Pinocchio is a Story About Art and God — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00This video will discuss major plot points of  Pinocchio, Pinocchio, Pinocchio, Pinocchio,
2. 0:04Lies of P, and A.I. Artificial Intelligence. It,  like all my videos, is better on Nebula.
3. 0:10In the year 2022, three different Pinocchio  movies were released– two of which were made
4. 0:16by academy award winning filmmakers– and  I thought “that’s fine.” In the year 2023,
5. 0:23one of the best games of the year was a  spin on the popular “soulslike” genre,
6. 0:28except instead of medieval  knights or lovecraftian beasts,
7. 0:31the game based its lore on…Pinocchio.  And I thought, “seems normal to me!”
8. 0:38But for some reason, learning that legendary  directors Francis Ford Coppola, Federico Fellini,
9. 0:44and Stanley Kubrick all had dreams of making a  Pinocchio film and were only stopped by death
10. 0:50or massive lawsuits has pushed me over  the edge. Like, there isn’t some other
11. 0:55Pinocchio I’ve missed, right? We’re talking  about the puppet?? The fairy tale???
12. 1:01In the past 80 years there have been at least  fifteen explicit film adaptations of Pinocchio,
13. 1:06even more TV specials and “guest appearances,”  countless books for both children and adults,
14. 1:12and an ever-growing list of projects that may  not have “Pinocchio” in the title but are,
15. 1:17in one way or another, twists on the  same story of a little wooden boy.
16. 1:24What is it about a puppet without strings  that requires so many different artistic
17. 1:29interpretations? It’s not like Coppola,  Del Toro, Fellini, Zemeckis, Spielberg,
18. 1:34Calvino, Kubrick were all dying to untangle the  mystery of Goldilocks. I want to understand this,
19. 1:41I need an answer, and over the past several months  I’ve consumed so much Pinocchio-based art I feel
20. 1:47like I’m losing my mind. Because here’s the twist:  there’s not a simple reason all these artists
21. 1:52are obsessed with Pinocchio, because Pinocchio  isn’t about anything. It’s about everything.
22. 2:02The Adventures of Pinocchio, the original  work by Italian author Carlo Collodi,
23. 2:07was a serialized story that released a chapter  at a time in the “Giornale per i bambini,” or
24. 2:13“Newspaper for Children.” Between 1881 and  1882, readers were treated to the trials and
25. 2:19tribulations of Pinocchio, an absolute dipshit  of a wooden puppet. Reading through Pinocchio
26. 2:25often feels like an “oops all Goofus” edition  of Highlights; the story broadly operates as a
27. 2:31sort of morality tale, and Pinocchio is virtually  always on the wrong side. Gepetto, who himself is
28. 2:38described as a bad-tempered man, carves the puppet  out of wood, and the first thing the puppet does
29. 2:43is steal Gepetto’s wig, kick him in the nose,  and run out into the street. The townsfolk then
30. 2:47decide that Gepetto is abusing Pinocchio  and drag the woodcarver off to prison.
31. 2:54If you’re familiar with the nonchalant brutality  of other fairy tales– parts of Cinderella read
32. 3:00like a Coen Brothers movie– the random cruelty of  Pinocchio may not come as a surprise. But what’s
33. 3:06still jarring about the original story is that  now-iconic parts of “Pinocchio lore” appear only
34. 3:12briefly, if at all. A talking cricket shows up in  Chapter 4 and tells the puppet that good boys are
35. 3:18obedient and that he should learn a trade to earn  an honest living. Pinocchio, enraged, says that
36. 3:24all he wants to do is eat, drink, play, and wander  around, and then kills the cricket with a hammer.
37. 3:30His nose only grows twice in the whole story, and  entire chapters seem to completely disregard the
38. 3:35fact that Pinocchio is a puppet at all. This is maybe because, in the most notable
39. 3:40difference to its adaptations, Pinocchio’s desire  to be a “real boy” only shows up in the 25th of
40. 3:4636 chapters. It feels, like serialized fiction  often does, that the author neglected to start
41. 3:53writing with a conclusion in mind and instead  has to scramble to wrap everything up. But in
42. 3:58Collodi’s case, this is only partially true–  the story was actually supposed to conclude
43. 4:03ten chapters earlier when Pinocchio was, I am  not kidding, KILLED BY ASSASSINS. The intended
44. 4:09ending to The Adventures of Pinocchio was in  chapter 15, when a cat and wolf chase him down,
45. 4:15throw a noose around his neck, and hang him from  a tree until he dies (which, in a morbid sense,
46. 4:21is kind of the most ironic death a puppet could  have). Only after a public outcry and Collodi’s
47. 4:27editor reminding him how successful the serial  was, did Pinocchio recover from his fatal hanging,
48. 4:33meet a blue fairy, and go on several more  adventures. He traveled to what would later
49. 4:37be called “pleasure island,” got swallowed by a  big fish, and eventually became a real boy.
50. 4:44Much of the appeal of reading the 1880s story  today is how uncompromisingly mean it can be.
