Barber Westchester
Entry updated 26 May 2025. Tagged: Film.
US animated film (2022). Herbert Sorbet Studios. Directed and written by Jonni Peppers. Voice cast includes Maddie Brewer, Lindsey DeMars, Zach Dorn, Chris Kim, Sam Lane, Grace Milk, Jonni Peppers, Frankie Tamaru and Victoria Vincent. 90 minutes. Colour.
DeSabla is a town located in a mountainous region of California; Barber Westchester (Kim) – her head a mass of blue hair with two large eyes protruding – is Mayor Wisconsin's (Peppers/Brewer) official astronomer (see Astronomy); studying the stars enables her to avoid facing the difficulties in her life. One is being a member of a cult led by her father, Mailman Westchester (Dorn), who predicts the imminent destruction of the town by his deity, Dacia (see Disaster, Religion) – the sound of approaching aeroplanes has Barber fearing it might be Dacia arriving to punish her and everyone she cares about. She is also plagued by nightmares of being mired down whilst two geometrical creatures (Vincent) hinder and stress her (see Horror); one later manifests in the waking world. Furthermore, a disease is turning many of the townsfolk into clay, whilst the parrot population is increasing and is beginning to attack the clay people: both events arise from the Mayor's machinations for setting up a colony of the rich among the stars (see Colonization of Other Worlds, though this thread is not followed up). As the local observatory is in the Mayor's office, Barber's presence is an inconvenience; the mayor arranges an internship for her at NASA, which has a branch in nearby Mountainia. The journey is made by Airship, during which Barber loses an arm to an overpowerful flush mechanism in the airship's toilet (she is fairly phlegmatic about this loss).
After arranging accommodation and befriending her room-mates, Barber goes to the NASA building – there is a brief interaction with a Robot – where her new boss Lordland Candlestick (Lane) reveals "space isn't real – NASA's a sham ... nothing's up there, that we know of" (see Conceptual Breakthrough). The Astronomy she has studied is fabricated (see Scientific Hoax): the Hubble telescope is "just my husband blowing paint bubbles" (we see him photographing them) – "all we know is the sky is a weird film – we just project the sky onto it to fool everybody and control 'em ... make them think stuff that isn't real" (see Paranoia) ... and if Barber tells anyone, Candlestick will have her killed. Barber seeks advice from the mayor of a nearby town, on whose head an obnoxious parasitic creature has taken root(see Parasitism and Symbiosis); the mayor explains that he and his husband have found ways to work around its presence. Shortly after Barber tells Margaret (DeMars), a talking mole she has befriended, about NASA's secret; she first has to explain what outer space is, the concept being unfamiliar to a dweller Underground. Margaret replies that, to her, the surface is what outer space is to Barber; if the surface did not exist, her life underground would be unaffected. She concludes that maybe Barber should face the problems which made her look to the study of space for escape and happiness. So Barber returns to DeSabla, only to find it overrun by parrots and her family departed for New Hampshire, having left to avoid Dacia's attack.
Arriving in New Hampshire her mother, Dentist Westchester (Milk), informs Barber that her brother Peter (Tamaru) says he is gay, though to her "he just doesn't seem it." "I don't think it's your place to say." – Barber offers support to Peter. The sloughing of her despondency seems to have begun and she returns to Mountainia to discover DeSabla has been struck by an earthquake. The infestation of parrots is due to the vicinity's red clay, which is a natural antidote to the Poisons in the berries they eat: some parrots do this in the real world and this is considered a possible explanation (see Ecology). They had dug underground to get to it, undermining the town's foundations. The television news says the population departed due to the aggressive parrots (though it is possible they had turned into clay) and the now uninhabitable region has been declared a bird sanctuary. Later, as she sits in the park, a local musician sings a song that nods to Percy Bysshe Shelley's "On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below" (11 January 1818 The Examiner) – usually referred to as "Ozymandias" – and recapitulates its theme of transience (see Music). Barber quits NASA and (literally) sheds her skin; later she reflects: "I'm still working through a lot of things ... I still find myself held back by the old stuff, as well as the new stuff [sighs] but I guess my answer to my problems now is I know that these things will all pass, just like everything that came before."
Barber Westchester is an independently made feature length film; funded from her Patreon contributions by the non-binary Jonni Peppers, who has described it as very autobiographical and "basically a string of metaphors about my personal life" (July 2024 Instagram). It was hand-drawn mainly by Peppers, with some material from guest animators/artists; there are also songs. The result is thoughtful, surreal (see Absurdist SF), humorous (see Humour) and charming; the animation is simple, but appealing and effective at conveying emotion: it is a memorable work. Peppers' next feature film, Take Off the Blindfold Adjust Your Eyes Look in the Mirror See the Face of Your Mother (2024), features some of the same characters. [SP]
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