maps become increasingly turned to challenge the status quo (counter mapping, etc.).

But the museum’s implicit narrative for the history of puppetry—with non-European puppetry still mired in religion and myth whereas European puppetry has developed in new ways—falls apart when one abandons the universality of puppets. And so too the older and current narratives of map history. There are multiple narratives of different modes of puppetry, and of their intersections and divergences within societies and across cultures, as there are of modes of mapping.

All told, MAM’s exhibits are a useful surrogate for talking about and reflecting on maps and mapping. If you’re wedded to the idea of the essential quality of all maps, think for a while about the differences in kinds of puppets!

(And if you get to Lyon, check out MAM — it’s well worth it!)

n1. There is a wonderful moment in the revisal a few years ago of Sondheim’s Into the Woods, when the puppeteer performing the dead white cow (a skeletal puppet) breaks the fourth wall, throws the puppet down, and runs of stage so as not to be physically assaulted by another character.

Wood, Denis, and John Fels. 2008. The Natures of Maps: Cartographic Constructions of Nature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.