[spectre] beMyGhost: Punch and Judy Show

Bjørn Magnhildøen magh at chello.no
Wed Jun 18 23:09:58 CEST 2003


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  Noemata's beMyGhost: Punch and Judy Show

  A light seaside summer entertainment  
  The plaintext dessert of a desert hyperwork 
  A puppet show beyond good and evil 
  Etc.

  As performed by the professors of automata,
  telemata, noemata.

  Now playing the Inbox Theater Scene -

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The story so far....

He  is  known as  Pulcinella  in Italy,  Guignol  and Polichinelle  in
France,  Kasperl in  Germany, Casper  in Sweden,  Karagioz in  Turkey,
Karagiosis in Greece, Petruk in Indonesia,

He's been around a  long time in one  form or another. He's  an imp of
mischief  out  of  the  mists  of  time.  We  know  him  as  Punch. As
Pulcinella, the actor, he was part of the Commedia Dell' Arte  troupes
of Renaissance  Europe. To  trace him  back further  takes us into the
very ancestry of pantomime itself, back to Ancient Rome and  Classical
Greece and the licentious topsy  turvey world of Saturnalia and  Satyr
plays. He exists in many cultures for he is one form of The Trickster:
a key figure  in society's development;  a figure able  to turn shared
values upside down for the shocked amusement of the community and  the
ultimate strengthening of the bonds that mutually bind it.

Charles Dickens was also a great  admirer of the Punch and Judy  Show.
Mr. Punch  is frequently  mentioned in  his novels.  One work, The Old
Curiosity  Shop,  seems  to  be based  almost  entirely  on  the Punch
tradition. The show has taken a  fair amount of stick in the  past for
being violent,  or not  politically correct  and being  flippant about
domestic violence. Charles Dickens is among those who have nailed this
as ridiculous.

Who Are Punch and  Judy? Punch and Judy  are arguably the most  famous
traditional puppets in the Western World, with a colorful history more
than 300 years old.  Mr. Punch, with his  hook nose, hunched back  and
garish costume, is  a cultural icon  in England. His  unabashed joking
and rowdy,  mischievous behavior  have provoked  paroxyms of  laughter
from audiences throughout time. An impressive body of art is graced by
Punch's outrageous countenance.

PUNCH: Are you a doctor?

HANGMAN: Yes, are you alright?

PUNCH: No, I'm dead.

HANGMAN: You can't be dead.

PUNCH: I'm dead, dead, dead.

HANGMAN: How long have you been dead Mr. Punch?

PUNCH: About 6 weeks.

punch  judy,puppet,puppets,Codman's,Toby,Rhos-on-Sea,punch,punch&judy,
judy,Mr. Punch,punchinello,polichinelle,puppetry, puppet  heros,wooden
heads,that's the way to do it,what a pity,somerville, colwyn  bay,rhos
on    sea,comical    tragedy,tragical    comedy,mr    punch's   opera,
pulcinella,harlequinade,hunch back,hump,big  nose,  professors,punch
man,professors,slapstick,swazzle, swazzle-omi,swazzle-homi,punch
call,itinerant,marionettes,  seaside,entertainment,on  the beach,beach
performers,on  the  sands,  carnivals,The Punch  and  Judy  College of
Professors,The Punch and Judy Fellowship,swazzle,swatchel,old red nose

Hoban quotes him as saying, "Punch is so old he can't die."

In its classical, glorious sense,  immortality is the quality of  what
passes  beyond  death,  the  quality  of  the  supra-living.  In   its
contemporary version, it is the quality of the sur-viving, that is, of
what is already dead and, by that token, becomes immortal.

"It's a fine show  sir." he replied. "jolly  fine show". Then, with  a
guffaw he added "And a damned bad moral".

"Many of the Trickster's  traits," Radin writes, "were  perpetuated in
the figure of the mediaeval jester, and have survived right up to  the
present day in the Punch-and-Judy plays and in the clown" (xxiii).