51. 4:51Lampwick, Pinocchio’s truant friend-turned-donkey,  eventually dies in front of him. The cat and fox,
52. 4:58once assassins, fall into such deep poverty  that the cat goes blind and the fox sells
53. 5:03his tail– Pinocchio proudly tells them “if  you are poor, you deserve it!” The moral,
54. 5:08and thus political, slant of the book is  abundantly clear: working is good and begging
55. 5:13is bad. Obedience is the one path to becoming a  “real boy,” a functioning member of society, and
56. 5:19ultimately how you earn your father’s love. But there’s a stickiness to the story itself that
57. 5:27makes it memorable past its moralizing. Its  darkness is compelling, Pinocchio’s constant
58. 5:33failings make him…more relatable than all the  adults demanding his attention. And ultimately,
59. 5:39The Adventures of Pinocchio subverts the  typical fairytale archetypes simply through
60. 5:44its unpretentious choice of subject. My favorite  line of the whole book is probably the opener.
61. 5:50Once upon a time there was– "A king!" my little readers all shout.
62. 5:54No, children, you are mistaken. Once  upon a time there was a piece of wood.
63. 6:00In its unpretentiousness, The Adventures of  Pinocchio doesn’t really comment on a mountain
64. 6:05of topics implied by the themes of its story. Art,  agency, family, god– these things would come to
65. 6:12define Pinocchio, but only through a hundred fifty  years of using Collodi’s text as a foundation.
66. 6:24The 1940 Disney animated adaptation, maybe the  biggest “event” in the history of Pinocchio
67. 6:29as a cultural idea, grabs onto the most  obvious topic that Collodi glances over:
68. 6:34that Pinocchio himself is an inanimate object  brought to life, a block of wood turned into a
69. 6:40boy by the craft of an artist. Actually, this is  specifically not the case in the book– the block
70. 6:47of wood is already talking before Gepetto carves  it. But even then, the fact that Gepetto can
71. 6:52make a boy out of this talking stump, one that  can run and dance and misbehave, is basically
72. 6:58taken for granted in the original story. Not so in the 1940 film. Returning to it for
73. 7:04this script, I was struck by how little it takes  any of its liveliness for granted. Only the second
74. 7:10full-length animated Disney movie, Pinocchio  finds constant delight in things we might take
75. 7:16for granted. There are long stretches early  on when nothing happens except a cat opens a
76. 7:21window or Jiminy Cricket watches cuckoo clocks,  sections with essentially no story significance
77. 7:26or character growth. These parts of the movie  instead exist purely to enjoy the animation
78. 7:32itself, the overly laborious route the cat  takes to the window, the over-engineering
79. 7:37of a dozen different cuckoo clocks. I am not a classic Disney guy at all,
80. 7:43but there is genuine magic in these moments, the  movie not asking us to attach our emotions to a
81. 7:49specific character but instead the technical feat  of thousands of hand-drawn images coming together
82. 7:55into something greater. And so, even though the  movie never draws an explicit parallel between
83. 8:01its medium and its subject, Pinocchio-the-boy  serves as a metaphor for Pinocchio-the-film,
84. 8:07something delightfully willed into life by a  combination of artistic skill and magic. Both
85. 8:13seem in love with their newfound ability  to replicate what it is to be alive.
86. 8:19To accompany this new enthusiasm for life,  many of the book’s harder edges are sanded
87. 8:24off. Gepetto is made much more gentle in the  narrative of the disney movie, and expresses
88. 8:28his own hope that Pinocchio might become a real  boy. The cricket isn’t crushed under a hammer,
89. 8:34and instead serves as the puppet’s protector and  conscience. Pinocchio himself, although he still
90. 8:39skips school, joins a circus, and takes a trip to  pleasure island, is depicted as charmingly naive,
91. 8:44rather than the little stinker he is in the book.  Disney’s Pinocchio mostly does away with the moral
92. 8:50that you should grow up and get a job– but that  doesn’t mean it doesn’t moralize. Instead, as
93. 8:56Georgia Panteli writes in her thesis on Pinocchio  (I’m not the only one with this obsession)
94. 9:02“Disney presented a world where the only  safety was within the family. Collodi’s
95. 9:07Pinocchio was street-smart and learnt how to  become responsible by his exposure to the road;
96. 9:12he encountered thugs but also helpers.  In Disney, all external encounters are
97. 9:17dangers and the message is that the only  safe place for the child is the family.”
98. 9:23As will become increasingly clear, one  of the Pinocchio story’s strengths is its
99. 9:27near-infinite malleability. In Collodi’s hands,  its protagonist has to learn to stop goofing off
100. 9:33and become respectable in order to raise his  family out of poverty. Disney, 50 years later,
101. 9:39frames Pinocchio as a wonderfully goofy boy who  just needs to remember that all the love he needs
102. 9:44lives at home. And for someone like me who lo  ves these sorts of comparisons, what’s extra
103. 9:50fascinating about all this is that 80 years later,  the same company, Disney, gave another Pinocchio
104. 9:56the full feature treatment! With a budget of 150  million dollars and oscar-winning director Robert
105. 10:01Zemeckis at the helm, Disney’s 2022 “Pinocchio” is  another chance to see how flexible the Pinocchio
106. 10:07story is, how it can be resculpted to fit into  the culture of our modern day, and perhaps it
107. 10:13shouldn’t be surprising then that this is…one of  the worst movies I’ve ever seen in my life.
108. 10:25Maybe this one’s on me for expecting better.  Zemeckis, who directed in the first 30 years
109. 10:29of his career some of the most technically  accomplished and narratively satisfying pieces
110. 10:34of American cinema– Back to the Future! Who Framed  Roger Rabbit! Castaway! Contact! Even Forrest
111. 10:40Gump! – has, in the 21st century, become fully  consumed with the potential of motion-capture
112. 10:45movies animated entirely digitally.  The Polar Express, A Christmas Carol,
113. 10:50Beowulf– remember Beowulf? A couple years ago,  Patrick Willems made an excellent video entitled
114. 10:57“The Sad Story of Robert Zemeckis & His Wonderful  Toys,” that tracks his filmography as it descends
115. 11:03into an obsession with these strange waxy  digital worlds. As his technical ambition
116. 11:09has shifted into CGI land, his ability to  tell a compelling story has…suffered.
