Come with me on my personal tour of cardboard, and together we will unlock a new world of drama, impersonation and flavour benchmarks.
My curiosity about cardboard began recently when I read a movie review, which gave a particular film just one star out of five, criticizing it for characters who were “cardboard cutouts”. Now I can understand that the producers may have been under extreme production cost pressure, and that live actors can be very expensive. However using cardboard cutouts as actors must give the movie a cheap feel and cause growing resentment in the audience. I can imagine the disgruntled audience picketing the cinema, brandishing cardboard signs saying things like “Cut out the cardboard” or “Use wooden actors if you must, but not cardboard”. However, pushing this whole line of thought way too far, perhaps you and I could invent a new sub-genre of movie farce called Cardboard Cutout Comedies. The characters would be real cardboard cutouts moved around the movie set by small children crouching behind them. This technique worked brilliantly for the classic TV series “Lost in Space” where 250kg Robot was moved around by actor Bob May. So why not go cheaper, lighter and more silverfish friendly and use cardboard? The actors are already available. There are many off the shelf cardboard characters standing around right now in warehouses just waiting to be called up by some cutting edge comedy director. A quick scan of the internet offers up a cavalcade of full size cardboard cutout figures of cliched movie characters.* There’s Prisoner with Ball and Chain, Peg Leg Pirate, Hazmat Guy in orange coverall suit and mask, Scottish Bagpiper in full kilt and sporran, English Butler in formal morning dress and my personal favourite, Social Distancing Man who features a sign saying “PLEASE wear a mask and social distance”. He’s a really accurate portrayal too. He wears a blue surgical mask and has tightly folded his arms so as to look aggressive and repel unsanitary handshakes. Who said cardboard cutouts can’t act? He’s totally believable. Now all the movie directors have to do is think up a plot using these characters, threaten to cut off their children’s pocket money unless they move the cutouts around during filming and bingo – a hit comedy movie at a fraction of the normal cost. The plot could be more or less dictated by the cardboard characters. For example, using the above cast list, the story could be: Prisoner with Ball and Chain is fleeing from the law and stows away on a ship skippered by the Peg Leg Pirate who, in a moment of mercy for a fellow felon, cuts off his ball and chain with a cutlass. He then gives him a hazmat suit as a disguise and they sail to Scotland on the pirate ship where they are greeted on the pier by the Scottish Piper, who has been bagpiping all night to show ships where to dock in the fog so the passengers can spend all their money at the Loch Lowmoan holiday resort. The Hazmat Prisoner continues his escape by fleeing to some distant contaminated area where he will blend into the surroundings and Peg Leg Pirate then checks into a luxury hotel where he is greeted by the English Butler who happens to be the Peg Leg Pirate’s brother. In a running gag, lurking in every room of the hotel is a Social Distancing Man, warning the pirate to wear a mask at all times even in the bathroom, swimming pool and gym where he almost suffocates. Meanwhile, Social Distancing Woman is hired to work at the hotel and romantic longings fire up between the social distancing enforcement couple. However, there is a big problem. They have to remain 1.5 meters apart with arms folded and masks on at all times. This romantic tension could be resolved in the sequel, Social Distancing Man II – Unmasked.
I hope you are seeing how versatile cardboard cutout comedy movies could be. Just imagine the laughs that could be provoked by introducing other cardboard cutout characters available off the shelf, such as Scuba Diver, the two 1920s Flapper Girls, a full size goat, a wolf and an Abrams battle tank.
Cardboard cutouts of human figures are very versatile. In the 2020 Covid ravaged Tokyo Olympic Games, live crowds were declared too dangerous and were replaced with cardboard cutouts of spectators in the grandstands. They were teamed with cardboard crowd noises such as cardboard flapping sounds for applause, tearing sounds for boos and wobble board sounds for laughter. With cardboard cutouts stepping into the breach, Covid infection rates plummeted. In fact, not one case of Covid was diagnosed at the Tokyo Olympics amongst the cardboard cutout spectators. That’s right, not even one.**
On the culinary front, cardboard has also been widely adopted in restaurant reviews as a flavour benchmark. If you thought the only creatures who like the taste of cardboard are silverfish and rats, you’d better think again. On one internet forum, I found a detailed discussion of the use of cardboard as a baseline for flavor. One restaurant reviewer said the food in this particular eatery “would make cardboard taste good in comparison”. I will take that as a food fail for the chef and a quiet win for cardboard. Someone else commented on a particular sauce created for dish X at restaurant Z saying “this sauce is so good it would make cardboard taste great”. Perhaps this could be the next big test on TV’s Master Chef: create a sauce that makes cardboard irresistible.
But my favorite reference to cardboard in relation to food and drink is the uniquely Australian nomenclature for wine casks. These are an Australian invention, comprising a silver foil bladder often containing cheap wine, poured out through a plastic tap. The whole thing is encased in a sturdy cardboard box. The wine in this popular contraption is often described in Australia as CardBordeaux. Classic Aussie humour.***
It’s time to reassess cardboard. It turbocharges creativity, protects us from nasties, sets new culinary standards, and can encase just about anything.
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© Geoff Milton 2022
* StandingStills.com “Social distancing man”
**Reuters.com “Robots or ‘cardboard you’: crowd alternatives for Tokyo Games”. The article also describes a Covid-safe baseball game complete with crowd robots comprising “yellow dog-like machines and white humanoid Pepper bots”
*** My sincere apologies to the good winemakers of Bordeaux for our vulgar Australian wit which has been described as “totalement horrible et barbare”
