Get in loser we’re researching the history of Doll FearTM
I found an 1894 reference to the idea that dolls with half-open and half-shut eyes (think dolls with eyes that “sleep“ getting stuck halfway) and dolls whose expressions are too fixed in a pronounced smile are creepy. So that’s pretty much all I’ve got so far, but we’ll see what else google books has to offer up
- One writer in the 1940s expresses that he finds the gimmick of the Dy-Dee Doll “creepy.” Considering that this was one of the first dolls that came with a bottle and appeared to urinate, I’m inclined to agree with him. Or, if not creepy, that I find this function extremely bizarre as an element of play
- The first reference I found to an inherently creepy doll was in 1961. That doesn’t necessarily mean no one ever thought that any earlier, but it does seem to have been an attitude that gain prominence in the mid20th century
- 1965 review of the 1920s short story “the haunted dolls-house“ includes the opinion that old dolls are always creepy. Thus bolstering my previous statement on when this idea began to really take hold in the public consciousness
- there’s a huge spike in results from the 1980s on to the present day. All of this is really serving to suggest that the idea of dolls having some inherently scary or spooky quality is much newer than people might think.
- also, I don’t think the Uncanny Valley effect Re: static dolls is a biological fact. Fight me. If this attitude was almost nonexistent until like 60 years ago, or at least sufficiently uncommon that finding sources on it is very difficult, how can it be some ingrained evolutionary response? if we’re supposedly “wired“ to be afraid of dolls, how come our ancestors were far less so than we seem to be today, on the whole? that’s completely putting aside the fact that, as many people seem to forget, the uncanny valley theory as originally written contains the element of motion. it’s not just about inhuman humanoid figures of any sort; it specifically deals with ones that move