Who  is  Punch anyway?  Where  does he  come  from? And  how  could so
impossible and ridiculous  a character have  survived the changes  and
turmoil of the passing centuries? The plain fact is that nobody knows.
Certainly the figure of Punch as  we know him today has a  direct link
with  the  commedia  dell'arte of  the  seventeenth  century, but  the
character is far, far older. The original significance of Punch's face
and  figure -  his enormous  nose and  hump -  are meaningless  to an
audience  of  modern  times  when, perhaps,  it  is  not  customary to
associate  large noses  and sexual  potency or  find hunchbacks  mirth
provoking. But it is possible that Punch has lasted so long because he
so blatantly cocks a snook at  the restrictions of civilised society  
and perhaps every man, at some time or other would like to flaunt  the
laws of society with a comparable nonchalance, removing those who  got
in  his  way,  pursuing  his  amorous  inclinations  willy  nilly, and
defeating,  in the  end, the  devil himself!  How often  we say  of a
likeable rogue "He could  get away with murder."   And Punch
does - or almost always does - and he is such a likeable rogue and, of
course, he's only a puppet and puppets can get away with anything.

HANGMAN: Now prepare yourself for execution.

PUNCH: What for?

Mr. Punch. A  Roman mime called  Maccus was the  original of Punch.  A
statuette of this  buffon was discovered  in 1727, containing  all the
well-known features of our friend- the long nose and goggle eyes,  the
hunch back and protruding breast. The most popular derivation of Punch
and Judy is Pontius cum Judæis (Matt. xxvii. 19), an old mystery  play
of Pontius Pilate and the  Jews; but the Italian policinello  seems to
be from pollice,  a thumb (Tom-thumb  figures), and our  Punch is from
paunch.} The drama  or story of  our Punch and  Judy is attributed  to
Silvio Fiorillo, an Italian comedian of the seventeenth century. Punch
triumphs over all the  ills that flesh is  heir to. (1) Ennui,  in the
shape of a dog, is overcome; (2) Disease, in the disguise of a doctor,
is kicked out; (3) Death is beaten to death; and (4) the Devil himself
is outwitted. -Brewer's Phrase and Fable

This compulsive desire for immortality, for a definitive  immortality,
revolves around a  strange madness -  the mania for  what has achieved
its  goal.  The  mania  for  identity  -  for  saturation, completion,
repletion. For perfection too, the lethal illusion of the perfection.

'Every ecstasy  ultimately prefers  to take  the path  of renunciation
rather than sin against its own concept by realizing it' (Adorno)

To the identitary individual,  the virtual clone, there  corresponds a
horizontal  madness...  a  delirium of  self-appropriation  -  all the
monstrous variants of identity -  not of the schizophrenic but  of the
isophrenic, without shadow,  other, transcendence or  image - that  of
the mental  isomorph, the  autist who  has, as  it were,  devoured his
double and absorbed his twin  brother (being a twin is,  conversely, a
form of autism à deux). Identitary, ipsomaniacal, isophrenic  madness.
Our  monsters  are  all  manic  autists.  As  products  of  chimerical
combination... deprived of hereditary otherness... they have no  other
destiny than desperately to seek  out an otherness by eliminating  all
the Others one by one.

Punch-and-Judy  show -  a traditional  puppet-show in  which Punch  is
shown  nagging,   beating,  and   finally  killing   a  succession  of
characters, including his wife Judy.

The problem of Frankenstein, for example, is that he has no Other  and
craves otherness... But our  computers also crave otherness.  They are
autistic, bachelor  machines: the  source of  their suffering  and the
cause of their vengeance is the fiercely tautological nature of  their
own language.

Punch did not always  have his own play;  it seems his first  role, in
England,  was  to  provide  comic  interludes  in  serious  plays   by
interrupting the action as and when he could. 

A MODERN PUNCH SCRIPT CHARACTERS PUNCH; JUDY; BABY; POLICEMAN;  CLOWN;
CROCODILE; HANGMAN; GHOST

the challenge of the  Ghost representing Death, is  considered Punch's
greatest trial, 

We  long ago  stopped believing  in the  immortality of  the soul,  a
deferred immortality. We no  longer believe in that  immortality which
assumed  a  transcending of  the  end, an  intense  investment in  the
finalities of the beyond and a symbolic elaboration of death. What  we
want  is  the immediate  realization  of immortality  by  all possible
means.

the conquest of whom enables Punch to finally defy the Devil himself. 

