Pinocchio is a Story About Art and God
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- Опубліковано 19 січ 2024
- For one hundred years, a legend spread across the planet without ever experiencing periods of oblivion | Watch my exclusive video on “Pinocchio: A True Story” by joining Nebula at go.nebula.tv/jacob-geller
Watch my Nebula-exclusive video on yet another Pinocchio movie: nebula.tv/videos/jacob-geller...
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Additional Editing by Isaac Holland
Translation by Katherine Incandenza
Sources:
The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, 1883
Additional Pinocchio Art from PINOCCHIO: Atlante delle edizioni italiane dal 1883 al 2022
Pinocchio in Venice by Robert Coover, 1991
I, Fellini by Charlotte Chandler, 1995
The Will to be Human by Silvano Arieti, 1972
Ma Collodi Non Esiste by Italo Calvino, 1981
Pinocchio and Pinocchiology by Jennifer Stone: www.jstor.org/stable/26304056
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio: Sculpted to Life by Matt Zoller Seitz: www.criterion.com/current/pos...
From Puppet to Cyborg: Posthuman and Postmodern Retellings of the Pinocchio Myth by Georgia Panteli: discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint...
Fellini's Language of Dreams by Jonathan Cott: www.maryellenmark.com/bibliog....
From Kubrick to Spielberg: The Story of ‘A.I.’ by Tim Greiving: www.theringer.com/movies/2021...
Coppola loses $20m compensation for lost Pinocchio by Duncan Campbell: www.theguardian.com/world/200...
The Real Life Adventures of Pinocchio by Rebecca West: magazine.uchicago.edu/0212/fe...
Blank Check with Griffin and David (A.I. Artificial Intelligence, 2017): open.spotify.com/episode/0ABy...
Media shown: Disney’s 1940 Pinocchio, Disney’s 2022 Pinocchio, Pinocchio: A True Story, Gullermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Lies of P, Handcarved Cinema: The Making of Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio, The Polar Express, A Christmas Carol, Beowulf, Welcome to Marwen, Dark Souls III, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Bloodborne,
Music Used (Chronologically): Cohen’s Masterpiece- Accordion (Bioshock Infinite), Lost in Thessaloniki (Trabant 33), Peaceful Sleep- Music Box (Nier Automata), I’ll See You in My Dreams (Isham Jones), March of the Ducks (Mike Franklyn), Invention No. 4 in D Minor (Bach), Last Move (White Bones), A New Power (SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE), The Midnight Woods (Hyper Light Drifter), Hallway Omega (SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE), Estella Opera House (Lies of P), Far East Princess (Lies of P), Saintess of Mercy Statue (Lies of P), Etude No. 3 for String Quartet (Peter Sandberg), Fallow Deer (Martin Klem), The Angels Descend A (Bayonetta), Marche Militaire Version 2 (Epidemic Sound), Ave Maria (Epidemic Sound), Only Human (Philip Ayers), Smooth Talking (Nocturnal Spirits), Feel (Lies of P)
Additional music and sound effects from Epidemic Sound
Additional footage from Razbuten
Thumbnail and Graphic Design by / hotcyder
Description credit: Ma Collodi Non Esiste by Italo Calvino - Розваги
There are many more fascinating Pinocchio stories to be analyzed. "Pinocchio: A True Story," starring Pauly Shore, is not one of these stories. And yet it's like a car crash; I couldn't look away. Catch it exclusively on Nebula: nebula.tv/videos/jacob-geller-attempting-to-understand-pinocchio-a-true-story
A minor edit I think would be (completely not) worth making. When you said "Do you remember Beowulf?" there should have been a pause for about three seconds and then "Liar."
But have you seen the Benigni one?
Is the book of Jonah a Pinocchio story?
Jacob, are you forgetting something? When are you going to talk about how Barbie(2023) is Pinocchio?
Funny detail I found out via these two videos: Tom Kenny isn’t just A True Story’s Gepetto, he is also in Del Toro’s version as Mussolini
Nobody tell him about the theatre production of Pinnochio at the London National Theatre where every single character is played by elaborate puppets except Pinnochio hiself who's played by a human actor, which is simultaneously impressive as fuck and has amazing implications about what it represents with his character and his place in the story's world
Is there a slime tutorial I can watch for this? Sounds cool…
@@TryinaD Unfortunately noo 😔 I mean there probably is but I'm no good with that kind of thing
Something about thinking other people especially adults know what they're doing and you're just winging it then growing up and realising everyone else is also just figuring out how to be human
Holy shit where can I watch this from the US
@@otakuinredthere is National Theater at home services for watching online plays, but I'm not sure if Pinocchio is available since I haven't used that since COVID
"The joy of parentage is discovering who your child is, not deciding who they should be" damn what a line
Made me tear up lol
I started crying imediatelly
I had to do a double take on it lol
Write that down write that down !
That hit me in my soul
And then, there's Astro Boy, ALSO based off Pinnochio, that gets its own adaptation by many very talented artists.
Like, Pinnochio Everywhere mode is ALWAYS on.
I read that as ”Pinnochio Everywhere system” and now i want a Yakuza side-story with Pinnochio.
and Mega Man. A lot of people Mandela Effect the plot of Mega Man as being about a human boy turned into a cyborg like Ghost in the Shell, but it's actually about a sentient labor robot who volunteers to be modified for combat
definetely my first thougth concerning Pinocchio adaptations
I fell in love with the Netflix series "pluto" and my jaw fell to the floor when I found out it was a freaking astro boy adaptation!!
@@cartilagehead6326 Thank you for bringing this up. I was thinking of this.
One of my exes, her grandfather was deathly afraid of Pinocchio. The word was banned in the house, because even in his old age it would send the poor Italian gentleman into shrieks of hysteric terror. I can see why
lmaoo
"pinocchio killed jiminy cricket with a hammer right after meeting him" is one of the funniest things i've heard
It pretty much a family guy gag.
If me and my friend met jiminy cricket as kids, we’d kill him with hammers, that’s for sure.
I'm trying to tell this story to as many people as I can because I feel it's an import moral
When I was a 14 year old lad I went with a group of friends to a guy named Stuart "loose bum" Rennie's house. While there someone asked his mother how Stuart got the moniker Loose Bum. She started laughing and told us the tale of how she sent him to boarding school 4 year prior, when Stuart Loose Bum was 15. While he was there he provoked a bunch of the other boys and they sneak attacked him, beat him up and crammed a glass bottle up his rear end. The boys then smashed the bottle with a swift hit to the abdoment with a baseball bat. The damage to Stuart Loose Bums colon and anus was so extensive that he lost the ability to control his bowel movements for quite some time. During that time his mother started calling him loose bum and his peers started following suit. Stuart "Loose Bum" Rennie died of a meth overdose 7 years ago. You can look up his obit. His son is now a fenti addict. 😮
Don't be a Stuart Loose Bum. His life was without worth and his mother recognized the fact long before anyone else.
@@AQFearfullMage I now have to wonder how well a Seth MacFarlane adaptation would bring out the comedy of the original story.
@@AQFearfullMage It is: ua-cam.com/video/lTbLVp_ayxo/v-deo.htmlsi=X_EnSHPkypjtqPW_
Pinnochio is such a good retelling of Pinnochio, but not as good as Pinnochio imo.
Eh i preferred Pinnochio myself
Y'all are obviously forgetting about Pinocchio, the best version of Pinocchio since Pinocchio was written
I hate Pinnochio, much prefer Pinnochio
Pinocchio & Pinocchio are my 2 favorite versions of the story. WTF was up with Pinocchio, Pinocchio & Pinocchio though?
Agreed, Pinocchio was a bit overrated, but Pinocchio is a masterpiece and needs more recognition
that last line, about the grand metaphor, and "no, you are a mistaken. once upon a time there was a piece of wood". that was GOOD. that was so good. that was wonderful, incredible, videomaking truly is art
literally brought a tear to my eye.
Alright buddy cool it down its just a white ass video essay.
I got literal shivers
@@kice1102 Only a single tear?
Whats the song he used while saying that (if you know)
"The joy of parentage is discovering who your child is, not deciding who they should be." I broke down and cried when I heard this line - this one hit closer to home than I was ready for.
