#sennentuntschi

Forgot to share Day 8 from my 12 days of Ship-Mas. the full image is on my bluesky (nsfw due to SennenTuntschi Elisabeth being nekkid)

The Sennentuntschi is a motif of widespread legends in the German speaking parts of the Alps. It occurs in several variations, centered around a basic framework. Alpine herdsmen and dairymen, bored from their existence remote from any civilization during the summer, used to make themselves a female doll. They talked to her, fed her, and took her to bed. Shortly before the ceremonial driving down of cattle from the mountain pastures into the valley in autumn, the doll became alive and started talking. She accused the herdsmen and dairymen of the wrongdoings and of forcing themselves on her and her sisters. As a punishment, she forced one of the herdsmen to stay with her on the mountains during the winter. This herdsman would never be seen alive. His body would either be found the next spring shattered at the side of the mountain, or appear decades later when it thawed out of the ice of a glacier. Other legends say that the Sennentuntschi would skin the herdsman alive.

The legends probably arose from phantasies of the valley dwellers of the remote existence of herdsmen and dairymen up on the mountains during the summer. They are also reminiscent of the antique Greek-Roman legend of Pygmalion in which a self-created image of a human being gains life and soul. The “Pygmalion effect” is a term used in psychology to describe the assumption that a creature that resembles a human in stature and behavior has life and experience.

In everyday language, Sennentuntschi has become a metaphor for an artificial creation or product created out of desperation that decent people would not bother with.

bold: rewatch

About a Boy (2002, Chris and Paul Weitz)

Amélie (2001, Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

An Education (2009, Lone Scherfig)

As the Gods Will (2014, Takashi Miike)

Baba Yaga (1973, Corrado Farina)

Daguerréotypes (1976, Agnès Varda)

Dumplings (2004, Fruit Chan)

Empire of Passion (1978, Nagisa Ôshima)

Fish Tank (2009, Andrea Arnold)

Good Time (2017, Benny and Josh Safdie)

Inglourious Basterds (2009, Quentin Tarantino)

Jane B. for Agnès V. (1988, Agnès Varda)

Lady in the Lake (1946, Robert Montgomery)

Leviathan (2014, Andrey Zvyagintsev)

Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979, Hayao Miyazaki)

Marnie (1964, Alfred Hitchcock)

Melancholia (2011, Lars von Trier)

Nurse 3D (2013, Douglas Aarniokoski)

Purple Noon (1960, René Clément)

Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970, Jerry Schatzberg)

Salt and Fire (2016, Werner Herzog)

Score (1974, Radley Metzger)

Sennentuntschi (2010, Michael Steiner)

Sex & Fury (1973, Norifumi Suzuki)

She Shoulda Said ‘No!’ or The Devil’s Weed (1949, Sam Newfield)

Sleeping with Other People (2015, Leslye Headland)

Spirited Away (2001, Hayao Miyazaki)

Steve Jobs (2015, Danny Boyle)

Stoker (2013, Park Chan-Wook)

The Burning Hell (1974, Ron Ormond)

The Disaster Artist (2017, James Franco)

The Love Witch (2016, Anna Biller)

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972, Emilio Miraglia)

The Stepford Wives (1975, Bryan Forbes)

The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971, Sergio Martino)

The Witches (1967, Mauro Bolognini, Vittorio De Sica, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Franco Rossi, Luchino Visconti)

Thoroughbreds (2017, Cory Finley)

In many Swiss and neighboring Alpine tellings (Bernese Alps, Liechtenstein, Tyrol, Upper Bavaria, Styria), lonely herdsmen on summer pastures build a woman: a figure of cloth, wood, straw. They feed it, speak to it, bed it as a joke against boredom.

Near season’s end, the game curdles. The doll comes alive. She speaks, serves, then demands a reckoning for the men’s deeds...