So, let’s break this down this video. Forget about the storyline, let’s just look at the characters in order of appearance.
First shown is “Your Political Machine.” Ostensibly an old reel-to-reel tape recording device, it has a mustache and a hat that looks like it won a Best Costume award at a local arts and crafts summer camp. Obviously, the machine’s paint job is designed to mock Muriel Bowser’s campaign colors, which isn’t exactly a subliminal shot.
Next up is Supporter 1. Looking slightly stressed out – maybe a fellow Wilson Building employee – the powder blue and flower shirt he’s rocking is fashion gold. This pears to be pulled straight out of the “I see Jimmy Buffett 10 times a year” guy’s closet. And the lime green collar? Incredible. We see later that his shirt is the kind that has button straps on the inside, for when you roll your sleeves up, which is super useful. Smart guy. Supporter 2 is a more typical Washington look. The beaded choker gives a nice hint of “I only dress like this because I have to,” which is pretty much how everyone who doesn’t take themselves too seriously approaches their work wardrobe in this town. Hopefully, at least.
Supporter 3 is the clear showstopper. This thing looks like a mix of wolverine, cookie monster and a limeade tie-dye experiment gone wrong. Any D.C. Voter worth their salt, no matter whom they support, will find a way to recreate this outfit on their way to the ballot box in November. The extra green sludge around the eyes makes me feel like maybe this thing lives under a houseboat.
“No comment guy” is an interesting character. The most ostensibly white person in the video, he’s wearing a black pinstripe suit, with no tie. The harried look on his face is the kind of look I assume that many political types have all day. Of course, hiding his face from the camera, we get no real insight in to which Joseph A. Bank he bought his suit from.
Up next is Supporter 4. Another woman wearing a choker, I realized that those are maybe the only real way to wear neck jewelry on a puppet without creating a logistical problem. Her hair is absolutely fabulous, however, and the flower that matches her outfit as an accessory is a nice touch.
The master puppeteer behind these glorious visual aids is a woman named Elizabeth Dapo, who is quite literally a master puppeteer. She has a Master’s Degree in Puppetry the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. She’s been working in the field for about the last five years and uses phrases like “modern puppet culture.” She’s built more than 50 puppets in her career, and the ones you see in Catania’s video have made another appearance in a D.C.-based video before. “Hey Supreme Court: No Bosses in My Bedroom,” was published in March. If you want to see puppets on Metro, this one’s for you.
But the main character in the Catania video was no accident. “Mr. Political Machine” was built specifically for this shoot. “He took a little time to figure out, but he’s a lot of layers of basically foam core and balsa wood. I wanted him to look like a reel to reel puppet, because when we were thinking about the D.C. machine … the reel to reel is outdated, it’s not really used anymore, but ti’s still part of the foundation of what we know of modern technology,” Dapo said. “I feel like sometimes D.C., it’s an old city, but it’s a foundation for everything that we have in politics.”
I have a feeling we’ll see Mr. Machine in a few more videos down the line, if that’s his motivation.
“We find the humanness of puppets (they are more REAL than people aren’t they) really cuts through the clutter of an elections season,” wrote Arun Chaudhary of Revolution Messaging, the group who worked with the campaign to create the video, in an email. But, the political message of this video is totally lost. Whether or not these characters are supposed to represent actual voters is beside the point, honestly.
The puppets are just too fun to look at.