Word: dolls
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Last month, the Democrats spent a week ridiculing George Bush. Now its the Republicans turn to mock Gov. Michael S. Dukakis and the Democrats. For $5.95 Republicans can bring home "an authentic Democratic voodoo doll." Or a "Du-ka-ka Happens" T-shirt...
...figures before the Foreign Ministry called the firm's attention to a critical article about the mannequins in the Washington Post. The company stopped production. Sanrio Co., the manufacturer of a well-selling line of toys and gift items, followed suit. Its products included large-eyed dolls called Sambo and Hannah, and towels, bags and stationery goods decorated with pictures of the pair. Along with a big-lipped black doll named Bibinba, the line brought Sanrio more than $11 million in sales last year. "We were making a summer item, and we designed it to be kawaii," says Kazuo Tomatsu...
Other journal entries are less encouraging. Cynthia, a former foster child who sits in front of Bianca in class, once wrote, "I would like a magic ring that do anything I said and I would want my baby doll to be a real baby." The teacher wrote back, asking her, "How would you take care of a real baby and still go to school?" She answered, "I have a mom, you know." To this, the teacher replied in her red ink, "This isn't your mom's baby. Why should she take care of it?" No reply...
Several campy collections of old TV and movie material are fun as well. ( Rhino's Sleazemania series contains howlingly bad excerpts from old antidrug shorts, soft-core porno and previews for grade-Z melodramas ("Terrifying realism! Claws at your unbelieving mind!"). The Video Doll Shoppe, from the New York City-based Video Resources, is a compilation of doll commercials from the 1950s and '60s, including a gloriously dopey promotional film from the Ideal Toy Corp. describing the invention and manufacture of Betsy Wetsy...
...pretext for reflection on Eros' power to maim and dominate. His code for the subject in the early '60s was graffiti. Flattened scrawly figures with sticks for limbs and blobs for heads, much influenced by Jean Dubuffet, populate a whole set of images from 1960 to 1963 -- Doll Boy, The Fourth Love Painting, The Most Beautiful Boy in the World (a valentine to the pop singer Cliff Richard, on whom the artist had an unrequited crush), We Two Boys Together Clinging (a line from Walt Whitman, who, like Gandhi, was one of the heroes of Hockney's youth...