Simon Panayi

Ross Stringer and Simon Panayi on their RTS Award-winning animation about a boy, a crab and masculinity

A father and son fishing for crab, we gather, as the man gifts his catch to the boy in a loving gesture punctuated by a burst of colour. The crab’s orange shell is the only splash of it in this world of monochrome masculine conformity, the intimidating scale of which is illustrated in the mechanical sequence that follows. We see a conveyor belt of countless identical men crab farming, binge drinking and arm wrestling, like cogs in an alpha male machine, while the son looks on, blankly.