The Adventures of Pinocchio

Pinocchio: A case study of ADHD hyperactivity in puppets Fantastic, picaresque tale, full of the darkly inexplicable and uncanny. As well as the titular sentient puppet, there are talking animals, magical transformations, ghosts and a blue haired fairy. Pinocchio himself is hyperactive with a somewhat anarchic attention span, always being distracted by something new and forgetting his promises. He is an insolent, backsliding, obstinate, ADHD puppet. The plot of Pinocchio is as volatile as the puppet, with bizarre twists of fate, and unexpected brutality, often to punish Pinocchio for not being good. I might have said Pinocchio was surreal, but it’s more like Aesop’s Fables, where the fantastic elements are used didactically as moral lessons: Believe what you are told, Do what you are told, Don’t get into trouble, Don’t steal, Work hard. I love Guillermo Del Toro’s film interpretation of this preachiness in Pinocchio: Following these moral virtues makes you a fascist puppet; a pliable, placid worker easily exploited by the state. If only the leaders’ noses would also grow when they lied.