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John Holden

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Head of Culture

John Holden is Head of Culture at Demos and a visiting Professor at City University. He has Masters Degrees in law and art history and is the author of an influential body of work on cultural value and on leadership

Posted by John Holden at 9:04am on Friday, 29th August 2003

David Blaine's forthcoming stunt of starving himself whilst suspended over the Thames at Tower Bridge is morally repugnant. Voluntary starvation for entertainment looks pretty sick when there are so many people really starving in the world. But is there something more sinister at work? Are the broadcasters who will televise this stunt unaware that Blaine's act debases the currency of one of the most extreme forms of political protest? When the next political prisoner decides to go on hunger strike, who will not be influenced by the fact that the something very similar was undertaken on screen to make money?


Comments

1
Perhaps, but isn't the symbolic power of the hunger strike the implicit message that the prisoner is prepared to die for their cause (which Blaine, one would assume, is not)? It all seems a long way from David Copperfield doing those dreadful TV stunts where he'd make the Berlin Wall disappear. With Derren Browne promising to play Russian roulette on live TV, what does it say about the modern era when these extreme stunts are the only way to get publicity? It almost makes me yearn for rerun of Paul Daniels featuring the lovely Debbie McGee. I said almost...
Posted by Paul Paul  at 1:59pm on Friday, 29th August 2003
2
Say 'Yes Paul'. I'd like that - but not a lot.
Posted by Lydia Howland  at 2:26pm on Friday, 29th August 2003
3
Of course, he may be trying to make a literary statement: Franz Kafka's famous short story The Hunger Artist provides an absurdist take on the same subject. David Copperfield eat your heart out (now that would be an impressive stunt...).

You can read a translation of it on the Kafka Project website.

Posted by Bobby Webster  at 5:20pm on Friday, 29th August 2003
4
Well I think he's a bloody hero !
Posted by Nigel Tromans  at 4:34pm on Tuesday, 7th October 2003

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