So long as  there is a  finalistic conception of  life and death,  the
afterlife and immortality are given,  like the world, and there  is no
cause to believe  in them. Do  you believe in  reality? No, of  course
not: it  exists but  we do  not believe  in it.  It is  like God... If
something does not exist, you have to believe in it. Belief is not the
reflection of existence, it is  there for existence, just as  language
is not the reflection of meaning, it is there in place of meaning.  To
believe  in  God is,  therefore,  to doubt  his  existence. Belief  is
superfluous,  just as  Canetti says  vengeance is  superfluous; it  is
rendered unnecessary  by the  inexorable reversibility  of things.  In
exactly the same way, passion  is a useless supplement to  the natural
attraction between  things, and  we might  say the  same about  truth,
which merely complicates appearances unnecessary.

- or as a mirror merely refracts your image without believing in it.

God, for his part,  if he exists, does  not believe in his  existence,
but  he  allows the  subject  to believe  in  him, and  to  believe he
believes in it, or  not to believe that  - but not to  believe he does
not believe in it. -Stavrogin

When the Devil has been done away with, Punch exults to the  audience:
"The Devil is dead! Now everyone can do as he likes!"

But what  will the  human race  do once  free of  any belief?  It will
either fullfill itself  egoistically, obeying an  exclusive, sovereign
individualism (Stirner), or  do so collectively,  by setting out  on a
long, historical course, as  in Marx, or it  will shift its sights  to
the superhuman, through a transvaluation of the values of the  species
- this is the path marked out by Nietzsche, who argued that the  human
race cannot be left to itself, but must aim beyond itself and discover
the great metamorphosis  - that of  becoming... Nietzsche has  written
magnificently of the vital illusion - not of the 'worlds beyond',  but
of the illusion of appearances, of the forms of becoming, of the  veil
and,  indeed,  all the  veils  which, happily,  protects  us from  the
objective illusion,  the illusion  of truth...  Needless to  say, this
transvaluation...  has  not  taken  place,  except  precisely  in  the
opposite sense... A  transvaluation folding in  upon itself towards  a
non-differentiation, a non-distinction of values, itself fetishized in
an  aestethics of  plurality, of  difference, etc.  Not any  longer a
fetishization of divinities, great  ideas or grand narratives,  but of
minimal differences  and particles...  This de-differentiation  of the
human and the inhuman, this reabsorption of the metaphor of life  into
the metastasis of survival is  effected by a progressive reduction  to
the lowest common denominator.

The Crocodile  was a  late arrival  in the  story and  has now been an
important character for about a  hundred years. First he was  a dragon
which eventually became a crocodile.  Perhaps the idea of a  crocodile
became firmly established  after children had  been frightened by  the
Crocodile  in  Peter  Pan.  The  Ghost  is  seen  occasionally  still.
Originally the Ghost of Judy, it is now just any old ghost. 

Who was  Pulcinella -  or as  he is  sometimes called  Pollicinella or
Pulicinella? His role was primarily  that of a servant, as  indeed was
that  of  Harlequin, and  he  was obviously  a  comedian. He  wore  an
artificial  nose,  pot-belly  and hump  -all  calculated  to make  the
audience laugh, and he was the mixture of jollity and cruelty, wit and
stupidity just as Punch is today.

The Punch/Trickster    concept    embodies    notions    of    anti
establishmentarianism,  buffoonery   and  shamanism   that  [reflect]?
attributes of the creative individual functioning in an  authoritarian
ethos [the late 80s] ? bucking the system, inverting [values]?

Assuming an  ubuique  persona and  balancing  precariously on  a  mono
cycle, Punch/Trickster pedals blindly into an unknown future,  fending
off unseen adversaries with an ineffectual weapon. The sculpture? is a
concretisation of a state of mind or an existential predicament. It is
concerned with delusions of  grandeur and vulnerability ?  paradox and
pathos.

