Hard-Drinkin' Barbie

If you've never heard of Bild-Lili, blame Barbie. Yes, that Barbie.

The litigious history of Lili would surely have been a movie or a book by now but for the Mattel Corporation getting a court injunction specifically forbidding such things. However, thanks to a glaring oversight in the judge's ruling, we now have Bild-Lili, the electro cabaret sensation.

Lili began life in 1952 as a sassy, hard-drinking, wise-cracking cartoon character in the Hamburg newspaper, Bild, in the years immediately following WWII, with Germany in ruins and America in the ascendency. Lili was a hit with Bild's largely male readership, but when the newspaper proprietors decided to cash in and make a Lili doll, her runaway success quickly led to her legal demise when Ruth Handler (wife of Mattel co-owner Elliot Handler) took three Lili dolls to America. The sanitised, anatomically impossible clone that resulted not only broke records for doll sales but set in train a series of court cases that continue to this day.

For solo cabaret performer Elena Knox, Bild-Lili was an irresistible idea. “She's just such a great counterpoint to Barbie in that she's an adult and she's sassy and witty and everything that Barbie sorta boggles at.”

Knox's electro cabaret version of the Bild-Lili story sees her playing both Lili and Barbie, not to mention wearing enormous moulded heels, playing bass and navigating her way around a bunch of analogue-era gadgets and accessories. “Lili's the perfect person to try and unpack,” Knox declares, “because she's been cloned. Y'know, it's like 'this woman stole my face.'”

Beneath the obvious comic and shock value, Elena Knox is clearly keen to drill further down into the marrow. “My work sorta looks at the societal forces acting on women and women also being a part of that in their self-construction. Lili seemed to be an emblem of a kinda post-feminist disempowerment in a way; not really in herself but in what she went through. Y'know, the fact there are still court cases open about whether or not she's even able to exist is, well, a really existential question.”

As part of bringing the show together, Knox has been conscious to try and “embody” the unlikely twins. “Barbie is the emblem of accessory fetishism and so there's super fun to be had with her,” she admits. “Lili is like a Page Three cartoon, but different to the classic Page Three girl. She always had these little captions that were 'her' words, 'her' ideas; albeit that she was created by a man and that she was a male fantasy looker. But she was speaking.”

However, the 'dramatic' heart of the show centres round the ongoing court battle. “Lili has to represent herself against herself and so there's this stuff about patenting and the ownership of ideas but in the show it degenerates into a karaoke battle and nothing's really decided.”

For Knox, who once famously snogged Kate Winslet on screen, Mattel's clampdown on the Bild-Lili moniker is more of a challenge than a threat. “When they supressed the production of the doll they bought the name Bild-Lili and the legal ruling says that it can't be a book title and it can't be a movie. It doesn't say it can't be an electro cabaret performance art event. Anyway, I'm up for the scandal. She would have been.”

Bild-Lili runs until 4 August, Malthouse Tower Theatre.