" This conversation actually forms the crux of the entire story. The artist is looking for validation while the public is apathetic. A true artist on the other hand is consumed with passion for his work and public admiration is not his main concern. But in this story, the suffering artist is craving for attention. When that attention is denied him, he loses respect for his work too. He believes he would have done something else if he could. But the only reason he fasts is because there is nothing else he knows.
The food that he seeks is public attention and when he doesn't get it, he starves to death. The story has few layers of meaning. It is not a simple one-layered tale. On the one hand, we meet are being introduced to the suffering artist who is a victim of commercialization and on the other; the same artist is being blamed for his starvation.
Everything has to have an element of entertainment or people won't stay. This is another idea the story forwards. The author tells us that in a commercial world, all that anyone really cares about is entertainment. People's attention span is shorter and their love for the artist is fleeting. They will stay for as long as they are entertainment and then move forward. In order to keep their interests alive, you need to present something exciting every second. True art has lost its audience and appreciation is now a scarce commodity. Art is not appreciated for itself but for the excitement that it creates.
It is for this reason that the manager at the circus has involved a few antics with the fasting feat. The hunger artist should behave violently at times and it has to be limited to forty days. No one is interested...
And yet in his personal life despite the anguish he wrote about so eloquently he enjoyed modern novelties such as the cinema, aeroplanes, and motor-cycles. He went swimming and followed the vogue for nudism. He had his fair share of sexual affairs, and he complemented those with visits to brothels (Johnson, 2005). Doubts about his work caused Kafka before his death to ask that all of his unpublished manuscripts be
And a lot of this has to do with real epithets that were used against Jews at that time on the streets. Someone would see a Jew and say, 'You dirty dog', or 'You're nothing more than a cockroach', or something like that. For Kafka, this became a kind of literal condemnation which he accepted into himself. OK. 'You point a finger at me and call me a dog,
According to Parsons (2003), "Coincident with the growing avant-garde fascination with silent film, cinema was becoming the ultimate embodiment of modern mass culture" (90). The "modern mass culture" that was emerging in Europe at this time was a reactionary one that became known as a bohemian lifestyle that was personified by Valle-Inclan. In this regard, his biographer emphasizes that, "His behavior at the time showed contempt for the rational world
In "Piaf," Pam Gems provides a view into the life of the great French singer and arguably the greatest singer of her generation -- Edith Piaf. (Fildier and Primack, 1981), the slices that the playwright provides, more than adequately trace her life. Edith was born a waif on the streets of Paris (literally under a lamp-post). Abandoned by her parents -- a drunken street singer for a mother and a
From this came our insistence on the drama of the doorstep" (cited by Hardy 14-15). Grierson also notes that the early documentary filmmakers were concerned about the way the world was going and wanted to use all the tools at hand to push the public towards greater civic participation. With the success of Drifters, Grierson was able to further his ideas, but rather than directing other films, he devoted his time
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