Something Strange

[Tetrachord]

I actually said to my husband as we were leaving the golf club the day the couple had the doll, "this reminds me of the film 'Lars and the Real Doll'".

The other stories here about people and their toy companions are very disturbing to me, especially the notion that doll babies are 'popular' in the US and the UK. As has been said, many people must go along with these fantasies for them to continue.

Pastoralguy is right about 'pm photography'! There are many images from the Victorian era of children dressed up and photographed after death. I've always found these images very disturbing indeed. And the photograph of the dead man in the wedding photograph!! OMG. After both my parents died my sisters went to the "viewing" but I wouldn't have a bar of it; my mother would have been utterly horrified by such a notion ("don't use my grave as a shrine; get on with your lives"), as would my father.

[greenilex]

Some of us, I fear, have been known to co-opt our dogs instead of pukha dolls, which to me is creepy too.

[P. G. Tipps]

Start The Week on R4 at 09.00 this morning is about to discuss, among other very weird associated things, 'a man who dresses like a little girl'.

There are weird things and people throughout society not least within the Houses of Commons & Lords and the BBC.

It surely has to be the weirdest period in human history so far?

[Pabmusic]

...It surely has to be the weirdest period in human history so far?

I very much doubt it. Throughout our history, we have (generally) been conditioned be superstition - that has been weird beyond imagining. On the whole we live in a less superstitious age, one in which many answers are available for those ready to consider them.

But there are 'weird' things - like the fact that our brains begin to prepare our bodies to react to thoughts up to 7 seconds before we experience the conscious thought. Now that's weird... (And what does it mean for the notion of 'free will'?

[doversoul1]

I actually said to my husband as we were leaving the golf club the day the couple had the doll, "this reminds me of the film 'Lars and the Real Doll'".

The other stories here about people and their toy companions are very disturbing to me, especially the notion that doll babies are 'popular' in the US and the UK. As has been said, many people must go along with these fantasies for them to continue.

Pastoralguy is right about 'pm photography'! There are many images from the Victorian era of children dressed up and photographed after death. I've always found these images very disturbing indeed. And the photograph of the dead man in the wedding photograph!! OMG. After both my parents died my sisters went to the "viewing" but I wouldn't have a bar of it; my mother would have been utterly horrified by such a notion ("don't use my grave as a shrine; get on with your lives"), as would my father.

It puzzles me rather. Do you find it so difficult to imagine what it is like for parents to lose a young child, maybe in a very regrettable circumstance? It probably means nothing whatsoever to the parents if their behaviour disturbs other people. I often wonder how those parents go on living without going completely mad or killing themselves.

[jean]

Start The Week on R4 at 09.00 this morning is about to discuss, among other very weird associated things, 'a man who dresses like a little girl'...

The great thing about Grayson Perry is that he is not weird at all.

Just listen, instead of taking comfort from your own feelings or normality. You'll be all the better for it.

[french frank]

It puzzles me rather. Do you find it so difficult to imagine what it is like for parents to lose a young child, maybe in a very regrettable circumstance? It probably means nothing whatsoever to the parents if their behaviour disturbs other people. I often wonder how those parents go on living without going completely mad or killing themselves.

To most people, I think, the public behaviour is extremely odd, unsettling. I wouldn't have known whether they were putting on some deliberate act to see how others reacted (shades of Candid Camera or Beadle's About) and we were supposed to laugh. The unfamiliarity of the situation wouldn't have led me simply to accept that they had suffered some sort of tragedy. It may be behaviour that we (people) have to adapt to in the future, but that doesn't stop it seeming extremely strange now.

[Beef Oven!]

To most people, I think, the public behaviour is extremely odd, unsettling. I wouldn't have known whether they were putting on some deliberate act to see how others reacted (shades of Candid Camera or Beadle's About) and we were supposed to laugh. The unfamiliarity of the situation wouldn't have led me simply to accept that they had suffered some sort of tragedy. It may be behaviour that we (people) have to adapt to in the future, but that doesn't stop it seeming extremely strange now.

I suppose one's life experience has much to do with it. As a schoolboy there used be a young woman, probably about 30 years old who used to get on the bus that I sometimes took to school. She had a baby doll, little blanket and other associated paraphernalia. She'd talk to the baby and smile at other passengers if they looked on curiously. I guess if you are exposed to things like that when you are 13 years of age, it might not be disconcerting when you experience such things in later life, when you find yourself in more genteel agreeable surroundings.

[P. G. Tipps]

It puzzles me rather. Do you find it so difficult to imagine what it is like for parents to lose a young child, maybe in a very regrettable circumstance? It probably means nothing whatsoever to the parents if their behaviour disturbs other people. I often wonder how those parents go on living without going completely mad or killing themselves.

In Victorian times and earlier it was not uncommon for the majority of children in some families to die before reaching double-figures in years never mind adulthood.

In our comparatively privileged times that is almost too unbearable to contemplate but most parents did cope no doubt because childhood death was simply another horrible part of their horrible everyday lives?

I said this is the weirdest of times but I'd still much rather be living now than at any other time in history. So maybe there is something to be said for 'weirdness' after all?

[Beef Oven!]

....... I said this is the weirdest of times but I'd still much rather be living now than at any other time in history./QUOTE]

But you've nothing to compare it with.

[french frank]

I suppose one's life experience has much to do with it. As a schoolboy there used be a young woman, probably about 30 years old who used to get on the bus that I often took to school. She had a baby doll, little blanket and other associated paraphernalia. She'd talk to the baby and smile at other passengers if they looked on curiously. I guess if you are exposed to things like that when you are 13 years of age, it might not be disconcerting when you experience such things in later life, when you find yourself in more genteel agreeable surroundings.

Yes, that's the sort of situation which I recognise, and I think people would have been very tolerant - perhaps even protective - of the young woman, but at the same time categorised the behaviour as 'aberrant' in some way. It seems to be the limits of 'social norms' that are expanding.

[teamsaint]

But you've nothing to compare it with.

Well quite.

Plenty of folk in the past likely had "better" lives than many do now.

Back to the OP, it seems to me that the behaviour in the OP is just one of a range of extreme and understandable reactions to a very difficult life event, and by no means the most damaging, and I would include self damage in that.

[Pabmusic]

... So maybe there is something to be said for 'weirdness' after all?

Are you somehow suggesting that it's not 'weird' to have most of you children die in infancy?

I still don't understand why you think that ours is 'the weirdest of times'.

[P. G. Tipps]

The great thing about Grayson Perry is that he is not weird at all.

Just listen, instead of taking comfort from your own feelings or normality. You'll be all the better for it.

Thanks for the kindly tip and advice, jean, but ...

[doversoul1]

To most people, I think, the public behaviour is extremely odd, unsettling. I wouldn't have known whether they were putting on some deliberate act to see how others reacted (shades of Candid Camera or Beadle's About) and we were supposed to laugh. The unfamiliarity of the situation wouldn't have led me simply to accept that they had suffered some sort of tragedy. It may be behaviour that we (people) have to adapt to in the future, but that doesn't stop it seeming extremely strange now.

I agree with you that people endlessly do odd (mostly ridiculous to me) things in public/publicly these days but once the reason is told as in this case, I’d accept the particular behaviour.

And I’d agree, if anyone insisted, that there is no reason why we shouldn’t discuss these behaviours but when a child’s death is involved (if it indeed does in this case), I find discussing the matter as if something odd is, well, rather disturbing. Anyway, that’s just me, so I won’t come back to this thread.