The Trickster as buffoon acts out a quixotic farce in ironic fashion.

Ubu Roi, a precursor of the theater of cruelty, the absurd. Punch/Ubu?
Puncheon. Pernille og Mr. Nelson?

JUDY: Where's the baby?

PUNCH: (In a melancholy tone.) I have had a misfortune; the child  was
so terrible cross, I throwed it out of the window.

It is generally thought that the obsession with survival is a  logical
consequence of life and the right to life. But, most of the time,  the
two things are  contradictory. Life is  not a question  of rights, and
what follows on  from life is  not survival, which  is artificial, but
death. It is only by paying the price of a failure to live, a  failure
to take pleasure, a failure to die that man is assured of survival.

Punch's  women performers  Bearing in  mind that  Mr Punch  is a  folk
hero/rogue/ scoundrel/ trickster of  the opposite sex from  ourselves,
why are  we so  keen to  portray his  story? And  what might the women
Professors add to the drama of the tradition?

The traditional Punch  and Judy show  presents Punch as  the simpleton
hero, who  successfully outwits  various characters,  representing his
oppressions, in order to gain his freedom. This 'clever fool' type  is
often  portrayed  as  a   male  anti-hero  in  folklore,   (Jack,  Til
Eulenspiegel, Clever  Hans, Monkey,  Anansi and  Brer Rabbit  are some
examples). Somehow he always manages to achieve through his  stupidity
what  others  fail  to  achieve by  concentrated  effort.  Punch  is a
combination  of  the fool  and  trickster. His  characteristics  are a
collection of the archetypal shadow masculine traits, those which  are
socially deemed  to be  undesirable -  cowardice, lewdness,  rudeness,
stupidity,    fickleness,    irresponsibility,    selfishness,   greed
................ and violence or cunning

Mr Punch, the trickster, carnival fool, king of anarchy, is an  absurd
masculine archetype of those aspects of the human psyche that want  to
turn the world  upside down  and create  chaos. His  gross appearance 
the  bulbous hooked  red nose  and the  phallic 'hump'  on his  back,
comically  reinforce  his  male  sexuality,  along  with  the  big red
slapstick, which  he wields  as the  answer to  all his  troubles. His
character  and  appearance  have their  roots  in  the ancient  ritual
dramas,   celebrating   birth,  death,   resurrection,   conflict  and
fertility.  In   our  'civilised',   hierarchical,  bureaucratic   and
patriarchal  society Mr  Punch has  evolved and  survived through  the
centuries as our national 'Lord of Misrule.'

Punch men often portray Judy  as a wonderfully fussy, bossy  pantomime
dame  type with  a high  falsetto voice.  (Note that  this makes  the
character a parody of the male's fantasy of woman). 

When knocked down, she bobs  up again several times in  comic protest,
always with one  more thing to  say. Sometimes her  final utterance is
almost  orgasmic  in nature  so  that the  mock  puppet death  we  are
witnessing might  more closely  resemble 'le  petit mort'  rather than
actual mortality.

When she returns to discover that Mr Punch has inadvertently (in  true
'ignorant simpleton' style) made the baby into sausages she is, as any
woman would be,  at first distraught  and then angry.  However, having
fully expressed her grief and given  Mr Punch a piece of her  mind she
quickly moves into  acceptance, and realises  this is her  opportunity
for freedom: "Well now  Mr Punch - You  made the baby sausages  so you
can look after the baby sausages! That's fair! I'm going to claim  the
insurance money  and take  a nice  little holiday  in Majorca. No, you
can't come with me. You're to  stay at home and look after  the little
sausage".

And off she goes, leaving Mr Punch and the sausages to the mercy of  a
big green crocodile with tooth-filled gaping jaws. Her triumph is that
she has called  Mr. Punch's bluff.  Rather than waiting  to be knocked
out of his way, Judy leaves him with the consequences of his  mistakes
and  removes herself  to a  more fulfilling  situation. She  does the
separating off. This gives Judy an equal status to Punch in the drama,
although he still remains at the centre of the story and fulfills  his
usual trickster role with his other adversities.

