Flying Fish Puppets at NPM Mass
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    Cross-posted at the Cafe. I just don't get to say "Flying Fish Puppets" in public very often, so am taking every opportunity. http://www.chantcafe.com/2013/08/flying-fish-puppets-at-the-npm-mass/
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,160
    What, no video?
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    As they say on the chan sites, "I'll just leave this here."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_Puppet_Theater
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    Chonak, let me see what I can do.
  • matthewjmatthewj
    Posts: 2,694
    I saw them in the opening ceremony video, but hadn't seen any video of the Mass.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    They're everywhere! PT is publishing them RIGHT NOW in a kind of skit.
  • expeditus1
    Posts: 483
    I'm going to adopt "Flying Fish Puppets!!" as my new curse-phrase.
  • Caleferink
    Posts: 429
    Look what I just found! The puppets at the Basilica Mass:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OxFC2gkMMU
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    wow
  • Caleferink
    Posts: 429
    For all the beautiful liturgies I've seen/participated in at BNSIC, this is certainly not one of them.
    Thanked by 2bkenney27 Ben
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,160
    I've just figured it out, Kathy: it's Christ the ichthus! All those 70s bumper stickers, alluding to the early-church symbol, right?

    Now, what are they singing: is it a setting of the entrance chant?
    Thanked by 1Gavin
  • Caleferink
    Posts: 429
    I think it's supposed to somehow represent the Holy Spirit upon the Church, as the theme revolves around this year being the 50th anniversary of the start of Vatican II.

    (Understatement of the year coming up) Execution could have been better.
    Thanked by 1irishtenor
  • matthewjmatthewj
    Posts: 2,694
    who are all the unvested lay people in the procession?
    Thanked by 2ryand irishtenor
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    Chonak,

    Why are there so many fish? I keep thinking that Chalcedon must have insisted that there is one and the same Lord Jesus Christ.
  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    Anyone else note the lack of active participation on the part of the congregation?
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    Calefrink,

    Thanks a ton for the video. Otherwise, who would believe?
  • Dear God, what WAS that? WHY was that?
    Thanked by 1Gavin
  • Gavin...I agree....I always find it interesting that those who promote "...full, conscious and active participation..." also promote a style of musical prayer that does not foster it at all. Why we cannot simply come together and pray is beyond me.....
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    This is why I'm not a liturgical pacifist, by the way. People keep (bleep)ing with the Liturgy for ridiculous reasons, and with all the aesthetic sophistication of a Cursillo skit.
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    Anyone else note the lack of active participation on the part of the congregation?


    You are forgetting that the original Latin means that "actual participation" means sitting or standing quietly while watching giant fish fly through the air.

    Plene conscia et actuosa participatio, in piscibus intuens in volatilibus est promovere.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    I think it represents, no, better yet, CELEBRATES the fact that much of what emerged at VII sounds, smells and looks fishy!

    I know this is a tangent that will probably be blacklisted from the forum, but I just purchased plasticsquirtingfish.com. Wonder if it's all an inspiration from above?

    OK, yea, I'm being a little FISHetiuos! Ha!
  • expeditus1
    Posts: 483
    I retrieved a few things from my old email on the subject of puppets. This first one is from a 2008 Palm Sunday Mass in Minneapolis. We will call it "The Lord of the Dance":
    http://fratres.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/in-honor-of-the-beast/

    An interesting article here:
    http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/1544/whence_come_these_puppets_of_doom.aspx#.UfqVEawtzs0

    Bad humor for today:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rh_nqtp3VrU

    I could not find my old photos from the 2008 International Eucharistic Congress held in Quebec City's hockey arena, where these same type of potato-head puppets held court.
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,160
    I'm seein' one red fish. Were there more later? Are there more fish designs on the banners?
    I wonder if the people from the "fisheaters" web site were in attendance.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    Wow, ex... That is just scarry. If I was a kid I think it would result in nightmares.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    There's a red fish, a yellow fish, and a red and yellow fish. The filioque? I just. Don't. Want. To. Know.
  • expeditus1
    Posts: 483
    Francis, looking at that picture from the Minneapolis Mass that I posted above, where the puppet Jesus is lying prostrate on the ground http://fratres.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/8.jpg, and then seems to lose all body mass http://fratres.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/dead.jpg, I guess I'm just glad that the children watching weren't provided with sticks to whack the Jesus puppet, so that they could scramble to recover the candy.

