With these eyes of gold

A selection of photos from photographer Charles Fréger’s “Wilder Mann”, a visual catalog of the “savage” archetype as it exists in European folk traditions.

“These images, like archetypes, half-man half-beast, animal or vegetable, resurface from the  depths of time on the occasion of ritualistic, pagan or religious festivals, celebrating the cycle of the seasons, the fat days, carnival or the eve of Easter. In the common fund of the European rural societies, these characters or emblematic animals represented protective figures or symbols of fertility. Today they evoke an imaginary, impulsive and physical world where everyone perceives an ancestral relationship with nature where the springs of our animality and sometimes the regressive desire inherent in some of our behaviors emerge.”

I love the depth and breathe of the characters and the materials used to create them. Fur, straw, seeds, leaves and a host of other natural materials evoke the distinctly natural (some would say, primal) role these creatures play in European folk mythology. Many of these characters and the traditions they’re part of are explicitly pagan, still evolving personages dating back to a pre-Christian Europe.   

You can also see the way these folkloric costumes influence character design across every single narrative genre from films to video games. If you’re a costume designer, concept artist, or animator attempting to create something dramatically primal, I can think of a few better places to start for visual inspiration than Fréger’s book. 

Photos + copyright belongs to Charles Fréger in their entirety. Quoted section from the website of Charles Fréger.

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The stagehands in their mismatched black clothes roll the squeaky library set onstage while the piano vamps. A book falls off a shelf; the lanky Beast picks it up and presents it to Belle with a gruff and panicked flourish. She smiles because he loves her and it doesn’t have to be perfect; he just has to try.

High schoolers giving their all to heathers or ride the cyclone. The backstage TikToks and videos where everyone is in character and being silly.

A fifty year old hamlet crying over his thirty year old dad after ‘remember me- I have sworn’t’. After some time, Horatio, an eager lad of sixteen, pulls him from those treacherous cliffs and mouthes the cherished lines to his sweet prince where he thinks I can’t see. Word perfect for the rest of the night. I still don’t know if this was stage business or a missed cue but it was beautiful.

guys busting out of fishnets and glitter makeup and having a ball bc they’ve got their whole family seated front row throwing toast at them for rocky horror.

Every little shop of horrors with big lunged urchins who can’t blend and a gigantic plant puppet that knocks the rest of the set over

I’m in the splash zone for swan lake. The music is tinned and it’s raining. This will never happen for me again

An ebullient four year old giving extra pizzazz and inner life to the role of ‘tree’ in the wizard of Oz

Hermia and Helena are making out a lot more than Shakespeare thought they ought in the fifteenth dream you’ve seen this midsommar. And yep! It’s set in a cult, we’re all outside and I’ve been given a pie to eat.

When the stage manager turns the house lights back on, Cinderella’s rags will be transformed.

I remember seeing my brother in a pretty low rent Our Town (cast bc he was tall) and stunned at how he was holding back tears by the end. He didn’t want to say goodbye yet and it was closing night.

You don’t often get that connection at the pro level. You don’t get to see people you love like that all the time.

It doesn’t matter who corpses or who blanks or who misses their cue

you have to go and be open to whatever happens.

"This is Ankh-Morpork, you know. We've got extra pronouns here."

"Female? He told you he was female?" "She," Angua corrected. "This is Ankh-Morpork, you know. We've got extra pronouns here." She could smell his bewilderment... "Well, I would have though she'd have the decency to keep it to herself," Carrot said finally. "I don't think it's very clever, you know, to go around drawing attention to the fact." "Carrot, I think you might have something wrong with your head," said Angua. "What?" "I think you might have it stuck up your bum."

Sir Terry Pratchett - "Feet of Clay"

This is CARROT being the asshole. Carrot who has, throughout all the prior books, been depicted as basically the best of all possible people. He is noble, brave, considerate, kind. He is the good guy in the entire City...

... and yet, he grew up dwarf, and has picked up their more conservative views on gender identity.

Discworld dwarves start out in the books as basically a people without visible gender differences (thanks to the woman growing beards just like the men) and using "he/him" pronouns as their default. Anything else is seen as breaking the most basic of social conventions. (Dwarf dating is described early on as being two dwarves who like each other spending an inordinately long time trying to find out, as tactfully as possible, what gender the other dwarf is)

Carrot does immediately adopt the "she" pronoun for Cheery, which is but wishes she didn't make such a fuss about it. He's prepared to tolerate her choices, but he doesn't APPROVE of them, and thinks that that is enough.

Carrot, because he IS Carrot, does learn to open his mind on this subject, perhaps his final frontier of bias, but I do love that it's addressed as something he has to work on, and succeed.

1) I don't have the book to hand, but when Cheery comes out she changes her name to Cheri, because "sometimes, when you shout who you are to the whole world, you need to do it quietly." It's such a beautiful expression of coming out being a process, and one that needn't be undertaken all at once.