Adult  enthusiasts can  recognize him  as the  head of  one of  those
dysfunctional families of Drama that span from Oedipus and Macbeth  on
the tragic side to the Addams Family and The Simpsons on the frivolous
side. He - and other little red nosed rogues like him - have been kept
alive  down the  centuries because  his irrepressible  antics and  his
flying in the face of  convention have amused generations of  ordinary
people - particularly those with no power of their own.

Step warily  around the  fair Welsh  seaside town  of Aberystwyth this
weekend for everywhere you look  will be a strange beak-nosed  figure,
clad in red with pointy-toed shoes  and a manic gleam in his  immobile
eyes. No,  it's not  Beelzebub: it's  Punch. The  second international
festival of Punch and Judy is in  town. Oh no it isn't. Oh yes  it is,
etc.

       There was an Old Man with  a nose, Who said, "If you  choose to
       suppose That  my nose  is too  long, You  are certainly wrong!"
       That remarkable man with a nose.

A Jungian Consideration of Edward  Lear's Nonsense Verse Lear was,  in
many ways, an  example of what  Jungian psychologist Marie-Louise  von
Franz calls the puer aeternus,an archetype she analyzes in her book of
the same  name. The  term comes  from Ovid's  Metamorphoses and  there
refers to the child-god of the Eleusinian mysteries. "In later times,"
von Franz writes,

       the child-god was identified with Dionysus and the god Eros. He
       is the divine youth  who is born in  the night in this  typical
       mother-cult mystery of Eleusis, and who is a redeemer. He is  a
       god of life, death and resurrection--the god of divine youth [.
       . .] The title  puer aeternus therefore means  "eternal youth,"
       but we also use it to indicate a certain type of young man  who
       has an outstanding mother complex [. . .] . (1)

 Wandering,  moreover, is  one of  the most  important traits  of the
 Trickster  archetype  (Radin 167),  which,  as we  shall  see, Lear's
 nonsense exemplifies.

There was an Old Man of Peru, Who never knew what he should do; So  he
tore off his hair, And behaved like a bear, That intrinsic Old Man  of
Peru.

There was a Young Lady whose eyes, Were unique as to colour and  size;
When she opened them wide,  People all turned aside, And  started away
in surprise.

There was a Young Lady of Norway, Who casually sat on a doorway;  When
the  door  squeezed her  flat,  She exclaimed,  'What  of that?'  This
courageous Young Lady of Norway.

There was an Old Man of Cape Horn, Who wished he had never been  born;
So he sat on  a chair, Till he  died of despair, That  dolorous Man of
Cape Horn.   

There was an Old Person of Cromer, Who stood on one leg to read Homer;
When he found he grew stiff, He jumped over the cliff, Which concluded
that Person of Cromer.

There was an  Old Man on  some rocks, Who  shut his wife  up in a box;
When she said,  'Let me out!'  He exclaimed, 'Without  doubt, You will
pass all your life in that box.'

There  was an  Old Person  of Bangor,  Whose face  was distorted  with
anger! He tore off his  boots, And subsisted on roots,  That irascible
Person of Bangor.

There was an Old Person of  Spain, Who hated all trouble and  pain; So
he sat  on a  chair, With  his feet  in the  air, That  umbrageous Old
Person of Spain.

There was an  Old Person from  Gretna, Who rushed  down the crater  of
Etna; When they said,  'Is it hot?' He  replied, 'No, it's not!'  That
mendacious Old Person of Gretna.

There was a Young Lady of Parma, Whose conduct grew calmer and calmer;
When they said, 'Are you dumb?' She merely said, 'Hum!' That provoking
Young Lady of Parma.

There was an old  man of Hong Kong,  Who never did anything  wrong; He
lay on his back,  With his head in  a sack, That innocuous  old man of
Hong Kong.

The  function  of the  Trickster,  according to  Kerényi,  "is to  add
disorder to order and so make a whole, to render possible, within  the
fixed  bounds of  what is  permitted, an  experience of  what is  not
permitted"  (185).  Kerényi  could  just  as  well  be  describing the
nonsense genre that emerged in the nineteenth century.