    Thanked by 2Jeffrey Quick Jenny
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,934
    Evidently, the people who run the shrine don't enforce any standards. What is that "piece" they are singing as they process? I didn't recognize it.
  • jpal
    Posts: 365
    Not that it matters a lot, but I think they are technically liturgical/processional "kites," as opposed to puppets.

    The song is "We Come Keeping Festival" by Robert LeBlanc (text by Delores Dufner).
  • jpal
    Posts: 365
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,934
    Thanks! I think I will stay with "O God Our Help in Ages Past." Processional kites? That's a new one to me.
  • BenBen
    Posts: 3,114
    I'd like to find the spot in the GIRM where the processional kites come.
    Thanked by 2CharlesW marajoy
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,934
    Ben, we obviously need to get out more often. LOL.
    Thanked by 1Ben
  • JahazaJahaza
    Posts: 468
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,160
    The kites could come in handy during the Canon as flabella.
  • jpal
    Posts: 365
    Ben, I found a couple places:
    28. The Mass consists in some sense of two parts, .... There are also certain kites that open and conclude the celebration.

    31. Likewise it is also for the Priest, in the exercise of his office of presiding over the gathered assembly, to offer certain explanations that are foreseen in the kite itself.

    42. The gestures and bodily posture .... Attention must therefore be paid to what is determined by this General Instruction and by the traditional practice of the Roman Kite and to what serves the common spiritual good of the People of God, rather than private inclination or arbitrary choice.

    A) The Introductory Kites
    46. The Kites that precede the liturgy of the word....

    Is that what you were looking for?
  • WendiWendi
    Posts: 638
    The only thing missing is the sister playing something upbeat on the guitar, and you'd have my childhood.

    I really thought we had progressed beyond all that nonsense. Evidently not.

    There is nothing more ridiculous than old people trying to prove how hip and with it they are. All the kids do is snicker at them.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    "...the gates of the future are kites..."
  • One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish........wait....let's talk about tweedle beetles.......
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    oh, let's not degrade Dr. Seuss by dragging him into this mess...
  • +1 Adam
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    The kites could come in handy during the Canon as flabella.

    Or a cannon could come in handy during the kite flying.
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    To look at this from an uncheeky perspective--when we (thems there, thems here) look at stuff like this, what do we/they SEE versus what either they think they see or want to see?
    Swimming away from this flying fish (whoa!) I'd like to share that over at PTB in one of the WYD article boxes some wag retorted with the old cannard about "Burke and his cappa magna" yet for the thousandth time, and how many could have been fed for its cost. That's so passe over there now that it didn't get much traction. And I certainly wasn't going there.

    But knowing just the briefest history of the cope and cappa, I looked at a clip of some Mass where the cardinal was processing into the sanctuary trailed by the cappa and it suddenly dawned upon me what I was SEEING was the Faithful gathered, awash in the blood of the Lamb of the sacrifice. The realization hit me just as powerfully as did the TLM in the second Duquesne colloquium when I was sick and just was a PiP. I was seeing beyond the veil, beyond the physics of eyesight, and into the very mind of God. I'm saying "As I SAW IT." It was perfect as it was sublime. There was no doubt, no confusion, no other possible image as my being took in a human action in vesture of human making literally transformed into the paschal mysteries.

    Here's the rub about what we see in that video. I don't care about FACP in either of its meanings by those folks there. I don't care about their bellicose whatever the heck piece the choir, organ, tympani and brass were blasting, I don't care about that flying V of a cantor at the raised epistle ambo. What I do care about is that these banners and symbols will always remain as nebulae to the eye, or if you will- just eye candy literally. No one's mentioned that the other banners have the NPM logo at shoulders' height. Why "NPM?" Why not "INRI," a Jerusalem cross, a chi ro? Why not the flag of the Vatican? Did the faithful at this Mass not know they were at the NPM national? Or is the NPM brand necessary to promote the activity that is to come we normally associate with the Cross and Corpus iconographically?

    Why is there such a total loss of humility and any sense of the sober deliberation of all our human arts, from the reception and transcription of the Divine Word to the environment to the movements and postures, that are then dreamt up "ANEW" which is progressive-speak for "let's reinvent the wheel." I have to think that even Oosterhuis and Schillebecxk (sp?) would be thinking "Huh?"

