Look at those elephants.
Seriously, look at them. Towering over the street like a dream made manifest, like something that crawled out of the collective unconscious and decided to take a walk. You think you understand puppets? You think they’re for children? You don’t know shit.
Most of us don’t want to admit that we’re all terrified of authenticity. I’m scared shitless of standing there, naked and human, saying what I actually mean or feel. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that. So we build these elaborate constructs, these papier-mâché gods, these cloth-and-bamboo avatars, and we make them tell our truths. Because if the puppet says it, if the elephant dances and sways and speaks in our voice but not with our face, maybe we can get away with saying what’s actually in our hearts without getting destroyed for it.
The puppet is the ultimate fuck-you to realism. It says: “You want truth? I’ll give you truth. But I’m gonna make it twelve inches tall and paint it in colors that don’t exist in nature, and you’re gonna believe it more than if I just stood here and talked to you like a regular human being.”
It’s the oldest magic trick in the book. The shaman knew it. The Greeks knew it. Every street performer in Myanmar to Fisherman’s Warf knows it. You want to tell someone their world is ending? Their god is disappointed? Their heart is breaking? Don’t just say it. Build something impossible, move it with your hands while hiding in shadows, and let it speak. Let the elephant stumble and cry. Let the demon rage. Let the lover sing.
Gentlemen,” returned Mr. Micawber, “do with me as you will! I am a straw upon the surface of the deep, and am tossed in all directions by the elephants- I beg your pardon; I should have said the elements.
David Copperfield
Because here’s what Dickens understood, what everyone who’s ever pulled strings or worn a mask understands: we’re all just “tossed in all directions.” Life throws us around like we’re nothing. But when you make the elephant dance, when you take dead materials and breathe your own desperate humanity into them, you’re taking control. You’re saying, “Okay, chaos, you want to toss me around? Watch me make art out of it. Watch me make meaning.”
The puppet doesn’t pretend to be real. That’s its power. It announces itself as artifice, as construction, as made, and then it goes ahead and breaks your heart anyway. Maybe especially because of that honesty. It’s more real than real because it admits it’s fake.
These elephants in Myanmar aren’t trying to fool anyone. They’re obvious and utterly impossible. And that’s exactly why they work. That’s exactly why, when they move through the street, people stop and stare and remember something true about themselves they’d forgotten.
We need our puppets. We need our monsters and gods and elephants. We need something bigger than us to carry the weight of everything we can’t say out loud.