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| Robert Williams – “The Flight of the Last Dodo” (This painting was actually on display last year in CSUN’s art gallery at an exhibit of Williams’ work.) |
The Narrative
They look to her to give them their wings. They were born with little stubs that they flapped and flapped, but they never managed to catch the wind. She brings them spare pieces of scrap metal, old remains from the planes that lay wasted and broken, rusting in the dry earth under the sun’s eyes. She puts them together – slowly, meticulously – welding and oiling and finally strapping them securely onto their backs. They try to master their excitement as they wait for their own turn to receive their fuel, solemn, for this is a sacred moment they never expected to achieve.
And then one day he comes, promising her that life she’s always wanted. And she is setting the last of them free to take flight into the sunset, because there has to be more than this, this vanity project. She never wanted to be a hero, she just wanted a purpose, and she can’t imagine staying here forever when he offers so much more. The last one finally has her fuel, and takes flight. And they all watch from above as the wing-bearer goes, slowly making their way to greet the sun-painted clouds. The two below are nothing but specks on the ground, ants lost in a tiny world.
The Analysis
Robert Williams’ “The Flight of the Last Dodo” is an excellent example of Shklovsky’s concept of defamiliarization. Familiar objects, namely birds, are made unfamiliar by being attached to another object that is similar and yet different than a bird – airplanes. In this way, both the birds and the planes are defamiliarized.
Taking into consideration further that the birds aren’t just any birds, but specifically flightless dodos, adds to Williams’ approach to defamiliarizing – there is a logic here to the planes, and yet it’s such an amusing and unusual sight we must take our time to comprehend it. Eventually, we begin to see that the birds aren’t that much different than the humans beside them – both can only dream of flight, and need external machinery to make this dream reality.
Moreover, Shklovsky’s remark that “the purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known” (para. 4) takes this even further. What we know about dodos is that they are flightless, but this isn’t something we immediately perceive – when we first see them, we just see a bird. But the planes bring in a human element, and now we perceive the dodos less as birds and more as humans. This creates an emotional connection between us and them, even as they remain clearly separate creatures from us (note their rather expressionless faces in contrast to the humans). Ironically, there’s almost something more attractive about the dodos, something that makes them more relatable than the man and woman. They seem to be achieving their dreams, while the humans stay firmly on the ground. The dodos in this way take on an almost divine role in contrast to the man and woman – the birds are elevated, while the humans are trapped by what seems to be the more animalistic and earthly nature of romantic attraction. Thus our expectations are more or less reversed, further defamiliarizing the entire scene, and leading to an interesting commentary on what it means to be human versus a creature of nature.
(As a side critique, the little green guys on the bottom of the painting always seemed distracting and illogical to me, and I feel like they detract from the piece. Then again, I suppose they do “increase the difficulty and length of perception” (Shklovsky para. 4), I just wish they did so in a way that contributes more to the overall work, rather than as a side note that seems out of place.)
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Works Cited
Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” Vahid's Official Website, 30 Sept. 2007. Web. 26 March 2011.
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