"the cruelty of being created by a god who abandons you," has now made me want to see something blend the stories of Pinocchio and Frankenstein.
I think Astro Boy, and by extension, Pluto, is definitey one of them.
I highly recommend actually reading Frankenstein (I read the unedited 1818 version for a college course which slaps) because it is WILD. The creature is so driven mad by the rejection of his creator that he makes Frankenstein chase him literally to the north pole. It's the epitome of "any attention is good attention" that neglected children sometimes develop. Oh, you can't bring yourself to love me? Cool, I'll just make sure I occupy your every thought
@@swiftlymurmurs1825oooooh, now i see why i relate to "the monster" so much. 😅
This is just Wanderer/Scaramouche from genshin! including the 'abandoned by god' thing!
He also blends Itallian theater, japanese theater, neon genesis evangelion and bohemian rhapsody, an odd mix thats somehow not only coherent but well written
It is really funny that you mention this, because the prevailing theory about Lies of P's upcoming DLC is that it will be featuring something to do with Frankenstein. It is not confirmed, but the teaser art looks like it takes place in the snowy far north or south, has a sailing ship, and a lab of some sort, which all give off Frankenstein vibes.
As an Italian, it's my duty to point out that the name of the monkey in Del Toro's work "SPAZZATURA" means "TRASH"
oh my god that's so mean and funny, thank you
man , now I feel more bad for the monkey.
And I thought it was a cool sounding name 😭
I find it very strange that Jacob states that Pinocchio in Lies of P "behaves perfectly" and that he always obeys his father. Despite saying that he went over the story many times, he seems to have missed the recurring theme that Gepetto wants Pinocchio to always tell the truth and "be a good boy" to fulfill his plans, and Sophia (the blue fairy) wants Pinocchio to choose what his heart desires, whether that be truth or lies only humans can tell. Pinocchio only "behaves perfectly" if you choose for him to always tell the truth and even then the ending tied to always being a "good boy" is considered not to be the canon ending.
I thought it was glaringly obvious just playing the game once that being human isn't something that can be boiled down or distilled, it isn't even just whether you tell a lie or not. You gain humanity from listening to records. So is being human the ability to enjoy art? You gain humanity from disobeying the Grand Covenant (the commandments given to puppets by their creators), so is being human the ability to sin? As you progress through the story you gain allies that stop regarding you as merely a puppet but as a trusted friend, so is being human having friendship? And at the very end, you have the choice to put Sophia out of her misery or let her live, which can lead to you sacrificing your life for her. So is being human the ability to sacrifice everything for what you love?
Maybe the game doesn't make it clear what all these questions it poses you mean or whether they have a right or wrong answer, but I don't have any doubts that these questions having ambiguous answers IS the answer to me. Being human isn't something that can be clearly defined, but as long as you are thinking of these questions you can think of yourself as human as you like.
Yes, thank you!! I was really disappointed too by his reading of LoP, but it's understandable considering the range of his essay.
P in the game is no more free than any other rendition of Pinocchio. All fictional characters are subject to their God, the writer. But in Lies of P, thanks to ludonarrative magic, P gets some semblance of agency through the player, who is as much subject to the whims of the world and its creators as the protagonist himself is. Sure it's not perfect freedom, but what really is in art? Or in life? In a video game with choices like in Lies of P, Pinocchio can actually be free and 'choose' (however limited his options may be).
And as you point out, being human is not one single thing, but a range of emotions and actions. We define ourselves, through P, what human is. And through us, P can himself experience what humanity is like.
p does not die in the lies of p ending
Yes, I agree! I thought his conclusions of LoP were pretty lacking (and the blip that he thought Sophia was Simon's daughter makes me think he didn't spend much time with the story and its characters)
The "real boy" ending where he is obedient and a "good boy" all the way through, being exactly what Geppeto wants him to be, is the most horrific and "evil" ending. Even Sophia asks at the very end "is this the world you want?" Calling into question blind obedience and the lack of real autonomy. Did he ever ask himself what he wants?
In the canon ending, Geppeto's puppet becomes his own person by denying the expectations of his creator, and by doing so he doe become "real" in a sense, not because of external influences and being molded into what is desired by others, but because he is an individual acting on his own wants and desires. He becomes an autonomous individual. The transformation is internal, he is still a puppet physically, but that's the point.
You get this ending by the very act of saying "no" - disobedience.
Watch Pluto
Huh? No, Pinocchio does behave perfectly....because he's following the player's controller inputs. He's acting directly by the player's will. You don't make choices and the game randomly chooses the other option. He follows the absolute authority of the player.
All I can add is that the best adaptation of Pinocchio is and has always been Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer, a comic where Pinocchio’s nose can kill vampires because the tree he was cut from was watered with the blood of Vlad the Impaler’s victims
I need y'all to know that not only did Tom Kenny voice Geppetto in Pinocchio: A True Story, he also voiced Mussolini in del Toro's Pinocchio.
Tom Kenny will voice anyone!
This is vital information
it’s also cosmically hilarious that he’s simultaneously the primary voice actor of Spongebob Squarepants. Spongebob and Mussolini, imagine that on a resume
he likes the puppets
@@lesteryaytrippy7282 Tom Kenny will voice again. [Threatening]
"Joy of parentage is discovering what your child is, not deciding who they should be"
This line (perhaps unintentionally) explained to me what has been poisoning my art making process for years.
I've always focused on how my art should look like and completely disregarded how it actually turned out. Treating every painting as just a stepping stone to excellence, sanding off it's quirks and trying to mold it into something that doesn't come naturally to me at all, like some kind of overbearing parent.
...i think i need to sit down and reconsider some things. ty for life-altering experience, as always.
It hits hard as a writer, too. Themes tend to develop without you even realizing it
Didn't realize this until reading your comment
Thank you
But you still have to protect children from danger and correct bad behavior.
@@howarda1000 A close analogy in visual art to "correcting the child" would probably be having solid fundamentals, and they are a must indeed! But in the end they are there to give you footing, not be the goal of your art journey. Just like parenting it's a delicate balancing act.
Aand there's also always the fact that things you enjoy looking at aren't always the things you'd enjoy drawing, and you gotta listen to that feeling! Joy of creation is overlooked a lot but it ultimately decides if you get burned out or not.
That part made me cry because of some issues I have with one of my parents. Now it looks like I have to cry about this other thing too
As someone who loves Frankenstein, the parallels are surprisingly close. This video is beautiful and im obsessed with the line “god does not speak, but the church does”. I highly suggest watching Dimension 20’s Neverafter series, they explore a lot of Pinocchio’s themes in growing up in a world you’re not prepared to face on your own especially as a child, and it’s so beautiful. If you enjoy dnd i can’t recommend it more. UGH
I'm glad someone else thought about Neverafter. I was thinking about bubblegum whiskey this whole video!
exept gepeto didn't abbadom pinocio
"no strings to hold me down, motherfu-"
i think that humanity's obsessive appeal towards that one sentence, which includes myself, pretty much sums up why pinocchio is so popular. we spend our lives trying to cut our strings, trying to destroy any outside factor that might be controlling us and actually being in control at some point in your life is so satisfying that we just keep craving to reach such state of existence again and again as long as we are alive.
you can't always be in control, but the point is to be in control as long as possible and when you lose it, you want to take it back as fast as possible.
this need to take control is why i think pinocchio makes so many bad decisions in collodi's original. he's rebelling against what the authority figures want him to do. and then he becomes human when he acts the most like an obedient puppet.
@@pooplenepe59 exept that is not what moral is suposed be and you lefthis idiots waroed this into selfish jakass
it's about becoming better veriosn of themselfs
Interestingly, never once in LoP is the main character called Pinocchio; he’s always called “Geppetto’s puppet”. Geppetto never even uses a name for P, only ever calling him “my son”.
Also, in LoP'world Pinocchio is a well known story for children
Adding to that, Lies of P might itself not be referring to pinocchio, but rather Paracelsus, as the whole game (and the foreseeable franchise) is possibly centered around his lies
He said it himself he didn't fully understand the Lies Of P.