117. 11:15However, there’s a way where Pinocchio is a  near-perfect story for him to tackle. Zemeckis has
118. 11:21spent decades chasing the dream of creating false  humans who are indistinguishable from real ones.
119. 11:27Now enter Pinocchio, a story of a created-boy  who wants nothing more than to be real! In 1940,
120. 11:34Disney thrills audiences and itself with the  magic of illustrations charmed into movement,
121. 11:40now in 2022, Zemeckis can do the same with a  computer-created heightened reality, the tech and
122. 11:46the narrative working towards the same goal! This isn’t what happens, of course. Pinocchio,
123. 11:52much like the other Disney “live-action” remakes,  can’t find a single artistic reason to exist.
124. 11:59There are vanishingly few meaningful differences  from the original Disney film– Pinocchio goes
125. 12:04through exactly the same series of events in the  same order. The characters have been slightly
126. 12:09tweaked; Pinocchio is more hapless, Jiminy is  more annoying, the cat is this horrible CGI
127. 12:15creation. There’s a scene where Pinocchio  stares in wonder at literal horses**t.
128. 12:21But most disappointing of all is how visually  dull the whole thing is. For instance– that
129. 12:27cuckoo clock bit still happens and now all the  cuckoo clocks are references to other Disney and
130. 12:32Zemeckis movies, but no one is having any fun with  it. Is it cool that a fake Toy Story character can
131. 12:39pop out of a 3D-modeled clock? Or does the movie  include these references because it has no faith
132. 12:44in its own ability to be inherently aesthetically  compelling, the way the original film was?
133. 12:50In a staggering regression, 2022’s Pinocchio fails  to ever communicate what the 1940’s version did so
134. 12:56effortlessly: that art coming to life is amazing  in itself. Despite the film’s false one-ers and
135. 13:04complicated liquid simulations and accurately  modeled bounce lighting– maybe, because of
136. 13:09them– Pinocchio the puppet and the film feel  purposeless, incredible technical achievements
137. 13:15without an ounce of magic. Even the film’s one  “narrative swing,” a slightly ambiguous ending
138. 13:20where we don’t actually see him grow into a real  boy, is completely undercut by the grotesque new
139. 13:27Jiminy explaining away that same ambiguity. But in a demonstration of the flexibility of the
140. 13:41story, even this failure can be worked into some  understanding of Pinocchio’s themes. Zemeckis,
141. 13:48entirely unwittingly, performs a sort of  “pinnochiotic inversion.” His film is so obsessed
142. 13:54with the aesthetics of “reality” that it’s robbed  of any sense of magic. Unlike Pinocchio himself,
143. 14:00the film fails to ever become more than the sum  of its parts. Maybe it’s this final challenge, the
144. 14:06magic, the spark, that’s attracted so many artists  to it– maybe the story consumed Coppola, Fellini,
145. 14:12and Kubrick because it represented the great goal  of filmmaking, to take text and celluloid and
146. 14:18endow it with life, sculpt it into something that  grows beyond their raw technical skill. Or maybe
147. 14:26there’s still more to the little wooden boy. In a journal article titled- prepare yourself,
148. 14:33“Pinocchio and Pinocchiology,” author Jennifer  Stone writes that particularly in Italian culture,
149. 14:34“Pinocchio is a stable for innumerable  critics, writers, and psychoanalysts,
150. 14:44all who try to carve a niche in the vast  literature of ‘Pinocchiology’.” They write
151. 14:49about its religious themes, she says, its ideas  of nationalism, its linguistic structure. And yet,
152. 14:55she says, one idea has been ignored by “even the  so-called psychoanalytic critics”: why aren’t we
153. 15:01talking about the fact that his nose is clearly a  d**k! “Let us now proceed,” she writes, “to read
154. 15:07about the vicissitudes of Pinocchio’s adventurous  libido in contest with his mortified ego.”
155. 15:14Stone’s spiral into Freudian analysis of  Pinocchio is somewhat matched by Robert
156. 15:19Coover’s novel “Pinocchio in Venice” in which the  now-adult puppet [***************], his
157. 15:25nose becoming a [********************], and everyone in
158. 15:30Venice wants a piece of [***********] including  like, [******] because everyone talks in Pinocchio and
159. 15:35everyone [***********]. There is, as with  everything, a world of Pinocchio-based adult
160. 15:41entertainment, if you are unfortunate enough  to type in that combination of words.
161. 15:47Elsewhere, the puppet becomes a symbol  of social decline. In the fittingly
162. 15:52titled book “The Will to be Human,” Italian  psychiatrist Silvano Arieti first diagnoses
163. 15:58Pinocchio’s antisocial behavior on the lack of  a mother figure in his life, and then writes
164. 16:03an entire chapter on “Pinocchian, Alienated,  and Newly Committed Youth.” Arieti designates
165. 16:09unnaturally alienated young people as members  of the “Pinocchian Subculture,” youth who
166. 16:16“Unleash the id, abandon the road  to maturity, disregard education,
167. 16:20and take easy trips to artificial toy-counters  which ultimately lead to dehumanization.”
