Carnivalesque Retrieval in the Living Doll Self-Display

Shiva Massoudi & Nafiseh Saadat

The term "Living doll" refers to young girls who undergo surgical transformations and heavy makeup to resemble toy dolls like Barbie. They showcase their gestures and behaviors on social media through photos or videos. In this article, we explore the notion of carnival and carnivalesque through Bakhtin's perspective, identifying death, mask, madness (expressed as rogue, clown, fool), and play as the four main themes. The research background indicates that embodying these themes in literary works or social and political phenomena can contribute to the development of the carnivalesque.

Examining the Living Doll phenomenon for carnival elements leads us to conceptualize the virtual space as the carnival square. The cyber display has two components: representation, seen as having an executive aspect from Goffman's standpoint, and the performance venue in cyberspace, particularly on social networks. Here, individuals can craft diverse, artificial, and ideal identities. The Living Doll, with roots in literary sources and girls' desires to emulate dolls, puppets, or cartoon characters, signifies the adoption of a peculiar puppet-like identity in cyberspace.

Living Dolls encapsulate the four carnival themes through the concepts of inanimate being and mortality, face and body masks, stupidity, rebellion, deception, wonder, and puppet-like performances. Consequently, they transform their cyberspace presentation into a carnival, as viewed through Bakhtin's lens.