Nobody is Normal

"Working alongside [UK charity] Childline to help young people feel better in their own skin energized all of us at the agency, as well as our partners. It’s a campaign that speaks to children in a way that is natural to them. To walk through the usual walls these types of messages face, we needed an emotional story that intrigued people enough to pay attention and moved them enough to make them reflect and change their perspective."
Lucas Peon



Client: Childline 

Agency: The Gate 

CCO: Lucas Peon Creatives: John Osborne, Rickie Marsden, Sam Whatley 

Producer: Susie Innes 

Production: Blink Productions, Rowdy Films 

Director: Catherine Prowse Rowdy 

Producer: Daisy Garside Blink 

Producer: Joe Byrne 

DOP: George Warren 

Animator: Tim Allen, Tobias Fouracre 

Puppets: Adeena Grubb 

2D animator/compositor: Tom Fisher Rig removal: Ieuan Lewis 

BTS: Joe Eckworth 

Art Department Runners: Feiyang Yin and Stella Chapman Shot at Clapham Road Studios 

Sound: Major Tom, Grand Central 

Music: Radiohead “Creep” 

Label: Beggars, Warner Chappell, Concord

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image via

Quoting Helena Bonham Carter

"There is no normality in life."
Helena Bonham Carter



photograph (Benjamin McMahon series) via

Anthropology and the Abnormal, by Ruth Benedict (1934)

"(...) Normality, in short, within a very wide range, is culturally defined. It is primarily a term for the socially elaborated segment of human behavior in any culture; and abnormality, a term for the segment that that particular civilization does not use. The very eyes with which we see the problem are conditioned by the long traditional habits of our own society.



It is a point that has been made more often in relation to ethics than in relation to psychiatry. We do not any longer make the mistake of deriving the morality of our own locality and decade directly from the inevitable constitution of human nature. We recognize that morality differs in every society, and is a convenient term for socially approved habits. Mankind has always preferred to say 'It is morally good' rather than 'It is habitual,' and the fact of this preference is matter enough for a critical science of ethics. But historically the two phrases are synonymous."



"The problem of understanding abnormal human behavior in any absolute sense independent of cultural factors is still far in the future. The categories of borderline behavior which we derive from the study of the neuroses and psychoses of our civilization are categories of prevailing local types of instability. They give much information about the stresses and strains of Western civilization, but no final picture of inevitable human behavior. Any conclusions about such behavior must await the collection by trained observers of psychiatric data from other cultures. Since no adequate work of the kind has been done at the present time, it is impossible to say what core or definition of abnormality may be found valid from the comparative material. It is as it is in ethics: all our local conventions of moral behavior and of immoral are without absolute validity, and yet it is quite possible that a modicum of what is considered right and what wrong could be disentangled that is shared by the whole human race."



- Benedict, R. (1934). Anthropology and the Abnormal via
- photographs by Leon Levinstein via and via and via

Quoting Frank Zappa (and his mother)

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible."
Frank Zappa



"The thing that makes me mad about Frank is that his hair is curlier than mine - and blacker."
Zappa's mother on Zappa



The photographs of Frank Zappa (1940-1993) with his parents were taken for the 24 September 1971 issue of LIFE by John Olson (via).

"Everyone had told me that Frank Zappa was going to be really difficult, and he couldn't have been more professional."  John Olson

- photographs of Frank Zappa with his parents via and via and via
- Fisher Lowe, K. (2007). The Words and Music of Frank Zappa. Bison Books

The -ism Series (6): Normalism

I don't know what "normal" means, anyway.
Karl Lagerfeld



The German literary scientist Jürgen Link developed the concept of "normalism". According to Link, the mass collection and processing of data (using questionnaires, mathematical-statistical theories of distribution) produce normalities. These normalities are based on average statistical distributions following the ideal of the Gaussian distribution: one "normal" range in the middle that is average and two "anormal" extreme zones on each side of it (i.e. one above and one below average).
Link concludes that normalism "provides a simple, and apparently effective, set of tools for the regulation of in- and exclusion" as all attitudes, actions, roles and individuals within the normal boundaries are included whereas those outside the boundaries are excluded. He continues: "What seems so simple upon first glance turns out to be more difficult" as "no mathematical criterion exists which establishes the boundaries of normality" since the transition between normality and anormality is continuous. Interestingly, the normality boundaries can be tightened and as the normal range narrows, the anormal ones expand. The concept of normality is flexible, and with it, the concept of anormality.

Link, J. (2003) Concerning Two Normalistic Strategies: Regulating Inclusion and Exclusion, in: Normalising Diversity, based on a Workshop held on 2-3 June 2002, EUI Working Paper HEC, No. 2003/5, European University Institute, Florence, 9-22 (via), photo via