Blainely offensive
by John Holden
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?
Lydia Howland
Say 'Yes Paul'. I'd like that - but not a lot.
Maybe it's all these "Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed" type shows that mean magicians have to get ever more extreme to get noticed. Now we all know how the Paul Daniels type tricks are done, it takes more to impress us.
Having said that I've got a friend who makes quite a lot of money as a magician at parties without having to resort to David Blaine scale danger. The audience isn't kids though, he gets far more bookings for middle class, middle age, North London gatherings.
Bobby Webster
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.
Nigel Tromans
Well I think he's a bloody hero !
Paul Paul
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...