Belle Taylor: Reborns, Labubus and Annabelle — the whole world is playing with dolls
The toy baskets are full of them. There is one face down on the living-room floor and I suspect one or two under the couch. They seem to sprout, mushroom-like, from the deep recesses of doll-ville.
These are my daughter's babies. I guess that technically makes me their grandmother but I'm usually assigned the role of sister, which seems to involve setting up the tea party while mum vigorously jiggles baby while yelling 'STOP CRYING' before declaring 'BABY HAPPY NOW' and flinging it head first to the corner of the room. It's probably important to point out my daughter is three.
Although when it comes to dolls, age is no guarantee people won't get a little weird.
There has been a spate of doll news of late. The strangest might be the rising craze for 'Reborn' dolls. These are incredibly lifelike baby dolls collected mainly by adults. A trend has emerged where people take these dolls out for walks in the pram, to the park and even on hospital visits. There are multiple videos online of people showing their 'evening routine' with their dolls — bathing them, dressing them, putting them in their cot for the night. It's all very calm and serene and at no point is anyone screaming: 'I'm not reading that book a sixth time! No! In the bed, not under it! I don't know why elephants have trunks. Wait, how did you get naked?' So it's not exactly true to life.
The trend is particularly big in Brazil, where the craze has sparked something of a moral panic. Politicians across the country have filed at least 30 Bills to bar the dolls from accessing public services, with concerns the doll owners will try to take their charges to doctors or attempt to enrol them in day care. Other politicians are less worried, with MP Manoel Isidorio bringing his reborn 'granddaughter' into parliament, arguing that it was 'not a sin' to play with dolls. Pfft, Australian politicians would never take a doll to parliament. A lump of coal, a burqa, a full-sized dead salmon and a cardboard cut-out of Kevin Rudd maybe. But not a doll.
Camera Icon
Labubu Plushies.
Credit: Instagram
/ TheWest
At least the Reborn dolls are cute. The other doll craze sweeping the globe are Labubus — ugly, furry elf-like creatures with nine fang-like teeth. Labubus are sold by the Chinese chain store Pop Mart, but have become a global consumer phenomenon with people lining up to purchase the popular dolls. They have 'become a benchmark for China's pop culture making inroads overseas', according to China's Communist Party mouthpiece newspaper, People's Daily.
'The enthusiasm over Labubu may pass like any other viral trend,' The New York Times opined this week. 'But it could also be another sign that China, which has struggled to build cultural cachet overseas amid longstanding concerns about its authoritarian politics, is starting to claim some victories.'
A headline in Foreign Policy in Focus this week: 'Labubu's rise mirrors declining trust in US leadership'.
Sheesh. It's never just about the doll, huh?
While Brazil nurtures their Reborns and China queues to buy Labubus, in the US it is one particular doll making headlines — a Raggedy Ann doll called Annabelle.
Camera Icon
The doll Annabelle in the movie Annabelle Comes Home.
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
/ AP
The doll, which has featured in several horror movies, is supposedly haunted. It was part of a travelling exhibition of 'spooky' objects called the Devils On The Run tour when it supposedly went missing in New Orleans. By complete coincidence, the doll's disappearance coincided with a local fire and a jail break, leading people to blame the doll. That's a great example of taking two and two and getting 5 million.
Of course Annabelle had nothing to do with either of those things. It's just a doll, a blank vessel on which to project our innermost desires and fears. Cuddle them, collect them, accuse them of arson. Dolls are just tiny mirrors and here we are, all over the world, staring back at them.
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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's decision to host a meeting between Australian iron ore miners and Chinese steelmakers during his visit to China last week shows that our leaders are attuned to the economic potential of green metals. Why green metals? Europe, with Asia soon to follow, has introduced a "carbon border adjustment mechanism" which acts as a tax on polluting industries. What this means is the high-pollution products we currently export will become uncompetitive in the next 10 to 20 years. To replace those export losses, Australia needs to adapt and focus on producing green exports. Our customers are changing their habits, so we must change our offerings. If you owned a doughnut shop and all your customers started demanding cream-filled rather than jam-filled doughnuts you wouldn't keep pushing jam-filled doughnuts. You would switch to cream-filled, otherwise you'd go out of business. So how exactly do we get from here to there? 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The news that Spanish energy company BlueFloat bailed on its $10 billion Gippsland offshore wind proposal, has triggered a chorus of people (mostly anti-offshore wind proponents) heralding the end of the industry before it's even begun. Although I don't know about the particulars of BlueFloat's exact situation, which also impacted plans for the Illawarra, as an offshore wind consultant I do know a lot about the process of getting these projects up generally. That's why I can confidently say this actually is just the beginning. This is a new industry for Australia and whenever you do something new for the first time it's like making a pancake, the first one is never quite perfect. Energy-intensive industries like minerals mining and metals manufacturing will be the big winners from offshore wind. There is a reason these industries are co-located with coal-fired power stations historically, and why the offshore wind zones have been designated in these same regions - Gippsland, Illawarra, Hunter. With offshore wind, Australia is looking to capitalise on the growing global demand for green metals. For the Illawarra, that's steel made with renewable energy. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's decision to host a meeting between Australian iron ore miners and Chinese steelmakers during his visit to China last week shows that our leaders are attuned to the economic potential of green metals. Why green metals? Europe, with Asia soon to follow, has introduced a "carbon border adjustment mechanism" which acts as a tax on polluting industries. What this means is the high-pollution products we currently export will become uncompetitive in the next 10 to 20 years. To replace those export losses, Australia needs to adapt and focus on producing green exports. Our customers are changing their habits, so we must change our offerings. If you owned a doughnut shop and all your customers started demanding cream-filled rather than jam-filled doughnuts you wouldn't keep pushing jam-filled doughnuts. You would switch to cream-filled, otherwise you'd go out of business. So how exactly do we get from here to there? Well there are three main hoops that developers need to jump through to make it happen: The Australian offshore wind market has some unique conditions, for example in the Illawarra it means floating wind technology is needed which is still relatively new. Therefore it's OK to have some delays - it allows Europe and Asia to make the mistakes for us to learn from, and bring industrial costs down for us. But Australia can't afford to wait too long as our polluting exports become less and less viable, we need to pivot to green exports to secure the long-lasting careers that keep communities together. 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