I thinjk this could have been predicted; he’s pretentious - that alone he might have got away with, but he’s a pretentious foreigner and I’m afraid that the reaction (which, please note; I’m condoning in neither action nor sentiment) is pretty much inevitable.
I’m up in London on Wednesday and I’ll only be a stone’s throw from Tower Bridge; I may pop along and have a laugh at the whole proceedings.
I really hope his nationality doesn’t come into it.
In fact I’d hazare that the reaction would be stronger if, say, our own Paul Daniels were in the box (and Debbie McGee was wiping egg off it).
well, perhaps, but there is a whole different kind of contempt; Paul Daniels’ threat to leave the country if the Labour government got elected was a large contributory factor to their landslide voctory.
Quote from above:
Humiliatingly, his German girlfriend, Manon von Gerkan, had to be cranked up on a crane to wash the box with a cloth. "
And goodness me, you do need to be a vegetable to be this guys girllfriend.
he wants to attract public attention. there is no guarentee that all the attention will be good.
I think that it comes down to the mentality of the British. The British tend to …
Love cutting people down to size, especially celebrities with massive egos
Disapprove of people making exhibitions of themselves
Enjoy irritating Americans in a non-offensive, jokey type of way (want to drag us into a pointless war?* then we’ll throw eggs at your most famous magician!)
Resent major traffic congestion at the boundary of the London congestion charge zone
Most important of all, however, is their love for
All the above factors have all combined to cause a frenzy of mild mannered excitement. And the man who paraded a burger around the box, dangling from a model helicopter, should be included in the new year’s honours list.
Possibly David Blaine didn’t do his homework.
Probably. The obvious (yet never mentioned) parallel is with Tilda Swinton’s stint in Cornelia Parker’s glass box at the Serpentine in 1995. Pretentious by most standards, yet nobody batted an eyelid. Because she’s British and it was in an art gallery.
Personally, I think Blaine’s crucial mistake was underestimating our national fascination with matters scatalogical. It’s difficult to take the high moral ground, even from a crane, when everybody knows you’re wearing a nappy.
It’s real simple: He’s not doing it “for” anything- charity, for example, awareness of hunger in Africa, for another, or even general homelessness/street bum type hunger- therefore it can really only be viewed as ego: “Hey everybody, look at me!”
Which, for an entertainer, is just fine. However, this particular stunt is remarkably pointless.
Houdini’s manacles-and-milk-cans stunts were at least interesting, there was, if nothing else, the element of “will he get out in time?”
Blaines’ stunt is, by contrast, exceedingly boring. He’s not doing anything, and his life, really, is not at risk. (I’m sure his handlers will pop him out of there the second they think he’s fallen ill or in danger of injury.)
So it boils down to the fact we’re watching an almost-static bit of new-ageish artwork that really isn’t all that interesting. For 44 days.
And in these modern times where a fifteen-second TV commercial is almost too long unless it involves a car explosion or partial nudity, and where even us enlightened web surfers’ eyes glaze over if the poster has written more than about a half a paragraph, forty-four days is entirely too long.
And so, the audience begins to participate. And how do you participate with a man stuck in a glass box? Hell, let’s throw something at him.
Is it right? Maybe not. Blaine, however, should have expected it- indeed, it’s good theater; look how we’re all talking about it, eh?
Nevermind the fact that Kafka did it better.
How exactly is watching some rich guy starve himself “entertaining”? A test of endurance, yes, but not a test of skill, wit, or talent. And it does seem a bit callous for him to do this as a stunt when so many people are involuntarily starving.
So he’s spending 44 days in London without eating English cooking? How hard can that be?
And I for one am surprised he’s not wearing his stetson and chewin’ his tobaccy.
Put it this way: how is he not asking for it?
Why does he have the right to our sober congratulations? Why does he even have the right to expect us to look the other way?
But I think this is best summed up by Wimbledon. No, stay with me here. Something I frequently hear from an American tennis player is something along the lines of, “I was born with the biggest talent and I’m the best” in a very matter-of-fact fashion. I simply cannot imagine a British tennis player saying that (even should we ever get one that is, in fact, the best).
British people really don’t like someone putting themselves up as some kind of superguy for the rest of us to admire. The rights and wrongs are irrelevant. The result is inevitable.
pan
No, no one asks to be abused. He wants to make a public spectacle of himself, and apparently part of the British public feel that the best revenge for this sort of behavior is to make a public spectacle out of him. Well, I bet that showed him.
kabbes
And from these two negatives you come up with “So then we can throw shit at him!”
Heckle him, sure. Make fun of him, ok. But I think throwing things at him is just a bit much.
professorbiscuit
I disagree. I’ve never seen such celebrity worship. People are adored simply because they are ‘presenters’ - famous, it seems, because they’re famous. Posh and Becks are icons in the way that (the former) Bennifer never could have been. The capacity of the British public to worship celebs for no apparent reason never ceased to amaze me. I guess they’re just choosy about which celebs to aim their worship at …
burundi
To me it seems much more callous to be throwing all kinds of food at him when so many people are involuntarily starving.
I can’t really explain the public fascination with Posh and Becks - though I suspect it’s more of a media obsession, though clearly it’s self-serving, since their pictures sell magazines and papers. And in media circles, Victoria Beckham is mocked, too - just read what people have to say about the talentless “Skeletor” (as she’s known) on the Popbitch messageboard.
But that’s not the point: for all their faults, they don’t go round being pompous, self-important asses, implying they’re somehow mystical, and bang on about their “art” that clearly isn’t. And as I said above, if the British magician Paul Daniels were to do the same stunt, the abuse would be much worse.
That is a good point. But think of all the biscuits and burgers that could be bought with the fee that Blaine is earning.
Although I have no plans to throw foodstuffs, I’ll stand by what I said in the other thread; Blaine hanging around doing essentially nothing for six weeks is a pretty poor excuse for entertainment. If it gets any comment (and Blaine’s posturings pretty much guaranteed that it would), then that comment’s going to be negative. And negative criticism is one of the hazards of any entertainer’s career …
He deserves to be assaulted with food as much as a woman wearing an alluring dress deserves to be raped.
I think mimes are the lowest form of entertainment but I don’t throw food at them.