    If these 3K folks are buying these "replacement players" as the genuine article in the practice of their faith, I'll have no part of it other than to send Paul Ford money for having a booth and a voice in this obvious wildnerness.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    Here's where one of the fish almost got its tail flippers singed by the Paschal Candle: http://youtu.be/lEXmDC6cYOg?t=12m47s

    Apparently the fish respond to that particular song, much like dementors go after Harry Potter.
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,046
    Isn't all this discussion of kites sort of a red herring?
    Thanked by 2Kathy CHGiffen
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    Swimming away from this flying fish (whoa!) I'd like to share that over at PTB in one of the WYD article boxes some wag retorted with the old cannard about "Burke and his cappa magna" yet for the thousandth time, and how many could have been fed for its cost. That's so passe over there now that it didn't get much traction. And I certainly wasn't going there.

    But knowing just the briefest history of the cope and cappa, I looked at a clip of some Mass (etc etc)



    Here is an ACTUAL CONVERSATION I had this morning....
    ======

    Jeffrey Tucker
    you know, I've never even attempted to understand the Puppet thing
    in liturgy

    9:50am
    Adam Wood
    cf protest theatre

    9:50am
    Jeffrey Tucker
    it's like we are all supposed to go: oh great I love how those huge puppets bring me closer to Christ!

    9:50am
    Adam Wood
    it's the same reason we have folk music

    9:50am
    Jeffrey Tucker
    but I don't get it
    ah, see, that's a culture I don't understand
    I figured it was just some random attempt to do something that is not from the past

    9:51am
    Adam Wood
    are you familiar with Julie Taymor?

    9:51am
    Jeffrey Tucker
    no

    9:51am
    Adam Wood
    or the Bread and Puppet theatre?
    it's a cultural marker of High Church Progressive Socialism. Like the Cappa MAgna, but for hippies.
    it's not random at all

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_Puppet_Theater

    9:55am
    Jeffrey Tucker
    oh! 60s shit! Now I see

    9:55am
    Adam Wood
    yup
    anarcho-socialism, civil rights, groovy times

    9:56am
    Jeffrey Tucker
    I should know better than to think this stuff was creative
    it's reactionary

    9:56am
    Adam Wood
    That's why those weird CTA and Women-priest groups use them

    9:58am
    Adam Wood
    And in context of something like NPM- where they can't get away with giant person-puppets pretending to be priests, the limited use of (for example) Fish puppet banners is like wearing a little red ribbon on your lapel. It comunicates tot he people who need to know which side you are on.

    9:59am
    Adam Wood
    One day I'll write an expose on the secret coded language of progressive liturgical practice.
    It's a real thing, and most of the RotR and trad people have no idea.
    (Culbreth does, but when he tries to explain it, he doesn't make any damn sense. And then people like Todd F. and Ruff pretend that it isn't a thing.)
    But it is, really, a thing.
    Thanked by 2SkirpR DougS
  • Flying bird kites are popular in our Episcopal diocesan and general convention liturgies, but I see them as part of a wrongheaded "clean slate" approach that seeks to develop something completely new, rather than let the fact that so many of us are gathered there be what makes the liturgy special.

    Best convention liturgy ever was one in which no kites nor other "special-event" gimmicks were employed but a beloved familiar congregational Mass setting used (Willan's SMM), and the congregational singing blew the roof off (not literally, but close).
  • red herring


    Made me spill my drink out of my nose. You know, fish kites, herring, etc.
    Thanked by 1Adam Wood
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    Here's where one of the fish almost got its tail flippers singed by the Paschal Candle: http://youtu.be/lEXmDC6cYOg?t=12m47s

    Apparently the fish respond to that particular song, much like dementors go after Harry Potter.


    And by the way- The fake vestments being worn in that video are not a helpful form of activism for the cause of female ordination.

    -------
    "But Adam- what form of activism WOULD be helpful?"

    Prayer.
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,944
    Well. Trying to think about the symbolism that may be intended. (While symbols don't need to be comprehended immediately and completely, they should not be obscure, either.)

    I have a sense that this form was chosen for its flame-like, Pentecostal, overtones rather than piscine qualities. Hence the use of red and yellow. (At least they didn't choose red and gold Chinese dragons, which would have been a rather different symbol....)

    Also share a dislike for brand banners. Didn't care for the Holy Name or Sodality folks marching in with their banners in the entrance procession at "their" Masses back in the day, nor the NPM banners now. Those work outside liturgy, not in it.
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    Seriously Adam, try harder. Culbreth's a tough read, but he makes damn more sense than those banners and kites.
    It's too bad your generation never had the chance to read Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kesey so they could then read Heller, Updike, Vidal and Mailer.
    I was very much trying to be cogent.
    Do we always have to either Strunk and White everything now, or "boil it down to bytes?"
    Cr*p!
    Thanked by 2Adam Wood CHGiffen
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