Bitef

FROG So, that figure you've been dreaming of was actually your father... THUMBELINA My father was no figure, my father was my father... What are you talking about... With the strenghtening of the "cycle" of the associative scenes, we see that it is not about maturing (or even encouraging stories, contraposing, or about analogical branching) but about the repositioning of the dramatical figure. That is also one of the Markovic's strategical components, the variety of places on which the figure moves are enabled by the genre metamorphosis. The transition from the cinical melodrama (Snow White) to a satirical parabole about small town mentality (Goldilocks) and then the moving away from the expressionist tragedy (The Dark Land) towards the grotesque (Hansel and Gretel), and maybe even more the incompatibility of their ilusionistic levels, makes each time continuity of the archetype-ritual-initiation, but also the possible Bildungstuck (as a product of such figures) become accidental: The time is merely the tension between the formula and desire. Moreover, that tension is irreversible and ironic: if not so, why would the heroine cross over the allegorical and not the biographical distance between the Girl in the first and the Witch in the last variety? Instead of using a ritual to get to the Same, by means of the allegorical montage one gets to the Other; that kind of embodiement in the fragmentary allegorical time - where re-birth is only a new, temporary death - which only supports the sufferings of the heroine, but it doesn't allow her to identify herself with any kind of well-rounded, final meaning.

Svetislav Jovanov

70

THE DOLL SHIP