So far, Morgan’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is considered a diorama through its narrative, its manipulation of the taxidermied animals, and its ability to manipulate the audience. However, these characteristics have contradicted traditional taxidermy dioramas such as Potter’s “The Kitten Wedding” and Akeley’s “The Muskrats,” which makes it debatable whether Morgan’s work can stand as a diorama or only as a sculpture. In confirming that it is considered a diorama, there is something that all three of these works share.
While observing Potter’s, Akeley’s, and Morgan’s work, the observer experiences familiar expressions and arouse memories and feelings of deja vu for the observer, according to Parcell. They reflect various states of life such as social order, physical places, and temporal conditions (Perez-Gomez, 1996). Potter’s diorama “The Kitten Wedding” evokes conditions of social situations, such as freedom or imprisonment (Perez-Gomez, 1996). Seeing as the narrative of a wedding is taking place, there is a happy emotion being suggested, in addition to the cute and cuddly stuffed kittens dressed in their gowns and suits, giving off comedic relief.
The relief from the bride and groom’s old family and into their new one gives the observer a sense of freedom. However, this comedic and light-hearted scene turns dark when giving a closer reflection in the reality of the materials used to portray this somewhat happy image. In addition, the barrier of glass creates a rectangular shaped prison surrounding and enclosing the dead baby animals. The barrier of glass makes the audience feel as if they have power over the contained kitten wedding display.
As dead baby animals are portrayed in this setting, a feeling of dominance amplifies Potter’s comedy in the narrative. This feeling of dominance makes the audience feel larger and comfortable, and therefore for easier to smile and look down at the cute kittens. Realizing that Potter killed 20 baby kittens for the purpose of this display is pushed back in the viewer’s mind because they feel comfortable and dominant over the animals. Even though the idea is still relevant in the viewer’s mind, but the viewer still obtains a pleasure of looking at the presentation of the baby animals.
Akeley’s taxidermy diorama “The Muskrats” evokes a state of temporal situations in the observer, such as timelessness and ancestry through certain characteristics (Perez-Gomez, 1996). Created with a didactic narrative, “The Muskrats” is a collection of Akeley’s observations to create a moment in time, which he perceived to be muskrats’ way of survival. Even though these specimens are dead and stuffed, they induce a sense of timelessness through the positions Akeley manipulated them into.
Although this idea contributes to all taxidermy, and even though that is agreeable on many accounts, taxidermy in dioramas captures this to a fuller extent. These animals are posed in the middle of actions to help the observer understand the body types and structures of the specimens in the displays. The five muskrats in the display are constructed to look as if they are surviving another normal day, as one is caught in action swimming, another is sleeping and hollowed in a bunch of twigs, a third dips its head into the water and the other is peaking its head up high searching and looking beyond into the rest of the wetlands.
Since there is only one perspective the observer can observe them from, the 2D quality of this work is like a photograph. There is a capture in time and an attempt to display it the best way possible. The perfected environment and the lively actions the taxidermied animals are displayed in contribute to the “moment captured in time,” and this moment is preserved within the boundaries of the cabinet like a photograph preserves its content through the borders of its frame. Ancestry plays a role in this diorama as well, but it is not as much as timelessness.
This state plays another role in taxidermy dioramas and becomes more relevant as years go by. Natural history dioramas are a documentation of specimens and their habitats. Although they are the lowest form of didacticism in Natural History Museum , they give a visual into the world that many humans present and the future will never know, understand, or experience. They are not always necessarily a captured moment in time, but a description of an animal’s habitat and way of surviving.
This is contradictory towards some ideas put forth onto timelessness and taxidermy dioramas, but it depends on what taxidermy dioramas are being displayed, especially if they are natural history dioramas. “The Muskrats” barrier has a sheet of glass at the front, which acts like a window, while the sides and back are made out of wood. The diorama is also referred to as a cabinet because it does not protrude into a wall, but because it stands on its own. Because of this design, the work of defined as an observation.
There is only one angle the observer can see into, suggesting that the world inside is much larger, and the sheet of glass separates the human world and the animal world. Natural history dioramas make it possible for humans to grasp a glimpse of what true nature looks like. But as humans must be given access to glimpse at false nature, it also defines the lack of integrity humans have to explore nature and comprehend it. Morgan evokes vital states in her work, “Fantastic Mr. Fox. ” These vital states, as Stephen Parcell mentions, involve paralysis and death. A taxidermist’s goal is to create the illusion that a dead creature looks alive.
Morgan’s taxidermied fox in her work looks very much alive, but because of the expression of the fox’s face, the arched back and lowered ears, the fox is in a paralyzed state. Physical paralysis is relevant because the fox is taxidermied and stays still, but there is also an emotional paralysis through the expression of the fox’s body language. This is very uncommon amongst most taxidermy and taxidermy dioramas. Although all taxidermy is still and motionless, they are meant to look caught in action or captured in time, such as the example given of timelessness in Akeley’s “The Muskrats.