168. 16:26Arieti’s diagnosis is based on what he identifies  as the Pinocchian philosophy of “Be. Do not
169. 16:33become,” a sort of hedonistic short-term pleasure  seeking that results in a neglected future. This
170. 16:40is, to me, a frankly bizarre reading of Pinocchio  because the story’s back half is entirely about
171. 16:46becoming something, growing into a real boy.  Yes, Collodi’s Pinocchio is- what did I call
172. 16:53him? A dipshit?- but his depiction of the puppet  is compelling because of how often he surfaces
173. 16:58the struggle between Pinocchio’s short and  long-term desires. Towards the end of the novel,
174. 17:04Lampwick convinces Pinoc to run away to pleasure  island with him, but only after pages of Pinocchio
175. 17:10agonizing between what he wants and what he knows  he should do. Arieti ultimately declares that the
176. 17:16Pinocchian philosophy, these youths who refuse  to mature, stems from (sigh) the fact that the
177. 17:23world is too easy now and their parents don’t  discipline them enough (and he was talking about
178. 17:28people born in the 50s!). It’s a bland reading of  history, and an inaccurate one of Pinocchio!
179. 17:35What Arieti correctly identifies in the Pinocchio  story, however, is the unavoidable theme of
180. 17:40parentage. It’s possible to read Collodi’s  original story as one of adoption– before
181. 17:46Pinocchio is carved into a human figure, he’s  a mischievous talking stump, and perhaps this
182. 17:51pre-existing personality is why he’s so resistant  to guidance. But in most adaptations of Pinocchio,
183. 17:57Gepetto creates Pinocchio entirely, placing him  as close as possible to his “biological parent.”
184. 18:04Read from a parent’s perspective, Pinocchio is  an anxiety-laden tale about how no matter how
185. 18:09hard you try to impart common sense onto your  child, they will go out into the world and make
186. 18:15mistakes and act foolishly and be taken advantage  of. While Arieti claims that Pinocchian youth
187. 18:21will never mature, it’s easy to read the book  as giving parents the exact opposite message;
188. 18:26one must spend several years with a little wooden  head before eventually being gifted a brain.
189. 18:33But Pinocchio is, first and foremost, a book for  children. And since they’re far more likely to
190. 18:38identify with the puppet than Gepetto, it’s not  a story about parenting. It’s a story about GOD.
191. 18:47Because yes, Gepetto is Pinocchio’s father but  far more in the “Our father who art in heaven”
192. 18:53way than like, the “my old man” way and once  you start thinking about this you really-
193. 18:58A.I. Artificial Intelligence is a 2001 film,  directed by Steven Spielberg but largely
194. 19:04pre-produced by Stanley Kubrick, who worked with  several screenwriters on the project before dying
195. 19:09in 1999. AI is a Pinocchio movie about the cruelty  of being created by a god who abandons you.
196. 19:20Loosely based on Brian Aldiss’ short story  “Supertoys Last All Summer Long,” AI begins as
197. 19:26a sort of sci-fi horror story for parents. Henry  and Monica Swinton are a wealthy couple in the
198. 19:3222nd century whose human son is sick and being  held in a vegetative state. Because his recovery
199. 19:38seems impossible, Henry brings home a robot.  Although other bots in the world of AI appear
200. 19:45fully human and have sophisticated programming,  this one– named David– is different, because this
201. 19:50one will be capable of genuine love. The scientist  who created David believes that love is the key
202. 19:57missing component of robot cognition, that love  will allow a created machine to cross the gulf
203. 20:03that separates programming and humanity. And after Monica activates David’s “love,” he
204. 20:09does come to life, in a way. He starts acting with  a very human sense of irrationality– he’s jealous,
205. 20:16unpredictable, neurotic. And his irrationality  also makes him dangerous in a way that’s amplified
206. 20:21when their previously-vegetative son recovers  and returns home. Monica and Henry decide that
207. 20:27they have to decommission David, returning him to  the factory to be destroyed since his activated
208. 20:32sense of “love” can never be reprogrammed.  Or, that’s what’s supposed to happen. But
209. 20:38Monica can’t do it. She loves David, at least  enough that she can’t bring herself to kill him,
210. 20:44and so she does something far crueler–  abandons him in a forest and runs away.
211. 20:49The movie is no longer about the fear of  having a child you cannot understand. It
212. 20:54is now about the desperation of being rejected by  the only thing that gives your life meaning.
213. 21:01The remaining plot of the film twists familiar  aspects of the Pinocchio story– David goes to a
214. 21:06circus, he goes to Pleasure Island, he’s swallowed  by a fish. But Pinocchio isn’t just alluded to in
215. 21:12AI– it’s an explicit driver of the story. David  becomes obsessed with finding the blue fairy,
216. 21:18the magical figure in Collodi’s book that  grants life to the puppet. He clings to
217. 21:23the idea that if she could make him into a  real boy, he’d finally be able to earn his
218. 21:28mother’s love. It’s an idea that destroys him.  [“I feel like my brain is falling out.”]
219. 21:37David is not born, he is made– made in his  creator’s own image. But he is meant to replace
220. 21:43that which is irreplaceable. Both his gods, the  father who made him and the mother whom he loves,
221. 21:49gave him the impossible task of filling the void  left by their one begotten son. It is his failure
222. 21:55to achieve this impossible task, his father tells  him, that brings him closest to humanity. But the
223. 22:02cruelty of David’s mother, of the cybertronics  corporation that machined his parts, was letting
224. 22:08him live in the world at all. David asks the blue  fairy to make him real, asks her for thousands of
225. 22:15years to change him into a real boy. But A.I.  suggests that love isn’t enough to become real,
226. 22:21nor magic. Instead, what makes David relatable is  that he has the inextricably human experience of
227. 22:28outliving, of being abandoned by, God. I can’t stop thinking about Pinocchio.
