Oedipus Fisher Price

Rita, Helena Iara, and I are now visiting my parents in Colorado, and Helena simply loves playing with the toys David and I had as children.  The Fisher Price Castle, with its moving stairways, secret passages, and dungeons (with a dragon, no less), may be her favorite, and she loves to move the "little people" (dolls with no arms and legs, for those of you who didn't have them as kids) all around and imagine the relationships they might have.

Last night, she put the queen in bed, and then put a little woodsman -- who might be an archer, horseman, or even Robin Hood -- in bed next to her.  She then found the king and brought him toward the bed, inviting several comments from Rita and me... but Helena quickly clarified the relationship: the little man clad in green was the queen's son.  None the less, she soon moved the king away to a spot atop the castle.

Personally, I love these little toys because they open play into narrative: though it's great when Helena plays with her dolls and stuffed animals by making them dance or slide, telling stories with toys is an even more interesting step.  Up to now, Helena's storytelling has been pretty simple, based around things that she has done, interfamily relations, or the simple joy of putting words together, but the physical relationships of the toys in the Fisher Price Castle seems to allow for longer and more complicated stories.  With the characters in place, she doesn't get lost in her stories very easily.

And with storytelling comes interpretation.  Mine, at least (I doubt that Helena is doing much hermeneutics!).  What would it mean if Robin Hood is, in fact, the Queen's son?  Does that transform the whole story of the Merry Men into an Oedipal drama?  In fact, there is something to this interpretation: after all, Robin Hood offers as a the political justification for his struggle against the Sheriff of Nottingham and Prince John, that he is defending England for Richard the Lionheart (off in Palestine during the crusades).  He is fighting for the definition of England (the mother land) against the law (in Lacanian thought, the law is the Father).

OK, it's a bad argument.  Not very helpful in understanding Helena's play with toys, nor the history of popular rebellions in England.  But the point is, that as babies begin narrative play and to do unexpected things that don't make sense, they make us think.  In some cases, the thoughts are useful, and in others, they don't lead anywhere.  But that, as an professor once told me, is philosophy.