Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

Some bloke in a box

Page: 1(2)3 4 5

11:42 / 11.09.03

yeah, he may very well be entertaining us: but think how many people out there in london are keeping his brain occupied. before he went in the box, people were saying that without visual stimulation he might get so bored & spaced out that he'd hallucinate. if anything, the egg throwers are doing him and his mind a favour.
he should be pleased that all these people are playing bongos and stuff for him. i sure as hell would be. if he *really* wanted to be left alone, wouldn't he be in a box somewhere remote like the desert or the artic?

11:56 / 11.09.03

Here's what UK Farkers are planning to do.

12:25 / 11.09.03

Houdini? As entertainment goes, crapping one's nappy in a perspex box is hardly up there with shooting Niagara Falls in a barrel...

12:28 / 11.09.03

His box is immediately above a tree. Could we burn it...?

12:39 / 11.09.03

I think we should get hold of giant space hoppers, pogo sticks, etc. and bounce up and down, grinning insanely at him through the perspex walls of his perspex box. It would be even better if the space hoppers were in the shape of giant pieces of cake, doughnuts etc. This should be done at totally random points, preferably increasing in frquency as he nears the end of his 'vigil'.

12:42 / 11.09.03

Maominstoat:

"What, we wanna stop anyone thinking of doing anything fun, whether pure showmanship or not?"

Not at all, that's why we're encouraging the throwing of eggs. THAT is fun. Looking at someone sitting in a box for 44 days is DULL.

"Do I care if it's real? No. But someone is attempting to entertain us."

Yeah, but in as dull a fashion as could be imagined. In the old days, people who wanted attention would be good enough to do something genuinely entertaining and dangerous in a thrilling way, like ride over the Niagra falls in a biscuit tin, or travel between the twin towers on a unicycle, via a piece of cotton, with fireworks coming out of their arse. And it didn't take flipping weeks to take in. This joker is trying to grab maximum attention for minimum effort, the lazy, greedy sod!

"But I can't be totally opposed to someone who's just trying to make life more fun (for which read... Harry Houdini. You dissing him?)"

Again, where's the fun? Houdini ruled, for the above reasons (ie he did edge-of-yer-seat, heart-in-mouth stuff).

Anyway, all of this takes no account of the best reasons for hating Blaine, which are his obnoxious, slack-jawed, mogadon drawl and his dopey "I am a simple man, and yet I am also the Messiah, do you see?" face.

11:38 / 13.09.03

flyboy: i told my beat friend about your picnic idea, and she laughed hysterically for, like, 34 minutes!

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:44 / 13.09.03

Gala pies. The pork pies with an egg in the middle. Take abnout hteee hundred of them, cut them all in half and superglue them to cover completely the exterior of the boc, so when Blaine awakes he is confronted with an unending vista of pastry, processed meat and hard-boiled rondel, lit fitfully by whatever light can get in around the irregularity of the crust.

No view of the world outside. No visual reference point.

Just pie.

Hmmm. Pie.

13:05 / 13.09.03

really, you have to give him some credit: he's got people worked up enough (either in amusement or irritation, but worked up nonetheless) to bother coming up with all these really funny ways to screw with him. and then going through with their ideas, much to the delight of everyone who cares to keep up on the whole thing.

in this way, his effort is very definitely a success. even if his "art" does suck.

autopilot disengaged

16:10 / 13.09.03

the picnic's cool, but - even better... i mean, i'm imagining he doesn't have any access to media, yeah? (well, officially, at least).

so - the army shd stage some massive military manouvere mostly involving pretending to fight and kill each other. blaine'll think civil war's broken out comma will panic.

glitch being, the military don't appear to have an especially highly-developed sense of humour. in my limited experience.

Whisky Priestess

22:25 / 13.09.03

I see a clear box and I want to paint it black
No colours any more, I want it to turn black ...

08:33 / 14.09.03

i hate to say this to the 'we-don't-find-this-interesting' brigade, but, like, why are you posting about it then? Isn't the boringness part of what makes it interesting in some wierd paradoxish way i'm too hungover to explain properly?

09:01 / 14.09.03

Have people started selling souveniers yet? Little black clad action figures sitting in plastic boxes and the like.

11:14 / 14.09.03

I think the whole event, including helicopter burger action, is quite interesting. That doesn't mean that Mr Blaine is not a tit or that we should give him any respect for it; I don't think this was his intention at all, I think we were all supposed to be amazed at his box-sitting-in skills and gaze upwards in silent awe.

