David Firth
Salad Fingers

The human genius, like stupidity, truly has no boundaries.

In 2004, David Firth - an English musician and cartoonist, born in 1983 - brought forth from his mind a somewhat absurd, grotesque, and at the same time tender creature: Salad Fingers. The series consists of eight episodes - all written and animated by Firth using the 'Flash' technique and all very short, with the longest not even reaching 6 minutes - where we witness the daily (and absolutely improbable) adventures of Salad Fingers, a being with green skin and huge vacant eyes, living in a desolate, post-atomic-like area, populated by few other beings, all very strange and unsettling. A war, the ‘Great War’, is often mentioned, which Salad Fingers and other inhabitants supposedly survived; but it's unclear if this war actually happened or if it's merely a fantasy of the protagonist.

The peculiarity of Salad Fingers is his boundless love for everything rusty, particularly spoons (the motto of the first episode - "Spoons" - is indeed «I must find the perfect spoon»). Thus, he never misses the chance to scrape anything rusty with his salad fingers, whether it’s a teapot or a plumbing pipe. Salad Fingers explains his rusty love like this: «The feeling of rust against my salad fingers is almost orgasmic!». Another peculiar thing is that he (?) is the only sentient being, and when he meets a ‘tender’ little girl who responds to him (Ep. 5 - "Picnic"), he is dramatically shocked. He also converses and plays with puppets, his only friends, to whom he gives quite imaginative names.

During his days, he is involved in many adventures: he entertains the corpse of an armless being by playing the flute, takes a nettle branch for a walk with a baby pram (Ep. 3 - "Nettles"), dreams of singing "Somewhere over the rainbow" while walking in a slaughterhouse, surrounded by carcasses hanging from hooks (Ep. 2 - "Friends"), imagines flying in the company of many rusty faucets with which he ardently desires to marry (Ep. 4 - "Cage"), prepares a delightful dinner for what remains of an unearthed corpse (Ep. 6 - "Shore Leave"), is targeted by the revenge thirst of a malfunctioning radio wanting its hair back (Ep. 8 - "Cupboard") and countless other situations absolutely senseless but absolutely hilarious, grotesque, and sometimes unsettling.

This animated mini-series is one of the most brilliant I have ever had the chance to see. The sparse drawings fully convey a sense of absolute desolation, the dubbing - done by Firth himself - is accurate and perfect, giving Salad Fingers' voice a mix of childish innocence and uncontrollable schizophrenia. And it's precisely the contorted, labyrinthine, enigmatic, and indecipherable personality of this being that constitutes the strength of the series.

The soundtrack is also excellent, consisting of effects created by Firth himself and dark ambient compositions by other artists, such as Lustmord and Boards Of Canada (whose "Beware The Friendly Stranger" is the most frequently used theme).

I recommend the viewing to anyone wanting to engage with something absolutely grotesque and full of nonsense. Don't seek a meaning if you don’t understand why certain episodes happen, take them as they are, the schizoid offspring of a creative mind.