Morgan certainly captures her creature caught in an action, but she puts an enticing expression on the fox’s face that suggests fear and awe at the same time. There is also a sense of hesitancy, which also influences the emotional state of paralysis. This paralysis captures the observer as well, directing their eye from the fox, to the fox’s facial expression, to its eyes, and up into the atmosphere of hanging black torn polythene and rotted rabbit meat. The observer becomes a part of the narrative and shares in this state of paralysis.
With this, the human observer is no longer separate from the animal displayed in the scene, but has become on the same level with the creature. With their shared actions and emotions, the alive human and the illusionary alive animal anticipate the abstract visual of death. Death is the second vital state Morgan incorporates into this work. Approaching this idea in taxidermy is very taboo, but the symbols of death are vibrantly displayed amongst the illusionary lively stuffed creature, and through their contrasting ideas and visuals, the two compliment each other.
Because this work displays the confrontation of death, which is something that has been feared and so unattainable to be understood by humans and animals, the barrier defining this state of mind cannot be mimicked by glass. Instead, the environment must define it. Potter and Akeley enclose their dioramas for containment, control, and observation (Perez-Gomez, 1996). Morgan utilizes the materials used to create the environment to create a mental barrier, and with this the isplay does not evoke an event captured in time such as Akeley’s does. This is because the event is happening within that space at that moment. Putting up a barrier of glass would deteriorate the atmosphere’s mind state like appearance and sensation. It would also define the work more as an observation, not as a real environment existing presently and with the viewer. In addition, it would put the human viewer and the animal inside the diorama on different levels, giving the viewer an upper hand in death.
However, since death is uncontrollable and is out of the hands for every living creature, Morgan does not separate the audience from the fox’s experience with approaching death but instead to share it. With her choice of barrier, the confrontation of death in the narrative, and her style of taxidermy, Morgan utilizes the animal body in a different way that most taxidermists avoid. She reconstructs the fox’s body to give an illusion of life, but contradicts it with the deconstruction of another animal to the point of no recognition (in reference to the hanging deconstructed rabbit meat).
In addition, she ignores the rules of preservation and allows the deconstructed rabbit meat to rot, and places the reconstructed fox to enter this zone of what that fox once was. Even though this is a dangerous move in traditional taxidermy dioramas, Morgan makes the fox livelier by contrasting it with symbols of death. Potter’s “The Kitten Wedding,” Akeley’s “The Muskrats,” and Morgan’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” are all dioramas that evoke life through their narratives and presentation and hover between fact and fiction through the human’s altered and romantic interpretation of certain situations (Perez-Gomez, 1996).
Through the situations that each taxidermist attempts to create, the viewer is reminded of similar human situations that perhaps have nothing to do with the animals in the dioramas, such as different vital states, social situation, or temporal conditions (Perez-Gomez, 1996). It is questionable whether Morgan’s work “Fantastic Mr. Fox” can be described as a taxidermy diorama such as Potter and Akeley’s dioramas, or if it is just a sculpture. However, because she creates an environment for the taxidermied fox to exist in, there is a narrative, and she creates a barrier between the audience and the space containing the fox, “Fantastic Mr. Fox” can be called a diorama.
Even without a barrier of glass, Morgan still portrays a field of observation even if it is something the audience and the subject (the taxidermied fox) of her imaginary environment share. She approaches a rare and taboo idea of death in her, but makes it work to her advantage just as Potter and Akeley used death to their advantage in their work. Each diorama displays “power over knowledge” by telling the viewer how their subjects in their dioramas should be viewed or observed.
This is through the manipulation of the animals in their work and the type of barrier that is chosen that is put in between the audience and the world inside the diorama. Morgan’s barrier in “Fantastic Mr. Fox” stands out among the three dioramas, portraying an abstract barrier that is created by the hanging spectacles representing death. With this choice of barrier, she also makes the environment she has created a part of the space it is placed in which is why the viewer becomes an observer with the fox of the space of death.
This makes “Fantastic Mr. Fox” stand out immensely in comparison to “The Kitten Wedding” and “The Muskrats,” by approaching the idea of death while maintaining the illusion of life that the fox represents. Although Morgan approaches taxidermy dioramas from a different perspective, she still shares Potter and Akeley’s manipulation of the taxidermied animal and the audience; she makes the animals paralyzed with emotion from the space and confrontation of death while also making the viewer observe this space with the fox as well, and the two become subjects of the work together.
Even though Morgan’s work has a different approach to taxidermy, it still contains a narrative, an environment for the taxidermied species to “live,” “survive,” or “exist” in, and there is a barrier between the audience and the world inside, making it a diorama just like Potter’s “The Kitten Wedding” and Akeley’s “The Muskrats. ”