Humanimals, a once-shamanic trope in TV commercial magic
[ by Charles Cameron — Mickey Mouse, eat your heart out ]
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Latter-day Disnanimals lack both the honest brutality Grimm‘s sometimes grim tales provide, and the sexual honesty of the Coyote tales as recorded by Paul Radin. Even in currently acceptable form, however, the second cousins twice removed of shamanic human-animals featured in current TV commercials retain their potential for humor and an eye-catching display of the varieties of human emotion.
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Let’s start with the tiger-cub nicely portrayed in this ad:
The cub is fascinated by its “real life” putative ancestor — but sadly, after a brief inspection, the parent-tiger turns away..
Quite how the Emu here figures that the emu in the mirroring glass “looks like” him or her I’ll never know. Does she or he keep a small mirror under his or her wing, to preen on — oh, hell! theirself — in idle moments?:
It’s instructive to compare this, earlier [2011?] Cold Turkey —
with this very recent — and brilliantly executed — Slow Turkey camping:
Love that whole series, btw..
And how can I miss this sporting Walrus?
Short form of this post: we identify with animals much as we do with humans
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I’ll deal with Jaguar in my next post
