The Uncanny in Puppetry

Throughout the short story “is your blood as red as this?”, Helen Oyeyemi revises the traditional “Pinocchio” fairytale in which puppets gain sentience, thereby constructing a mind-bending discussion of autonomy, ownership, and control. The narrative follows a young woman named Radha as she enrolls in a renowned school of puppetry with the hopes of wooing her idol Myrna Semyonova. Her acceptance comes as a result of the apprenticeship program spearheaded by Myrna and her peer Gustav Grimaldi. Myrna chooses her own prodigy to be Tyche Shaw, whose puppetry act consists of her seemingly sentient chess piece asking the titular question, “is your blood as red as this?” Tyche’s chess piece is one example of the many supposedly autonomous puppets throughout the narrative. Oyeyemi employs this question of autonomy and what it means to be human to infuse her story with an uncanniness adjacent to that defined by Sigmund Freud. According to Freud, the uncanny evokes a distinct sort of fear whereby the readers find themselves confronted with “something which ought to have remained hidden but has come to “light” (808). Freud illustrates his conception through the framework of the German word Unheimlich, which “on the one hand... means what is familiar and agreeable, and on the other, what is concealed and kept out of sight” (802). Freud’s theory of the uncanny provides a lens through which Oyeyemi’s boundaries between human and puppet can be analyzed. Oyeyemi’s puppets become mirrors for their cruel human counterparts, reflecting a distorted and vile image that is otherwise hidden. It is this cruelty and the accompanying desire for control over those deemed inferior which ultimately defines humanity. A comparison of Freud’s uncanny to Oyeyemi’s spellbinding tale of control and autonomy illuminates how Oyeyemi ironically amalgamates both her human and puppet characters with uncanniness. 

In the mere exposition, Oyeyemi juxtaposes the bizarre fairy tale elements of her story with a familiar and quotidian setting, thereby enhancing the presence of the uncanny. In order to successfully implement the uncanny into one’s literature, Freud argues that the author must prioritize realism such that their story “deceives us by promising to give us the sober truth, and then after all overstepping it” (814). Freud provides the rationale as to why fairy tales do not invite the uncanny, stat- ing that their foundation of imagination and fantasy hinders the readers’ ability to have a “conflict of judgment as to whether things which have been ‘surmounted’ and are regarded as incredible may not, after all, be possible” (814). According to Freud, once the “writer pretends to move in a world of common reality... everything that has an uncanny effect in reality has it in his story” (814). Through references to modern popular culture and technology, Oyeyemi infuses her fantastical narrative with realism. Thus, Oyeyemi’s setting becomes simultaneously familiar and outlandish. For example, when Radha first meets Myrna, she notices how Myrna “had a string of fairy lights wrapped around [her] neck” (101). Radha also owns a cell phone that has an inbox overflowing with Tyche’s “angst” (122). Even the puppets themselves take part in contemporary life as Rowan Wayland and Gepetta “[share] earphones and [listen] to knitting podcasts” on night buses in lieu of sleep (129). The concluding moments of Oyeyemi’s piece see Gustav walking “onstage to the sound of TLC’s ‘No Scrubs’” before he realizes that his puppets have been brutally mutilated (149). Though the readers do not know what year the events at the puppetry school take place, they infer that it must be sometime near the present day. By placing her fantastical narrative in a modern reality, Oyeyemi intensifies the presence of the uncanny. 

Infusing a narrative with reality is not the only prerequisite for an uncanny literary experience: Freud asserts that uncanniness in fiction can be further extended if the author discusses “far beyond what could happen in reality” and “[brings] about events which never or very rarely happen in fact” (814). While Oyeyemi’s setting reminds us of our present reality, the focal point of her story being a puppetry school is strikingly abnormal. Not only is there a puppetry school in existence, the school is highly prestigious and requires a rigorous application process involving “a soundproof room” with “hidden panels” through which the mentors scrutinize their potential mentees (107). Therefore, Oyeyemi centers her story in a reality with both familiar technology and atypical education systems. Through the exposition itself, Oyeyemi unsettles her readers, priming them for a distinctly uncanny episode. 

Oyeyemi employs the uncanny not only in her setting, but also in her representations of the puppets as she subverts what the readers believe to be true regarding the sentience of marionettes. Freud discusses how “an uncanny effect is often and easily produced when the distinction between imagination and reality is effaced” (810). Oyeyemi accomplishes this as she attributes independence to her puppets. For example, Rowan and Gepetta are able to ride the bus at night supposedly in the absence of their puppeteers (129), and are required to participate in a “History of Puppetry” course once a week (125). 

Oyeyemi further extends the bounds of her subversion of reader expectations by occasionally inverting the relationship between puppets and humans. Not only do Oyeyemi’s puppets have a consciousness and express human emotions, they also have an implicit authority over their puppeteers. As Radha and Tyche wait together for their audition to be ad- mitted to the puppetry school, Tyche describes how picking up her chess piece puppet caused her to say “something I’d never said before”, that is, “is your blood as red as this” (111). Likewise, Gepetta instructs Radha on what to do during her audition as she states, “Simply translate what I say. I will speak; don’t worry about the controls” (116). According to Oyeyemi, puppets offer humans merely the illusion of control. 

The sentience and authority of Oyeyemi’s puppets invites yet another unsettling observation: puppets and humans cannot be distin- guished as they traditionally are, namely, through the cognizance of one and inanimacy of the other. In fact, upon first glance, there is not much differentiating humans from puppets. Throughout the story, puppets attend school (125), have seemingly independent movement (143-144), listen to podcasts (129), and have conversations amongst themselves supposedly in the absence of their puppeteers (129). Meanwhile, the humans parallel the orthodox position of puppets. As mentioned earlier, Myrna’s first introduction has her sitting with a “string of fairy lights wrapped around [her] neck”, suggesting that she is akin to a marionette (101). Radha also jokes that she does not “feel one hundred percent sure that I’m not a puppet myself” (108). Thus, Oyeyemi’s puppets and humans have become so similar that the readers cannot tell whether the puppets are truly alive or are rather vessels through which the human characters express themselves. 

In contention with Freud, it is this “intellectual uncertainty [about whether or not the automatons are alive]” (806) that generates the predominant sense of uncanniness in Oyeyemi’s narrative. In his essay, Freud diminishes the significance of the uncanny in association with dolls, citing “The Sand-Man” by E.T.A. Hoffman. For Freud, it is incorrect to attribute the “unparalleled atmosphere of uncanniness” to Olympia, the anthropoid doll (803-804). Rather, Freud asserts that the extreme uncanniness of Hoffman’s story links to his evocation of blindness and by extension, castration (804). Freud’s assertion regarding “The Sand-Man” does not apply to Oyeyemi’s short story as the paramount source of uncanniness in her narrative is caused by the dolls and their relationship with the human counterparts. If the puppets are not autonomous, this would suggest that the human characters feel more comfortable expressing kindness to one another implicitly by means of their puppets whereas their cruelty can be expressed directly. One of the most ironic aspects of Oyeyemi’s narrative is that her human characters are more inhumane than her puppets. Indeed, the puppeteers base their relationships to one another around manipulation and cruelty: Joe attempts to bribe Arjun to talk to Myrna so that he won’t have to (99-100), Radha ignores her grandfather’s wishes and translates his story into English to impress Myrna (104-106), Myrna accepts Tyche as a pupil solely because she wants to break her spirit (122-123), etc. Conversely, if the puppets are alive, how can the puppeteers justify manipulating and subjugating them? Both conditions force the readers to arrive at the same conclusion- it is the humans, not the puppets, who lack humanity.

Therefore, the paramount uncanniness pervading Oyeyemi’s piece ironically lies in the characterization of the humans and how their relations to the puppets and each other reveal their most strange, hidden, and cruel desires. The conclusion of Tyche’s reflection paper emphasizes this irony as she describes how “I want to... see what we’d be like if we were actually in control of anything” (132), thereby revealing her innate and presently unrealized desire to subjugate those she views as inferior. Ultimately, Oyeyemi’s puppets serve as passive repositories for humanity’s callous and veiled desires, and these characterizations generate the uncanniness within the narrative. As the puppets’ subjugation illuminates the vile human subconscious, Oyeyemi’s story reflects Freud’s argument that the “uncanny is in reality nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar... in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression” (808). As Helen Oyeyemi blurs the lines between humans and puppets by means of Freud’s uncanny, she implicitly develops the notion that what defines humanity is its lack thereof.