Snowmen: Art Imitating Life

Just how much can a snowman take? Here he is with snowball battered umbrella and injured eye, having a smoke as he befriends the birds.



They are calling for snow in Upstate South Carolina tonight and the possibility of 5 inches in this area is the possibility of a "big one". This is a Southern event so rare that it sends frenzied hordes to the grocery stores so they can turn to food for comfort in their captivity. As one fellow on the news said last night..."it makes me want to eat because I feel trapped inside...even though I really have no where I need to go." I can relate. If this event does happen, it will also bring forth a primal need in many men, women, and children....the need to reproduce themselves in art by building a snowman.

When I was a child and we would have a big snow, the first moment when our Ford could touch tires with the black pavement again, we would load up for a ride to look at the white scenery which included the art of snowmen. Living in a college town in the 60's, we found our adventure to be a high entertainment mixture of typical friendly snowmen and male college student inspired snow sculptures of elaborate nude snow women. We loved snowmen. We were, after all, on the coattails of the "Frosty Generation" with our singing cowboy hero, Gene Autry, giving us his famous Frosty The Snowman song in 1950. We loved the song, but it did have a small element of "Bambi Factor" by bringing up mixed feelings...the frightening realization of the ephemeral world, but no need to worry cause "he would be back one day". We also had been exposed to and developed an unusual attachment for a strange 1943 German cartoon which aired frequently on our local morning cartoon show, The Mr. Bill Show. The Snowman In July tells the Gothic tale of a lovable snowman, who after seeing a calendar picture for the month of July, hides himself in a freezer. He hibernates until July, when the bird from the cuckcoo clock flies down to peck on the freezer door to wake him up. He leaves the freezer to wander forth into the joys of summer: picking flowers, wallowing in the summer wheat, allowing a ladybug friend with sticks on her feet to snow ski on his belly, and finding true love with an attractive rabbit. He eventually melts, of course, but is fulfilled by having experienced rabbit love and it all comes to an end with his tearful rabbit friend walking away from the puddle with her beloved's carrot nose. No matter how often we saw it, we sat in silence and fought back the tears ourselves. It was kindergarten angst at its best. The local station says it is bombarded with requests to reshow this cartoon to this day and they refer all requests to You Tube where it resides, titled Der Schneemann The Snowman.

This Christmas, these snowy feelings rose to the surface again as I looked for vintage snowman images for some artwork. In some of these older images we see quite a different Frosty than the one in our Little Golden Book. There seem to be two themes for these images. One is of the forlorned and abused soul who is tormented by women, children, kittens, and Santas, as they plummet him with snowballs, poke him with sticks, or run over him with toboggans and motor cars. The other theme shows the "Robert Downey Jr." years where he is the philandering, cigarette smoking, wise cracking problem child who has turned to the bottle. A little research on snowman folklore helps to explain the themes. The abused snowmen were mostly from the late 1800's and turn of the century. We were all a little stifled during those times with economic depression, crime and impending WWI. Any creature lower than yourself was fair fodder for target practice. Modern psychology tells us that anytime you mistreat or hold captive a soul, (evidently whether he is real or your icy replica) you are going to have to deal with some acting out behavior later, so here come the 1920's and 30's and "Snowmen Gone Wild". After enduring those years of abuse, Frosty decides to become a fun loving boozer, stealing our women and chasing our children as he cashes in as a post prohibition Ad-man for tobacco and liquor. So let this be a lesson for us tomorrow as we recreate ourselves in the snow. What you build may just be a glimpse into the current psyche.



Suffering abuse at the hands of little girls. Snowball to the back of the head and stick in the mouth.

He's trying to put on a good face, but gets plummeted anyway.

Toot toot, what fun! Frosty screams for help as Santa runs him down. A modern version of the abusive years. (I believe this picture has 2005 as date...a sign of the times perhaps?)

Even sweet kittens have their fun with a sad snowman who has turned to cigarettes for comfort.
A Merry Christmas to You Too.

OK...enough is enough. Revenge of the stick with bottled courage in tow. Frosty has grown himself a manly mustache so there is no mistaking that he means business.

It's Happy Holidays as Frosty gets the hot babe...ahhh revenge is sweet.

The turning point...Frosty tips the bottle with the encouragement of the torture squad. This is my personal favorite.

Misery loves company as Frosty takes a snort with a friend to numb the oncoming fire.

Now that he is large and in charge he gets a little respect and time to hang with angels and drink champagne.."life is good"

A smile, a new glossy hat, and dapper red scarf puts Frosty at the head of many Ad campaigns and all the liquor he wants for the winter. He's headed for the less humanized modern look of today.