Secrets of the Living Dolls is a BBC documentary about straight men who dress and wear plastic, prosthetic skin the makes them look like women, or at least facsimiles of women. Often they are interested in the phenomenon known as "female masking" because they are unsuccessful with women and they enjoy becoming the kinds of women they would like to meet or be with. To many they look strange and even scary, but to them they look great. There is a whole community around this sub-culture and a part of the film focuses on a meetup of female maskers in Minneapolis, MN.
Trailer can be viewed here:
Full episode can be viewed here.
Of course, if you think that's weird, imagine female masking on acid, and crystal meth... and PCP. Shaye Saint John was the character invented by artist Eric Fournier.
Here is a documentary about the Shaye Saint John story:
The back story was that Shaye was a model that was in a terrible accident and got reconstructive surgery, but got maybe a little too much. Ever the diva, Shaye continued her public life by making hallucinatory videos known as triggers. Basically, Shaye's triggers are living doll bad trips.
A playlist of Shaye's best films are included below:
Shaye's official, posthumous channel can be subscribed to here.
Why is this all so freaky though? It's noting you can necessarily put your finger on that ostensibly scares the viewer. There is no violence or rape or torture. It's actually pretty harmless on the surface.
It has something to do with the Uncanny Valley. The uncanny valley is a hypothesis developed by robotics scientist Masahiro Mori in 1970. According to Wikipedia:
Mori's original hypothesis states that as the appearance of a robot is made more human, some observers' emotional response to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong revulsion. However, as the robot's appearance continues to become less distinguishable from that of a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once again and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.[9]
This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a "barely human" and "fully human" entity is called the uncanny valley. The name captures the idea that an almost human-looking robot will seem overly "strange" to some human beings, will produce a feeling of uncanniness, and will thus fail to evoke the empathic response required for productive human-robot interaction.[9]
That is also probably why I Feel Fantastic fascinates so many viewers.
That is also probably why I Feel Fantastic fascinates so many viewers.
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