Pamela’s puppet show

Pamela searches the shed, while explaining her idea to Pilvi: they will perform a puppet show together. She casts Pilvi as the clown, providing her with a collar of paper flags as a costume.

As Pamela makes her animals out of paper and various other art supplies, she tells Pilvi that while she herself believes that the story she is constructing is sad – as wild animals will be getting hurt (eaten) – that viewers may choose to believe that the animals will be alright in the end, as “anything could be inside a belly”. Pilvi quietly offers up the suggestion of a party inside the belly.

Pamela completes Pilvi’s costume with a construction helmet, then instructs the production team to layer on some festive circus music, in keeping with the puppet show (she starts humming the stereotypical circus theme, Julius Fučík’s Entry of the Gladiators).

She then kneels down in front of Pilvi and starts bouncing each of her animals up towards her face, while Pilvi opens and closes her mouth in a manner reminiscent of a carnival game.

Pamela feeds each animal to Pilvi one at a time, taking advantage of the fact that Pilvi is being shot in profile to make it look as though the animals are actually being eaten when, in reality, they are being slipped into her flag collar, obscured from the camera.

In the studio, Jaakko questions Pamela’s statement about ‘anything’ possibly being inside a belly. Pamela explains that she knows that kids watch the show, and that she didn’t want to “lead animals to their doom”, so she had instead opted to create a more adventurous narrative, “like in kids shows, where miracles can happen in a whale’s stomach” (possibly referencing Monstro the whale from Disney’s Pinocchio). Jaakko then asks if Pamela has attempted to sell the idea of adventures beginning once an animal has been eaten to vegans.

Jaakko awards Pamela joint second place.

(Written by Jenny R and proofread by Karl Craven)

(Illustrations collected by Jenny R and adjusted by Karl Craven)