Don’t you open that TRAP DOOR!
Don't you open that TRAP DOOR!
I recently rediscovered this absolute GEM from my childhood when I woke up one morning with the (absolutely banging) theme tune stuck in my head. And then I found that some utterly brilliant human has put the whole delicious series on YouTube for our delectation.
For the uninitiated: Trap Door is a British claymation series from 1984, set in a gothic castle where Berk - a blue, egg-shaped creature with a West Country accent and a penchant for grumbling - goes about his daily life, cooking revolting meals for the unseen Thing Upstairs and bickering with Boni, a disembodied skull who lives in an alcove and considers himself considerably more refined than his circumstances suggest. Chaos ensues, regularly, when something escapes from the trap door in the basement. Tentacles. Slime. The occasional enormous pink blob. Y’know, the usual.
Each episode is only three minutes long and if you love stop motion animation, stupid British humour, and monsters, I guarantee you'll love it.
The thing that I adore about it (and what earns it a place in the Haus), beyond the utter delight of the animation and the deliciously silly humour, is the sheer ordinariness of it. The main characters might be monsters, but they're not villains. They're just creatures with a domestic life - cooking, arguing, keeping house, occasionally being terrorised by whatever's come up through the floor this time. Berk is basically a harassed caregiver (who happens to live in a haunted castle), and his concerns are the same as anyone's: get the dinner on, don't let the Thing Upstairs get annoyed, try to have a quiet life.
Many people who are considered ‘monsters’ by society are often those of us who are just ‘other’ - we’re damaged, or different, or divergent in some way, but we’re all just trying to get on with our lives. We feel conspicuous in our otherness and in the knowledge that we’re inadvertently raising the hackles of the people around us - maybe being a monster wouldn’t be so bad if we could just be like Berk. His life is aspirational, in a way - he gets to be who he is without having to think about being a monster, because in his world he’s not conspicuous.
The people I make work for - the ones who find their way to the Haus - are mostly people who've been told, in one way or another, that they're the monster in someone else's story. Too much, too loud, too strange, too difficult. The wrong shape for the available spaces. And what I love about Berk is that he's never once concerned with whether he belongs. He just lives his life. The castle is his home, Boni is his friend, the worms are for dinner, and that's that. His monstrousness is never a problem to be solved.
That's what I want my work to do. Show us ‘monsters’ just getting on with it. Living our lives, finding community with each other, and being, in all our weird and wonderful specificity, completely ourselves.
Oh, and if you haven’t heard the theme tune, make room on your Halloween playlist cos it’s a BANGER. Here it is in full:
Brave enough for more monsters? Step this way
And if you want to watch this particular monster (i.e. yours truly) just living her life, then you’ll love my vlogs.
