The Potato Hunter

The Potato head has a lot of elements of classical storytelling. It starts with a starving man struggling to find food and suddenly, he sees a big herd of potatoes. The conflict is that these potatoes can be rather aggressive and almost impossible to catch. The man then 'accidentally' find some sort of 'object of prophecy', the cave drawing, which guides him to the solution of his problem. The man succeed his goal and had a delightful ending after his hard work.

What stands out in this claymation is that it constantly plays with audiences' expectation. First one being when the hunter bashed the potato's head with a club. We as audience expected the bash to knock the potato unconscious and the hunter gets his meal for the day, however, the club broke as it hits the potato, and the potato fought back. The use of character positioning and entrance is also interesting. We audiences in nature, read things from left to right, classical story often make the main characters (especially the protagonists) enter/ move through the frame from left to right. However, the potato hunter stays almost entirely on the right side and moves to the left, suggesting that we are this lead character is some sort of a villain.

It is also interesting how the piece hides quite a few foreshadowing symbols. For example, a dog skull holding a star (representing the solution the problem, a lasso) can be seen on top of the cave-writing mural. The dog then came to that exact same position, replacing the skull, suggesting that the dog can provide him extra help.

I do not like this particular animation. However, I enjoyed it as an art piece with its bizarre, otherworldly world building. The creepiness is the fact that the objects are REAL but they do not act like what they are meant to. It is an amazing surrealist art like those of Salvador Dali.