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Belle Taylor: Reborns, Labubus and Annabelle — the whole world is playing with dolls
My house is full of babies.
The toy baskets are full of them. There is one face down on the living-room floor and I suspect one or two under the couch. They seem to sprout, mushroom-like, from the deep recesses of doll-ville.
These are my daughter's babies. I guess that technically makes me their grandmother but I'm usually assigned the role of sister, which seems to involve setting up the tea party while mum vigorously jiggles baby while yelling 'STOP CRYING' before declaring 'BABY HAPPY NOW' and flinging it head first to the corner of the room. It's probably important to point out my daughter is three.
Although when it comes to dolls, age is no guarantee people won't get a little weird.
There has been a spate of doll news of late. The strangest might be the rising craze for 'Reborn' dolls. These are incredibly lifelike baby dolls collected mainly by adults. A trend has emerged where people take these dolls out for walks in the pram, to the park and even on hospital visits. There are multiple videos online of people showing their 'evening routine' with their dolls — bathing them, dressing them, putting them in their cot for the night. It's all very calm and serene and at no point is anyone screaming: 'I'm not reading that book a sixth time! No! In the bed, not under it! I don't know why elephants have trunks. Wait, how did you get naked?' So it's not exactly true to life.
The trend is particularly big in Brazil, where the craze has sparked something of a moral panic. Politicians across the country have filed at least 30 Bills to bar the dolls from accessing public services, with concerns the doll owners will try to take their charges to doctors or attempt to enrol them in day care. Other politicians are less worried, with MP Manoel Isidorio bringing his reborn 'granddaughter' into parliament, arguing that it was 'not a sin' to play with dolls. Pfft, Australian politicians would never take a doll to parliament. A lump of coal, a burqa, a full-sized dead salmon and a cardboard cut-out of Kevin Rudd maybe. But not a doll.
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Labubu Plushies.
Credit: Instagram
/ TheWest
At least the Reborn dolls are cute. The other doll craze sweeping the globe are Labubus — ugly, furry elf-like creatures with nine fang-like teeth. Labubus are sold by the Chinese chain store Pop Mart, but have become a global consumer phenomenon with people lining up to purchase the popular dolls. They have 'become a benchmark for China's pop culture making inroads overseas', according to China's Communist Party mouthpiece newspaper, People's Daily.
'The enthusiasm over Labubu may pass like any other viral trend,' The New York Times opined this week. 'But it could also be another sign that China, which has struggled to build cultural cachet overseas amid longstanding concerns about its authoritarian politics, is starting to claim some victories.'
A headline in Foreign Policy in Focus this week: 'Labubu's rise mirrors declining trust in US leadership'.
Sheesh. It's never just about the doll, huh?
While Brazil nurtures their Reborns and China queues to buy Labubus, in the US it is one particular doll making headlines — a Raggedy Ann doll called Annabelle.
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The doll Annabelle in the movie Annabelle Comes Home.
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
/ AP
The doll, which has featured in several horror movies, is supposedly haunted. It was part of a travelling exhibition of 'spooky' objects called the Devils On The Run tour when it supposedly went missing in New Orleans. By complete coincidence, the doll's disappearance coincided with a local fire and a jail break, leading people to blame the doll. That's a great example of taking two and two and getting 5 million.
Of course Annabelle had nothing to do with either of those things. It's just a doll, a blank vessel on which to project our innermost desires and fears. Cuddle them, collect them, accuse them of arson. Dolls are just tiny mirrors and here we are, all over the world, staring back at them.