228. 22:36The legendary writer Italo Calvino once said that  "It is natural for us to believe that Pinocchio
229. 22:42has always existed, we cannot imagine a world  without Pinocchio." Is he right? Is Pinocchio core
230. 22:49to our understanding of ourselves? Is- [whisper]  is the bible just a big Pinocchio story?
231. 22:56A fact about the film AI that’s now permanently  stuck in my head is that part of the reason
232. 23:01Kubrick spent so long in pre-production is  he didn’t think the technology existed to
233. 23:06convincingly make the story– more specifically,  he didn’t want a child to “play” a robot,
234. 23:12he wanted a robot to play a child. He wanted  an actual mechanical David to be the titular
235. 23:19character. Spielberg, when he took over, opted  for Haley Joel Osmont, which was probably a good
236. 23:25call. But 20 years after the film’s release,  50 after Kubrick started toying with it,
237. 23:30a completely different team presented us with a  completely different kind of mechanical child.
238. 23:38Lies of P is a video game, developed by Neowiz  Games and Round8 Studio. It owes quite a lot
239. 23:44to FromSoftware titles, Bloodborne, Dark  Souls, Sekiro. But its dedication isn’t
240. 23:49to FromSoftware– it’s to Carlo Collodi. In the world of Lies of P, set loosely in a
241. 23:56steampunk-y version of the Belle Époque of  France, Pinocchio’s literal lack of strings
242. 24:01don’t make him unique. He is but one of thousands  of “puppets,” in this case automatons, all able to
243. 24:08move and work and kill autonomously. Instead,  Pinocchio is special because he can choose,
244. 24:15he can decide whether he wants to tell the truth  or lie. Or, rather, we can. Because this version
245. 24:22of the puppet is controlled by us. The core conceit of Pinocchio gets a
246. 24:29little…strange, when he’s positioned as the  protagonist of a video game. The character is
247. 24:34meant to be unconstrained, either by strings or  the rules of polite society. It is Pinocchio’s
248. 24:40agency that separates him from every other  puppet. But ironically, in Lies of P, he is
249. 24:46hyper-responsive to our every whim. No puppeteer  has ever had a subject as well-controlled as P,
250. 24:53who can run, jump, swing and slash and dodge  at the speed of thought. We often talk about
251. 24:59video games in first person– “I attacked,  I defended”– but the literal experience of
252. 25:05playing a game is typically much closer  to that of controlling a marionette,
253. 25:10making the figure onscreen perform recognizable  actions through abstracted hand movements.
254. 25:17Perhaps because of this, the Pinocchio of  Lies of P is also a narratively less dynamic
255. 25:22character than in other adaptations. There is  virtually none of his trademark disobedience,
256. 25:28his struggle between ego and id. Just as he  controls perfectly, Pinocchio acts perfectly,
257. 25:34totally compliant to his father, the blue  fairy, and most other kindly adults in his
258. 25:39life. He is neither relatable nor frustrating–  once again, his artificially high responsiveness,
259. 25:45his total predictability, clash with his  supposed agency as an “elevated” puppet.
260. 25:51There is an explanation for this in the game’s  lore, and boy does the game have a lot of lore.
261. 25:57Pinocchio’s character is benched in favor of long  histories of “ergo,” a sometimes-crystallized
262. 26:03lifeforce, a petrification disease that stems  from this lifeforce, an automaton uprising,
263. 26:08a cult of alchemists, monstrous archbishops,  uhh, Bane? But Lies of P’s ambition to explain
264. 26:15its world comes at the cost of its legibility  as a narrative; even after spending a huge
265. 26:20amount of time with the game, I struggle  to concisely sum up what it’s “about.”
266. 26:26That’s not to say it’s a storytelling failure.  The game’s aesthetic is remarkable, shuddery
267. 26:31household robots repurposed for violence,  a city caught between technological eras,
268. 26:36humans wracked with disease morphed into  less recognizable shapes than the puppets
269. 26:41that replace them. One of my favorite designs in  the game is this so-called “puppet of the future,”
270. 26:47an enormous wandering crane that’s effortlessly  outclassed by the more-nimble Pinocchio. In Krat,
271. 26:54the city where the game takes place, we see a  civilization that plunged into a new technology
272. 26:59without properly reckoning with its implications.  Technology without morality, innovation without
273. 27:05ethics. Lies of P echoes the cruelty of AI, the  reckless disregard with which humans might create
274. 27:11something only to ignore its suffering. If the game does have a central thesis (other
275. 27:17than “being a puppet lets you use really cool  weapons”), it’s in the conflict between artificial
276. 27:22preservation and organic loss. Gepetto’s human son  dies before the game begins, and all the violence
277. 27:29of the puppets is a result of this grief (in a  roundabout way, if you read the lore). Simon Manus
278. 27:35dreams of divine immortality and thus imprisons  his daughter in a torturous suspended animation.