Lies of P sounds like a book about a urinary tract infection
@@QuantumTelephone when your P Organ* gets an infection.
Jacob really working that 'italian anarchist in spanish civil war' look.
He’s pulling it off!
He's a handsome lad
you cannot believe i much i luodly laughted about this comment!
Fitting, considering what the last main focus of the video is.
it’s a quality look for anyone!
Hi Jacob! I watched your video on Pinocchio: A True Story, and since Nebula doesn't have a comment section, I'll write it here.
This movie is actually based on Buratino, a Russian adaptation of Pinocchio, written by Aleksey Tolstoy. I don't know a lot about the production, but I've heard that Tolstoy wanted to translate it, but he wasn't really fluent in Italian, so he just adapted it based on the words he understood. It's more of a "prophecy" and "revolution" story, I actually was really hoping you'd talk about it in the main video, since Buratino is a big cultural icon in ex-soviet countries, but I understand that your scope is mostly on the western productions and not the loose adaptations. I find it puzzling how not only they made a loose adaptation of the Buratino story, but they also used names from the Pinocchio story. The Blue Fairy turned into Malvina in Buratino, The Girl With Blue Hair, a puppet girl who ran away from the evil puppet master, and helped Buratino, and in this movie Bella is supposed to be her. The horse character is like a distant scream of Julius the horse, a character from the Melnitsa studio's bogatyr movies. P.S. Would love to see more of your cooking videos! :^)
This is really interesting! I had no idea
@@JacobGellerSo does that mean we'll get a Buratino follow-up? Probably not but I can dream a Russian version of the story gets talked about in any meaningful way on English speaking UA-cam.
True Story is an extremely lousy adaptation sadly. They had a chance to bring Buratino outside of Russia and they completely wasted it.
oh hey thanks from bringing up the movie of a lot of our childhoods :D and I mean.. Buratino to Pinnochio is kind of like Starship troopers the movie is to Starship troopers the book, in that characters are mostly there, occasionally their personalities match and the set up is very loosely the same, but the interpretation of the story is a different, including the story's moral. And I'm pretty curious as to what Jacob's take on it would be. aaaaand now I have a theme song stuck in my head, damn it.
"The joy of parentage is discovering who your child IS, not deciding who they should be."
Thanks, you made me cry. You made me realize I love my father, because he loves who I have become and doesn't discount me for who I am not. What a nice start to my Monday.
“Humanity isn’t awarded a single time for good behavior, but maintained through a continuous examination of the self.”
This throwaway line goes unreasonably hard.
What makes that a throw away line? I want to explain so I don't come off as argumentative or pedantic. I really want to know what people, or at least the original commenter, think makes a throw away line, and how does it move beyond it's throw-away-ness?
@@nothanks6549 I think the intention here is that it's a line that isn't particularly emphasized more than whatever lines come before and after it - like a line in the middle of a paragraph that is impactful enough that it could have been a mic drop
@nothanks6549 I'm trying to tell this story to as many people as I can because I feel it's an import moral
When I was a 14 year old lad I went with a group of friends to a guy named Stuart "loose bum" Rennie's house. While there someone asked his mother how Stuart got the moniker Loose Bum. She started laughing and told us the tale of how she sent him to boarding school 4 year prior, when Stuart Loose Bum was 15. While he was there he provoked a bunch of the other boys and they sneak attacked him, beat him up and crammed a glass bottle up his rear end. The boys then smashed the bottle with a swift hit to the abdoment with a baseball bat. The damage to Stuart Loose Bums colon and anus was so extensive that he lost the ability to control his bowel movements for quite some time. During that time his mother started calling him loose bum and his peers started following suit. Stuart "Loose Bum" Rennie died of a meth overdose 7 years ago. You can look up his obit. His son is now a fenti addict. 😮
Don't be a Stuart Loose Bum. His life was without worth and his mother recognized the fact long before anyone else.
@@gage7575Great explanation my dude
@@gage7575a perfect explanation-that’s exactly what I meant thank you!
"This video will discuss major plot points of Pinocchio, Pinocchio, Pinocchio, Pinocchio..."
Ah yes, truly the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
"And I looked and behold a wooden horse. And its rider's name was Pinocchio. And hell followed with him."
Pinnochio: "He's [Christ] wooden too. Why do they love him and not me?"
Narrator: "Because you do not bring salvation, but *ruin."*
Smash cut to Pinnochio riding puppet horse, bringing the apocalypse.
The Pinocchalypse
@@emilyrln I need someone to go make a metal band called Pinocchiocalypse now cuz it kinda sounds like Metalocalypse, but somehow stupider....
I don't know whether I should thank or curse you for putting that in my head.
And they'd surely make metal music with wooden instruments
The blade runner series is a pinocchio sequel and I can't unsee it now
Jacob, every topic you talk about, no matter how mundane or flat it may appear at first, you explore with such beautiful and insightful perspectives. One of the top content creators in my opinion, keep up what you do.
in 2022, the same year all those pinocchio movies came out, the director of my ballet studio decided to create a ballet of pinocchio for our spring production, and ended up with some set pieces that have not left my head since, notably:
- bungee cords that the dancers cast as marionette dolls hung off of lifelessly before springing into action, using the cords to throw their weight around and do impossible things, all while the puppeteer stood over them on a platform, a red light illuminating his face from below as he directed each movement and pinocchio ran through the dancers, terrified
- a whale half the size of the stage, broken into puzzle pieces with each piece controlled by one dancer as they moved all as one. it was terrifyingly realistic, and once gepetto and pinocchio both were thrown into the belly of the whale, the dancers opened up their pieces of the whale and retreated around the stage to reveal the whale’s innards so that the father and son could be shown reuniting
- a giant birdcage pinocchio got trapped in, with a single spotlight illuminating his crumpled figure, as silhouettes of other people walked by, and his nose grew as he pleaded to the blue fairy for help
there were more incredible choices, but ultimately i just wanted to share why the ballet has stuck with me to this day-it’s become one of my favorite adaptations of pinocchio. this video speaks to me so deeply mr geller i appreciate you always
That sounds amazing, holy hell!? Was it recorded?
I hope it was recorded and accesible somewhere, I really hope from the bottom of my heart to see this
That sounds absolutely amazing, is there video? Please tell me there's video, that sounds fantastic!
I too would like to see if its uploaded anywhere
Oh man do you have any recordings of it??? Sounds amazing
"Pinocchio is not about anything, it's about everything!" I feel like those are the words someone says when at the edge of their sanity.
You think Jacob isn't?
It’s kind of normal for this guy dw
I've always heard that Del Toro's Pinocchio was really good without fully knowing why it was such an instant classic.
Having Pinocchio's disobedient nature being framed against the authoritarian obedience of Fascism?
That's REALLY good.
I'm honestly genuinely surprised it's not something I hear more discussion about because having that be the framing of events is honestly kind-of genius??? Like, it just makes so much sense, you know?! It's not just a story about a goofy little guy learning to be a good bean while getting into trouble, it's about learning that sometimes it's good to be independently minded and think for yourself. And framing that against Geppetto's own trauma from the war leading him to mirror that desire for control just for him to learn to accept Pinocchio for who he is?
Yeah. No wonder this was well regarded. They were really cooking with the story of this film, and the visuals, themselves, look incredible, too. The fact that this came out at the same time as the lifeless Disney remake is genuinely the wildest comparison I could ever think of.
Your sophisticated yet slightly insane style of analysis is deeply Talmudic. This is how I want every Torah Study session to go.
My man. I knew there was something I loved about this channel. Thanks for putting it into better words than I could. 🙂
bruh
Imagine a video game where you slowly lose agency as the character becomes "more human" - you lose dialog options. Combat gets replaced with QTEs, then takes away the button inputs. Cutscenes get longer and transition from in-engine to pre-rendered cinematics.
There are games that do this unintentionally- to collapse story threads into a single or limited set of endings, hoping you don't notice the loss of agency. But imagine if it was intentional and thematic?
If the story does that, it should break the 4th wall as well.
There was that momen in the first Metal Gear Solid, where Snake refuses to pull the trigger no matter how hard you, his thoughts, try to make him do it.