12:37 / 14.09.03

What fridge said. It's more a case of "look at what those people are doing to that idiot in the box" than "look at that idiot in the box." Will many be travelling to London to see it? Will they hell. Will many who happen to be walking past on their way to somewhere decide to throw some shit at him for the hell of it? You betcha.

Mind you, I fully expect Blaine to emerge from this and claim that the audience reaction and participation was part of his plan all along (despite the apparent attempts by his team to stop it).

18:45 / 16.09.03

Blaine cage attack...

09:48 / 19.09.03

Okay, thet've increased security since the nutter's attack around the box. (see Ganesh's link). However, if you wanted to start getting at him, a boat on the thames might be a worthwhile effort. Only for the dedicated few who really wanted to fire some stuff at him of course.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

10:05 / 19.09.03

Kittie, surely, has it right on the nail...

I'm not really following it, so I don't know the pundits views, but surely the whole point is that Blaine is 'the canvas'.

It's the 'audience', and this thread, and the emotions and hate, and vitriol and Guardian website, that are the 'art / entertainment / showmanship'.

WE'RE the spectacle, not him.

As situationist art goes, I reckon he's pulled off a corker.

And we're not even getting paid or famous.

10:12 / 19.09.03

Interesting blog entry here re. the Blainster and his stunts. (not by him though).

Tryphena Absent

10:19 / 19.09.03

Sensationalist art. It does make sense and Blaine in a glass box can certainly be viewed as an installation. It can be dismantled and reconstructed elsewhere, it focuses on the spectacle and our reactions are the prime interest.

However I got this email the other day and it suggests that this stunt is going to go another way. I'm not necessarily taken in by it as it doesn't seem to be Blaine's usual style but hell, I might as well post it up here...

A mate of mine who works for Channel 4 has told me whats really going on with the whole David Blaine down at Tower Bridge thing. Apparently he is going to stay in the box for a predetermined period, at which point an announcement will be made saying he is ill, weak etc. They will then attempt to get him down from the crane (all on live TV), at which point the box, with him in it, will drop into the Thames by 'accident' seemingly killing him. Until of course he reappears some minutes later.

Tryphena Absent

10:29 / 19.09.03

In response to this excerpt from that blog... Our armour against the false media gods has slowly crippled our ability to believe that the marvellous is possible; or our ability to see the marvellous when it stares us in the face...

I don't see much that is marvellous in David Blaine's stunt. I might see a moral hunger strike as admirable and if he was doing this for a cause I might have some admiration but he strikes me as a big show off in a glass box. 44 days in a box for no reason, slowly wasting away is not magic, it's not marvellous, it's not all that interesting, it just means he's had some expensive training and bulked up a bit. If anything it is purely about speculation, our focus on publicity. Our reaction is not what's at fault here, it's the very fact that anyone would do this in the first place.

David Blaine is a False Media God.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

10:32 / 19.09.03

Yeah, that is a nice blog, Illmatic.

Anna D L - would this change the nature of the work in some fundamental way? I don't think so. It would be a fantastic punchline to a marvellous joke on evryone who has in any way contributed to the work as a whole.

I'm personally kind of disgusted with the level of antipathy something as essentially boring and personal as this has stirred up in the Sociopathic Crowds. I'm forcibly reminded of the Angry Mobs that frequent The Simpsons on a fairly regular basis, tipping vehicles and beating seven shades of shit out of anything in their way.

Mr Burns : (high on a coktail of morphine and other painkillers, glowing from radiation poisoning and floating through Springfiled Woods) "I bring you LOVE!!!!"

Barney : (at the front of a large Angry Mob) "Hey! It's bringin' love! Quick, let's KILL IT!"

10:40 / 19.09.03

Anna - sounds spurious. Is that your mate or second hand?
What pre-determined period?
And also - it's a pretty hefty swing to over the river. Would look a bit obvious, no?

Tryphena Absent

10:41 / 19.09.03

Hey, I think he's just gonna have to take it. Welcome to England, we're not in to Mr. Boasty today, there's nothing noble about denying yourself food for no reason. We're surrounded by anorexics and people who can barely afford to feed themselves. I don't even want to go in to the number of homeless people on the streets of London who beg for lunch everyday and this man is not eating for a stunt. It's lame, it's sad and it's ill conceived. He deserves to have things thrown at him, plus those adverts just made him obscenely pathetic.

It isn't sociopathic to react to someone acting like a twat- no one's beating the shit out of him, they're just throwing things at a glass box. The British tabloids have made it clear that the people of this country are happy to make anything a tragedy- someone surely expected this.

Tryphena Absent

10:43 / 19.09.03

Probably more like fourth hand Jub.

10:43 / 19.09.03

A channel 4 source so well placed, ze thinks the box is suspended over the Thames. Hmmmmm.

