The Secret Life of Puppets

The Secret Life of Puppets

by Victoria Nelson

“In a remarkable scholarly book, The Secret Life of Puppets, Victoria Nelson argues that our sense of the supernatural and yearning for immortality has been displaced from religion to such expressions of popular culture as superheroes, robots and cyborgs.”—Francisco Goldman, The New York Times Magazine

“The Secret Life of Puppets explores the hauntings, possessions, and other uncanny phenomena proliferating in literature and entertainment (and by no means only on the margins); she argues strongly, through vivid and original readings of H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe and many artifacts in a variety of media, for a new approach to the uses of fantasy and to the relationship between material and immaterial phenomena.”—Marina Warner, The Times Literary Supplement

“From Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, A.I. and X-Files, to the genre grotesqueries of Child’s Play and The Puppet Master, so much of our popular storytelling concerns forces and phenomena our culture firmly insists aren’t real and cannot exist… In a dizzying and fascinating alternate history scored with subterranean connections, Nelson presents alchemists, Platonists, Gnostics and magi in their own terms and contexts… In this rich work of erudite charms, Nelson convincingly argues that the cultural pendulum is swinging back to the platonic side.

But because our rigid scientific materialism doesn’t allow us to take any of this seriously, we are left with mostly unconscious expressions that overemphasize the sensational and horrific dark side, with a little sentimental New Age nod to the latent good.”—William S. Kowinski, The San Francisco Chronicle

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Where monsters lurk / Local scholar explores supernatural elements that surface in our culture's art

William S. Kowinski

There are ancient dangers in readmitting these potent approaches, including cyber-cults and resurgent fundamentalism. But Nelson states the opposite peril perfectly: "We should never forget how utterly unsophisticated the tenets of eighteenth-century rationalism have left us, believers and unbelievers alike, in that complex arena we blithely dub 'spiritual.' "

Lately it's become acceptable to explore transcendent beliefs in indigenous and distant cultures. Nelson's vital contribution is to concentrate on the European legacy, which perhaps surprisingly has many points of convergence with other cultures, as well as with what she calls the customary psychedelics- derived insight that everything is alive.

Nelson spotlights the new legitimacy these ideas are gaining in aesthetics and philosophy, but also suggests another area where they are gaining relevance: science. It turns out that much of today's rigid reductionism is obsolete, and restrictive rationalism is not appropriate to every realm.

As Nelson points out, exploring these ideas doesn't require a "regression from rationality to superstition." It can be a cross-cultural gathering of ancient and contemporary means to more profoundly understand ourselves and our world, and by doing so, find the means to not destroy it all.

Also an interview with Victoria Nelson can be found here on the Synch Book's podcast 42 Minutes.

And as an ongoing catalogue of this revival of the Mythic/Imaginal through our entertainment media:



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As someone who has watched the entirety of Adventure Time, I can verify that the show does indeed resonate such spiritual themes. The animated Avatar series took great inspiration from Buddhism, Shinto and many other Eastern religions and cultures. Pendleton Ward has worked on another animated series I believe has been linked on here somewhere, which focuses on spiritual outlooks on things like death and psychedelics. He's even referenced things like astral projection in his animated works. 
 
As for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I have always been fascinated by their attempts to appeal to both materialists and immaterialists, the spiritual and the non-spiritual. There are plenty of examples of this:

• AI exists with a degree of sentience and/or self-awareness, but are implied to be imitating humans to some degree or are powered by external sources of a cosmic nature. 
  
• Souls exist and astral projection is possible, but when the brain dies the astral form appears to 'fade away'...somewhere? 
  
• There are metaphysical abstract entities representing conceptual forces in the universe that possess consciousness (panpsychism or fundamental consciousness and minds?)
  
• The multiverse exists, but is traversed often by actual sorcerers capable of manipulating matter and energy with their minds. 
  
• The character Wanda Maximoff is called Scarlet Witch in the comics, but has still not been referred to as this as of writing this. Her powers are basically telekinesis and telepathy, but for whatever reason they have to refer to the telepathy as 'neuro-synaptic interface'. 
  
• 'Gods' exist but are implied to be akin to transcendent aliens with advanced science comparable to magic, or mixed with magic. 
  

When it to the comics, as of more recently, Marvel and DC have been very...interesting...when it comes to expressing the supernatural. It all depends on who's writing of course, and which writers want to retcon and change established lore, mythology, concepts, forces, powers etc. This has been especially prevalent in DC, and not everyone's a fan.

Getting.