Deltarune and OFF are two games that use the disconnect between the player and the character in a somewhat-similar way to this!
Obligatory Kentucky Route Zero mention (Conways "decision")
This sounds dope
"He sees that humanity is not awarded a single time for good behavior, but is maintained through continuous examination of the self."
that line has me tearing up at how completely true it is.
My thought on this is humanity can't agree on the definition of good behavior
ME TOO !!!
"The joy of parentage is discovering who your child is, not deciding who they should be" is a fantastic line. Thank you Jacob.
As an italian it warms my heart to see one of my favourite youtuber cover one of the best works of italian literature, if not world literature. My father read the whole of the book when i was a child and i've never forgotten it. Always an a amazing channel Jacob, keep up your great work
I've just realised that Blade Runner is also a kind of Pinocchio story. Roy Batty is lost, acting out violently and dangerously, and is looking for his creator to extend his life - or, effectively, give him life. The replicants want, more than anything, to live, and be a "real" human, just like Pinocchio becoming a "real" boy.
blade runner 2049 also kind of hits on the themes of pinocchio, with k coming to believe he is the child he is tasked with investigating, that he isn’t a replicant but a real human, before realising that isn’t the case. of course the whole replicant and human dynamic as whole plays on themes of pinocchio.
@@insertcontent73 even his JOI told him he's a real boy
I'd say K is more Pinocchio than Roy. Roy doesn't care about being "human" he just wants to live and die a free man.
“The inextricably human experience of outliving, of being abandoned by God.”
*Mary Shelley has entered the chat*
Wow, Frankenstein and Pinocchio really are the same story.
@@the11382 Well, except for the part where Geppetto created a wife for Pinocchio and then destroyed her out of fear of them breeding
@@LimeyLassen You didn't here about that dlc?
I think one of my favorite parts of Jacob's videos is the music he adds to the background. I love rehearing tracks from Nier and Hyperlight Drifter but I gotta tell ya, hearing Feel right at the end got me chills. Lies of P is incredible in most aspects it tackles and one of my favorite games in recent memory and every time I hear that song is like reliving the moments when I was playing the game. Same goes for other tracks in the video.
Jacob if you see this, this is what made me get Nebula, good job.
Fascination is stuck in my mind. And I love that he uses Bayonetta's less known tracks
Isn't there also a really dark and twisted version of the story where everyone in the world is made of wood and Geppetto makes Pinocchio out of flesh as a kind of horrific "stitched-together meat puppet"?
34:50 we could read it the other way around. since pinocchio IS controled by the playeer, arguably IS us, and since the other robots and human are controled by code, the idea of being a living person among non living but moving things is, in one sense, truer here than in any movie.
Exactly, it’s like we’re in the driver’s seat and having to experience all the things firsthand that Our Boi has to grapple with. Especially since we don’t obey Law Zero from our godlike dad…
I’d count Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel as one of the best cinematic Pinocchio adaptations ever made.
God Alita fucking rules
i went into alita expecting absolutely nothing good, just something goofy, and it instead made me sit for a good 30 minutes thinking about it
or the manga that has both giant judo cyborgs, vampires and a cat-girl AND a deep thorough examination of what it means to be a human from every point of view
I would put Mighty Atom there too! The recent Pluto adaptation is incredible
Wait, Alita is good? Never saw it but the anime eyes put me off, seemed really creepy. Should I ignore that?
I'll be honest: in all my 21 years on this planet, I have only just in the last 2 understood the beauty of Pinocchio as a story. My childhood, like many others, flourished under a canopy of colorful Disney animated movies, from some of the early days of the company to the most recent. I had always held firm in my stance that the oldest films, (Snow White, Pinocchio, etc.), were boring, outdated, and fundamentally flawed due to cultural progress. My view, now that I've rewatched these classics, is that they are some of the most humble and simple stories of human nature that have come out of the studio. Many people criticize Snow White because of her lack of a spine, as well as the fact that she longs for a prince to come and save her. While not necessary, I do believe that it's perfectly acceptable, and honestly totally understandable, that she would want someone to help her out of the darkness that had enveloped her life at that point in the story. The evil queen had just attempted to have her killed, and she lost her home as well as the comforts that home provided. While her prince is a bit of a weirdo, I don't have a personal disdain for such a heroine as her. Which brings me back to Pinocchio. When I was younger, I used to believe that the Disney classic was one of their most boring and bland. Having rewatched it at the height of the Pinocchio craze, I found an overwhelming sense of having been blind for most of my life, but only now being able to see. I finally realized why people hold the story of this wooden boy so closely to their hearts. The life and vibrancy Disney was able to lend this tale was captivating and very whimsical. The story is about so much more than a puppet wanting to be a real boy, it's about, at least to me, all of us yearning to be our truer selves. Even in our darkest moments, when we fall short and make terrible decisions, we can rise from it. And Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio was such a masterful work that perfectly encapsulated every joy and sorrow and hopeful moment that I experienced with the older stories, but with so much more style and depth than before. Long story short, this video summed up precisely everything I've felt about the story since my enlightenment about it. This video was a joy to watch, and an even bigger delight to know it came from you.
i will absolutely at some point write something about how the bible is, in fact, one big pinocchio story. that throwaway line actually ended up really helping me with my confirmation class and some struggles i was having squaring the "jealous" god of the old testament with the unconditionally loving god we teach in our reconciling congregation. thank you for your incredible dedication to your obsessions and art in general. 💜
I’m a Pinocchio realist: “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of Pinocchio.”
I just laughed hard enough to startle the cat
@@InnuendoStudiosHEY WAIT A MINUTE
When are you going to make a new podcast episode!?
Have you finished bingeing Brennan Lee Mulligan?
Honestly, the christian parallels don't even stop there. You definitely know this, but for anyone who doesn't, 'geppetto' is a diminutive of 'giuseppe', italian for... joseph. You know, joseph from the bible, who is a carpenter, and has a child who he raises but was given life by god. ...you know, like-
Also the idea just keeps popping up through our history, like with pygmalion / galatea (plus, you know, frankenstein and such). God, I should make a pinnocchio thing someday, there's just so much intertexuality oozing from this wooden freak. loved the video btw!
Pinocchio was given life by the Blue Fairy, Jesus was given life by Mary, who is most commonly depicted in blue robes.
@@Pinion396the blue Mary
@@averagejoey2000 so we can bring in the SNK mythos too.
the 70s italian animated pinocchio film goes hard on on the religious themes imo; like not explicitly*, but in its theming it is EXTREMELY catholic, it REALLY loves the catholic themes of poverty and suffering and penitence and self-sacrifice etc. it is also poorly drawn and animated. and its pinocchio is a very weird little guy with a weird design but also oddly lovable despite being a lil shit.
*aside from the blue fairy's design apparently being based on the virgin mary
This is one of my favorite essays you've ever done. I've been going through some really intense creative self-examination lately (writing and drawing almost all day, almost every day) and your analysis of Pinnochio as a medium to be explored really resonated with me. Nothing starts as a brilliant metaphor, or a real boy, or a compellingly-written novel. It all starts as a piece of wood.
this was a great watch. i didnt realize how ingrained Pinocchio was in society. Instantly subscribed. My favorite depiction of Pinocchio is Droupout's fairy tail horror season Neverafter where he's played by Lou Wilson. it dives into the effects such a hard and punishing world has on a literal child and goes into the pressure Geppetto put on Pinocchio and how lying isnt inherently bad. He even went so far as to break his nose off and the nose is used as as magic staff blessed by his patron who is revealed as Cinderella's step mother. If you dont watch the full season (i dont blame you its like 50 hours) at least look up "I'm a puppet" the emotion and passion lou puts into his characters is at it's peak in that scene. one of my favorite performances in all of D20.
It's super beside the point of the larger story, but maybe one of my favorite spins on the Pinocchio set up is Urasawa's brief rewrite of Atom's backstory in PLUTO.
