Living statues aren’t big in New Zealand, but in almost any large city square in Europe there are frozen figures silently plying their trade. We’ve already posted on the phenomenon of living statues but need to alert you to the insidious erosion of what has always been an otherwise unimpeachable member of the lookalike category (human division). We’re talking full head mask.
The great thing about living statues, apart from their willingness to coat themselves with gold paint while knowing one of the Bond girls nearly died doing the same thing, is their ability to remain completely impassive. Stony is the expression living statues go for and stony is not easy when the show-offs in the crowd are trying to make you laugh or kids are spilling ice cream and worse down your leg.
So the growing use of the full cover head mask is, at the very least, cheating even if it is hot and uncomfortable. Our recommendation should you see a ‘masker’ at work is to walk on by and save your coins for the real McCoy. If you want a good inside account of doing the living statue thing, read Ben Leach’s account of how he made out standing still on a box in London here.
Images: LS contemplating another day in a hot head mask. Right at ‘work’ as a living statue.
