Sunday, December 24, 2006

Is it me...


or is this giant bubble santa scene terribly, terribly creepy? Peeping Tom Santa.

This is what it looked like when we drove by yesterday. Today it was all deflated and flat on the ground. Natural causes, or neighbour with a bb gun?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i suppose it's creepy, but that wouldn't have been among any of my initial reactions- it's no MORE creepy than the behaviour i'd rationalized when i was 4 or so.
Having long internalized the expectation that "he sees you when you're sleeping," etc, a totally-bundled-up santa peering in behind the safety of a glass bubble seems almost quaint.

it doesn't bring any NEW feelings of creepiness to my collaged understanding of "What Santa Is", at least.


FAR more chillingly creepy to me are, in no particular order,

-Any santa depicted with a pronounced, knowing leer. I get that this is supposed to show his omniscient awareness of one's misdeeds, no matter how one might try to conceal them, but this always just comes across jackassy and, more often than not, perverted. As a father figure/godhead/morality allegory, Santa should exhibit neither such wanton schadenfreude nor the slightest whiff of "You've been very BAAAAD"-style BDSM.
As far as I'm concerned, Santa Claus shakes his head sadly and "tut-tuts" when he's left with no choice but to deliver a sack of coal, and that's that.


-Along with #1- any sexy santas at all. This includes any (cartoon or other) depictions of Santa getting sexy with Mrs. Claus, a hot elf or some co-ed climbing into his lap to tell him what she REALLY wants...Also, dancing figurines where, to a familiar xmas tune, Santa drops trou or swivels to gyrate his booty over and over again at the unsuspecting victim who accidentally triggers the device; And, even though my own burlesque history makes this point a hypocritical one, "I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" in any shape or form.

I'll defend my contradiction by saying that Santa depicted as a young man doesn't trigger such a response in me...and in another defense, it's not a, "ewww, old people have sex lives" thing, it's a, "i just walked in on my own grandparents" thing that makes it creepy.
(Gay St. Nick, though, actually doesn't disturb me at all, for some reason, especially if he's called that and not Santa specifically.)


-Any depictions created by religious factions who, having accepted the inextricability of Santa from Christmas, attempt to gain-by-working-WITH the secular fence-sitters, and show Santa happily working hand-in-hand with Jesus. No matter how they try, it just always winds up really really creepy. These Santas never seem wholesome, they seem like Santa got some favour from the mob years ago, took his time paying up until he found a reindeer's head in his bed, and is now shilling for Jesus only because of the unseen machete digging into his back, a look of terror always visible behind the forced smile in his eyes.




At any rate- PTSanta was back up and running a day or so after you left town.
I WOULD love to figure out why someone needed to have that on their lawn, though, and what Santa brought that household.