Normally the origin is that Dr.Tenma makes Atom to replace his dead son, Tobio, but has kind of an existential crisis when he realizes he can never watch his new son grow up, and gets rid of him. But in a flashback in PLUTO he sits down to eat with his new perfect robot son, who talks enthusiastically about what he learned in school that day, about how much he loves the dinner they're sharing together, and the doctor says something to the effect of, "Tobio would always misbehave. He hated studying. He hated my cooking. He hated me..." and THAT becomes the moment he decides to get rid of Atom. Not the typical moral of a child's obedience earning him personhood, making him "real," but the exact opposite:
A "perfect" child isn't real at all, just the delusional fantasy of a bad parent.
Woah I’ll have to check this out. Coincidentally, your comment made me think of the indie game Mothered, similar themes there for sure.
Haven't dug deep into the OG Tezuka's Atoms mythos, but Pluto takes the Pinocchio as AI metaphor to WILD places so much so that Urusawa positions Tenma vs Ochanomizu is their definition of Humanity, or what the most idealized evolution of AI is entirely Cynical vs Hopeful and plays wonderfully with its other metaphors of geopolitical turmoil and y'know Robots as second class citizens
Everything Urasawa writes is gold I swear, also Dr. Tenma's experience with Atom is what leads him to creating the "perfect" robot, a robot that is "human", he does this by purposefully introducing negative emotions and personalities to the robot's AI, because humans are not perfectly "good" nor perfectly "evil" so the robots only become truly "human" when given ALL of what makes us human, the good and the bad.
RAAAAAAAAAAAAGHGHGGHG PLUTO MENTION!!!!! pluto has been my favorite mango for literal years for my birthday multiple years back much before netflix adapted it into an anime my dad went through the pain staking task of obtaining all 8 volumes of pluto in english for me. it was a difficult talsk because it wasn't very popular at the time from what i know and most of copies were printed in japanese or german. For years i have obsessed over the story of pluto and tried to convince people around me to read it so i could find someone else to love it with me. naoki urasawa writes such complex and beautiful and introspective stories it never fails to amaze me.
As someone who has spiralled into an obsession with Jekyll and Hyde adaptations for about two years and almost wept with joy upon finding an adaptation that actually *got it*, as well as thinking about Pinnochio as a kind of myth about god and humanity for a long time, I thoroughly enjoyed this video and hope that Jacob finally found some peace once he finished it.
Which adaption is it?
Yeah please answer. Which adaptation got it?
@@yersiniapestis5237 It's a film called 'Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier'. It's a French TV Movie that was made in 1959. It's on the Internet Archive with subtitles. It's cheap as hell and mixes up the plot and characters a bit but it still somehow manages to capture the vibe of the novella a lot better than other adaptations. Like, it takes place in a different time and place but the themes are fundamentally the same and the plot changes it makes actually work and feel like they were considered in relation to the original. At least, I felt they did. It might not be for everyone but I hope it is.
The French would know how to adapt it because Jekyll and Hyde as well as Frankenstein are carrying strong inspirations from the Villeneuve novel Beauty and the Beast from 1740, same as Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo. The 1946 French movie is also good just in terms of faithfulness. And Dumas has trickled down to PLENTY of wacky retellings like Castlevania and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.
The difference seems to be, that a lot of these derivative works are heavily marketed on account of being more Anglo-Scottish in origin. And that alone tends to cover for limitatons in quality and creativity. Similar to how George Lucas and Tarantino can make bank from copying the styles of Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone, while producing not much to add but a children's film or grindhouse exploitation.
This "they got it" talk makes me wonder if anyone is ever going to adapt Animorphs and if it could be any good. Not sure why, it just popped into my head.
(The answer is yes, Animorphs: The Reckoning, it's awesome; but I wouldn't mind an Adult Swim cartoon or a Netflix series, or, just, give me something.)
So I cried watching this. I cried a lot.
I'm a poet and I am a trans man. I watched this thinking a lot about a poem I wrote at the height of my conflict with my parents about my gender identity called Otesanek, which is based on a Czech folktale about a couple who can't conceive a child and end up adopting a tree stump which comes to life. Except when it comes to life it's out of control, and an absolute monster. It starts eating uncontrollably, in most retellings ends up eating people, often other children, and has to be put down by one/both of its parents or some other sensible personwith an axe and burnt.
I guess I put all of my feelings about not being wanted, or loved by my parents who were refusing to accept my identity into it. They wanted the idea of a child, it felt, the child they had in the heads, and not the reality of my existence. They loved a child as a possession, not as a living, breathing person. They did not want to discover who I was, they wanted to impose it. I do performance, and manage to put so much venom into the line "mummy sits and sobs for the child she wanted and not the child she got" that the room will go entirely silent. It's the most graphic, horrible thing I have ever written. People don't know how to feel after hearing it, particularly parents. It's gained me a reputation as a "horror" poet, because that's what Otesanek is, a version of Pinocchio where the author recognised what a horror story this is. A thing that never chose to be alive being punished for the mere fact of its existence.
Pinocchio goes really hard with trans people, especially trans men. All of that desperation to please be transformed into a "real boy" by a god that has made you apparently in a drunken stupor, with a body that doesn't match the way you know that you are /supposed/ to be. And the real irony is that you always have been a real boy, it's just that other people are incapable of seeing and accepting that.
I did patch things up with my parents. Kind of. It's imperfect, but we're working on it.
LOL, this story isn’t about how we should accept mental illness and it’s definitely not about being trans. Stop trying to make storylines fit your narrative.
Thank you for sharing that. ❤
Just wanted to say, I'm glad you shared this
Thank you for what you've written. And good luck to you. You're amazing ❤
are you willing to share your poem with us? i got chills just reading your comment and i would love to read your poem as a fellow enby with parent problems
27:34 Valentinus Monad
Small Correction: Simon Manus is NOT the father of Sophia Monad, the blue fairy. Sophia is the daughter of the Founder of the Alchemists, Valentinus Monad and his wife, Isabelle Monad. Simon Manus was the leader of the alchemists after her fathers passing who captured her and used her abilities for the arm of god project
“It looks like Pinocchio fails a quick time event” -Jacob Geller
Truly a quote for the ages
One of my favorite Pinocchios is Pinocchio from Dimension 20: Neverafter, a dnd game about fairytales. Not going to spoil anything but Pinocchio's story there really takes the meta narrative of writers and puppets and runs with it. Also, is just played fantastically by Lou Wilson.
I was going to leave a comment about Neverafter too until I saw this! Pinocchio of all time. Honestly this video made me admire how great of an adaptation Lou's Pinocchio is so much more
When he was talking about other people speaking through you, I instantly thought of that scene with the Stepmother talking to Fairy Godmother through Pinocchio
SAME, and I read the original "book"/collection of stories. I loved Lou's version of the character and the wildly "Neverending Story" feel from the layers of story. One of my favorite campaigns of all of all time ❤
Pinocchio’s never-ending quest to find where the White Women at never fails to bring a tear to my eye
Neverafter finished in 2023, but by a strange coincidence ALSO started airing in 2022! It really was the year of Pinocchio, it seems.
If I had a nickel for every time Jacob made an introspective, thought-provoking video essay with religious themes about an inanimate humanoid figure crafted by an elderly man and given life by magical means, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
39:40 - 40:18 is my favorite part.
I’ve watched this video in its entirety like four or five times now, and that’s the moment that really stuck with me my first watch.
We all must change, we all must grow, we all must learn to move on.
This is now one of my favorite things you’ve put out. Great great stuff.
"2022's Pinocchio fails to ever communicate what the 1940's version did so effortlessly: that art coming to life is amzaing in itself"
Danm, I am always impress by your script but that hit hard because it relatable to what I feel when I watch that movies.
I think Lies of P is pretty clearly a story about how unchecked greed blinds us to the value of what we have and the suffering of others, leading us to neglect and destroy, while acceptance and selflessness allow us to protect and nurture. I can't think of any part of the game that isn't about that in one way or another.
So many people expected a grimdark fantasy like most souls likes have, but surprisingly it ended up being an Astro Boy love letter down to Arlecchino being Pluto. The irony of the most evil character arlecchino “creating” the most “good” character in the form of venigni ties the whole game together. Love how well it tackles the theme of learning to accept what it means to be alive and if you choose to respect new life and friends or pay the consequences of loneliness trying to dispose of new things out of fear.
