Back to business as usual around here, gratuitous T & A for the hungry masses!
I’ve been telling my friends about Real Dolls whenever I wanted to shock and amaze them with all that our beautiful world has to offer. I think I first found out about them from a HBO show and more recently I read about the experience of the Real Doll aficionado in the entertaining serial column “I did it for science” on Nerve. Here is the article by Grant Stoddard.
I found the appearance of the dolls in photographs a little horrifying and unsettling, in the very least, in that they resemble police composites for the remains of murdered prostitutes. But, all in all, it was just a silly novelty to me. That is, until I saw the reality of this video. It’s about an 80 year old man and his girlfriend–an inanimate doll. The subject of the short is sorta sad and way cringe-inducing. I think if you don’t straight up vom thinking about your own old grandpappy, you will find it enriching. Give it an open-minded shot, friends.
Oh, and how does this relate to my art, pray tell? In that these ladies also have the much beloved cold stare of a Piero Della Francesca character! My mental catalog of images is filled with this trash, and that’s what supplies my paintings. Also, I would love access to this technology. Maybe I should apprentice in the famed Real Doll house. Ugh, but that’s the right idea.
P.S. After seeing Das Boot, I read somewhere that the sex doll was invented to relieve sailors in submarines. Jeeze.
UPDATE 4/26/07: Just read a very good article about this topic called, “Just Like a Woman” on Salon.
From that article I found the Real Doll Doctor. I have to say that the photos of the “operations” to repair damage that I don’t even want to mentally reenact how the injuries came to be is disturbing. Some common damages to the dolls are called a “blow out” or a “flat tire.” Goo. The Salon article quotes the Real Doll Doctor as refusing to ever again do repairs for a particular student, who he refers to as “Jack the Ripper” due to the extremely violent damage done to the doll. Shudder.
Oh, then after he fixes some of the dolls, he sells them.
Used. sex. dolls. Shudder x infinity.