You desire to LIVE "according  to Nature"? Oh, you noble  Stoics, what
fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly
extravagant,    boundlessly    indifferent,    without    purpose   or
consideration, without pity  or justice, at  once fruitful and  barren
and  uncertain: imagine  to yourselves  INDIFFERENCE as  a power--how
COULD you live in accordance with such indifference?

Contrary to the underlying Rousseauist ideology, which argues that the
profound nature  of the  liberated subject  can only  be good and that
nature itself, once  emancipated, cannot but  be endowed with  natural
equilibrium  and all  the ecological  virtues, there  is nothing  more
ambiguous or perverse than a subject.

Trickster is at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and
negator, he who dupes others and who is always duped himself. He wills
nothing consciously. At  all times he  is constrained to  behave as he
does from impulses over which he has no control. He knows neither good
nor evil yet he is responsible for both. He possesses no values, moral
or social, is at the mercy of his passions and appetites, yet  through
his actions all values come into being.

It is  a personification  of traits  of character  which are sometimes
worse and sometimes better  than those the ego-personality  possesses"
(The  Archetypes   261).  The   Trickster  is,   in  other   words,  a
manifestation of what Jung calls the shadow; and he comments: "We  are
no  longer aware  that in  carnival customs  and the  like there  are
remnants of a collective shadow  which prove that the personal  shadow
is in part  descended from a  numinous collective figure"  (ibid.262),
from, that is, the Trickster archetype.

Furthermore, the Trickster is a  forerunner of the saviour, and,  like
him, God, man, and animal at once. He is both subhuman and superhuman,
a  bestial   and  divine   being,  whose   chief  and   most  alarming
characteristic is his unconscious- ness [. . .]. He is so  unconscious
of himself that his body is not a unity, and his two hands fight  each
other.

As Jung says  of the Trickster:  "Although he is  not really evil,  he
does  the  most  atrocious  things  from  sheer  unconsciousness   and
unrelatedness" (ibid. 264).

We ought not  to entertain the  illusion that we  might cultivate good
and happiness in  a pure state  and expel evil  and sorrow as  wastes.
That is the terroristic dream of the transparency of good, which  very
quickly ends in its opposite, the transparency of evil.

- Bedre veier gir flere ulykker

The  travel  poems also  reflect  the Trickster's  habit  of wandering
(albeit his wandering is  generally aimless). Radin comments  that the
Trickster's  desire   to  wander   represents  "his   protest  against
domestication and society with all its obligations" (140).

To what do we  cling so tightly when  we resist the dangers  of drift?
Barthes spoke (positively) of drift  as a kind of "stupidity."  Are we
afraid of appearing "stupid"?

In 1642 when  Oliver Cromwell's Puritan  regime banned all  theatrical
performance, commedia companies must have scrubbed England from  their
gigging schedules. But the Punchinello character appears to have  hung
in. Cross-pollinated with  the local Vice  character - originally  the
trickster  fool  of the  Mystery  plays -  Punch  utilised Harlequin's
slapstick bat, took a wife and resurfaced in the Punch and Judy puppet
show.

Puck/Punch? :  Santa/Pelznichol/Nicholas/Janney/Yule? I  Norge har  vi
oskoreia og julebukker - "they acted out an odd play ? the leader, who
dressed in goat or bear  skins, argued with another character  or with
the woman figure.  He was killed,  the woman lamented,  and the doctor
comically resuscitated him, or he spontaneously revived, declaring  he
wasn't dead after all" "the Fool  was in his original beast form;  the
death and execution were enacted amorally. In later plays, the Fool or
beast-man is often killed  by a young groom  because he "makes a  pass
at"  the  Woman,  and  narrators explain  the  behavior  with  a comic
script." "Scholars concluded that  the hundreds of versions  peppering
Europe could be traced to the great goat-god Dionysus. After all,  the
Dionysian rites gave birth to  modern theater" "In Britain, he  became
Robin   Goodfellow   or  Puck   [norsk   slekt:puk?],  celebrated   by
Shakespeare; Goodfellow's cousin Robin Hood began life as Wood, a name
for the Wild Man. In  the Black Forest, the  Pied Piper of Hamelin  re
enacts poet  Robert Browning's  version of  the ancient  mystery." And
don't forget the 'geek' as a freak act.

