It’s finally here! I’m so glad to see the DHMIS puppets continuing their adventures, even if this newest installment is the least creepy so far. The subject of this episode is love, so lets get down to the nitty-gritty and analyze this video!
So it all begins with our little trio sitting down to a picnic of raw chicken. Gross. We’re also shown a missing person’s poster with all three on there, and they’ve been missing for a few months. This is rather ominous and likely hints to an overarching plot in the next few episodes, but doesn’t have much bearing on the current episode.
Swatting a pesky butterfly upsets the yellow guy, and he runs off to be alone. From there he goes on a journey to learn a lesson about love. Whether he learns anything useful is left to question.
I’ve heard a lot of people interpret this episode as a critique of mainstream religion and its stance on homosexuality. This it true to a point. In my opinion the denizens of this realm are exhibiting societal expectations of love rather than purely religious ones. Religion does play a role, but it’s not the only thing that lies behind the ideas presented in this video.
The butterfly’s lesson of love begins on a positive note, that even though there’s a lot of horrible things in the world and can be divided by our differences, through love we can find a way to live in harmony.
Things start to get weird when the yellow guy meets the rest of the butterfly’s friends. They say that they love him and that he loves them, and he accepts this outright. How can anyone immediately love strangers? Or know that they love him just because they said so? It’s a very shallow form of love at best. So often people of either gender mistake true love for fleeting words or experiences.
Obviously it a very poor notion to teach because the yellow guy starts claiming that he loves just about everything. It’s then that he’s shown the opposite end of the spectrum: loving only a ‘special one.’
The idea of a ‘special one’ is a take on the idea of a ‘soul mate’ and how we all are supposed to have one. People can spend years trying to find someone like that, never to realize how unrealistic this romantic notion can be. So often people never find someone like this, and many are even ostracized from others altogether, never to be loved in any capacity. The love teachers try to offer an example through Michael, but he seems to never find a companion and they don’t really have an answer for those who are truly alone. In fact they just ignore this fact and reinforce the idea that a ‘special one’ will always come as long as you’re patient.
They go so far as to say that this is how love always occurs, protected by the symbol of the ring. This is where traditional ideas around marriage start to creep in. There is a king that must be fed gravel or he will get angry. The yellow guy is expected to change himself to be accepted and love and it’s intended to last forever. These are all concepts tied to religion and how followers are expected to conform to beliefs.
It’s the red guy and the green duck that finally reveal what it’s really like to love and care for someone. Even though they finished their picnic before looking for the yellow guy, they care enough about him to take hours looking for him, apologize for upsetting him, and finally save him the last egg so he doesn’t go hungry. There is more to love than fleeting relationships or a romantic connection: there is the love of friends who care about your feelings and well being. They are the proof that there are many different ways to experience love.
And a bloody butterfly burst out of the egg only to be smacked again. It wouldn’t be DHMIS without moments like this. Let me know what you think about this video in the comments.
Reading in the Shadows 