Faceless Dolls, Weird and Eerie

I admit it: I love jigsaw puzzles and pick the most challenging to try to put together. I'm pretty picky. So, when my parents passed away, I got rid of a puzzle or two of theirs, but I did keep one: a doll puzzle that is creepy as all get up. My youngest son, who loves to help with puzzles, actually pretty much completely finished this one before I had a chance to get to it.

I decided to deconstruct a bit of it.

So much less creepy? Huh? I . . . uh, nevermind.

This is, in essence, a lesson in the Weird and the Eerie as explained in Mark Fisher's excellent work The Weird and the Eerie. The above is an example of the eerie, in which there is an unsettling lack of something. Weirdness, on the other hand, is caused by the presence of that which does not belong. I tried capturing this, at least in theory, by rearranging the faces and creating new ones from the existing fragments of the others, like so:

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

I like all of these for one reason or another, but my favorites are VI, IX, XI, and XX. IX and XI are just slightly off of complete, yet they are complete, just completed by something that doesn't belong there. VI and XX are just plain surreal examples of beautiful dolls consuming each other's faces. And who doesn't like a little Victorian/Edwardian cannibalism?

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