279. 27:41Pinocchio delivers a robot baby to a woman, lies,  and says it’s her own infant. In your typical
280. 27:48Pinocchio tale, this would read as darkly ironic–  the puppet wants nothing more to be human, while
281. 27:54everyone around him abandons their own humanity.  But in Lies of P, Pinocchio wants…nothing,
282. 28:02it seems. Nothing except to perform the whims  of the player controlling him. He is never
283. 28:07more real than what we allow him to be. Federico Fellini, for what it’s worth, hated that
284. 28:15Pinocchio had to become human at the end of the  book. Although he dreamed of adapting Pinocchio to
285. 28:21film, said the story read like a book of oracles,  said all his doubts and problems found answers
286. 28:26on the page, the end still disappointed. “The end of the book is the poorest part because
287. 28:32Carlo Collodi, as a 19th-century man, moralizes  when the puppet becomes a boy. It is sad because,
288. 28:39losing his marionettehood, Pinocchio  loses his childhood, the marvelous
289. 28:43life of knowing animals and magic, in return  for becoming a good, conforming idiot.”
290. 28:49It’s a point he made several times,  in several different interviews.
291. 28:53“But, of course, it’s true that  we all lose the magical childhood,
292. 28:57Pinocchio part of our being—being in touch  with animals, with the night; with mystery
293. 29:02...in contact with life the way it should be.  And with this loss, we become good idiots,
294. 29:07good students, good husbands, good citizens.” Maybe Fellini wishes he was part of Arieti’s
295. 29:14“Pinocchian Subculture,” because he understands  the inherent tragedy in maturing past the magic
296. 29:20of the world. Maybe he sees the sadness in  defining “real” by one’s ability to obey
297. 29:25and plan for the future. Maybe he also gets  that it’s just a strange way to tell a story,
298. 29:30removing the thing that made your character  special as some sort of final reward.
299. 29:36As infinitely flexible as the Pinocchio story  is, it’s these ideas that tie it down. How can
300. 29:41art enjoy being brought to life, if it insists  that it still doesn’t live? How can the puppet
301. 29:47not have strings, if it inevitably needs  to bend to societal pressure? And how can
302. 29:52these themes be resolved while simultaneously  grappling with every other aspect of the story,
303. 29:57parents, children, creation, god? Well, to start, you put it in stop-motion.
304. 30:06In retrospect, it seems blindingly obvious  that stop-motion should be the medium for
305. 30:12Pinocchio. Forget drawings or CGI, why not  actually sculpt the little wooden boy? And
306. 30:18yet– with the exception of a largely forgotten  and forgettable Rankin and Bass run in the 60s–
307. 30:24cinematic depictions of Pinocchio have avoided  making the puppet into…a puppet! That is, until
308. 30:31Guillermo Del Toro and Mark Gustafson picked up  that particular torch and took it to the stars.
309. 30:37Pinocchio himself in Del Toro’s film is about as  visually flawed as he’s ever been. He is deeply
310. 30:44asymmetrical and unfinished– he only has a right  ear, wood grain cracks and splinters across his
311. 30:50torso, the back of his head is essentially an  open stump. His feet, which he burns off almost
312. 30:56immediately, are haphazardly reattached with  bandages. He is a character carved drunkenly and
313. 31:02sloppily, and he never becomes more polished than  how his creator made him. But these imperfections
314. 31:08don’t stop at Pinocchio– they extend to the world  itself, because stop-motion is a medium in which
315. 31:14the hand of the creator is always visible.  Not just Pinocchio but every character in
316. 31:20the film– Gepetto, Cricket, Lampwick, God  in Heaven– is unmistakably sculpted, poked,
317. 31:26prodded and machined by the continuous efforts of  their animators. Stop-motion is an unbelievably
318. 31:32labor-intensive process, and one that’s almost  at conflict with itself. Its ultimate goal is
319. 31:38to disappear, to tell a story with figures that  appear to move of their own volition. And yet,
320. 31:44it's so visually compelling exactly because you  know they are NOT moving of their own volition,
321. 31:50that every action is an expertly-crafted  illusion, working a frame at a time to create
322. 31:55a world of puppets without strings. From a technical artistry perspective,
323. 32:00I’m not sure any other adaptation has more  cleverly used its medium to communicate the
324. 32:05themes of the story. That the Del Toro movie is  also a narrative masterpiece…it kind of makes
325. 32:12me want to cry. My LIFE has been Pinocchio, for  MONTHS. Most of the movies I watched have been
326. 32:19about Pinocchio! I’ve read books about Pinocchio,  had papers translated because of Pinocchio,
327. 32:24all I talk about to my friends and loved ones  is Pinocchio, and here, Del Toro just…gets it.
328. 32:31Everything that is interesting about Pinocchio  is in the film, every disappointment of Collodi’s
329. 32:35tale has been brilliantly tweaked, and the  things it adds feel like fundamental pieces
330. 32:40of Pinocchio that had simply been lost to time  until now. To be transparent, I watched this
331. 32:46movie pre-Pinocchio obsession and thought it  was…good. Really good, even! But it didn’t
332. 32:53click with me until I had fully immersed myself  in this world, and you could maybe call that a
333. 32:58fault of the movie but I am just so relieved that  someone really, really, gets it. So let’s go.
334. 33:06The first thing to know about this adaptation is  that, while still in Italy, it’s been moved up in
335. 33:11time just a bit– from the late 19th to the early  20th century. The second thing to know about this
336. 33:17adaptation is it’s not going to be gentle. Gepetto  and his human son Carlo live in a quiet mountain
337. 33:24village. Gepetto works as a woodcarver there, and  is assembling his latest piece– a crucifix for the
338. 33:30town’s church– when a group of World War 1 planes  fly overhead and drop a bomb through the roof.