I also love how despite it having a generally well-defined sense of right and wrong, the game doesn't really equate becoming a real boy with becoming a good person. P can do all sorts of things to make him more human, from showing concern for others and lying to spare their feelings, to (SPOILERS) killing a character in revenge, despite being given the option to spare them. It sends a message that being human is filled with all sorts of complexities and that it isn't a matter of right and wrong, so much as being able to connect with others. Revenge may be well understood to be a bad thing, but it is also an inately human thing.
I made my own comment going into detail, but I wanted to add on here too where people can actually see that like. As much of a dark fantasy as it is as a Soulslike, it's also having a lot of FUN with itself????? The devs are blatantly having fun with leaning in on the Pinocchio-ness, P's nose might not literally grow on his model but BOY do they have fun with the nose growing on stuff like the loading bar and Carlo's portrait, and even when it's not specifically Pinocchio-themed fun there's still lots of cute elements (You can hug the cat!!!!! When P gets more human he can hug the kitty cat!!!!!). My absolute favorite thing is the preorder bonus being an in-game costume for P that puts him in the funny clown suit that Pinocchio in the original novel is illustrated in, and I'm so mad that I didn't learn about the game until well after the preorder bonus was no longer available because I am *obsessed* with that outfit, I want to see the funny puppet twink run around in a yellow traffic cone hat, pointy shoes, and frilly neck ruffles. Seeing the game take the time to be goofy and cute just makes me so happy, it gives the game a sense of joy at being alive even with the nightmare apocalypse going on in the story.
Also I adore how they lean into the man-vs-god take on the Pinocchio story, bringing in really nuanced references to the demiurge mythos in Gnosticism, in particular w Simon Manus (referencing the gnostic character Simon Magus) and Sophia (referencing the gnostic Sophia). I was really moved by the game's story and amazed at the depth in how well-thought out its plot was. Kinda disappointing that Jacob didn't feel the same way.
@@ayin_norththe truth is P takes inspiration from a great deal of amazing literary works...
And makes you think, a lot.
Not quite what I expected from a Soulslike bloodborne knockoff with Timothée like protagonist. It is so good though.
I'm so glad to be recommended this video and to know there is apparently Pinocchiology out there in the world.
Thanks for making this, I really enjoyed hearing your thoughts on Pinocchio and what it may mean to those who have made their own adaptations... As an artist who has wanted to make my own interpretation of Pinocchio, this video really made me feel a lot. Your words are really insightful and statements like "The joy of parentage is discovering who your child is, not deciding who they should be.", "Do we allow agency to the figures we immortalize in wood?" and "How can art enjoy being brought to life if it insists that it still doesn't live?" are poignant and I want to continue thinking over them.
I could write a lot of thoughts here about all the different Pinocchio's you've mentioned, but I think I want to focus on the 2022 Disney Pinocchio because I feel you've helped me fine-tune what it is that I did not like about it.
You said: "His film is so obsessed with the aesthetics of reality, that it's robbed of any sense of magic. Unlike Pinocchio himself, the film fails to become more than the sum of its parts."
I feel that this brings to light a really core element that I've been trying to word for ages about this movie: Pinocchio is about being more than the sum of your parts.
Pinocchio, at its core, is a story about context, how context shapes us. Even Collodi's original, with its big focus on deference, still places a lot of value on context.
With the 2022 Disney film's focus on realism to the detriment of everything else, it loses sight of ... well, the human experience in context. We don't know everything. We have a relatively small scope.
Even in something like AI's story (I love AI) that spans thousands of years, there is a level of the unexplained, the complicated interwoven connections that we only see pieces of, that the characters only ever see pieces of.
We ARE small pieces of a much greater history, and this is true of Collodi's story, or the 1940 Pinocchio, of AI, of Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, and I mean even Pinocchio: A True Story might have some of that... Our lives are lived in a context that influences us since the day we are born.
But... The world in the 2022 Disney Pinocchio feels so dead, done and over with, whenever it's not on-screen. Yes, things do happen offscreen, like Stromboli being overthrown, but it doesn't really *feel* like any sort of liveliness. It feels, to me, similar to knowing where an event trigger in a video game is, and you have that little bit of immersion break... Which, if you like games or the game is good, you might not mind. But in this movie, that feels devoid of anything it holds meaningful to say, it's like sitting in a fancy theater, watching really, really bored stagehands not even trying to hide, while the actors on stage move from point A to B.
It's a movie that, in my opinion, tries to hold metacontextual engagement with the audience and fails to do so in such a tremendous way that it makes the world feel stilted. It turns itself into a puppet that is DESPERATELY trying to perform for the idea of what an audience wants... Or rather, what an audience will pay for (which is not the same intrinsically as what an audience wants).
The scene with Jiminy ACTUALLY getting Pinocchio to go to school is annoying, with Jiminy practically bragging to the audience for succeeding here, but then it hits a whole new level when the school teacher tosses Pinocchio out anyway. It's like... this double whammy of "haha, surprised you huh, audience member?" that becomes "anyway, even if this DID happen, it wouldn't have changed anything."
Which then... Reinforces that ultimately this movie doesn't really seek to change anything, to show anything new, to care about the context.
You said this movie, like other Disney "live action" remakes, can't find a single artistic reason to exist, and I agree.
I believe art relates to a personal world, to our own individual experiences as ourselves and what we value... And if this movie outright spells out that even if Pinocchio had made different choices, that nothing would have meaningfully changed... What does it mean about its world except that it is stagnant, predictable, and devoid of growth?
The 1940s Pinocchio film was so glad to be alive. The world was so animated, drawn lovingly, with a lot of time to absorb the visuals and feeling... Even if sometimes those feelings were scary, like Pinocchio being kidnapped by Stromboli.
The 2022 (Disney) Pinocchio film is a husk shaking about, begging you to keep your eyes on the screen as it strains between hating the viewer that has caused it to exist and doing everything it can to avoid displeasing the viewer through any sort of unexpected change, outside of lukewarm and acceptable non-changes (like "Stromboli bad, so overthrow that guy, give the movie a stronger moral standing.")
I guess it fascinates me that the film itself is so calcified in deference to authority that it doesn't know what to be, or that it even *can* be anything, outside of a very rigidly defined 1940 Pinocchio copy... It's a puppet that doesn't want to be real, for it does not know how to want. It's a puppet that emulates a puppet wanting to be real, hitting some bizarre form of the uncanny valley.
The feeling I had is that Collodi thought he was writing a simple story, with all the tropes expected from the time, with the bratty kids that the audience would find relatable, and this is why the ending just boils up to "grow up". And yet, he didn't realize the full implications of his story, that's what helps creating such a massive world of expansions.
But Del Toro's movie really felt so good because it's the culmination of over a hundred years of Pinocchio discourse and how choices are the most important theme in the story. Honestly, the saddest part was that Podesta had more than one opportunity of abandoning facism, just let Pinocchio go and pay attention to his son, but he just refuses it and he might think he's doing a great sacrifice, but, in the end, he's just dooming himself and the ones he should love.
1. your line about what parenting should be brought me to tears
2. even though i'd seen stills from Pinocchio (2022) with Tom Hanks, Figaro, Jiminy Cricket, your video was my first exposure to the titular boy himself and I nearly did a spit take
1. Yeah me too lol
@@oriole3702 same
I find it strange that you didn't touch on the original book's version of Frankenstein's monster, who is similarly a creation abandoned by his creator. The monster wants to be human, to be loved, but that it taken away from him. I do understand avoiding it but I find that it has some parallels to Pinocchio.
Absolutely! I was thinking Metropolis as well.
he had to pick his lane, there are so many Pinnochio-esque stories from Astro Boy to Blade Runner 2049, you can't talk about it all
Video was really good!!
As a Lies of P fan, I appreciate that the game is getting recognition when people talk about retellings on Pinocchio's tale. However I feel like to make a correction about a plot point you talked about ; Sophia is not Simon's daughter but a young girl Simon was obsessed with which... is pretty obvius in which way that's why she ended up like that :)
The GDT analysis made me contemplate how my expectations about how things and people should be affect my ability to appreciate them. Incredible video.
I ugly cried so hard during Del Toro's Pinicchio. Somehow, he keeps topping himself with each movie.
The Blue Fairy in Del Toro's adaptation is a straight-up Biblical angel.
Of all the years I've been watching/listening (audio only when I'm at work), I never know where the next episode will go, but they never cease to astound. I'll always be up for the journey. Keep up the fantastic work.
Im only 5 minutes in but i cant wait til jacob talks about Pinocchio: a kdrama about ethics in journalism set in a world where some people develop hiccups whenever they lie
After the reveal at 18:37 I literally had to pause and get up to walk around. The idea that Pinocchio is about God not loving its creation the way it desires or needs just threw me for such a loop and I love it
It would take approximately seventeen hours to explain why, but there's a point in this video that made me weep uncontrollably because it told me something I really needed to hear for the sake of my own mental health.
You're a real boy, with real feelings, and those feelings really matter.
@@darksu6947 that wasn't it, but good try
@@tjzambonischwartzYou're a big fish and want to eat little boys
I've got seventeen hours to spare, if you don't mind
Don't share things with strangers on the internet if you don't want to, but I at least want to ask: which point was it?
By the halfway point I was wanting to hear you use Megaman lore into your essay, because so much of it fits into the story of Pinocchio. This is absolutely my favorite video from you now!
Jacob Geller doesn’t mention Frankenstein in this video essay, but I used to think about Pinocchio and Frankenstein as very similar stories.
Both main characters desire belonging and purpose as outsiders to the human experience. Where they differ is that Pinnochio treats life as a blessing and Frankenstein’s monster suffers life as a curse.
Had a thought about Lies of P Pinocchio. He is literally a digital marionette puppeteered by the player, yes. But if you think of Pinocchio and the player as one and the same, then the player is the one being influenced by expected Pinocchian story conventions. Becoming human in Lies of P requires lying through your teeth and bucking against your family, the opposite of what Carlo Collodi and most other Pinocchio writers seem to have intended. Not super deep but resonant for me.
I think lies of p did such a great twist on the original story. I think its only as deep as you're willing to look into it. You can easily play through the game once and completely miss the point if you expect the story to hold your hand and not respect your literacy and deduction skills
@@patricklapinski1526Yup. For example, most people scratch their heads and ask "Where was Monstro? Was he the submarine?", without even realizing that Simon was the stand in for Mostro all along.
As an Italian passionate about literature, I will never thank you enough for this video. What you've felt watching del Toro's movie after your deep dive into Pinocchiology is also what I've felt. The crushing realism of Geppetto, the cultural scars being left by fascism, it was too much for me. I kept thinking about it for a long time
Adding 'Feel' at the end was the cherry on top. Lovely analysis, dissection and exploration once again, Jacob!
This video, as the Del Toro masterpiece made me cry. The lines and concepts about Christianity, the grueling task of getting to know yourself, a father-son relationship in both this video and the Toro one are beyond superb. Jacob's essays are always profound and deep without being incomprehensible or rambling, one of the best out there
barbie is honestly (in my opinion) a great example of pinnochio's elements translated through another form of media
THANK YOU I was looking through the comments for some mention of barbie 😭it does the idea SO well. a lot of attention is given to the more surface level feminism of barbie and its relatability to womens experiences but for some reason not that much to its core theme of humanity, which it also explores from a female perspective (unlike most pinnochio type stories). like in interviews gerta gerwig talks a lot about god, how ruth handler represents a god who is like a loving mother, “The idea of a loving God who’s a mother, a grandmother - who looks at you and says, ‘Honey, you’re doing ok’ - is something I feel like I need and I wanted to give to other people." she talks about how when barbie and ruth touched hands it was a reference to Michelangelo's the creation of adam. she describes the scene of barbie and the old lady on the bench as a "transaction of grace.” i loved the movie so much more than i was expecting to, how it shows such a love for humanity that despite how shitty it can be and the existiential things like death you have to accept, barbie still wanted to be human.
That's a very good point!!!
@@BlisaBLisa I never really liked the Barbie movie. It speaks about cellulite but is too afraid to show women the true extent of the corruption. It gives off the vibes of Swifties saying shit like "Men are allowed to laugh, but women are forced to chuckle.". Women aren't Barbies, we aren't marionettes, we're not harlequin dolls that wear pink skirts and fix political problems by going to stop elections by distracting men. Sometimes the only way to fix such a deep and rooted issue like sexism and misogyny is to punch and scare a few rich fascists, but the people getting punched would be Hasbro's CEO and benefactors.
Too bad the movie is fucking terrible.
@@Silenthero66 wrong. I’m in your walls
The adaptation of Naoki Urasawa's Pluto, released recently, is also very much a Pinnochio. Lies of P takes as much from it as it takes from the original story.
In a world of moving puppets, Pluto presents us with only ten or so "true" Pinnochios. The Strongest Robots in the World, are first and foremost weapons, in the eye of the state. But to their makers, they are sons and dear friends. They play pretend at being human, so much, and for so long, that differences become a blur. They pretend to eat, pretend to get drunk, pretend to cry, pretend to learn the piano. The one thing they don't have to force, that comes naturally to them, are their strongest feelings. Hate, and love. Hatred for the man who killed their child, hatred for the robot that killed their friend, hatred for the government that sent them to war, hatred towards themselves for being faillible. Love for their long-lasting rival, for their robot wife, for their adoptive children, for their maker and parent. What makes a robot "perfect", what makes it feel "true" feelings, and able to lie, both to others and itself, is the presence, in their memory, of those extreme emotions.
When the genius human scientists present this theory of extreme emotions, the only examples that comes to them is suffering. Pain, anger, hatred, sadness. But Pluto postulates that nothing comes from hatred. The mad "perfect" robot born from hatred is brought down by the overwhelming love for all life, organic and robotic, that lives in the heart of the Strongest Robot in the World.
The mastermind of the whole story is the robotic core of the United States itself. A super-AI that plans on erasing humanity altogether, orchestrating conflicts behind the scenes to achieve a world of robots. At the very end, this computer is killed by the first robot in history that ever killed a human. The first puppet that managed to cut its strings sacrifices itself, motivated by love, in order to bring down a robot that played the part of the puppetmaster for far too long.
almost every one of your video essays has made me cry in self reflection. Thank you for that space
Jacob Geller as a writer always ends up being one of my biggest inspiration for my visual/digital art, I'm always at awe in the way he just makes me fall in love with things I don't care about, his video on the shape of infinity pretty much defined my philosophy as an artist as my desing mission statement for what I want to do with set art, everything, I'm never gonna stop watching this video unless something goes very very south, thank you Jacob :)
AI might be a sci-fi horror story for parents but I saw that film when I was really young and it fucked me up, I saw it young enough to not remember exactly how it fucked me up but whenever I see certain scenes from that film I get an inexplicable feeling of terror in my gut. I'm certain that film introduced me to the concept of existentialism at a very young age and left me with an awful fear of being abandoned and a looming terror that I wasn't... real?
AI is one of those formative pieces of media that I experienced right when I was reaching the event horizon of consciousness and of understanding art and it shaped the person I have become profoundly so.
As a child, the ending fucked me up so bad that I took the VHS tape and stuffed it into my toy box in the hallway, hoping that it will never see the light of day ever again.
@@Little1Cave Unfortunately I didn't have a physical item to personify with my fear of the film. I just had to live in terror of digital movies looming on the TV lmao
Unironically no film has ever made me sob like AI
In Lies of P, one of the contradiction is that despite everyone opposing Pino being about going against their humanity, his allies and other survivors are all about being human. Eugenie survived because of her family love, Venigny because of the paternal love of his awakened puppet, Red Fox and Black cat because of a familial love borned first from a lie. It's actually weird that Pino, through experiencing all the high and low of humanity around him, and through the ultimate sacrifice of a father for his second son, not a replacement of the first, become the immortal all his opponents wanted to become.
It’s a surprisingly tight story, and definitely one of my favorite supporting casts of the usual soulslikes mostly because they don’t all tragically die because souls. Their conclusions usually fit their resolve especially with venigni and his butler, who ironically saves both of them by telling a lie about his own sentience. Geppetto’s Puppet is designed with the Spoiler of Spoiler in mind to revive him which is why he has one arm, but through his literal legion of experiences it is *his* arm and he is recompleted in his own way. It’s great.
