Be the golem you want to see in the world

Spoken Word/Personal Essay

Originally published as part of the Fondue 006 Audio Anthology, this ekphrastic piece responds to a work by local ceramic artist Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran (pictured above). Listen to me read at 26:18 here.

'And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.'

Genesis 2:7, King James Bible, 1611

The trail ahead was dusty and winding, cast between the rolling hills of rural Victoria, leading to my grandparents’ farm in Leongatha. It was here, in one of my earliest memories, that I was mesmerised by a certain plastic figurine carried by my older cousin, whom I was meeting for the first time. Adrian was holding a red, robotic tyrannosaurus rex, which transformed into a masked, spandex-clad martial artist. Never before had I beheld such a supremely awesome thing. And from that moment on, I was hooked on the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

I don’t remember much about the show now, beyond a blur of multicoloured somersaults, lightning bolts and hi-yas. But something that stuck with me was the Putty Patrollers.

This army of foot soldiers was moulded and baked from clay by the evil Rita Repulsa, enemy of the Rangers. And they were the source of much internal conflict for me.

Repulsive yet pitiable, the Putty Patrollers served as endless fodder for the protagonist’s theatrical repertoire of combat moves. These were no noble figures like the famous terracotta soldiers formed to protect China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang into the afterlife.

Inherently flawed, the Putty Patrollers were totally devoid of dignity, suffering defeat after pathetic defeat, all the while gobbling like titillated turkeys. Yet I found myself feeling sorry for them. Simply following orders from above, the poor cretins were too stupid by design to even begin to question their role. Did they really deserve their doomed fate, suffered at the hands of the superior fighting force that was the Power Rangers?

Perhaps I saw a little of myself in them, more so than in the impossibly infallible heroes of the show. As well as inspiring empathy, the Putty Patrollers intrigued me. I felt there must be more to them than hamfisted karate chops and nonsensical gobbles. Did they have ambitions, hobbies, pet hates (besides Power Rangers), favourite colours (aside from grey) or animals? Perhaps they liked lasagne but not brussels sprouts, sharing a similar palate to mine back then.

I wondered, could a Putty fall in love?

In the years since those childhood ruminations, I’ve come to understand that the complexity I sensed behind the dull facade of the Putties was not unjustified. Upon examining Jungian archetypes sprawled across storytelling throughout history, a grander scheme reveals itself, of which the Putty Patrollers are the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Rita Repulsa, it turns out, appropriated her techniques from a long lineage of legendary ceramicists.

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