339. 33:36Gepetto’s son is killed, immediately, senselessly.  “It was later said that Gepetto’s little town was
340. 33:43not even a target. That these planes were heading  back to base, and simply let go of their bombs to
341. 33:48make their ballast lighter.” Gepetto plants a  tree on his son’s grave and then, years later,
342. 33:54drunk, grieving, angry, he chops the tree down  and hacks Pinocchio out of it, a misshapen puppet
343. 34:01to replace his boy. The blue fairy shows up,  in trademark Del Toro style, looks absolutely
344. 34:07bananas, and brings the wood to life. Gepetto is both horrified and frustrated.
345. 34:14Pinocchio, loud, irreverent, and with a lot  of the dipshit energy of the original book, is
346. 34:19nothing like his son. Gepetto, mean, restrictive,  unwilling to acknowledge the many wonders of the
347. 34:31world, also resembles his book counterpart. But unlike the book, Del Toro’s film refuses to
348. 34:38flatten this relationship. In Collodi’s original  story, there is little question what he thinks
349. 34:43sons owe their fathers: deference, obedience,  labor. But the film demands an answer to what
350. 34:50fathers owe their sons. Is it guidance  alone? Is it a father’s job to puppeteer
351. 34:56their son into maturity? Is it so impossible  that they could learn from their children as
352. 35:01well? And no matter how tightly each pulls the  strings, does a child not deserve love?
353. 35:08As Pinocchio dies, meets God, is resurrected,  poses in front of the crucifix, the questions
354. 35:15the story poses only grow. [“He’s made of  wood too- why do they like him and not me?”]
355. 35:22How much of our culture is based on a singular  understanding of the relationship between parents
356. 35:27and children? Do we allow agency, humanity,  to the figures we immortalize in wood?
357. 35:34Matt Zoller Seitz writes in his Criterion  essay on the film that “Pinocchio is not
358. 35:39merely a movie about a puppet…it’s a  film about the idea of puppetry. It
359. 35:43wants audiences to consider the possibility  that whenever people open their mouths,
360. 35:48other people’s voices come out.” Sons repeat  the words of their fathers, patriarchs define
361. 35:53the rules of reality. Christ does not speak in  this movie but the church does, through the mouth
362. 36:00of a priest who labels Pinocchio an abomination.  The priest declares that moral authority over the
363. 36:06puppet belongs not to Gepetto nor even god, but  to another controlling father figure: the state.
364. 36:13Because this Pinocchio is also about FASCISM. By excluding a few plot beats, you can make this
365. 36:24adaptation sound pretty similar to the ones  we’re more familiar with. Pinocchio ignores
366. 36:29school to join the circus and sing songs.  He takes a trip far away with a bunch of
367. 36:34rowdy boys. He gets swallowed by a big fish.  But connecting each of these scenarios are
368. 36:39threads that upend the original story’s moralizing  understanding of obedience. [“Who controls you,
369. 36:45wooden boy?” “Who controls YOU?”] For instance: Pinocchio joins the circus,
370. 36:51but the show is co-opted into a nationalist anthem  about the glory of fighting for World War 2 Italy.
371. 36:57Pinocchio begrudgingly plays his part, because  he feels he has to earn money for Gepetto to pay
372. 37:02off his debt. Only weeks old, and Pinocchio  is puppeted not by strings but by economic
373. 37:08pressure. This is mirrored by Spazzatura, the  little abused monkey sidekick of the ringmaster,
374. 37:14kept in line by violence and withheld love.  But despite their strings, both Pinocchio and
375. 37:20the Monkey break the rules when their circus is  visited by Mussolini– yes, Mussolini. They put
376. 37:28on a special show for the dictator, singing  to him about how he eats boogers and shit.
377. 37:33It’s a juvenile and ridiculous performance,  one that comes naturally to the willfully
378. 37:38disobedient Pinocchio character. But what the  Del Toro film recognizes is that sometimes,
379. 37:43submitting to authority is not wise. Sometimes,  disobedience is unambiguously morally correct.
380. 37:50Anyway, as payment for this performance,  the fascists shoot Pinocchio with a gun.
381. 38:01Another new wrinkle to this version of the story  is that Pinocchio, as a divinely animated puppet,
382. 38:06is functionally immortal. When he dies,  which he does several times in the film,
383. 38:11he goes to a purgatory with a Tilda Swinton God  creature and hangs out in stasis for a while,
384. 38:17watching a big hourglass tick down before  returning to the world of the living. Podestà,
385. 38:23the fascist official of Pinocchio’s town, doesn’t  care about any of that supernatural stuff, but he
386. 38:28is interested in Pinocchio. After all, he’s got an  unkillable puppet made out of good Italian pine.
387. 38:35He’s going to make him into a supersoldier. In this telling, Lampwick– the poor boy who
388. 38:40usually gets turned into a donkey on Pleasure  Island– is instead the somewhat hapless son of
389. 38:46Podestà, and Pleasure Island itself turns out to  be– oh no!– a military training camp for boys.
390. 38:52Like the church or economic subjugation, the camp  is yet another effort to tie down Italy’s youth.
391. 38:59Unlike Pleasure Island, the danger they face here  is not limitless hedonism or bottomless root beer,
392. 39:05but having their individuality wiped away to  be replaced with state-sponsored violence. And
393. 39:11once again, Pinocchio rebels. The puppet  refuses to dehumanize his friends.
394. 39:18There are three bad fathers in Del Toro’s  Pinocchio– well, four if you count the state.
