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Snuggles, Cuddles and Sexuality: An(other) Anthropological Interpretation of May Gibbs's Snugglepot and Cuddlepie 1
Author(s) -
Eipper Chris
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/j.1835-9310.2003.tb00238.x
Subject(s) - interpretation (philosophy) , ooid , ambivalence , reinterpretation , sociology , adventure , friendship , mirroring , subjectivity , human sexuality , epistemology , aesthetics , identity (music) , gender studies , philosophy , psychoanalysis , history , psychology , art history , social science , linguistics , paleontology , communication , facies , structural basin , biology
This paper offers an interpretation of May Gibbs's classic illustrated children's story, The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. Its inspiration was Annette Hamilton's 1975 anthropological analysis, ‘Snugglepot and Cuddlepie: happy families in Australian society’. Rather than effacing that account, my reinterpretation draws on and augments it, even as it turns it ‘inside out’. The paper argues that stories acquire mythic status by magnetising interpretation. In suggesting that questions of subjectivity, identity and sublimated obsession are central concerns of May Gibbs's story, it directs our attention to the authoring of culture, its creation, transmission and transformation. The ‘Mother of the Gumnuts’ emerges from her recurring depictions of kinship and friendship, marriage and adoption, twinship and mirroring, androgyny, ambiguity and ambivalence, as queerly contemporary. If the approach advocated here is correct, such a revelation (and the sense we make of its significance) will not only complicate, but also enhance, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie 's enduring appeal and emblematic status as a national icon.