the doll games
shelley and pamela jackson

MISSION STATEMENT

S: The doll project. Or is it called the doll games?

P: The doll games.

S: Describe our mission* in general, Pamela.

P: Our mission in general is to document and theorize and perhaps even...

S: Lie—

P: And act out and make up stories about doll games.

S: But not just any doll games, because we’re not terribly interested in miming out mothering* behaviors on large baby dolls.

P: Right, we’re interested in our own doll games, the historical fact, which we will be reconstructing.

S: And when we interview other people about their dolls, what we’re looking for are people who like us constructed elaborate narratives using the dolls.

P: And we have no idea what we’ll find.

S: Yeah, perhaps we are unique. We will be traversing some very strange terrain* in our pursuit of doll excellence. We’re interested in thinking about them as kind of a native narrative form that hasn’t been studied, and a collaborative model for fiction or creation, and also one that’s probably more a female genre, although we don’t know that for sure.

P: And we’re interested in thinking about them in relation to other genres of fiction.

S: And in documenting the huge influence* they’ve had on the entire course of Western culture.