395. 39:24Five if you count god. Let’s say three. Each has  a son who desperately wants to please them but
396. 39:29nevertheless can’t abide by some aspect of their  behavior. Spazzatura fights the ringmaster instead
397. 39:35of letting him burn Pinocchio alive. Lampwick  refuses to execute the puppet even when his dad
398. 39:40commands him. Because each son refuses to do the  morally indefensible, each son loses their father–
399. 39:47each, except for Pinocchio. Because in this  story, unlike the ringmaster, unlike Podestà,
400. 39:53unlike Collodi, Gepetto recognizes that  fathers also need to change. He sees that
401. 40:00humanity isn’t awarded a single time for good  behavior, but maintained through a continuous
402. 40:05examination of the self. Gepetto realizes  that one son cannot simply replace another,
403. 40:11that the joy of parentage is discovering who your  child is, not deciding who they should be.
404. 40:18And what of the puppet? No matter  how you twist and turn the story,
405. 40:22Pinocchio is a tale about a wooden boy becoming  a real one. And this Pinocchio becomes real
406. 40:27through yet another act of disobedient  selflessness, making the choice to shatter
407. 40:32his own immortality to save the ones he loves. I don’t know what Carlo Collodi would have thought
408. 40:42about Del Toro’s Pinocchio– or any other  adaptation, for that matter. My guess is
409. 40:48that he would be shocked that his story, written  a chapter at a time for a children’s magazine,
410. 40:53had stretched so far, landed in the hands of  so many artists. Perhaps he would be frustrated
411. 40:58that the puppet had been softened into a largely  blameless mascot, or bemused that his silly wooden
412. 41:04boy became a vessel for existential dread. I would  love to show him Lies of P, to which I assume
413. 41:10he’d react “AHH WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?” Before I started this journey, my initial
414. 41:15reasoning for this story’s popularity was a  fairly cynical one– Pinocchio is a property
415. 41:20in the public domain, popularized but  not owned by Disney. He’s a Cinderella,
416. 41:25a Little Mermaid. This is partially true, I’m  sure. But I don’t think many great artists die
417. 41:32regretting they never “got to exploit the fact  that a character exists in the public domain.”
418. 41:37I don’t think you get Freudian analysis, societal  diagnoses, conversations with god, meditations on
419. 41:43the core of humanity, out of mere convenience. If nothing else, Pinocchio has proven himself to
420. 41:50be endlessly malleable, not tied to strings or  specific philosophies, able to cross mediums,
421. 41:56generations and countries. Maybe the story is  just raw material in a skilled craftsman’s hands,
422. 42:04able to be born into whatever shape best fits the  era. But there is a core to the puppet that is,
423. 42:10fittingly, human. Despite Collodi’s original plan  to leave him wooden (and hanging from a noose),
424. 42:17the element of…yearning, for that indefinable  quality of “real,” defines every permutation.
425. 42:24Pinocchio wants to be something more than himself.  And over more than a century, the puppet has done
426. 42:30exactly that, became real not just by the scale  of his cultural impact, but because his constant
427. 42:35struggle– to understand the world, how he can fit  into it and how it can be shaped by him, defines
428. 42:42humanity just as much as flesh and blood. Once upon a time there was–
429. 42:49–a grand metaphor, for life,  and death, everything–
430. 42:53No, you are mistaken. Once upon a  time there was a piece of wood.
431. 43:02– I know what you’re thinking. Jacob,
432. 43:04aren’t you forgetting something? Jacob, you only  talked about two of the three Pinocchio films
433. 43:09that came out in 2022. When are we going to hear  about the animated marvel Pinocchio: A True Story,
434. 43:14starring none other than Pauly Shore? [“I’m a boy and I’m alive!”]
435. 43:23Hi, Jacob from the future here. You can  tell because my beard is growing in and
436. 43:27I look like I’ve spent the last 40 hours  editing. The true reason that Pinocchio:
437. 43:31A True Story wasn’t included in this essay is  it’s simultaneously too light and WAY too…much to
438. 43:38include in this otherwise somewhat professional  video. But I DID watch it, and ended up still
439. 43:43talking about it for almost an hour, and you  can see that video exclusively on Nebula
440. 43:49[“And pinocchio is like, ‘horse, you’ve gotta  be my dad now.’” “If I were the audience,
441. 43:55I’d be like ‘what’s the bit here?’” “It looks  like Pinocchio fails a quicktime event.”]
442. 44:00If you’re new here, Nebula is a streaming service  where I, along with other favorite creators like
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444. 44:11exclusive additions. Here’s a gaming metaphor–  joining Nebula now is kinda like buying a console
445. 44:16after it’s already been out for several years,  and suddenly you have an entire generation of
446. 44:21amazing games that you can explore right away.  Much like that metaphor, Nebula is also cheap,
447. 44:27only $2.50 a month when you follow my link. Check out all the exclusive videos I and other
448. 44:33creators made last year, or Nebula classes, or my  exclusive podcasts…or, hey, just skip all that and
449. 44:39watch us try to comprehend what this movie is  doing with Pinocchio. [“The horse is like, ‘you
450. 44:46think you want to watch a movie where Pinocchio’s  nose grows,’ yes! That would be more fun!”]]
451. 44:51In any case, Nebula is your best opportunity  to get more of the creators you love,
452. 44:55support us in making more stuff sustainably, and  do it all for very little money. Join today and
453. 45:01get 40% off an annual subscription  by going to Nebula.tv/JacobGeller.