Shiva  is  more or  less  what you  want  him to  be,  as in  him  all
contradictions casually coexist. The notion of Shiva as exclusively  a
Wild Man of the forests and mountains, traveling with a band of ghosts
and  ghouls as  their leader,  Bhoothnath, is  a recent  phase of  his
worship. For while he was  always capable of peculiar behavior,  Shiva
used to live  outside of society  not because he  had rejected it  but
because he had  transcended it. Shiva  is repeatedly described  as the
supreme master of all the arts, and that indicates a highly socialized
being, the Nagarika of ancient India, not a rustic.

Only Siva,  who indulges  in both  extreme ascetic  and extreme erotic
activity, the creator and the destroyer, the quiescent and the  active
god,  who represents  both the  cyclical motion  of the  universe and
spiritual immortality  can offer  devotees both  paths of  immortality
through rebirth, or renunciation and spiritual immortality. He is  the
living lingam in the yoni, and the androgyne. Both symbols contain the
paradox within themselves and provide a resolution.

Lingam, Sanskrit, literary 'mark' or  'sign' (- is there a  connection
between 'sign'  and 'seed'  (seme and  semen)? via  sema, seme, sememe
semiological adj.[Gk semeion  sign f.  sema mark],  seminal, symbolic
inseminal, pregnancy - pregnant expression...)

Shiva is worshipped in several apparently contradictory aspects, whose
combination gives emphasis  to his incomprehensible  transcendence. He
is seen as a giver of  blessings, and is also a symbol  of sensuality,
represented  by  the lingam  or  phallus. On  the  other hand,  he  is
sometimes  depicted  as  an  ascetic,  seated  in  meditation  in  the
Himalayas. Shiva is  also the god  of destruction and  dissolution. In
his manifestation as Shiva Nataraja, the four-armed Lord of the Dance,
he tramples on the forces  of ignorance and chaos, and  keeps creation
in balance.

>From Orphee To Punch - Worlds Apart

They should also  contain a 'shadow'  who causes disruption.  In Punch
and Judy (1966) the  shadow is Punch himself,  in The Mask or  Orpheus
(1973-83) Aristeus, the  man who lusts  after Euridice and  causes her
death, in Yan Tan Tethera (1983-4) the Piper, the Bad 'Un. 

The death of Euridice occurs  five times, that of Orpheus  four times.
Other cyclic events include the stories Orpheus told to the trees  and
rocks, and glimpses  of an esoteric  Orphic ceremony. As  in Punch and
Judy, the shadow is a character on stage 

The impossibility as that of  jumping over your shadow when  you don't
have one. It's a metaphysical leap which is beyond us. Peter Schlemihl
had at least sold his shadow  to the devil; ours we have  simply lost.
This  is   because  we   have,  in   the  meantime,   become  entirely
transparent... the  atomic shadow,  is the  only left  for us: not the
sun's shadow, nor even the shadows of Plato's cave, but the shadow  of
the  absent,  irradiated  body,  the  delineation  of  the   subject's
annihilation, of the disappearance of the original.

Enter Ghost.

Punch siungs  meanwhile 'Home,  sweet Home.'  (This is  original). The
Ghost represents  the ghost  of Judy,  because he's  killed his  wife,
don't you see, the Ghost  making her appearance; but Punch  don't know
it at the moment. Still he sits down tired, and sings in the corner of
the frame the song of 'Home, sweet Home,' while the Sperrit appears to
him.

