How Shrinking People Stories Help Us Deal With Our Anxieties 🔬 Miniature People Trope, Explained

The Take Film TV Movie

From historic Irish tales of ‘little people’ to Swift’s Lilliputians, the Honey I Shrunk The Kids franchise to watching people cook in tiny kitchens online – what’s our eternal obsession...

Transcript

00:00It's a tiny trope with a surprisingly large impact, one that stems back to some of the very

00:05earliest mythology, and now pops up on screen in movies, shows, and even social media. From

00:10historic Irish tales of little people, to Swift's Lilliputians, the Honey I Shrunk the Kids franchise,

00:16to watching people cook in tiny kitchens online, what's our eternal obsession with miniature

00:20people all about? Over the centuries, tiny people have been portrayed in a myriad of ways. They've

00:26been mischievous and magic, funny and fearsome, sinister and sweet. And once they made it on

00:31screen, those different portrayals were pushed even further, from fantasy into the realm of sci-fi.

00:36Part of the reason filmmakers return to tiny people on screen is also that it's technically

00:41impressive. Making humans look like they're no taller than a teacup poses a challenge,

00:45and we can really see the development of visual effects, and the fingerprints of different VFX

00:50artists in movies that feature them. From well-employed forced perspective, to animatronics,

00:56to CGI, artists and set designers have to be incredibly creative when it comes to creating

01:01these worlds. Often, it can seem like the plot is driven to an extent by how impressive the

01:05visuals can be.

01:06Nick, it's one of your cookies!

01:08You're never gonna bring it in a skill.

01:10But no matter how far-fetched their stories, when they appear on screen, miniature people often

01:15tell us something important about human beings of all sizes.

01:20Someday you'll meet someone your own size, and you'll forget all about me.

01:25I won't. I'll never forget you.

01:28Because it's such a popular trope, there are multiple academic theories surrounding our obsession

01:33with miniature people. In an article called A Taste for Shrinking, professor of literature

01:37Sarah Higley writes that,

01:39In short, the miniature is power over the world of things that we would like to possess,

01:43but do not. It is also exclusion, from a space we would like to inhabit, but cannot.

01:49This is true of many miniature people narratives, particularly in children's movies. We see

01:54children who are desperate to own the miniature people they meet.

01:58My little person.

01:59Who are you calling little?

02:01Well, you are quite small.

02:03And who are enchanted by their way of life, trying to weave themselves into it.

02:06Part of the great appeal of seeing many people in children's stories is their creativity,

02:11how they use our objects in different ways.

02:13So in The Borrowers, bottle caps become frying pans, walnut shells become helmets.

02:19It's a charming way of looking at the everyday, turning the things we often overlook into

02:23something more grand and fantastical.

02:26But these stories also explore the very real frustrations that come from being small.

02:31Frustrations that adults often forget about, but are very real for children, who can't

02:35always make their own decisions, buy their own things, or control their own lives.

02:40Honey, when you say things like that, you make him feel about this big.

02:43If he wants to feel big, he should act big.

02:46In Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, all of the children are up against these issues in various different

02:50ways.

02:51In the Thompson family, teenager Russ fails to meet their dad's expectations, while his

02:55little brother Ron is desperate for genuine engagement from their dad.

02:59But he doesn't get it.

03:00Amy is a teenager, just growing into a phase of new responsibility, and experiencing the

03:05freedom and possibilities that come with it.

03:08Being shrunk poses a serious threat to her social plans.

03:11It's just yet another annoying instance of her family getting in her way.

03:15We're now 400-inch tall and 64 feet from the house.

03:21Nick, I've got six hours to get home, get big, and get to the mall.

03:27Now get moving.

03:27But in the end, all of the kids grow as people while they're shrunk.

03:32And their parents do too, forging friendships they didn't have before.

03:35In part, this is down to the terrifying experiences they have when they're tiny.

03:40They realize that if they can survive all of that, anything that can happen to them in

03:44their human size is surmountable.

03:46Likewise, in Alice in Wonderland, Alice feels protected by her human size.

03:51Although she's a child, when she's in Wonderland, she's often bigger than everyone else, which

03:55makes her feel able to call out the mean, miniature adults.

03:58Your majesty, indeed.

04:00Why, you're not a queen.

04:02You're just a fat, pompous, bad-tempered old tyrant.

04:08But the thing about Wonderland is that she never really knows when she'll shrink, and

04:13it puts her at greater risk when she does.

04:15In her PhD thesis on miniature narratives, Danielle Morse O'Connor writes that,

04:20From the earliest miniature narratives, there's been an insistence on miniature people's

04:24inferiority to and dependence on big people in the big world, and the conclusion that

04:29big people will always be dangerous and destructive to miniature people, because of this innate

04:34hierarchy built into the differences in scale.

04:37In that way, miniature people narratives are also about making children feel responsible,

04:41teaching them how to care for things and people who are more vulnerable than they are.

04:46There's plenty more.

04:48Plenty more.

04:49Your father risked his life with this potato.

04:51Vulnerability is a big factor in miniature people movies made for adults, too.

04:55These stories often explore our worries and our needs on a new scale.

04:59There's no medical precedent for what's happening to you.