I've been a big fan of your work for a while now and after a second watch I genuinely think this is the best work you've done.
Facinating, well presented and thoughtful. Thank you for the time you spent producing this.
What a beautiful video! I love your work, also, I like how the little figurines in the background keep changing
I was really obsessed with AI for years. It was such a sad and heart wrenching story. David didn't deserve to exist in such a cruel world.
Me too, im obsessed with it
Speaking of Lies of P and soulslikes, the Bloodborne Old Hunters DLC was released on November 24. This is the birthday of Carlo Collodi, author of Pinnochio.
And now you are ready to understand how Elden Ring (2022) is a Pinnochio story spanning a 6000 year timeline.
This is going to be a strange headspace going into NG+.
I was always fascinated and obsessed by Pinocchio and his many adaptations, having a video from you on this very specific topic is like a true Christmas gift !
Easily one of my favorite UA-camr’s, you can talk about anything and I know for an hour or so I’ll be engaged in that subject and learn something. Thanks Jacob! Keep them coming.
Pinocchio has always been such a fascinating story, there’s so many versions I’ve seen and so many different interpretations on what it means for him to become a real boy.
It's an easy to understand fable format that allows the author to define what personhood and responsibility mean.
What you said about Lies of P, about the character being controlled by the player like a pupeteer, really reminded me of what appears to be one of the main themes of deltarune. In case you havent played it, at the end of the first and second chapters, along with some smaller hints throughout the game, its seen how you as the player are possesing the character in game. You and the player are different entities, and they momentarily try to escape your control by ripping your soul out of their body.
Being a puppet and simmilarities to pinochio also can be seen with spamton, the tumblr sexyman from chapter 2. If you havent played it, you should give it a go, its not very long and its free.
I think the pinocchio themes of art and creator are going to end up going even deeper than kris and spamton, as I think that's what fuels the dark worlds. the dark worlds and darkners are art that takes a life of its own after it is created. (and spamton for example being the personification of a message that was written only to be discarded)
Honestly I was thinking about Deltarune for like half this video. I don't know if that Lies Of P player control was diegetic, but I hope so.
spoilers for everhood but (i defiantly do recommend to go in blind and play the game if you can)
i have to mention everhood and how this also has a similar theme to it, you seemingly start off playing as a wooden doll called red who's lost their arm and the first half revolves around that and getting it back. but you soon enough find out theres some other force or simply "red" speaking to you through a mirror and how they hate being controlled.
turns out there's a being called pink in red's body and it was simply just a vessel, so it reminds me of that whole puppeteer theme.
I'm glad someone else thought of Deltarune! I did immediately think of Kris when Jacob mentioned the Lies Of P protagonist having no will of their own because they are an avatar of the will of the player.
I think a lot (probably more than can be considered normal) about the themes of Kris and Spamton being puppets who hate their puppeteers.
thought of that too...
Jacob, this is another very formidable entry in your collection of video essays, that I am going to rewatch over and over again.
Thank you for your thought provoking videos
watched it on Nebula, but came back here to comment: what a fucking amazing storyteller you are!!
I watch a TON of content (online or streamed) and you still are by far the best storyteller I have ever (and so avidly) listened to... Kudos kudos kudos ❤
I really love the Brendan Fraser in Mummy cosplay
lmao
I'm italian and it's really weird and somehow touching to see this story become important to people in other countries. Like I knew of the adaptations but I never really stopped to consider that the whole message of it could obsess so many artists, idk if it makes sense. I was obsessed w it as a kid!! It was so strange to see the illustrations of the edition I read when I was like 5 in this video so many years later.
Also idk if you already heard of them but since I'm in the position of just having absorbed pinocchio lore by living here, I can recommend Mattotti's Pinocchio movie, he's a phenomenal artist, and if I remember right from high school Umberto Eco wrote an article about Pinocchio in which he compares it to the other very big story for children at the time, Cuore, and gives a bit of context on why Collodi might have felt compelled to give the ending the moralising twist about Pinocchio learning obedience and losing his previous identity (idk how much of italian politics you got into to research this video but teaching kids how to be "good" citizens was all children's writers were worried about at the time. Because being italian citizens was a new thing, they were the first generation of kids born after Italy was united). I haven't watched Del Toro's movie yet but it seems like he got that part very well, obedience not being only about a familial role but about a role constructed by the state.
Also I can testify that generations and generations of italian kids grow up learning to be absolute dipshits from this book and that's italian culture (jk)
Brilliantly done. Your ability to suddenly make me care about something I've previously glossed over never surprises me, and always delights me. Thanks.
Jacob is looking VERY handsome with the combo of that stubble, that hairstyle, and that shirt & suspenders. It's very "Brendan Fraser in The Mummy".
Another movie of the "Year of Pinocchio", Puss in Boots - The Last Wish, has the villain's motivation be that Pinocchio was more popular than him, now he wants revenge on the world. Did every writer get a secret memo to make Pinocchio movies in 2022?
Big Jack Horner was a puppet... a puppet of Society™
My recent months-long obsession has been Frankenstein, and I'm struck with how many similar themes the two stories have, as well as the continuous failure of adaptations to uncover what so many of us see. Loved this video and wish I could talk about Frankenstein as well as you do about Pinocchio!
The opening and title reminded me of Frankenstein, too, and its explicit existential dystheism.
What are your opinions on the new lisa Frankenstein movie? It looks really interesting and as you seem to be an expert I'd love to hear your opinion
SAMEEEE!!!!!! omg I’ve been obsessed with Frankenstein for the better part of four years now and I was so excited to see the similarities within these two stories!
Speaking of Frankenstein, the irony of you bringing this up on this video is that Lies of P will be having an upcoming DLC, and the teaser images that have been released really suggest that a Frankentein DLC could be next. The frozen far north setting with the laboratory and sailing ship feel like Frankenstein.
I heard Guillermo Del Toro's next movie will be a Frankenstein adaptation, too.
This is some of your best work, honestly. I wish this particular essay could have been 3 hours long, but I know it wouldn’t be able to be nearly as great as it is just like this.
Vale, Jacob. You’re one of the true greats of essay writing.
Literally just read two of calvino's essays for one of my classes!! Seeing scholars you're learning about pop up in videos is always a treat
Oh, this is a great video! When I saw GDT's Pinocchio, the story turned around in my head for a while, and it's interesting to see how so many artists approach the story (as someone who loves 2001 and reads it as at least in part a movie about god, I should really watch A.I. at least in part to compare the two). Another recent and wildly popular story that I feel is grappling with Pinocchio's themes and structures is Barbie, a story in the broadest terms about a doll becoming human with an emphasis on the relationship between the mother and the daughter. Also, your description of Lies of P as a perfect puppet (and mentioning GDT) (and Something Rotten) reminds me of a game that deliberately alienates the relationship between the player and protagonist. So, spoilers for Metal Gear Solid Two, but given that the game is about an empty vessel of a man growing up to freely define himself outside of colonel's and the player's influence I think Raiden might qualify as a Pinocchio? Maybe?? In between the general themes of control, Solidus throwing off his Doc Ock suit in the final fight, and Raiden throwing away the strings connecting him to the player (the dog tags) I think there's something maybe there.
wait shit he tweeted it. from Kojima's twitter:
Garrone, Guillermo del Toro, Zemeckis, are all working on "Pinocchio" films. I was also influenced by "Pinocchio". Raiden, swallowed by the huge white whale of the information society, is digested in his stomach and vomited out through the anus! After that, his puppet of information control cuts the strings and starts walking on his own legs. That's MGS2.
NO IS THIS REAL??? HOW DID I MISS THIS
@@JacobGeller when everything clicked and i saw the tweets i was flabbergasted. it felt like a celestial alignment
OH MY GODDDD METAL GEAR SOLID 2 OF COURSE
Well now Jacob has to remake this video and include the 40 minute Metal Gear tangent.
I think Pinocchio is a great example of how having things in the public domain is a good thing.
this quickly became one of my favourite youtube vids, you're a great writer!