After Ever After
Have you wondered about life after Happily Ever After?
With Disney fairytales so widely commercialised today, we are made familiar to the various “Happily Ever Afters” that our favourite characters enjoy. “After Ever After” simply refers to the events which occured after “Happily Ever After”. No prizes for getting that one right. In this work, a several familiar characters were illustrated with a twist in my own rendition of Pinocchio. It comprises of a vertical banner printed on cloth (3560mm x 420mm) and a short animation designed for screening at the Media Art Nexus Wall, Nanyang Technological University.
Most of us are familiar with the tale of Pinocchio – a wooden marionette carved by a woodcarver named Geppeto in a village near Florence, with dreams of becoming a real boy. His willfulness got him into a series of mishaps which included getting devoured by Monstro the whale. The blue fairy eventually granted his wish after he learnt his lessons, but she wanted that if he was to be a real boy, he must always be good – and that was the happily ever after we knew.
But here’s what we don’t as told by my own rendition – after the passing of Geppeto, Pinocchio wandered back to his impish ways. In a different time and a different land as depicted by the Japanese style and motifs , things weren’t quite the same. Back to being a wooden marionette, Pinocchio sought revenge on Monstro. Gone was his conscience (Jiminy), who watched helplessly, and gone was the happily ever after we always thought we knew.