05:03I simply know that you're getting smaller.

05:06The x-rays prove it beyond any doubt.

05:08In one early iteration, The Incredible Shrinking Man, made in 1957, Scott's story unites many of

05:14the anxieties of the era.

05:16I was continuing to shrink.

05:18What was I?

05:20Still a human being?

05:23Or was I the man of the future?

05:26We see the looming threat of atomic war, and the undermining of the patriarchal order.

05:31Scott is sprayed with a mysterious chemical and begins to shrink, battling to keep his role

05:36as the head of the household for a while, but ultimately becoming so small that he's freed

05:41from his need to provide.

05:42But this isn't the end of his troubles.

05:44Once he's tiny, he has to battle things that he never had to worry about when he was bigger,

05:48like a spider that's now bigger than him.

05:51In the end, he kills the spider, but realizes that he's still shrinking.

05:55In the philosophical and fairly tragic final scene, he's lost almost everything.

06:00But Scott says in voiceover narration that it doesn't matter how small he becomes,

06:05he has survived.

06:06He still exists.

06:07My fears melted away, and in their place came acceptance.

06:14Yes, smaller than the smallest.

06:16I meant something too.

06:18The Incredible Shrinking Man was parodied in the 80s movie The Incredible Shrinking Woman.

06:23Here, the concept of the shrinking wife is played for laughs.

06:26There's a lot of slapstick comedy, courtesy of lead actress Lily Tomlin, who plays Pat,

06:30a woman who's exposed to chemicals that end up shrinking her.

06:33To my family, I'd become a doll, and to our dog, a chew stick.

06:38But there's a darker political undertone to the film too.

06:42The idea of the little wife has long been about keeping women down in traditional household roles.

06:47Can't you just see it, Madame Gaston, his little wife?

06:52And the film is enraging in this respect.

06:55Although Pat is shrinking, and unable to fulfill her apparent duties as housewife,

06:59her family still doesn't lift a finger to help her.

07:02Oh, Judith, I don't know, I just...

07:05Oh, honey, I guess we eat out again.

07:10In a time when some were questioning if women had already stopped needing feminism,

07:13the Incredible Shrinking Woman showed just how small some women were still treated.

07:19In fact, in many of the shrinking person narratives for adults,

07:22the ideas sometimes switch from sweet and curious to downright dystopian.

07:26As writer Jeff Ewing wrote for Forbes when the second Ant-Man movie came out,

07:30shrinking technology would create the capacity for the world to become a totalitarian nightmare,

07:35with authoritarian governments spying on people left and right.

07:38Putting the miniature's dystopian lens onto the 21st century,

07:412017's sci-fi comedy Downsizing explores whether,

07:45in relation to our increasingly bleak prospects,

07:48the future of humanity could be in miniature.

07:51A famous scientist invents a way of shrinking people,

07:54claiming it could be the only thing that saves the human race.

07:57But when central character Paul meets an old friend who's undergone the process,

08:00we begin to realize that even when they're being told this is the only way to survive,

08:05humans still view the process selfishly.

08:07Plus, it must feel good to know you're really making a difference.

08:09You mean all that crap about saving the planet?

08:11Yeah.

08:12Downsizing is about saving yourself.

08:15It takes the pressure right off, especially money pressure.

08:18Paul decides to downsize based on his friend's recommendation,

08:21but his wife backs out and leaves him,

08:23meaning he doesn't get the luxurious miniature lifestyle he wanted after all.

08:27He ends up meeting the creator of Downsizing,

08:30and he reveals that it's already too late anyways.

08:33Environmental disaster, pandemic disease, unbreathable air, some combination of them all.

08:41Do you really mean extinction? What about downsizing?

08:44Yeah, yeah, too little, too late.

08:46Only 3% of the world has minotarized.

08:49And yet, with his new girlfriend, Yonk,

08:51Paul decides to make the best of whatever time they do have left,

08:54and dedicates the rest of his life to helping others.

08:57It took him becoming tiny to turn him into a better man.

09:01Whether they're part of a vibrant, exciting story brimming with possibility and charm,

09:06or they're making the best of a miserable existence,

09:09the resilience of miniature people may be why we return to them again and again.

09:13They might not be the biggest, they may not be the strongest,

09:16but whatever they come up against, we know they're going to fight.

09:20In the climactic scene of the Borrowers movie,

09:22the Clock family, who've always lived a solitary life,

09:25are joined by thousands of other borrowers in their effort to bring down Oshus P. Potter.

09:29We're not vermin, we're not freaks, and we're not pests.

09:36We may be small, but heaven help anyone who thinks he can squish us!

09:43Children's literature professor Perry Nodelman writes,

09:45When these small beings prevail over insurmountable odds, as they always do,

09:50they represent a potent version of the wish-fulfillment fantasy.

09:54The very small can triumph over the dangerously large,

09:57the very powerless over the exceedingly powerful.

10:00And this is an element of the miniature person narrative that is extra appealing to today's

10:05audiences.

10:05When a few big people control our politics, our finances, and the way we communicate,

10:10we might feel small sometimes, but there's power in numbers.

10:13And that's why we predict we'll be seeing a lot more miniature people movies in the coming years.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended