Isn't she just a doll?

On our recent trip to Salvador and Recife, Helena Iara heard one comment time and time again: "Isn't she just a little doll?" ("É como uma bonequinha!")  Helena is a cute baby, but what really attracted interest was how blond she is: in the very African cities of Brazil's northeast (and where the harsh sun burns everyone black pretty soon), such a white baby is shocking.  I'm not exaggerating when I say she stopped traffic on downtown streets.


I began to tell Helena a little more about the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard, which seemed quite apropos... Baudrillard's basic idea is that in post-modernity, the sense of reference is lost.  Instead of a picture signifying some real thing "behind" it, representation develops a new relationship to reality.  What, he asks, does the China exhibition at Epcot Center have to do with China?  He defines the simulacrum as a "Copy for which there is no original."

As I explained to Helena, it seemed even more perverse the doll -- originally a signifier of a baby, but now a kind of simulacrum -- would now become the reference by which real babies are judged.  If a baby is "like a doll", then she is pretty and good. Certain other comments we heard on the street also made it clear that the comparison had to do with wealth: several women declared "She looks like a soap opera baby!" while one street boy innocently spoke the truth that lies behind all of these comments: "She looks almost like a baby of the rich people!"  The rich, like a doll, are unreal and perfect, powerful but untouchable.

Fortunately, Rita was listening to my diatribe and stopped me before it got out of hand.  She explained to Helena that the real problem wasn't ontological, but practical.  When people describe a baby as a doll, they may also treat the girl as a thing.  The cheek-pinching, hair-mussing, and invasive stares she got from people she had never seen before and would never see again served as very good evidence of this fact.

In the end, I still contend that issues of the constitution of being in postmodernity are important... but Rita is basically right.  The real issue with seeing the other was a doll is that she becomes a thing.  Prized and treasured, perhaps, but basically an object.  Instead of another subject with whom I interact, people on the street wanted an object with which they could play.