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:43 / 19.09.03

That's an interesting theory, and quite a plausible one when you consider that Blaine's initial idea for a Tower Bridge related stunt was to jump off the top of it into the Thames (mooted a few years ago now).

What I find fascinating at the moment is the reaction to the reaction to the stunt. To some, it's symptomatic of the British public's alleged intolerance of 'difference'; to others, it represents out admirable scepticism and unwillingness to be impressed by American pomp or hokum. I have issues with both of these views, but more importantly, I find it odd that so many people assume that the attempts to disrupt Blaine's stunt are specifically British in nature. Is it so inconceivable that he would have met with an entirely different response if the box had been hung in another of the world's capital cities?

10:43 / 19.09.03

Your right on the Money there Money $hot... read something somewhere that said all the slagging was because the British public like their celebs to be humble and they'll shoot down anyone who isn't...

I heard a similar thing about the end of the 44 days not the Thames though I think that's probably just a bit of confusion as the original stunt for London was going to be Blaine getting pushed off the Bridge wearing concrete boots. I was going to post about it but didn't want to spoil it for anyone, but it makes sense that he'll play ill he did it at the end of the Frozen in Time stunt too.

10:45 / 19.09.03

Oops sorry posted before seeing Flyboys post.

10:47 / 19.09.03

I just dd something similar bear. I'm so lame.

10:56 / 19.09.03

Anna: I think invoking the problems of anorexia and homlessness in service of your arguement is a little lame really. Those two phenomona have nothing to do with what's going on - it's not as if he's doing it to take the piss out of them, is it? "Take that, you thin bastards - I don't even need to eat!!"

I don't agree with everything in the blog but I'm with him insofar as us British love to have a hate figure, and that's something I don't particularly like, any more than I like the opposite, media orchestrated outpouring of affection and mass sentimentality we've had around Princess Di and others.

Tryphena Absent

11:03 / 19.09.03

Well I don't Illmatic, it feels like he's poking people in the eye, mainly because of the persona that he chooses to present. I admit the main reason I dislike the stunt is more to do with the fact it's boring but to me it also reeks of hypocrisy. There are so many people without food and this incredibly rich man is going without in order to get more money to feed himself and buy plush sofa's and bad see through fireplaces to fit in with the Backstreet Boys and their terrible interior design set.

And I do think that he would have got a different reaction in other cities, not necessarily that different but I think it's probably a particular type here- we clearly weren't going to like him.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

11:12 / 19.09.03

The thing I don't understand is the people who are all like "Why do they hate David, why are they doing all these things, why FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST?!" as though only David has the right to do something pointless in a public place. Staying in a box for a month and a half is performance art. Throwing an egg at a bloke staying in a box for a month and a half is also performance art. Now, admittedly, the fourteenth person throwing eggs at a bloke staying in a box for a month and a half is rather tedious, which is why alternatives and remixes of the idea should be tried, but if David's Girlfriend doesn't want people throwing stuff at David then maybe David's Girlfriend should consider that they should have done this in David's flat and not in a public place, where other performers are allowed to take part.

On a slightly serious note, as it is a public area, presumerably David's security guards commit assault ever time they stop a member of the public from throwing something at David?

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

11:28 / 19.09.03

Anna, I'm not even following the thing, but even I know someone tried to cut off his water supply and cut the ropes suspending him up there, and was angrily hurling heartfelt abuse at him as they were arrested to the tune of "Go home you fucking Yank foreigner, we don't want you in this country".

OK, sociopathic is maybe a harsh, overly clinical term to apply - how about totally irrational? Completely out of proportion? Neurotically hostile? Stupidly concerned with a trivial non-event in a world of far greater causes to be upset about?

Seriously, if the guy wants to hang in a box without food until he wastes away and shits himself in public, so what? I see people ordering hugely expensive 3 course meals in nice restaurants and then leaving half of it on the plate. And you know what? The waiters just scrape that shit straight in the bin - they don't pop out the back and hand it to the queues of homeless starving people fishing half eaten Pret a Manger sarnies out of public bins. It just goes to waste. And you're pulling David Blaine up for fasting? Or is it that he's making such a 'big deal' out of it (is he? or are we?)

So the only possible objection to the whole thing I can really entertain is the media circus surrounding it. But hey - we have a media, and it's a circus.

11:50 / 19.09.03

"Go home you fucking Yank foreigner, we don't want you in this country".

I believe his actual words were (if our nations media is to be believed):
`Go back to America, I'm going to rock you!' - (rock his glass box)

Rock him? How fucking mild. What a twat.

Page: 1(2)3 4 5