   "Though  you've such  a tiny  body, "And  your head  so large  doth
   grow,--

Heads also play  a major role  in Hoban's novels:  Pilgermann (the tax
collector  and  several  hundred  Turks  and  Crusaders, decapitated);
Kleinzeit and The Medusa  Frequency (Orpheus, decapitated; Medusa  and
the Kraken as snaky heads);

           "Though  your  hat may  blow  away, "Mr.  Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò!
           "Though you're  such a  Hoddy Doddy--  "Yet I  wish that  I
           could  modify  the  words  I  needs  must  say!  "Will  you
           please to go away?" (312)



Curtain.






 ` ´ ` ´ ` ´ ` ´ ` ´ ` ´ ` ´ ` ´ ` ´ ` ´ ` ´ `
* * * * * * * * * * *  * * * * * * * * * * * * *

            THE TRAGICAL COMEDY, 
               OR 
            COMICAL TRAGEDY, 
               OF 
            PUNCH AND JUDY

== == == = = = =====oOOo==== = = = = = == == ==
* * * * * * * * * *  *  * * * * * * * * * * * *
 ´ ` ´ ` ´ ` ´ ` ´ ` ´ ` ´ ` ´ ` ´ ` ´ ` ´  `
...............................................




DRAMATIS PERSONAE.
__________________
PUNCH-UBU.bm
JUDY-BOO.mh
THE CHILD.bmg
DOCTOR.faustroll
CROCODILE.lutembi
HANGMAN.sfdt
BLIND MAN.greenberg
GHOST.baudrillard
CONSTABLE.moderators,funds
POLICE OFFICERS.sentrum,majorstua
POLLY.nakedwoman



STAGING.
________
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_________________________________________
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ASSOCIATED.
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NOEMATA FUNDING.
________________
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NOTES AND LINKS.
_______________

HTTP://WWW.EXMOUTH-GUIDE.CO.UK/X/430/PUNCH2.JPG
HTTP://WWW.PUNCHANDJUDY.COM/IMAGES/PUNCHF.JPG
HTTP://WWW.PUNCHANDJUDYWORLD.ORG/WWFPJ/PJMEDIA.HTML
HTTP://WWW.PUNCHANDJUDY.COM/SCRIPT1.HTM - A MODERN SCRIPT
HTTP://WWW.PUNCHANDJUDY.COM/IMAGES/CCS.JPG
HTTP://WWW.PUNCHANDJUDY.COM/WHO.HTM
HTTP://WWW.SAGECRAFT.COM/PUPPETRY/TRADITIONS/PUNCH.DICKENS.HTML
HTTP://WWW.PUNCH-AND-JUDY.COM/THE%20PUNCH%20&%20JUDY%20STORY%20SO%20FAR.HTML
HTTP://WWW.GUARDIAN.CO.UK/NETNOTES/ARTICLE/0,6729,768273,00.HTML
HTTP://WWW.NOEMATA.NET/BMG/
HTTP://WWW.PUNCHANDJUDY.COM/CVDCSCRIPT2/PAGE1.HTML
HTTP://WWW.GRAPHESTHESIA.COM/RW/SUBJECTS.HTML#S-PUNCH
HTTP://WWW.PUNCHANDJUDY.COM/SWAZZLE.HTM
THE SPECTRE OF JEAN BAUDRILLARD'S `IMMORTALITY´
CHAINED AND UNCHAINED FRAGMENTS OF FOUND TEXTS
HTTP://WWW.BOOTLEGBOOKS.COM/REFERENCE/PHRASEANDFABLE/DATA/1017.HTML#PUNCH
HTTP://WWW.PUNCHANDJUDY.ORG/WOMEN%20PERFORMERS.HTML
HTTP://NOEMATA.NET/1996-2002/535.HTML
HTTP://NOEMATA.NET/1996-2002/575.HTML
HTTP://WWW.INDIAYOGI.COM/WEBSITE/PHASE2/INDIANGODS/SHIVA1.ASP
HTTP://HOME.HETNET.NL/~EX-BABA/ENGELS/ARTICLES/PAPER%20'SHIVA-SHAKTI'.HTML
HTTP://WWW.XREFER.COM/ENTRY.JSP?XREFID=649111&SECID=.-&HH=1
HTTP://WWW.XREFER.COM/ENTRY.JSP?XREFID=223883&SECID=.-&HH=1





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